It is from modded skyrim jump. The entire jump is just as silly.
Brockton's Celestial Forge (Worm/Jumpchain)
- Thread starter LordRoustabout
- Start date
- Location
- United States
Ah, thank you.
More on topic @LordRoustabout I just want to let you know I binge read all of this on fanfiction.net the moment I found it. Stuff like this that uses Jumpchain in neat ways is a rare treat, and the feeling of progression has got me on the edge of my metaphorical seat waiting to see what he can make and/or do next. Thanks for the fun story.
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- Location
- Pearl of the Orient Sea
Gladnto sernthis fic here. Read it all in ff.
6.1 Interlude: Taylor
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
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.
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.
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This is very interesting. Please continue.
Small problem. I lack self control and have binged and now want more.
I read somewhere that Feedback is the coin of the realm so...
I will watch this with significant interest.
Small problem. I lack self control and have binged and now want more.
I read somewhere that Feedback is the coin of the realm so...
tldr review. Good use of characters. Keep doing it.
Two things struck me. The chapters that while long by wordcount, seem short. I would just get to the end and go "Well that sure didn't feel like 6000 words. Next."
Secondly while I normally see them done very badly, your OC's work remarkably well.
I was particularity Impressed with your development of Garment Gloves into a character in her own right well done she has limits goals and a well thought out impact on the world. Her actions seem to have weight and the world reacts organically. Good job.
I have also enjoyed the 40k Laboratory having a character. Very easy to write it off as a analyser and leave it at that. Turning it into a character with its own reactions such as to fleet and the life fibres was unexpected and very welcome. Can you get It some tinkertech just to see reactions? Particularly some weirder stuff?
I am now eagerly look forward to the further development of Fleet and Survey, seeing how they develop from their experiences in the rescue of the Undersiders.
And the inclusion of a therapist. Well done. Well done indeed. not only as a narrative tool to review and react to past actions but to emphasis that these people are broken while creating a potential social link that is needed to be defended form the coming chaos. So many possibilities for the future.
I would be cautious about adding too many new characters as each one is another ball in the air to be considered but so far you are managing impressively so what do I know?
Two things struck me. The chapters that while long by wordcount, seem short. I would just get to the end and go "Well that sure didn't feel like 6000 words. Next."
Secondly while I normally see them done very badly, your OC's work remarkably well.
I was particularity Impressed with your development of Garment Gloves into a character in her own right well done she has limits goals and a well thought out impact on the world. Her actions seem to have weight and the world reacts organically. Good job.
I have also enjoyed the 40k Laboratory having a character. Very easy to write it off as a analyser and leave it at that. Turning it into a character with its own reactions such as to fleet and the life fibres was unexpected and very welcome. Can you get It some tinkertech just to see reactions? Particularly some weirder stuff?
I am now eagerly look forward to the further development of Fleet and Survey, seeing how they develop from their experiences in the rescue of the Undersiders.
And the inclusion of a therapist. Well done. Well done indeed. not only as a narrative tool to review and react to past actions but to emphasis that these people are broken while creating a potential social link that is needed to be defended form the coming chaos. So many possibilities for the future.
I would be cautious about adding too many new characters as each one is another ball in the air to be considered but so far you are managing impressively so what do I know?
I will watch this with significant interest.
oh, yeah, with you with the problem that comes with lack of impuls control bigning.
really looking forward to how the undersiders and especially tailor is going to react to Garmet. She is, after all, probably one of the main contenders for main wifu. Lisa being freaked out by not parahuman parahuman, Tailor and the rest wondering about why he is "in love" with Tailor and CLEARLY also in a serious relationship with a piece of sentient accessories.
and yeah, Laboratory is also an amazing character, and i am almost sad that the Undersiders will never see the Hatted servo skulls. i wounder how a techpriest would have reacted to THAT...
and yeah, Laboratory is also an amazing character, and i am almost sad that the Undersiders will never see the Hatted servo skulls. i wounder how a techpriest would have reacted to THAT...
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7 Accessory
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
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.
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.
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- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
I've noticed some authors can write huge portions of text that seem to fly by and others can write short chapters that feel long without dragging. I'm not sure which I prefer and there's probably a more technical way to describe it than I'm doing.
I'm glad the original characters came across well. There seems to be a delicate balance between dropping in so many OCs you might as well write an original work and having contrived justification for every character you meet being significant in canon. It's a balancing act I'm trying to manage. A lot of it is just wanting to explore how something would interact with the world or characters and building up from there.
And I'm also looking forward to Garment's introduction to the Undersiders. Still a few chapters off but bound to be entertaining.
I'm glad the original characters came across well. There seems to be a delicate balance between dropping in so many OCs you might as well write an original work and having contrived justification for every character you meet being significant in canon. It's a balancing act I'm trying to manage. A lot of it is just wanting to explore how something would interact with the world or characters and building up from there.
And I'm also looking forward to Garment's introduction to the Undersiders. Still a few chapters off but bound to be entertaining.
Thanks for the feedback. I'll be crossposting regularly until I've caught up with the rest of the story. After that I'll be maintaining the latest updates on this thread.
Mizu
Software Developer
- Location
- Victoria, Australia
This is excellent so far. Loving the fact the protagonist is slowly growing in power as the story progresses, hints about his backstory and initial power going to be 'monster cape' ish - or Nilbog levels of 'oh crap' for nearby people - and how people are reacting to his presence. By which I mean the Undersiders and Taylor, the latter especially, and his actions are only worsening her guilt for dragging in a new guy who has a crush on her into villainy.
Or so she thinks, at least
Or so she thinks, at least
LordofTentacles
Surprisingly Sturdy
- Location
- Louisiana
Finally a tinker fic that doesn't turn the protags into an emotionless too-cool-for-the-public-pool asshole logic monster. This is wonderful.
8 Aftermath
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
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.
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.
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Twisted
Science, because it's basically magic.
- Location
- The Land Down Under.
- Pronouns
- Sir, He, Him
Mm, yeah crossposting is snazzy, I won't spoil anything for those who don't read it on ff.n but this I probably in my top 5 fanfics. (Off the top of my head, probably a few I'd put in to swap the bottem two around but yeah I like these).
1.Technoqueen
2.Brocktons Celestial Forge
3.A Cadmean Victory(hp)
4.Deathly Hallowed(hp)
5.Overloard: The Exiled(Overloard wb gets a lower number for being both unfinished and slow to update, like real slow)
So its real good.
1.Technoqueen
2.Brocktons Celestial Forge
3.A Cadmean Victory(hp)
4.Deathly Hallowed(hp)
5.Overloard: The Exiled(Overloard wb gets a lower number for being both unfinished and slow to update, like real slow)
So its real good.
- Location
- Brazil
- Pronouns
- He
really good work you got here
8.1 Interlude: Amy
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Interlude: Amy
Amy Dallon was in agony. Once the adrenalin had worn off the true extent of her injuries became brutally clear. She had refused painkillers until after the Wards were treated. She couldn't afford to have her focus compromised. She couldn't afford to make a mistake. As soon as the cast was on she was healing people again. Even an injury this severe wasn't enough to let her stop.
Her wrist was a mess. Both of them were damaged, but the sprain was so overshadowed by the compound fracture that she barely noticed it. She'd seen the x-rays. It was an odd feeling looking at something she would have been able to fix in minutes and knowing how long and painful the recovery process would be. There might have to be surgeries. She could even need an internal fixation plate before this was over.
The pain and worry had taken her normal healing from tedious to insufferable. After treating her sister the first Ward she had to deal with was Carlos. She hated working on Carlos. The way his body shifted function in response to every change made healing him like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall. This was worse than all the previous times put together. After what the bug girl had done to him.
She shuddered when she remembered that knife at her own throat. Knife? It was practically a sword. In her mind it kept getting bigger and bigger until the image of a woman in insect armor carrying a sword that dwarfed Chevalier's cannon blade loomed over her.
She shook off the thought. Carlos had been divided into seven pieces with a few swings of that weapon. Nobody else could have lived through that attack, and he even his miraculous survival brought unique challenges. Every piece of his body was trying to turn itself into something that could be self-sufficient without the other parts. That meant they would fight attempts to be combined into one person. Unlike the times he had lost an arm or leg every piece needed to be prepped at the same time or the entire mass would pull itself apart. Worse only the chest-torso piece still had his consciousness in it. Dealing with that dead stare and lolling tongue from his face while trying to wrangle his body together would have been hellish on her best day, much less with a broken wrist.
The visit to the Wards headquarters hadn't gone much better. No-one had escaped without some injury. Blake had at least been able to patch himself up with his biomancy and despite being tased had the closest thing to a victory in this whole mess when he broke Grue's knife. Chris was being chewed out by the director but apparently had taken a bad fall that put him out of the fight. Missy had been knocked unconscious and hearing what happened to Dennis would give her a whole new set of nightmares.
Then there was Dean. His armor might have been able to endure the attack from Hellound's dogs, but the villain had gotten her hands on one of those super knives as well. Once he was pinned she went to town on him. The suit was a complete write off. Every system was shredded and he'd had to be cut out of it while she'd been dealing with Carlos. Insufferably he tried to keep in good spirits about the whole thing, which ruined any satisfaction she might have been able to feel at his defeat. Hellhound had clearly been going for the suit, not him, but he had still picked up a handful of shallow cuts. They were so impossibly finely made that she could seal them with barely any effort. That said actually feeling the layers of cells that had been sliced in half rather than torn apart, like what happened in a normal cut, was harrowing.
Miss Militia had called off the other Wards when they pressed for information about Tattletale. That was the last thing she wanted to re-live right now. Instead she was sulking through the basement of the PRT building's attached hospital. It had been built to stop capes with injuries from being photographed when they were discharged. There were high security areas connected directly to the PRT headquarters, but the rest of it was a conventional downtown hospital.
And like a coward she was sneaking through back routes to the exit so she wouldn't see any patients. Patients she'd feel compelled to heal. She hated herself for it, but she knew even a broken wrist wasn't enough excuse to withhold treatment from someone dying of a terminal illness. Too much, it was all too much.
She had turned into a side hallway when a cape stepped out into her path. It was unusual to see one here, but they weren't actually confined to the high security wing. She didn't recognize his costume, but there were about a dozen minor heroes in the city and she hadn't kept track of all of them.
The man was tall but not particularly muscular. He had broad shoulders that were amplified by his long wool coat. Engraved metal panels decorated the coat, gloves, and parts of the rest of the costume. His left wrist had an elaborate and heavy bracer clasped to it that rested over the sleeve of his coat. He wore belts of pouches around his waist and a bandoleer across his chest. His mask was a well-made and stylish steel visor, but the rest of his head and face were covered by tied bandannas. That combination should have looked sloppy, but the whole design came together with a level of style and elegance she rarely saw even in Protectorate capes.
"Hi?" She asked. "Can I help you?"
"Yes actually. I was looking for you."
Amy's heart sank. She had a policy to not take requests, but could she refuse a hero? Not if it was for himself, but if he was asking for a friend or family member she would have to hold to her policy. She looked around. Why had she taken this deserted route? If he got upset about being turned down there was no one around to step in.
"What do you want?"
"There's something I need to resolve." She gave him a confused look. "I made the weapon that did that." He pointed at her wrist.
Amy froze. Tinker. She should have seen it, the metal, the pouches, the mask design. This was the new weapon tinker that had supplied the Undersiders. She had told the PRT that the bug girl wasn't a tinker. There were hints from how the Undersiders had talked about things, slight references, the way no one deferred to the bug girl regarding those weapons or anything technical. Even with all that it wasn't enough for them to make a definite judgement.
But Amy knew. She knew from how she had jammed the girl's power, the feedback connecting directly to her mind. But she couldn't explain that. It would reveal too much about her capabilities. So she put the city at risk and left an unknown villain tinker running unchecked all because she was too ashamed to come clean about her abilities.
Her eyes darted over the capes equipment. He didn't look like he was carrying weapons, but that meant nothing. She remembered her terror as the bug cape sprouted that damn baton from her hand and swung it at her. The thing was so thin it looked like it wouldn't trouble a fly, but it hit the extinguisher like one of Vicky's punches. The sensations came back to her in a flash. The metal crumpling. The foam exploding over her. The snap of the bones in her wrist.
Bones that still throbbed hours later.
"My sister's in the building. If I scream she'll hear me." It was a bluff, and a terrible one at that. They were in a nearly abandoned corner of the basement. The best she could hope for was some janitor or technician stumbling across them.
"Then I guess I'll have to do this quickly." He reached into one of his pouches and Amy flinched back, her mind running through a thousand horrible possibilities. Like that bug girl his costume completely covered him. The only skin she could see was his eyes. There was no chance she would be able to touch him before he unleashed whatever he was planning.
Instead of a weapon he pulled out a tiny plastic container of liquid and what looked like a piece of some root vegetable. He crushed them in his gloved hand and she could smell vinegar and... ginger? The mass in his hand suddenly started to shine and he casually tossed it into the air.
Light burst out from the mixture and washed over her. She flinched and covered her face with her hands, but the energy didn't hurt. In fact it did just the opposite.
She felt the bones in her wrist move back into place. The horrible pain was gone along with the sense of the injuries themselves. This hadn't just accelerated the healing, it erased the injuries completely, either making them never happen or healing so well there was no sign of damage. Her sprained wrist was feeling perfect as well, and every minor scrape and bruise she'd picked up through the fight in the bank was gone.
Better than that she felt refreshed. The slow buildup of stress and tension from too many long nights washed out of her as the light hit her and she felt calmer and more focused than she had in months, maybe even years.
All the work and suffering she'd been preparing herself for, the weeks of pain, the surgeries, the physio therapy, it was all washed away in an instant. Was this what the people she healed felt? Suddenly Amy understood their gratitude a little better. It was even enough to overwhelm the innate dread at the fact that she had just been hit by an unknown tinker tech medical treatment.
Looking at the tinker she felt that gratitude, but it clashed violently with every emotion she been seething in this afternoon.
"So are you still going to scream?" He asked tilting his head. She hated how she couldn't see any of his expressions. All she had to go on were his eyes, which had the gall to look amused.
"I should." She rolled her left wrist, enjoying the range of movement. With the fingers that were free of the cast on her right hand she picked at the cloth brace wrapped around it until it fell to the floor. "You supplied weapons to villains. I should get the PRT here to arrest you."
He let out a sigh. "I'd really prefer a chance to talk."
She didn't want to engage him. Actually, that wasn't entirely true. She wanted to engage him in a very specific way. She wanted to grab him and scream at him to go upstairs and clear out the damn ICU. She wanted to pin him down and show him pictures of children's cancer wards until he committed himself to emptying them. She wanted him to not be a villain.
But if he wanted to talk then maybe she could get some information out of him. Maybe enough to send the Protectorate after the Undersiders. Her mind spun off an image of Protectorate heroes raiding the Undersiders base, probably in a stinking sewer somewhere. Along with the pleasant thoughts of Miss Militia unloading a machine gun into the bug cape, using what were definitely rubber bullets and not high explosive rounds, and Tattletale being carted off to the Birdcage while gagged and hogtied she imagined this tinker. He was captured and offered a plea deal. Yes, that would work. Make your stupid terrifying weapons for the Protectorate and spend nights and weekends clearing out hospitals. And lunch hours. And if he was a villain he didn't really need coffee breaks, right?
Amy realized she had been lost in thought and quickly tried to cover for herself.
"What, are you a member of the Undersiders?"
"No, I actually didn't make it past the membership vote." She gave him a horrified look. "And I wouldn't have signed up anyway." He qualified.
Wait, they didn't want him on the team? Who would turn down a tinker? If it was a vote he could have been blocked by someone. A conflict with someone on the team? It was an avenue that she might be able to exploit. If she could split them apart then at least they wouldn't be able to get any more of those weapons. "Then how'd you end up working with them."
He considered this. "I saved them from Oni Lee. They wanted to make it up to me."
"What?" She sputtered. "How did that lead to you giving them weapons?"
"They needed some gear and I agreed to sell it to them." He kept his tone level during the confession.
Money. God damn it always came down to money. Stupid greedy capes taking shortsighted cash grabs and ruining everyone else's life.
"Was it worth it?" She spat the words at him. "Was what they paid you worth all of this?"
There was a pause before he answered. "I don't know."
"What, is your conscience catching up with you?"
"No," He looked at her. "It depends on whether it's enough for me to stop Bakuda."
Amy had gotten a good head of steam going and with one comment he completely derailed it.
"What? Sorry, what?"
"Bakuda? Bomb tinker? She just joined the ABB and attacked Cornell before that."
"I know who she is. What does she have to do with this?"
He suddenly turned very serious. "She's going to go off the rails. Lung would have been able to keep her in line, but with him locked up we're looking at a city wide bombing spree."
This was insane. It figures, she finally finds another healer cape and he's completely off his rocker. "You're saying you sold tinker tech weapons to supervillains so that you could get money to stop a hypothetical bombing spree from someone who hasn't even done anything in this city yet?"
She could see his jaw clench under his mask. There was part of this he wasn't telling her. "Have you seen the video of Cornell? The effects of those bombs?"
She hadn't. Amy had enough stress in her life without seeking out cape horror stories from other cities. But she wasn't going to let this person use some other tragedy to excuse his stupidity and greed. "It doesn't matter. She'll run out of whatever stock of explosives she's built before it can get out of hand." Her family had come to that conclusion during one of the rare team meetings she was able to attend.
"I used to think that before I fought Oni Lee."
"What does he have to do with anything?"
"You know how when he copies himself he duplicates all the grenades and equipment he carries?"
She vaguely remembered her family talking about something like that. "So what?"
"That works on Bakuda's bombs. As long as Oni Lee's around she has infinite copies of everything she builds and he goes from an annoyance to being able to put out firepower that would rival The Triumvirate."
Amy's mouth went dry and she felt sweat begin to bead on her forehead. "You can't know that."
"When I fought Oni Lee he tried to get me with a localized plasma grenade. It exposes everything within five meters to heat levels you only see inside of large stars."
She swallowed nervously. "Bullshit. I would have heard about it if something like that went off. The news would be all over the city."
"I broke his arm before he could use it and took it after he ran off."
Her eyes darted across his costume. He had been so distracting, so disarming that she nearly forgot who she was talking to. Oni Lee was a difficult opponent even for her family or experienced Protectorate capes. She wouldn't normally take a claim like that on faith but with what he could make she could see him besting the assassin. Still, that didn't mean she was going to buy the rest of his story. "So what, you can heal, make super knives, and analyze other tinker tech."
"Yes, actually." His answer was quick and flippant.
"Not buying it." In response he let out a chuckle. A fucking chuckle. "What?" Amy spat.
"It's that I just had pretty much this exact conversation with Tattletale."
The mention of that woman made Amy's gust wrench. She cursed herself for warming up to him. This was the kind of horrible slime that got chummy with supervillains.
"What, you two are close?"
"Actually I annoyed the hell out of her. I don't' think she likes me very much."
Or maybe he wasn't that bad. "What did you mean by the same conversation?"
"When I tried to explain my tinkering she was screaming about how it wasn't possible, then she slunk off with a headache."
The news lifted Amy's spirits more than was probably strictly appropriate. One of the worst parts of the whole ordeal was the thought of that bitch laughing at the fact that she almost destroyed Amy's life all while probably perched on top of a pile of money and caviar and fur coats that were probably made out of baby seal skin and endangered species. Her crawling off with a thinker headache felt like pure karma and Amy couldn't keep the smile off her face.
"Assume I believe you about being able to figure out her bombs. Why does that make you sure she's going to attach the city?"
He let out a breath. "I have a thinker power." From his posture and tone it was more like he was confessing to a sin than bragging about an ability.
God damn it. First Tattletale, then Dean, and now this guy. Why was she surrounded by fucking thinkers? That was of course assuming he was telling the truth and not just crazy.
"What, that lets you get inside her head? Tells you what she's planning?"
"No, it doesn't work that way." He paused as if considering what to say. "I get hunches about things, like how to feel about stuff. I can piece that together into hints about what I should do."
"So what are you getting about Bakuda?"
"Dread." His voice was dead serious. "Whatever she's planning it's horrible on the level of the worst capes. And I mean the worst worst capes, the ones no one likes to talk about. Given what I know about her and what she's capable of the potential scale of this is as bad as it can get."
At that moment Amy at least was convinced that he believed his own story. That was a big step up from her initial fears. Crazy and well-meaning was a lot better than strait up villainous.
"So what are you planning to do about it?" She could at least try to nail down his intentions.
He took a slow breath and starting listing things. "Build up my lab. Improve my equipment. See if I can crack her ECCM. Build counters for as many types of bombs as I can. Help the city prepare." The prospect seemed to exhaust him.
"How do you plan to do that?"
"Well, for one make sure their best healer is in top form."
Amy flushed at that. "I'd thank you, but you caused this mess in the first place."
"And now I fixed it. Problem solved." His tone wasn't as flippant as the words suggested. This seemed to be wearing on him and Amy took some satisfaction in that.
She was still frustrated, but at least she didn't feel threatened anymore. If she could talk this guy around they might be able to get him to turn on the Undersiders, or at least expose them.
"Hey," She shifted to a slightly friendlier tone of voice. "What should I call you?"
He gave her a tired shrug. "Haven't got a cape name yet."
Amy gaped. "You seriously put all that together without a cape name? You fought Oni Lee without a cape name?"
"Branding is for public relations. I've had tinker stuff to do."
Something occurred to her. "What about the bug girl?"
"She didn't have one, but I'm guessing you haven't seen the online reaction?"
She shook her head and felt a note of dread. She hated dealing with the internet community. Setting aside the fact that people couldn't understand her 'no requests' policy no matter how many times she explained it the other interactions were just exhausting. She avoided it as much as she could.
"What's happened?"
"It looks like they're going with Khepri." She gave him a questioning look. "Egyptian bug God."
Amy would have preferred the girl getting stuck with something like Warf Roach, but she knew how those things got out of hand. She'd have to check PHO later to see how this came about.
She put that aside and steeled herself for a question she'd been dreading. "That thing you used to heal me? What was it? Is it safe?" She was terrified of the answer. There weren't that many types of technology that she could imagine being able to heal a person the way he just had. All of them were incredibly dangerous. More than a few of them were grounds for a kill order. Worst case he'd admit to the kind of technology that gets you on the S-class lists.
"It's fine. There's no risk." She gave him a questioning look hoping he'd go on. "The mechanics are complicated, but it's perfectly safe."
She grit her teeth at the non-answer. "If it's so safe you should be out healing people."
"I'm pretty sure that's what I was just doing."
She glared at him. "I mean really healing. There's a city full of people who need your help as much as I did. If you care about the city what's stopping you?" Hopefully she could get some details on how his healing worked. She desperately hoped it wasn't based on one of the technologies the PRT banned outright.
"Well, first my healing doesn't work for free. If I go all out I'm going to run out of resources eventually, which will just leave everyone screwed when a serious disaster happens."
Amy's heart dropped at that, but she couldn't argue with it. Too many people with healing abilities were limited either in scope or endurance. She hated the algebra of it, but he had probably done more good by saving his resources for her than if he had healed freely. Of course it was his fault she was injured in the first place, so that was all crap.
"The Protectorate could get you all the resources you'd need. If you joined they'd be able to set you up with facilities, materials, support, everything." Unless time was the limiting factor. Or he was working with some technology that was under a blanket ban.
"I'm not joining the Protectorate." There was no uncertainty in his tone.
"Why not?" Amy was dreading the answer to this. If his tech was an S-class threat waiting to happen them forget him helping her heal, the PRT would be hunting him down for a trip to the Birdcage or a kill order.
He sighed. "My power warned me against it."
"What?" Once again he managed to jump the rails of this conversation.
"My thinker power? It told me joining the Protectorate was a bad idea."
Amy was really starting to hate thinkers. "So you got a bad feeling and decided working with villains would be better?"
"It's a little more complicated than that."
"Then explain it to me." Amy was frustrated, but if she could leverage that into getting more information out of him then so much the better.
He considered for a moment. "Ok, my power? It doesn't give me clear answers, just kind of feelings about things, but feelings about enough things in enough detail can let me figure stuff out. There are some bad things about the Protectorate as a whole, not unforgivable, just the level of corruption you'd probably find in any group that size. If it were Boston or New York I might be ok signing up, but not in here."
"Why? What's different about Brockton Bay?"
He was reluctant to get into this, but at her unflinching stare he relented. "Well, everything my power tells me says I wouldn't get along with Armsmaster. Not to the point of violence, just that it would be a bad relationship."
Amy could admit the man was somewhat intense. This tinker was frustrating enough for her. She could easily see him being at odds with the Protectorate leader. "Is that it?" If he was basing his decisions on something as minor as that she had probably given him too much credit.
"No." He was looking distinctly uncomfortable and Amy was taking no small pleasure in putting him on the spot. There was a pause before he continued. "Have you met the local PRT director?"
She nodded. The woman could be a terror but was unquestioningly devoted to her job. "Yea. What about her?"
He looked dower as he replied. "I'm pretty sure Director Piggot is insane."
Amy bit down at her natural reaction to this cape calling anyone else's sanity into question. Instead she switched to a placating tone of voice.
"Really? What makes you say that?"
The tinker started making abstract gestures. "There's a general feeling that it would be dangerous to work under her. Also some sense of instability around her, kind of tied to something in her past. I don't' think she likes capes, at least that's the impression my power gives me. I haven't dug into it enough to piece anything else together, but there are major red flags connected to the Protectorate ENE. More than I'm willing to risk."
"So you decided joining a gang would be better?"
"I haven't joined any gang. I have a single business relationship with the smallest group in the city."
"But you still expect me to believe you care about the city? You couldn't find anyone else to work with."
He muttered something. "What was that?" With a pained look he repeated himself.
"I did think about approaching New Wave."
Amy tensed but was angry enough to not get sidetracked. "Oh, really? Did you get some bad feelings about my Aunt Sarah as well?"
"No, she was fine." He answered so naturally that Amy couldn't see any duplicity there.
"So what was it?"
"Look, I don't know if you want to get into this."
Amy looked at the man. There was very little chance anything good was going to come from this, but she wasn't backing down now. "No, I want you to tell me what was so bad it made working with villains the better option."
"It's actually..." He stopped and considered things, then took a breath and pressed forward. "Well, sorry to say this about your mother, but it was pretty much Brandish that kept me from trying."
Carol? He had a problem with Carol? This seemed like a cheap psychological trick, trying to drive a wedge between Amy and her family. But as far as the public was concerned their relationship was fine. Did he actually have a thinker power? More likely Tattletale had sent him here to needle her some more. She didn't want to deal with this. The last thing in the world she wanted was some outsider's thoughts on her relationship with Carol.
But Amy had to admit there was some part of her that wanted to hear someone try to tear down the woman. Just to see what they had to say. "What about Brandish?"
The tinker let out a slow breath. "Look, there's a lot to unpack here. I have to sort this stuff out from emotional reactions, so it's not precise. It's a lot of work to figure out where the bad is coming from."
"So my mom is giving you bad feelings?" He made an exasperated gesture. She just waited for him to elaborate.
"Ok, none of this is totally solid, it's just warnings from my power." Amy nodded and made a 'get on with it' gesture. "The sense I get is she's been messed up for a long time. Like, long enough that I can't get a reading where that isn't the case. It could go back to her trigger event. Considering the nature of her powers that probably means there was some pretty bad physical trauma with an impact that was never dealt with."
She furrowed her brow. "What do you mean by that?"
"Breaker means there was probably a threat, or something she wanted to escape. The striker power means it was probably direct and physical, likely with a threat of injury."
Amy blinked. "You're using trigger theory to analyze my family?"
"Yeah?" He answered like it was the most natural thing in the world.
"That stuff isn't proven! There are all kinds of contradictions."
"Right, but there aren't any in New Wave."
How could he tell? "So you think Carol is messed up because of her trigger event?"
"I think she's messed up and has been for a long time. I think it could be her trigger event. From what I'm getting I think she has a mountain of trust and control issues and what feels like an unhealthy obsession with your sister."
The mention of Vicky brought up a surge of emotions that Amy hadn't realized she'd been keeping buried. "What, do you have a problem with her too?" He did that damn awkward contemplation thing again. "Why do you keep doing that?"
He sighed. "There's a lot to sort through here. I get different levels of details on different topics. The more there is the harder it is to figure out." He shook his head. "There's nothing that bad for Glory Girl." Amy didn't like the way he said 'that bad'. "There's some feeling of concern around her. Not malicious, just like there's not enough control. Maybe a lack of restraint?"
Amy remembered less than a week ago, the call from Vicky, the sixth time she had to save her sister from what would probably be at minimum aggravated assault if not a manslaughter charge. Still, it didn't prove anything. Anyone could make that kind of guess by watching her behavior in cape fights.
"Is that the limit of your prognosticating?"
Rather than take the insult at face value he stood there and looked contemplative. "There's also some level of concern connected to... proximity? Like being around her for long periods is a bad thing. That might be her aura. That messes with emotions right?"
"What of it?" Amy didn't like the way this was headed.
"I guess if it's on long enough it could change the way your brain responds to things. Emotions affect neurochemistry and neurons that fire together wire together, that kind of thing."
"You can't know that." Amy's tone was more defensive than she intended.
"No, it's just a theory." He concentrated again. "My power's telling me that staying close to Glory Girl for long periods would be bad, so I'm going with that. For all I know it could be a specific power interaction that would be a problem for me and everyone else could be fine. The idea that it could cause emotional disorders is just a theory."
Amy clenched her jaw. She hated anyone talking about Vicky that way, but details from his ramblings were jumping out at her. Had Mark's depression been as bad before Vicky triggered? Did Carol get more distant? And her own feelings...
No, it was too convenient an explanation. She was being handed a way to shift the blame for all of her failings onto someone who did nothing but try to be a hero. Who was a proper hero, unlike her. She hated him for giving her hope. You couldn't trust thinkers. Even if he wasn't getting inside her head Tattletale could have sent him here with a list of things to say to break her down even more.
"Anything else?"
"Uh, maybe?"
"What?" She asked, more harshly than she meant too.
"I was just thinking about your sister's powers. They don't really make sense."
Amy rallied at this. "So you admit your trigger theory is crap?"
"No, I mean they don't make sense as coming from Brandish and Flashbang. There's no basis for the emotional component. Unless... was your sister dating Gallant before she triggered?"
Amy froze. She didn't like Dean, but she wasn't going to give away his secret identity to some mentally unstable thinker/tinker. "What makes you think that?"
"There aren't a lot of other emotion based powers in the city, and he was active before she triggered. It seemed like a probable source for her aura. Maybe. I don't have a good handle on Gallant's power."
The dread she'd been feeling dropped to a manageable level. Unlike that other bitch at least he could admit he wasn't perfect. As frustrating as he was to deal with it was a million times better than the feeling that all your secrets were being dragged out of your brain.
"You know that stupid knife you gave Hellhound wrecked his armor." She sneered. "If you were worried about the safety of the city maybe you should be more concerned about that."
Annoyingly he just waved her off. "Tinker's shouldn't take anything into the field they're not prepared to lose. He'll have to use an older suit, or spend some time getting the next one ready."
Right, the public fiction that Dean was a tinker rather than a blaster/thinker. Of course he would think the armor could just be rebuilt or replaced. In reality Chris would have to put days, maybe weeks of work into getting the suit back together. And no wonder he didn't understand Dean's power if he was working from the wrong starting point.
She must have shown some of that concern on her face, because he picked up something was wrong.
"Wait, I thought he was a Focal tinker. Is there something else going on?"
And once again Amy was lost. This conversation was becoming infuriating. She honestly didn't know if she was dealing with mad ramblings or some kind of high level thinker insight.
"Sorry, what?"
"Focal tinkers concentrate on only one item, they just rebuild and refine it. They're even more restrictive than hyperspecialists. They don't have any specialization beyond the one thing they can make. I figured Gallant was like that, just rebuilding that power armor with emotion blasts over and over. But there are some tinkers that have some serious drawbacks to what they make, like a physical or mental cost. Is that what we're talking about here?"
Amy blanched. This was deeper stuff than had been covered in her parahuman studies courses. She wanted to dismiss it as nonsense, but enough of it sounded familiar that there had to be some grounding.
"How do you know about that stuff? Is it your thinker power?"
"Not exactly. Or sort of? I have a pretty good understanding of how powers work, especially tinkers. Look, if Gallant is going to go off the deep end if he has to keep rebuilding his armor then the Protectorate should probably hold him back from frontline work. You don't want to take risks with that kind of thing."
"Don't worry about it." Amy hated absolving him for his responsibility in wrecking the armor, but if he kept picking at this there was a real chance that Dean's identity could get exposed. She needed to change the subject. "You were saying something about my sister's power."
"Oh, yeah." Amy wasn't thrilled talking about this, but if he was able to identify a Ward thanks to information she gave there would be hell to pay. "About her powers, how close is Brandish to Manpower?"
And once again she was thrown for a loop. "What? Why?"
"Your sister's powers suggest a link to him rather than to Flashbang. Usually that means there's something of an emotional connection."
"Are you saying my mom and Uncle Neil had an affair?"
He looked almost as uncomfortable with the subject as she was. "It could be she built up a trusting relationship with Manpower that facilitated the kind of connection that allowed second generation powers. Just, what I'm getting about her from my power says that's not too likely. I guess an affair between them could explain it."
"That's ridiculous." She drew herself up. "I can sense genetics when I heal someone. Vicky is not Uncle Neil's daughter."
"It doesn't have to be genetic. You just need an emotional link. Even uncertainty over her parentage would have done the trick."
"I'm not listening to this. You're just spouting crazy image board conspiracy theories."
"Maybe I'm wrong. My power's not precise and I've had to reevaluate a lot of stuff from it." That was what was so annoying. He was loose enough in his predictions that there was room for all kinds of errors without disproving his overall outlook. If he had absolute confidence in his guesses then she would be able to bring them down by refuting one aspect of them. Instead the best she could do was get him to admit some aspect of his theories was less likely than he previously thought.
"You wanted to know why I stayed away from New Wave. Well, I kept getting stuff like this from my power. I didn't want to get caught up in someone else's family drama." She still wasn't sure she believed him, but it was a harrowing idea that her family dysfunction was enough that someone would rather deal with villains than get involved with it.
And that brought up some dark thoughts. "Well what about me then? What does your power tell you about me? How do my powers make sense in your whole trigger theory model?"
From the way he looked at her Amy immediately regretted the question. She actually took a half step back, as if his answer was going to be a physical blow.
"My power is telling me that answering that question is not a good idea."
Amy felt a surge of relief and hated herself for it. She knew there was something terrible waiting for her, but she didn't want to face it. Just a little more time where she could pretend. Where she could pretend Carol wasn't right about her. Pretend that she could make up for her past, for what a horrible person she was if she tried hard enough.
And she hated that all her feelings were on display for a half mad tinker who worked with villains and might just be following one of Tattletale's scripts to set her up for another fall.
"I'm sorry."
Amy snapped up to face him. Well, face him as well as she could through his stupid bandannas and visor mask. "You're sorry? What are you sorry for? Supplying deadly weapons to villains? Breaking my wrist? Injuring and traumatizing the Wards? For digging into my life? Huh? What exactly are you sorry for?"
He stood stock still as she hurled abuse at him. She was red faced and near tears, but the bastard was just standing there and taking it.
Finally, after she caught her breath, he spoke. "Just so you know, I'm not happy with how this turned out. It was a mess."
"A mess that you caused." Her voice was bitter.
He gave her a look that made her feel uncomfortable. "I'm taking responsibility for my part in this."
"What exactly? The attack on the bank? The injured wards? The Undersiders getting away?"
"I don't think you would have been able to beat the Undersiders even if I hadn't made anything for them."
"What?" Amy felt indignant at the suggestion. "They..."
"They were holding back. Massively. If they didn't have my weapons they may have done something desperate. They were in a building full of civilians. They didn't want to hurt them, but the Wards were putting that to the test."
"You're making excuses for villains."
"Yes I am." His lack of denial cut the legs out from under her. "I accepted what I was getting into when I made my deal. But there are conventions that are designed to limit damage, to keep normal people safe when capes start to throw down. Those were broken today, and not by the Undersiders."
"What are you talking about?"
He looked frustrated. "The heroes were the ones who decided to escalate. They assumed the Undersiders would rather be captured than end up being seen as a more serious threat. Every villain holds themselves back and each time they go further than their limit the limit moves. Before this the Undersiders were restricting themselves to smash and grab jobs. If the Wards had let them run for it they might have gotten away or they might have been captured, but they would have had incentive to stay at that level of restraint. Instead they created a situation where they had to fight. Now people know they're willing to take thing that far. Going back to their previous level of restraint is just not possible."
The way he talked about limits, restrictions villains placed on themselves, how if you went past them there was no turning back. Did he know? Did he know why she was restraining herself? She looked at him, but there was no hint he was talking about her. It could be a coincidence, but could she trust that? He was a thinker, or very good at pretending to be one. Was he seeing inside her head, or was she just being paranoid?
"So they should have done nothing? Just let them get away?"
"There's such a thing as a measured response and it's a very important concept for capes."
This was insane. The Wards were heroes and this was a villain, or at best an arms dealer who thought he could pass judgement. "Where do you get off criticizing them?"
He took a slow breath before continuing. "Tell me, you know these people. Did any of them look at this situation and think it was serious, or did they come figuring they would get an easy villain capture and a picture in the newspaper? There were thirty nine people in the bank with you. Did the Wards even confirm their safety before they lined up like they were on a photoshoot?"
"They're not the bad guys." Amy was beginning to feel like that was a desperate defense. "The Undersiders were the ones who robbed the bank. They were the ones who took hostages. They planted deadly insects on everyone there!"
He looked at her seriously. "Let me ask you something. When you messed with bug girl's control, did you know what would happen to all the spiders she was commanding, or did you assume they would just stand down?"
Amy shifted awkwardly. "What do you mean?"
"I mean disrupting the control of a master like that could have put everyone at risk. So either you had complete understanding of the feedback between her and the spiders neural systems that allowed you to block direct commands without defaulting the creatures back to their base instincts, or you warped them to throw out a jamming field and hoped you didn't end up with dozens of lethal bites from the feedback."
Amy put up a front of indignity, but inside she was sweating. She had felt out the brains of those black widows. She'd felt the way they were being controlled and, though it had taken some time she'd been able to create feedback that blocked new orders and information without letting the other spiders run free. Vicky didn't pick up on what that meant, but he did. So the only two explanations were that she had no regard for the lives of the public or that she's been lying about not being able to affect brains. Damn it, she hated dealing with thinkers. Except this wasn't some secret that had been dug out from the depths of her soul, it was basic logic that anyone with insider knowledge of the attack could put together.
"Once that giant cannon came out, or people started making threats about cancer..." she felt a pit open in her stomach. "There was no longer any reason to hold back. At that point the Wards were basically betting on the Undersiders being more concerned about casualties than they were."
A cloud of dread settled on Amy and she tried to avoid showing how much this was bothering her. "So what should they have done?"
"I don't know." He cut her off before she could reply. "I mean I really don't know. The situation makes no sense. I don't know why teenagers were sent to deal with a hostage situation. I don't know why the Wards are even allowed to operate independently in this city. I don't know why a public super powered brawl in a crowded part of the city could be seen as a preferable option to anything else, including letting non kill order villains escape. How many civilian lives would it be worth to bring in a villain? There were stupid decisions on both sides here, but only one of those sides is supposed to be acting in the public good."
Amy watched the frustration bleed off the man. Clearly the whole situation bothered him, but to her frustration she couldn't find a way to frame it to turn him against the Undersiders.
"This whole system?" He spoke quietly. "It's not stable. Those conventions, the unwritten rules, there the only things keeping it from turning to chaos. I'm not endorsing how things work, I'm just acknowledging it. That's what I meant about Bakuda. That's what happens when the breaks come off."
"So that's it? You're perfectly fine with the way things went down? No guilt at all?"
"If there was no guilt I wouldn't be here."
"And you think I'm the only one you have to make it up to?"
"Well you didn't decide to turn a hostage crisis into a publicity stunt."
"That's why you came here? Because I fit your moral standards and to make sure the city still had its healer for this imagined bombing spree?" He actually looked uncomfortable at that. Good.
"That's not completely it."
"Oh? What is it then?"
"My power, that is my thinker power? It's kind of concerned about you."
And Amy shifted once more from anger to dread. The emotional rollercoaster of this conversation was exhausting. Where Tattletale had kept pushing her further and further into despair he seemed content to throw her in a random direction every third sentence. One moment she was furious, then concerned, then defiant, then ashamed. Was that his game? Keep her off balance so she wouldn't be able to counter him.
In a way it was worse than dealing with Tattletale. This wasn't pulling her deepest fears straight out of her mind. He admitted he was working with limited information, which meant there was a semi-logical chain to his deductions. Sometimes it was blatantly wrong, like about Dean being a tinker, but generally she could follow his thought process. He knew she could alter living things. He knew she could mess with brains. He knew what she had threatened the bug girl with. Between his tinker and thinker powers he probably had a better idea of what she was capable of than anyone else. Of course he'd be concerned about what she'd do if she went bad. When she went bad.
Was all that stuff about capes holding back and consequences building to this? She hated the idea that it was a villain, well borderline villain, who finally saw her for who she was. That he was the only one really concerned about the threat she represented.
Amy steeled herself. "Concerned how?" Despite her best effort she felt her voice waver.
He seemed nervous. Of course he would be. He knew what she would become.
"Uh, are you doing ok?"
And once again he proved he was capable of pulling the rug out from under her. "What?"
"Like, personally, emotionally, are you doing ok?"
"What do you mean?"
"I know you do really long shifts, and you don't seem to have much going on outside your work. You usually look pretty tired as well. And I'm not sure how healthy your home life is. My power's concerned you're going to hit a wall."
Amy was bouncing between emotions. Not knowing how to feel she decided to settle on offence. He spends half the conversation insulting her, criticizing her family, and trying to moralize against heroes and now he wants to pretend he cares about her? "Is your thinker power telling you about my family? You're ok with it digging into my personal life?"
"It's not really digging into anything, it's just worried about you. I mean, from what it's told me about Brandish I doubt she's that easy to live with. Plus there's your power."
"What about my power?" Amy snapped, faster than she intended.
"There's no connection to anyone else in New Wave. That means that there was a stronger emotional link from your biological parent than from anyone in your family."
It was a brutally clinical diagnosis of her family dynamic. The idea that her villain father loved her more than anyone in her family.
"What do you know about my father?" She half growled. Years of frustration was coming to the surface. "What did your power tell you about him?"
"Um, I didn't even know it was your father. I was just getting the sense of someone connected to you. It could have been anyone, but with your adoption it made sense that it would be a biological parent. That was an assumption."
He didn't know. It wasn't like Tattletale where he could shout the secret to the world. He was looking at her life through frosted glass and making guesses. Really good, well informed guesses, but there was a sense of distance there.
"So what do you know?" He paused and looked off to the side. "Well?"
"You're serious about this?"
She nodded, expressing confidence she didn't really feel.
"Ok, I know that they, well I guess that's he, really cares about you. Like, a lot. It's endearing, really."
Of course a villain would be the only one who could love her. "What else?"
"Uh, I'm pretty sure he's a strong cape. Like top tier. There's this feeling of respect and caution."
"Because he's dangerous."
"Yeah, but not in the random violence way. The closest comparison I could make would be... I guess Miss Militia?"
Amy's mind screeched to a halt. "What?"
"There's this respect, and a kind of, like, honor? I'm dealing with this second hand so it's hard to process. What I mean is, Miss Militia can create tactical weapons, but she's not going to. She's dangerous, but generally not a threat to people around her. That's the sense I'm getting from your father."
"Seriously?" What was she supposed to make of this?
He held up his hands. "My power isn't great at moral judgements. I can't really guarantee any of that." His eyes went wide. "Oh."
"What?"
He looked uncomfortable. "I'm not sure I should say."
"No, you started this, you don't get to back out now. Tell me what you found out."
He looked pained, but he continued. "Look, I'm not sure about this. My power is hard to figure out."
"Just tell me."
"Ok," He swallowed. "There's something between your father and your current family."
Amy felt the blood drain from her face. "What did he do?"
The tinker just shook his head. "It wasn't him."
"What does that mean?"
"What I'm getting is New Wave did something bad. Not like an atrocity or anything, but they did something immoral. Like they broke a convention that everyone's agreed upon."
"So what, New Wave is horrible and my father was great?"
He seemed to be struggling through whatever his power was giving him. "I told you, it's not good at moral judgments, and it's hard to sort out. I think they had a reason for it, but they went further than anyone else would have. Like to a dangerous level." He let out a breath. "Frankly, this is a mess. I think more than Brandish the real reason I stayed away from seriously considering New Wave was there was just too much of this stuff to sort through."
"What, you're just leaving it like that? You accuse my family then decide to stop?"
"Look, I'm not going to be able to get you a perfect picture of what happened. You're going to have to talk to your family about that." He flinched. "But not Brandish."
Carol? "Why not?"
"I don't know why, but there is some serious bad stuff between her and your father. Whatever New Wave did, it was a lot worse on her part."
That didn't make sense. Carol and her father? What happened? Should she even believe him? This whole situation was a mess. He worked with Tattletale. He could have been playing her from the start, but that didn't match up. Too many details. He was too casual. There was no sense of a plan. He was either a master level thinker or he was just blundering his way through this. She didn't know which one she'd prefer.
She slumped like a deflating balloon. All her hopes of getting dirt on the Undersiders were long forgotten. This conversation had taken too much out of her and it felt like she barely got anything to show for it.
"You know, they still think the bug girl is the tinker. They're not going to believe me when I tell them about this." Some might, but the PRT could get legendarily obstinate. She had no proof so they would keep insisting for tentative classifications until something forced their hand.
"Actually, here. I meant to give you this earlier."
He dug something out of a coat pocket and tossed it to her. She caught it on reflex and felt the heft of it. It was a piece of card with something pinned to it.
"What's this?"
"I figured it would be harder to convince you I was who I said I was, so I made that as proof."
She turned the card over and saw the object attached. It was a hairpin, but leaving the descriptor at that seemed like a criminal underservice. It had two prongs of the glassy metal she remembered from those monster knives, only this was tiny and delicate. Where the prongs met a bouquet of flowers had been sculpted from the same metal, only each petal was individually shaped. Somehow something had been done to the surface of the metal giving it a rainbow gleam. Somehow it reminded her of gasoline spilled in a puddle. The prongs shifted through hues along their length but each flower was a different color. She ran a finger over the flowers and the individual petals moved. They felt like foil, but sprang back into shape immediately and the colors they displayed shifted slightly with their motion.
It was beautiful. It was also terrifying. She could tell the entire thing was one solid piece of metal. The colors on the surface weren't due to any paint or coating, somehow he had worked the metal to a rainbow sheen and also controlled how the colors presented. The tiny bouquet had nine individually sculpted flowers of different types. The precision and craftsmanship of someone who had made this just to prove his claim was at the disposal of the Undersiders.
She knew she should throw it back at him, but she didn't want to. He had made it for her, not in any personal sense, but it was made for her and it had nothing to do with healing. There was no red cross, no doctor theme, no Caduceus. It was just a pretty object, a tinker level pretty object, but it gave the sense it had been made for Amy Dallon, not Panacea.
"It's beautiful." Damn it, she didn't mean to compliment him, but it was true. And she was back to resenting him for working with villains.
"Thanks." He sounded half embarrassed by the compliment.
Where did she go from here? All that and had she even gotten anything she could use against the Undersiders? All that effort and she'd only been talking in circles.
The door at the end of the hall slammed open as a blond figure in a white dress burst through.
"Amy? Amy, thank God. I've been looking everywhere for you." In a faction of a second Vicky was next to her, the wind of her movement throwing Amy's hair into chaos and making the tinker's coat billow back. She glared at him. "Who's this?"
He answered before she could. "I'm the tinker who made the Undersider's weapons."
Vicky's eyes narrowed and Amy felt her aura flair. "Amy stand back."
"Vicky, wait..." but her sister was already winding up. She saw the attack fly. And she saw it stop dead against the tinker's chest. There was a faint ripple across his clothes but otherwise it was like nothing happened.
He looked over at her. "So, 'lack of restraint' was about right? Sorry to cut this short." He threw another glowing mix into the air. Vicky interposed herself between Amy and the tinker, but instead of spreading like the last time the light settled over him, then flared as he vanished from the hallway.
She smelled vinegar.
Amy stared blankly at the spot that once held the tinker trying to figure out what had happened. She realized her sister was shaking her and quickly came back to her senses.
"Amy! Amy, are you alright? What happened?"
"Vicky," What was the priority? Right, unknown tinker tech healing. "Vicky, I need to get upstairs right now. Get me to diagnostic medicine."
"What? What did he do?"
"He used some kind of healing technology on me." She held up her unsprained wrist and rotated it, as well as wiggling her fingers of her formerly broken arm. At the very least she needed to get that removed. "I need an exam. We have to make sure it was safe." And maybe figure out how to replicate it, as much of a long shot as that was.
"He healed you?" Props to Vicky, she didn't let her shock slow her down. Amy was scooped up and carried through the halls at a nearly unsafe speed.
"Afterwards I'll need to speak with Director Piggot or Armsmaster." And she had to figure out what she was going to say. The thought of repeating all his ramblings mortified her, but if there was any chance of bringing the Undersiders to justice she'd have to take it.
She just had to inform them the tinker who made those blades could also heal, teleport, and had defenses that could negate Vicky's punches. Oh, and claimed that he was both able to analyze tinker tech and that he was a strong thinker with the ability to predict personal details and bombing sprees. And that he had an ongoing 'business relationship' with the Undersiders. They were just going to love this news.
She would have plenty of time. The number of tests she had coming would see to that. It would also give her a chance to calm down. That tinker was infuriating. She could see how he set Tattletale off. Actually that image greatly improved her mood. If nothing else at least she could imagine Tattletale curled up in the dark with a thinker headache.
For that she could deal with the fallout from this meeting.
Amy Dallon was in agony. Once the adrenalin had worn off the true extent of her injuries became brutally clear. She had refused painkillers until after the Wards were treated. She couldn't afford to have her focus compromised. She couldn't afford to make a mistake. As soon as the cast was on she was healing people again. Even an injury this severe wasn't enough to let her stop.
Her wrist was a mess. Both of them were damaged, but the sprain was so overshadowed by the compound fracture that she barely noticed it. She'd seen the x-rays. It was an odd feeling looking at something she would have been able to fix in minutes and knowing how long and painful the recovery process would be. There might have to be surgeries. She could even need an internal fixation plate before this was over.
The pain and worry had taken her normal healing from tedious to insufferable. After treating her sister the first Ward she had to deal with was Carlos. She hated working on Carlos. The way his body shifted function in response to every change made healing him like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall. This was worse than all the previous times put together. After what the bug girl had done to him.
She shuddered when she remembered that knife at her own throat. Knife? It was practically a sword. In her mind it kept getting bigger and bigger until the image of a woman in insect armor carrying a sword that dwarfed Chevalier's cannon blade loomed over her.
She shook off the thought. Carlos had been divided into seven pieces with a few swings of that weapon. Nobody else could have lived through that attack, and he even his miraculous survival brought unique challenges. Every piece of his body was trying to turn itself into something that could be self-sufficient without the other parts. That meant they would fight attempts to be combined into one person. Unlike the times he had lost an arm or leg every piece needed to be prepped at the same time or the entire mass would pull itself apart. Worse only the chest-torso piece still had his consciousness in it. Dealing with that dead stare and lolling tongue from his face while trying to wrangle his body together would have been hellish on her best day, much less with a broken wrist.
The visit to the Wards headquarters hadn't gone much better. No-one had escaped without some injury. Blake had at least been able to patch himself up with his biomancy and despite being tased had the closest thing to a victory in this whole mess when he broke Grue's knife. Chris was being chewed out by the director but apparently had taken a bad fall that put him out of the fight. Missy had been knocked unconscious and hearing what happened to Dennis would give her a whole new set of nightmares.
Then there was Dean. His armor might have been able to endure the attack from Hellound's dogs, but the villain had gotten her hands on one of those super knives as well. Once he was pinned she went to town on him. The suit was a complete write off. Every system was shredded and he'd had to be cut out of it while she'd been dealing with Carlos. Insufferably he tried to keep in good spirits about the whole thing, which ruined any satisfaction she might have been able to feel at his defeat. Hellhound had clearly been going for the suit, not him, but he had still picked up a handful of shallow cuts. They were so impossibly finely made that she could seal them with barely any effort. That said actually feeling the layers of cells that had been sliced in half rather than torn apart, like what happened in a normal cut, was harrowing.
Miss Militia had called off the other Wards when they pressed for information about Tattletale. That was the last thing she wanted to re-live right now. Instead she was sulking through the basement of the PRT building's attached hospital. It had been built to stop capes with injuries from being photographed when they were discharged. There were high security areas connected directly to the PRT headquarters, but the rest of it was a conventional downtown hospital.
And like a coward she was sneaking through back routes to the exit so she wouldn't see any patients. Patients she'd feel compelled to heal. She hated herself for it, but she knew even a broken wrist wasn't enough excuse to withhold treatment from someone dying of a terminal illness. Too much, it was all too much.
She had turned into a side hallway when a cape stepped out into her path. It was unusual to see one here, but they weren't actually confined to the high security wing. She didn't recognize his costume, but there were about a dozen minor heroes in the city and she hadn't kept track of all of them.
The man was tall but not particularly muscular. He had broad shoulders that were amplified by his long wool coat. Engraved metal panels decorated the coat, gloves, and parts of the rest of the costume. His left wrist had an elaborate and heavy bracer clasped to it that rested over the sleeve of his coat. He wore belts of pouches around his waist and a bandoleer across his chest. His mask was a well-made and stylish steel visor, but the rest of his head and face were covered by tied bandannas. That combination should have looked sloppy, but the whole design came together with a level of style and elegance she rarely saw even in Protectorate capes.
"Hi?" She asked. "Can I help you?"
"Yes actually. I was looking for you."
Amy's heart sank. She had a policy to not take requests, but could she refuse a hero? Not if it was for himself, but if he was asking for a friend or family member she would have to hold to her policy. She looked around. Why had she taken this deserted route? If he got upset about being turned down there was no one around to step in.
"What do you want?"
"There's something I need to resolve." She gave him a confused look. "I made the weapon that did that." He pointed at her wrist.
Amy froze. Tinker. She should have seen it, the metal, the pouches, the mask design. This was the new weapon tinker that had supplied the Undersiders. She had told the PRT that the bug girl wasn't a tinker. There were hints from how the Undersiders had talked about things, slight references, the way no one deferred to the bug girl regarding those weapons or anything technical. Even with all that it wasn't enough for them to make a definite judgement.
But Amy knew. She knew from how she had jammed the girl's power, the feedback connecting directly to her mind. But she couldn't explain that. It would reveal too much about her capabilities. So she put the city at risk and left an unknown villain tinker running unchecked all because she was too ashamed to come clean about her abilities.
Her eyes darted over the capes equipment. He didn't look like he was carrying weapons, but that meant nothing. She remembered her terror as the bug cape sprouted that damn baton from her hand and swung it at her. The thing was so thin it looked like it wouldn't trouble a fly, but it hit the extinguisher like one of Vicky's punches. The sensations came back to her in a flash. The metal crumpling. The foam exploding over her. The snap of the bones in her wrist.
Bones that still throbbed hours later.
"My sister's in the building. If I scream she'll hear me." It was a bluff, and a terrible one at that. They were in a nearly abandoned corner of the basement. The best she could hope for was some janitor or technician stumbling across them.
"Then I guess I'll have to do this quickly." He reached into one of his pouches and Amy flinched back, her mind running through a thousand horrible possibilities. Like that bug girl his costume completely covered him. The only skin she could see was his eyes. There was no chance she would be able to touch him before he unleashed whatever he was planning.
Instead of a weapon he pulled out a tiny plastic container of liquid and what looked like a piece of some root vegetable. He crushed them in his gloved hand and she could smell vinegar and... ginger? The mass in his hand suddenly started to shine and he casually tossed it into the air.
Light burst out from the mixture and washed over her. She flinched and covered her face with her hands, but the energy didn't hurt. In fact it did just the opposite.
She felt the bones in her wrist move back into place. The horrible pain was gone along with the sense of the injuries themselves. This hadn't just accelerated the healing, it erased the injuries completely, either making them never happen or healing so well there was no sign of damage. Her sprained wrist was feeling perfect as well, and every minor scrape and bruise she'd picked up through the fight in the bank was gone.
Better than that she felt refreshed. The slow buildup of stress and tension from too many long nights washed out of her as the light hit her and she felt calmer and more focused than she had in months, maybe even years.
All the work and suffering she'd been preparing herself for, the weeks of pain, the surgeries, the physio therapy, it was all washed away in an instant. Was this what the people she healed felt? Suddenly Amy understood their gratitude a little better. It was even enough to overwhelm the innate dread at the fact that she had just been hit by an unknown tinker tech medical treatment.
Looking at the tinker she felt that gratitude, but it clashed violently with every emotion she been seething in this afternoon.
"So are you still going to scream?" He asked tilting his head. She hated how she couldn't see any of his expressions. All she had to go on were his eyes, which had the gall to look amused.
"I should." She rolled her left wrist, enjoying the range of movement. With the fingers that were free of the cast on her right hand she picked at the cloth brace wrapped around it until it fell to the floor. "You supplied weapons to villains. I should get the PRT here to arrest you."
He let out a sigh. "I'd really prefer a chance to talk."
She didn't want to engage him. Actually, that wasn't entirely true. She wanted to engage him in a very specific way. She wanted to grab him and scream at him to go upstairs and clear out the damn ICU. She wanted to pin him down and show him pictures of children's cancer wards until he committed himself to emptying them. She wanted him to not be a villain.
But if he wanted to talk then maybe she could get some information out of him. Maybe enough to send the Protectorate after the Undersiders. Her mind spun off an image of Protectorate heroes raiding the Undersiders base, probably in a stinking sewer somewhere. Along with the pleasant thoughts of Miss Militia unloading a machine gun into the bug cape, using what were definitely rubber bullets and not high explosive rounds, and Tattletale being carted off to the Birdcage while gagged and hogtied she imagined this tinker. He was captured and offered a plea deal. Yes, that would work. Make your stupid terrifying weapons for the Protectorate and spend nights and weekends clearing out hospitals. And lunch hours. And if he was a villain he didn't really need coffee breaks, right?
Amy realized she had been lost in thought and quickly tried to cover for herself.
"What, are you a member of the Undersiders?"
"No, I actually didn't make it past the membership vote." She gave him a horrified look. "And I wouldn't have signed up anyway." He qualified.
Wait, they didn't want him on the team? Who would turn down a tinker? If it was a vote he could have been blocked by someone. A conflict with someone on the team? It was an avenue that she might be able to exploit. If she could split them apart then at least they wouldn't be able to get any more of those weapons. "Then how'd you end up working with them."
He considered this. "I saved them from Oni Lee. They wanted to make it up to me."
"What?" She sputtered. "How did that lead to you giving them weapons?"
"They needed some gear and I agreed to sell it to them." He kept his tone level during the confession.
Money. God damn it always came down to money. Stupid greedy capes taking shortsighted cash grabs and ruining everyone else's life.
"Was it worth it?" She spat the words at him. "Was what they paid you worth all of this?"
There was a pause before he answered. "I don't know."
"What, is your conscience catching up with you?"
"No," He looked at her. "It depends on whether it's enough for me to stop Bakuda."
Amy had gotten a good head of steam going and with one comment he completely derailed it.
"What? Sorry, what?"
"Bakuda? Bomb tinker? She just joined the ABB and attacked Cornell before that."
"I know who she is. What does she have to do with this?"
He suddenly turned very serious. "She's going to go off the rails. Lung would have been able to keep her in line, but with him locked up we're looking at a city wide bombing spree."
This was insane. It figures, she finally finds another healer cape and he's completely off his rocker. "You're saying you sold tinker tech weapons to supervillains so that you could get money to stop a hypothetical bombing spree from someone who hasn't even done anything in this city yet?"
She could see his jaw clench under his mask. There was part of this he wasn't telling her. "Have you seen the video of Cornell? The effects of those bombs?"
She hadn't. Amy had enough stress in her life without seeking out cape horror stories from other cities. But she wasn't going to let this person use some other tragedy to excuse his stupidity and greed. "It doesn't matter. She'll run out of whatever stock of explosives she's built before it can get out of hand." Her family had come to that conclusion during one of the rare team meetings she was able to attend.
"I used to think that before I fought Oni Lee."
"What does he have to do with anything?"
"You know how when he copies himself he duplicates all the grenades and equipment he carries?"
She vaguely remembered her family talking about something like that. "So what?"
"That works on Bakuda's bombs. As long as Oni Lee's around she has infinite copies of everything she builds and he goes from an annoyance to being able to put out firepower that would rival The Triumvirate."
Amy's mouth went dry and she felt sweat begin to bead on her forehead. "You can't know that."
"When I fought Oni Lee he tried to get me with a localized plasma grenade. It exposes everything within five meters to heat levels you only see inside of large stars."
She swallowed nervously. "Bullshit. I would have heard about it if something like that went off. The news would be all over the city."
"I broke his arm before he could use it and took it after he ran off."
Her eyes darted across his costume. He had been so distracting, so disarming that she nearly forgot who she was talking to. Oni Lee was a difficult opponent even for her family or experienced Protectorate capes. She wouldn't normally take a claim like that on faith but with what he could make she could see him besting the assassin. Still, that didn't mean she was going to buy the rest of his story. "So what, you can heal, make super knives, and analyze other tinker tech."
"Yes, actually." His answer was quick and flippant.
"Not buying it." In response he let out a chuckle. A fucking chuckle. "What?" Amy spat.
"It's that I just had pretty much this exact conversation with Tattletale."
The mention of that woman made Amy's gust wrench. She cursed herself for warming up to him. This was the kind of horrible slime that got chummy with supervillains.
"What, you two are close?"
"Actually I annoyed the hell out of her. I don't' think she likes me very much."
Or maybe he wasn't that bad. "What did you mean by the same conversation?"
"When I tried to explain my tinkering she was screaming about how it wasn't possible, then she slunk off with a headache."
The news lifted Amy's spirits more than was probably strictly appropriate. One of the worst parts of the whole ordeal was the thought of that bitch laughing at the fact that she almost destroyed Amy's life all while probably perched on top of a pile of money and caviar and fur coats that were probably made out of baby seal skin and endangered species. Her crawling off with a thinker headache felt like pure karma and Amy couldn't keep the smile off her face.
"Assume I believe you about being able to figure out her bombs. Why does that make you sure she's going to attach the city?"
He let out a breath. "I have a thinker power." From his posture and tone it was more like he was confessing to a sin than bragging about an ability.
God damn it. First Tattletale, then Dean, and now this guy. Why was she surrounded by fucking thinkers? That was of course assuming he was telling the truth and not just crazy.
"What, that lets you get inside her head? Tells you what she's planning?"
"No, it doesn't work that way." He paused as if considering what to say. "I get hunches about things, like how to feel about stuff. I can piece that together into hints about what I should do."
"So what are you getting about Bakuda?"
"Dread." His voice was dead serious. "Whatever she's planning it's horrible on the level of the worst capes. And I mean the worst worst capes, the ones no one likes to talk about. Given what I know about her and what she's capable of the potential scale of this is as bad as it can get."
At that moment Amy at least was convinced that he believed his own story. That was a big step up from her initial fears. Crazy and well-meaning was a lot better than strait up villainous.
"So what are you planning to do about it?" She could at least try to nail down his intentions.
He took a slow breath and starting listing things. "Build up my lab. Improve my equipment. See if I can crack her ECCM. Build counters for as many types of bombs as I can. Help the city prepare." The prospect seemed to exhaust him.
"How do you plan to do that?"
"Well, for one make sure their best healer is in top form."
Amy flushed at that. "I'd thank you, but you caused this mess in the first place."
"And now I fixed it. Problem solved." His tone wasn't as flippant as the words suggested. This seemed to be wearing on him and Amy took some satisfaction in that.
She was still frustrated, but at least she didn't feel threatened anymore. If she could talk this guy around they might be able to get him to turn on the Undersiders, or at least expose them.
"Hey," She shifted to a slightly friendlier tone of voice. "What should I call you?"
He gave her a tired shrug. "Haven't got a cape name yet."
Amy gaped. "You seriously put all that together without a cape name? You fought Oni Lee without a cape name?"
"Branding is for public relations. I've had tinker stuff to do."
Something occurred to her. "What about the bug girl?"
"She didn't have one, but I'm guessing you haven't seen the online reaction?"
She shook her head and felt a note of dread. She hated dealing with the internet community. Setting aside the fact that people couldn't understand her 'no requests' policy no matter how many times she explained it the other interactions were just exhausting. She avoided it as much as she could.
"What's happened?"
"It looks like they're going with Khepri." She gave him a questioning look. "Egyptian bug God."
Amy would have preferred the girl getting stuck with something like Warf Roach, but she knew how those things got out of hand. She'd have to check PHO later to see how this came about.
She put that aside and steeled herself for a question she'd been dreading. "That thing you used to heal me? What was it? Is it safe?" She was terrified of the answer. There weren't that many types of technology that she could imagine being able to heal a person the way he just had. All of them were incredibly dangerous. More than a few of them were grounds for a kill order. Worst case he'd admit to the kind of technology that gets you on the S-class lists.
"It's fine. There's no risk." She gave him a questioning look hoping he'd go on. "The mechanics are complicated, but it's perfectly safe."
She grit her teeth at the non-answer. "If it's so safe you should be out healing people."
"I'm pretty sure that's what I was just doing."
She glared at him. "I mean really healing. There's a city full of people who need your help as much as I did. If you care about the city what's stopping you?" Hopefully she could get some details on how his healing worked. She desperately hoped it wasn't based on one of the technologies the PRT banned outright.
"Well, first my healing doesn't work for free. If I go all out I'm going to run out of resources eventually, which will just leave everyone screwed when a serious disaster happens."
Amy's heart dropped at that, but she couldn't argue with it. Too many people with healing abilities were limited either in scope or endurance. She hated the algebra of it, but he had probably done more good by saving his resources for her than if he had healed freely. Of course it was his fault she was injured in the first place, so that was all crap.
"The Protectorate could get you all the resources you'd need. If you joined they'd be able to set you up with facilities, materials, support, everything." Unless time was the limiting factor. Or he was working with some technology that was under a blanket ban.
"I'm not joining the Protectorate." There was no uncertainty in his tone.
"Why not?" Amy was dreading the answer to this. If his tech was an S-class threat waiting to happen them forget him helping her heal, the PRT would be hunting him down for a trip to the Birdcage or a kill order.
He sighed. "My power warned me against it."
"What?" Once again he managed to jump the rails of this conversation.
"My thinker power? It told me joining the Protectorate was a bad idea."
Amy was really starting to hate thinkers. "So you got a bad feeling and decided working with villains would be better?"
"It's a little more complicated than that."
"Then explain it to me." Amy was frustrated, but if she could leverage that into getting more information out of him then so much the better.
He considered for a moment. "Ok, my power? It doesn't give me clear answers, just kind of feelings about things, but feelings about enough things in enough detail can let me figure stuff out. There are some bad things about the Protectorate as a whole, not unforgivable, just the level of corruption you'd probably find in any group that size. If it were Boston or New York I might be ok signing up, but not in here."
"Why? What's different about Brockton Bay?"
He was reluctant to get into this, but at her unflinching stare he relented. "Well, everything my power tells me says I wouldn't get along with Armsmaster. Not to the point of violence, just that it would be a bad relationship."
Amy could admit the man was somewhat intense. This tinker was frustrating enough for her. She could easily see him being at odds with the Protectorate leader. "Is that it?" If he was basing his decisions on something as minor as that she had probably given him too much credit.
"No." He was looking distinctly uncomfortable and Amy was taking no small pleasure in putting him on the spot. There was a pause before he continued. "Have you met the local PRT director?"
She nodded. The woman could be a terror but was unquestioningly devoted to her job. "Yea. What about her?"
He looked dower as he replied. "I'm pretty sure Director Piggot is insane."
Amy bit down at her natural reaction to this cape calling anyone else's sanity into question. Instead she switched to a placating tone of voice.
"Really? What makes you say that?"
The tinker started making abstract gestures. "There's a general feeling that it would be dangerous to work under her. Also some sense of instability around her, kind of tied to something in her past. I don't' think she likes capes, at least that's the impression my power gives me. I haven't dug into it enough to piece anything else together, but there are major red flags connected to the Protectorate ENE. More than I'm willing to risk."
"So you decided joining a gang would be better?"
"I haven't joined any gang. I have a single business relationship with the smallest group in the city."
"But you still expect me to believe you care about the city? You couldn't find anyone else to work with."
He muttered something. "What was that?" With a pained look he repeated himself.
"I did think about approaching New Wave."
Amy tensed but was angry enough to not get sidetracked. "Oh, really? Did you get some bad feelings about my Aunt Sarah as well?"
"No, she was fine." He answered so naturally that Amy couldn't see any duplicity there.
"So what was it?"
"Look, I don't know if you want to get into this."
Amy looked at the man. There was very little chance anything good was going to come from this, but she wasn't backing down now. "No, I want you to tell me what was so bad it made working with villains the better option."
"It's actually..." He stopped and considered things, then took a breath and pressed forward. "Well, sorry to say this about your mother, but it was pretty much Brandish that kept me from trying."
Carol? He had a problem with Carol? This seemed like a cheap psychological trick, trying to drive a wedge between Amy and her family. But as far as the public was concerned their relationship was fine. Did he actually have a thinker power? More likely Tattletale had sent him here to needle her some more. She didn't want to deal with this. The last thing in the world she wanted was some outsider's thoughts on her relationship with Carol.
But Amy had to admit there was some part of her that wanted to hear someone try to tear down the woman. Just to see what they had to say. "What about Brandish?"
The tinker let out a slow breath. "Look, there's a lot to unpack here. I have to sort this stuff out from emotional reactions, so it's not precise. It's a lot of work to figure out where the bad is coming from."
"So my mom is giving you bad feelings?" He made an exasperated gesture. She just waited for him to elaborate.
"Ok, none of this is totally solid, it's just warnings from my power." Amy nodded and made a 'get on with it' gesture. "The sense I get is she's been messed up for a long time. Like, long enough that I can't get a reading where that isn't the case. It could go back to her trigger event. Considering the nature of her powers that probably means there was some pretty bad physical trauma with an impact that was never dealt with."
She furrowed her brow. "What do you mean by that?"
"Breaker means there was probably a threat, or something she wanted to escape. The striker power means it was probably direct and physical, likely with a threat of injury."
Amy blinked. "You're using trigger theory to analyze my family?"
"Yeah?" He answered like it was the most natural thing in the world.
"That stuff isn't proven! There are all kinds of contradictions."
"Right, but there aren't any in New Wave."
How could he tell? "So you think Carol is messed up because of her trigger event?"
"I think she's messed up and has been for a long time. I think it could be her trigger event. From what I'm getting I think she has a mountain of trust and control issues and what feels like an unhealthy obsession with your sister."
The mention of Vicky brought up a surge of emotions that Amy hadn't realized she'd been keeping buried. "What, do you have a problem with her too?" He did that damn awkward contemplation thing again. "Why do you keep doing that?"
He sighed. "There's a lot to sort through here. I get different levels of details on different topics. The more there is the harder it is to figure out." He shook his head. "There's nothing that bad for Glory Girl." Amy didn't like the way he said 'that bad'. "There's some feeling of concern around her. Not malicious, just like there's not enough control. Maybe a lack of restraint?"
Amy remembered less than a week ago, the call from Vicky, the sixth time she had to save her sister from what would probably be at minimum aggravated assault if not a manslaughter charge. Still, it didn't prove anything. Anyone could make that kind of guess by watching her behavior in cape fights.
"Is that the limit of your prognosticating?"
Rather than take the insult at face value he stood there and looked contemplative. "There's also some level of concern connected to... proximity? Like being around her for long periods is a bad thing. That might be her aura. That messes with emotions right?"
"What of it?" Amy didn't like the way this was headed.
"I guess if it's on long enough it could change the way your brain responds to things. Emotions affect neurochemistry and neurons that fire together wire together, that kind of thing."
"You can't know that." Amy's tone was more defensive than she intended.
"No, it's just a theory." He concentrated again. "My power's telling me that staying close to Glory Girl for long periods would be bad, so I'm going with that. For all I know it could be a specific power interaction that would be a problem for me and everyone else could be fine. The idea that it could cause emotional disorders is just a theory."
Amy clenched her jaw. She hated anyone talking about Vicky that way, but details from his ramblings were jumping out at her. Had Mark's depression been as bad before Vicky triggered? Did Carol get more distant? And her own feelings...
No, it was too convenient an explanation. She was being handed a way to shift the blame for all of her failings onto someone who did nothing but try to be a hero. Who was a proper hero, unlike her. She hated him for giving her hope. You couldn't trust thinkers. Even if he wasn't getting inside her head Tattletale could have sent him here with a list of things to say to break her down even more.
"Anything else?"
"Uh, maybe?"
"What?" She asked, more harshly than she meant too.
"I was just thinking about your sister's powers. They don't really make sense."
Amy rallied at this. "So you admit your trigger theory is crap?"
"No, I mean they don't make sense as coming from Brandish and Flashbang. There's no basis for the emotional component. Unless... was your sister dating Gallant before she triggered?"
Amy froze. She didn't like Dean, but she wasn't going to give away his secret identity to some mentally unstable thinker/tinker. "What makes you think that?"
"There aren't a lot of other emotion based powers in the city, and he was active before she triggered. It seemed like a probable source for her aura. Maybe. I don't have a good handle on Gallant's power."
The dread she'd been feeling dropped to a manageable level. Unlike that other bitch at least he could admit he wasn't perfect. As frustrating as he was to deal with it was a million times better than the feeling that all your secrets were being dragged out of your brain.
"You know that stupid knife you gave Hellhound wrecked his armor." She sneered. "If you were worried about the safety of the city maybe you should be more concerned about that."
Annoyingly he just waved her off. "Tinker's shouldn't take anything into the field they're not prepared to lose. He'll have to use an older suit, or spend some time getting the next one ready."
Right, the public fiction that Dean was a tinker rather than a blaster/thinker. Of course he would think the armor could just be rebuilt or replaced. In reality Chris would have to put days, maybe weeks of work into getting the suit back together. And no wonder he didn't understand Dean's power if he was working from the wrong starting point.
She must have shown some of that concern on her face, because he picked up something was wrong.
"Wait, I thought he was a Focal tinker. Is there something else going on?"
And once again Amy was lost. This conversation was becoming infuriating. She honestly didn't know if she was dealing with mad ramblings or some kind of high level thinker insight.
"Sorry, what?"
"Focal tinkers concentrate on only one item, they just rebuild and refine it. They're even more restrictive than hyperspecialists. They don't have any specialization beyond the one thing they can make. I figured Gallant was like that, just rebuilding that power armor with emotion blasts over and over. But there are some tinkers that have some serious drawbacks to what they make, like a physical or mental cost. Is that what we're talking about here?"
Amy blanched. This was deeper stuff than had been covered in her parahuman studies courses. She wanted to dismiss it as nonsense, but enough of it sounded familiar that there had to be some grounding.
"How do you know about that stuff? Is it your thinker power?"
"Not exactly. Or sort of? I have a pretty good understanding of how powers work, especially tinkers. Look, if Gallant is going to go off the deep end if he has to keep rebuilding his armor then the Protectorate should probably hold him back from frontline work. You don't want to take risks with that kind of thing."
"Don't worry about it." Amy hated absolving him for his responsibility in wrecking the armor, but if he kept picking at this there was a real chance that Dean's identity could get exposed. She needed to change the subject. "You were saying something about my sister's power."
"Oh, yeah." Amy wasn't thrilled talking about this, but if he was able to identify a Ward thanks to information she gave there would be hell to pay. "About her powers, how close is Brandish to Manpower?"
And once again she was thrown for a loop. "What? Why?"
"Your sister's powers suggest a link to him rather than to Flashbang. Usually that means there's something of an emotional connection."
"Are you saying my mom and Uncle Neil had an affair?"
He looked almost as uncomfortable with the subject as she was. "It could be she built up a trusting relationship with Manpower that facilitated the kind of connection that allowed second generation powers. Just, what I'm getting about her from my power says that's not too likely. I guess an affair between them could explain it."
"That's ridiculous." She drew herself up. "I can sense genetics when I heal someone. Vicky is not Uncle Neil's daughter."
"It doesn't have to be genetic. You just need an emotional link. Even uncertainty over her parentage would have done the trick."
"I'm not listening to this. You're just spouting crazy image board conspiracy theories."
"Maybe I'm wrong. My power's not precise and I've had to reevaluate a lot of stuff from it." That was what was so annoying. He was loose enough in his predictions that there was room for all kinds of errors without disproving his overall outlook. If he had absolute confidence in his guesses then she would be able to bring them down by refuting one aspect of them. Instead the best she could do was get him to admit some aspect of his theories was less likely than he previously thought.
"You wanted to know why I stayed away from New Wave. Well, I kept getting stuff like this from my power. I didn't want to get caught up in someone else's family drama." She still wasn't sure she believed him, but it was a harrowing idea that her family dysfunction was enough that someone would rather deal with villains than get involved with it.
And that brought up some dark thoughts. "Well what about me then? What does your power tell you about me? How do my powers make sense in your whole trigger theory model?"
From the way he looked at her Amy immediately regretted the question. She actually took a half step back, as if his answer was going to be a physical blow.
"My power is telling me that answering that question is not a good idea."
Amy felt a surge of relief and hated herself for it. She knew there was something terrible waiting for her, but she didn't want to face it. Just a little more time where she could pretend. Where she could pretend Carol wasn't right about her. Pretend that she could make up for her past, for what a horrible person she was if she tried hard enough.
And she hated that all her feelings were on display for a half mad tinker who worked with villains and might just be following one of Tattletale's scripts to set her up for another fall.
"I'm sorry."
Amy snapped up to face him. Well, face him as well as she could through his stupid bandannas and visor mask. "You're sorry? What are you sorry for? Supplying deadly weapons to villains? Breaking my wrist? Injuring and traumatizing the Wards? For digging into my life? Huh? What exactly are you sorry for?"
He stood stock still as she hurled abuse at him. She was red faced and near tears, but the bastard was just standing there and taking it.
Finally, after she caught her breath, he spoke. "Just so you know, I'm not happy with how this turned out. It was a mess."
"A mess that you caused." Her voice was bitter.
He gave her a look that made her feel uncomfortable. "I'm taking responsibility for my part in this."
"What exactly? The attack on the bank? The injured wards? The Undersiders getting away?"
"I don't think you would have been able to beat the Undersiders even if I hadn't made anything for them."
"What?" Amy felt indignant at the suggestion. "They..."
"They were holding back. Massively. If they didn't have my weapons they may have done something desperate. They were in a building full of civilians. They didn't want to hurt them, but the Wards were putting that to the test."
"You're making excuses for villains."
"Yes I am." His lack of denial cut the legs out from under her. "I accepted what I was getting into when I made my deal. But there are conventions that are designed to limit damage, to keep normal people safe when capes start to throw down. Those were broken today, and not by the Undersiders."
"What are you talking about?"
He looked frustrated. "The heroes were the ones who decided to escalate. They assumed the Undersiders would rather be captured than end up being seen as a more serious threat. Every villain holds themselves back and each time they go further than their limit the limit moves. Before this the Undersiders were restricting themselves to smash and grab jobs. If the Wards had let them run for it they might have gotten away or they might have been captured, but they would have had incentive to stay at that level of restraint. Instead they created a situation where they had to fight. Now people know they're willing to take thing that far. Going back to their previous level of restraint is just not possible."
The way he talked about limits, restrictions villains placed on themselves, how if you went past them there was no turning back. Did he know? Did he know why she was restraining herself? She looked at him, but there was no hint he was talking about her. It could be a coincidence, but could she trust that? He was a thinker, or very good at pretending to be one. Was he seeing inside her head, or was she just being paranoid?
"So they should have done nothing? Just let them get away?"
"There's such a thing as a measured response and it's a very important concept for capes."
This was insane. The Wards were heroes and this was a villain, or at best an arms dealer who thought he could pass judgement. "Where do you get off criticizing them?"
He took a slow breath before continuing. "Tell me, you know these people. Did any of them look at this situation and think it was serious, or did they come figuring they would get an easy villain capture and a picture in the newspaper? There were thirty nine people in the bank with you. Did the Wards even confirm their safety before they lined up like they were on a photoshoot?"
"They're not the bad guys." Amy was beginning to feel like that was a desperate defense. "The Undersiders were the ones who robbed the bank. They were the ones who took hostages. They planted deadly insects on everyone there!"
He looked at her seriously. "Let me ask you something. When you messed with bug girl's control, did you know what would happen to all the spiders she was commanding, or did you assume they would just stand down?"
Amy shifted awkwardly. "What do you mean?"
"I mean disrupting the control of a master like that could have put everyone at risk. So either you had complete understanding of the feedback between her and the spiders neural systems that allowed you to block direct commands without defaulting the creatures back to their base instincts, or you warped them to throw out a jamming field and hoped you didn't end up with dozens of lethal bites from the feedback."
Amy put up a front of indignity, but inside she was sweating. She had felt out the brains of those black widows. She'd felt the way they were being controlled and, though it had taken some time she'd been able to create feedback that blocked new orders and information without letting the other spiders run free. Vicky didn't pick up on what that meant, but he did. So the only two explanations were that she had no regard for the lives of the public or that she's been lying about not being able to affect brains. Damn it, she hated dealing with thinkers. Except this wasn't some secret that had been dug out from the depths of her soul, it was basic logic that anyone with insider knowledge of the attack could put together.
"Once that giant cannon came out, or people started making threats about cancer..." she felt a pit open in her stomach. "There was no longer any reason to hold back. At that point the Wards were basically betting on the Undersiders being more concerned about casualties than they were."
A cloud of dread settled on Amy and she tried to avoid showing how much this was bothering her. "So what should they have done?"
"I don't know." He cut her off before she could reply. "I mean I really don't know. The situation makes no sense. I don't know why teenagers were sent to deal with a hostage situation. I don't know why the Wards are even allowed to operate independently in this city. I don't know why a public super powered brawl in a crowded part of the city could be seen as a preferable option to anything else, including letting non kill order villains escape. How many civilian lives would it be worth to bring in a villain? There were stupid decisions on both sides here, but only one of those sides is supposed to be acting in the public good."
Amy watched the frustration bleed off the man. Clearly the whole situation bothered him, but to her frustration she couldn't find a way to frame it to turn him against the Undersiders.
"This whole system?" He spoke quietly. "It's not stable. Those conventions, the unwritten rules, there the only things keeping it from turning to chaos. I'm not endorsing how things work, I'm just acknowledging it. That's what I meant about Bakuda. That's what happens when the breaks come off."
"So that's it? You're perfectly fine with the way things went down? No guilt at all?"
"If there was no guilt I wouldn't be here."
"And you think I'm the only one you have to make it up to?"
"Well you didn't decide to turn a hostage crisis into a publicity stunt."
"That's why you came here? Because I fit your moral standards and to make sure the city still had its healer for this imagined bombing spree?" He actually looked uncomfortable at that. Good.
"That's not completely it."
"Oh? What is it then?"
"My power, that is my thinker power? It's kind of concerned about you."
And Amy shifted once more from anger to dread. The emotional rollercoaster of this conversation was exhausting. Where Tattletale had kept pushing her further and further into despair he seemed content to throw her in a random direction every third sentence. One moment she was furious, then concerned, then defiant, then ashamed. Was that his game? Keep her off balance so she wouldn't be able to counter him.
In a way it was worse than dealing with Tattletale. This wasn't pulling her deepest fears straight out of her mind. He admitted he was working with limited information, which meant there was a semi-logical chain to his deductions. Sometimes it was blatantly wrong, like about Dean being a tinker, but generally she could follow his thought process. He knew she could alter living things. He knew she could mess with brains. He knew what she had threatened the bug girl with. Between his tinker and thinker powers he probably had a better idea of what she was capable of than anyone else. Of course he'd be concerned about what she'd do if she went bad. When she went bad.
Was all that stuff about capes holding back and consequences building to this? She hated the idea that it was a villain, well borderline villain, who finally saw her for who she was. That he was the only one really concerned about the threat she represented.
Amy steeled herself. "Concerned how?" Despite her best effort she felt her voice waver.
He seemed nervous. Of course he would be. He knew what she would become.
"Uh, are you doing ok?"
And once again he proved he was capable of pulling the rug out from under her. "What?"
"Like, personally, emotionally, are you doing ok?"
"What do you mean?"
"I know you do really long shifts, and you don't seem to have much going on outside your work. You usually look pretty tired as well. And I'm not sure how healthy your home life is. My power's concerned you're going to hit a wall."
Amy was bouncing between emotions. Not knowing how to feel she decided to settle on offence. He spends half the conversation insulting her, criticizing her family, and trying to moralize against heroes and now he wants to pretend he cares about her? "Is your thinker power telling you about my family? You're ok with it digging into my personal life?"
"It's not really digging into anything, it's just worried about you. I mean, from what it's told me about Brandish I doubt she's that easy to live with. Plus there's your power."
"What about my power?" Amy snapped, faster than she intended.
"There's no connection to anyone else in New Wave. That means that there was a stronger emotional link from your biological parent than from anyone in your family."
It was a brutally clinical diagnosis of her family dynamic. The idea that her villain father loved her more than anyone in her family.
"What do you know about my father?" She half growled. Years of frustration was coming to the surface. "What did your power tell you about him?"
"Um, I didn't even know it was your father. I was just getting the sense of someone connected to you. It could have been anyone, but with your adoption it made sense that it would be a biological parent. That was an assumption."
He didn't know. It wasn't like Tattletale where he could shout the secret to the world. He was looking at her life through frosted glass and making guesses. Really good, well informed guesses, but there was a sense of distance there.
"So what do you know?" He paused and looked off to the side. "Well?"
"You're serious about this?"
She nodded, expressing confidence she didn't really feel.
"Ok, I know that they, well I guess that's he, really cares about you. Like, a lot. It's endearing, really."
Of course a villain would be the only one who could love her. "What else?"
"Uh, I'm pretty sure he's a strong cape. Like top tier. There's this feeling of respect and caution."
"Because he's dangerous."
"Yeah, but not in the random violence way. The closest comparison I could make would be... I guess Miss Militia?"
Amy's mind screeched to a halt. "What?"
"There's this respect, and a kind of, like, honor? I'm dealing with this second hand so it's hard to process. What I mean is, Miss Militia can create tactical weapons, but she's not going to. She's dangerous, but generally not a threat to people around her. That's the sense I'm getting from your father."
"Seriously?" What was she supposed to make of this?
He held up his hands. "My power isn't great at moral judgements. I can't really guarantee any of that." His eyes went wide. "Oh."
"What?"
He looked uncomfortable. "I'm not sure I should say."
"No, you started this, you don't get to back out now. Tell me what you found out."
He looked pained, but he continued. "Look, I'm not sure about this. My power is hard to figure out."
"Just tell me."
"Ok," He swallowed. "There's something between your father and your current family."
Amy felt the blood drain from her face. "What did he do?"
The tinker just shook his head. "It wasn't him."
"What does that mean?"
"What I'm getting is New Wave did something bad. Not like an atrocity or anything, but they did something immoral. Like they broke a convention that everyone's agreed upon."
"So what, New Wave is horrible and my father was great?"
He seemed to be struggling through whatever his power was giving him. "I told you, it's not good at moral judgments, and it's hard to sort out. I think they had a reason for it, but they went further than anyone else would have. Like to a dangerous level." He let out a breath. "Frankly, this is a mess. I think more than Brandish the real reason I stayed away from seriously considering New Wave was there was just too much of this stuff to sort through."
"What, you're just leaving it like that? You accuse my family then decide to stop?"
"Look, I'm not going to be able to get you a perfect picture of what happened. You're going to have to talk to your family about that." He flinched. "But not Brandish."
Carol? "Why not?"
"I don't know why, but there is some serious bad stuff between her and your father. Whatever New Wave did, it was a lot worse on her part."
That didn't make sense. Carol and her father? What happened? Should she even believe him? This whole situation was a mess. He worked with Tattletale. He could have been playing her from the start, but that didn't match up. Too many details. He was too casual. There was no sense of a plan. He was either a master level thinker or he was just blundering his way through this. She didn't know which one she'd prefer.
She slumped like a deflating balloon. All her hopes of getting dirt on the Undersiders were long forgotten. This conversation had taken too much out of her and it felt like she barely got anything to show for it.
"You know, they still think the bug girl is the tinker. They're not going to believe me when I tell them about this." Some might, but the PRT could get legendarily obstinate. She had no proof so they would keep insisting for tentative classifications until something forced their hand.
"Actually, here. I meant to give you this earlier."
He dug something out of a coat pocket and tossed it to her. She caught it on reflex and felt the heft of it. It was a piece of card with something pinned to it.
"What's this?"
"I figured it would be harder to convince you I was who I said I was, so I made that as proof."
She turned the card over and saw the object attached. It was a hairpin, but leaving the descriptor at that seemed like a criminal underservice. It had two prongs of the glassy metal she remembered from those monster knives, only this was tiny and delicate. Where the prongs met a bouquet of flowers had been sculpted from the same metal, only each petal was individually shaped. Somehow something had been done to the surface of the metal giving it a rainbow gleam. Somehow it reminded her of gasoline spilled in a puddle. The prongs shifted through hues along their length but each flower was a different color. She ran a finger over the flowers and the individual petals moved. They felt like foil, but sprang back into shape immediately and the colors they displayed shifted slightly with their motion.
It was beautiful. It was also terrifying. She could tell the entire thing was one solid piece of metal. The colors on the surface weren't due to any paint or coating, somehow he had worked the metal to a rainbow sheen and also controlled how the colors presented. The tiny bouquet had nine individually sculpted flowers of different types. The precision and craftsmanship of someone who had made this just to prove his claim was at the disposal of the Undersiders.
She knew she should throw it back at him, but she didn't want to. He had made it for her, not in any personal sense, but it was made for her and it had nothing to do with healing. There was no red cross, no doctor theme, no Caduceus. It was just a pretty object, a tinker level pretty object, but it gave the sense it had been made for Amy Dallon, not Panacea.
"It's beautiful." Damn it, she didn't mean to compliment him, but it was true. And she was back to resenting him for working with villains.
"Thanks." He sounded half embarrassed by the compliment.
Where did she go from here? All that and had she even gotten anything she could use against the Undersiders? All that effort and she'd only been talking in circles.
The door at the end of the hall slammed open as a blond figure in a white dress burst through.
"Amy? Amy, thank God. I've been looking everywhere for you." In a faction of a second Vicky was next to her, the wind of her movement throwing Amy's hair into chaos and making the tinker's coat billow back. She glared at him. "Who's this?"
He answered before she could. "I'm the tinker who made the Undersider's weapons."
Vicky's eyes narrowed and Amy felt her aura flair. "Amy stand back."
"Vicky, wait..." but her sister was already winding up. She saw the attack fly. And she saw it stop dead against the tinker's chest. There was a faint ripple across his clothes but otherwise it was like nothing happened.
He looked over at her. "So, 'lack of restraint' was about right? Sorry to cut this short." He threw another glowing mix into the air. Vicky interposed herself between Amy and the tinker, but instead of spreading like the last time the light settled over him, then flared as he vanished from the hallway.
She smelled vinegar.
Amy stared blankly at the spot that once held the tinker trying to figure out what had happened. She realized her sister was shaking her and quickly came back to her senses.
"Amy! Amy, are you alright? What happened?"
"Vicky," What was the priority? Right, unknown tinker tech healing. "Vicky, I need to get upstairs right now. Get me to diagnostic medicine."
"What? What did he do?"
"He used some kind of healing technology on me." She held up her unsprained wrist and rotated it, as well as wiggling her fingers of her formerly broken arm. At the very least she needed to get that removed. "I need an exam. We have to make sure it was safe." And maybe figure out how to replicate it, as much of a long shot as that was.
"He healed you?" Props to Vicky, she didn't let her shock slow her down. Amy was scooped up and carried through the halls at a nearly unsafe speed.
"Afterwards I'll need to speak with Director Piggot or Armsmaster." And she had to figure out what she was going to say. The thought of repeating all his ramblings mortified her, but if there was any chance of bringing the Undersiders to justice she'd have to take it.
She just had to inform them the tinker who made those blades could also heal, teleport, and had defenses that could negate Vicky's punches. Oh, and claimed that he was both able to analyze tinker tech and that he was a strong thinker with the ability to predict personal details and bombing sprees. And that he had an ongoing 'business relationship' with the Undersiders. They were just going to love this news.
She would have plenty of time. The number of tests she had coming would see to that. It would also give her a chance to calm down. That tinker was infuriating. She could see how he set Tattletale off. Actually that image greatly improved her mood. If nothing else at least she could imagine Tattletale curled up in the dark with a thinker headache.
For that she could deal with the fallout from this meeting.
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Saphire
Lurking dragon
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Decided to binge-read ahead on AO3. It was interesting, but the latest series of chapters is rather concerning about the future in the fic.
So, entire Bakuda fight. Is there any particular reason there's not a single attempt to consider tranquilizing her, or putting her to sleep by any means that are not electricity? Or just, a sufficiently hard knock on her head.
As I understood, her (strangely unhackable at all, and.. unblockable of course. Constant signal or trigger signal though? First case would allow to just shoot communication area of the trigger device...?) deadman's switch only checks for her heart beating, not if her brain is present at all, or whether she's conscious. Just the.. pacemaker neurons firing/muscle contraction, or even just mechanical motion?
But eh, epic battle, power growth, etc.
Next up... The end of chapter 20. This is uh, a bit over the top? Like, Bakuda got basically a full on breakdown going, her traumas stabbed all over, her mob of people scattered and battered, her equipment broken in various ways, entire area around messed up, and effects of bombs (that got upgraded after Tattletale kept pushing on her trigger because of course it would 1UP her power at the best moment).
Only for backup to arrive, give her new grenade launcher, and get to get up and brush off like it was all nothing and have even more stuff and more backup? It's.. concerning.
If the Bakuda fight gotten powered up so much, what about the rest of things happening? And it seems that the story is going right all by stations of canon so far. So it kinda makes me wonder if this can be kept up. Unless author decides to make things go less over the top like Bakuda. Which I'm rather doubtful, but that's just opinion without actual factual support.
As I understood, her (strangely unhackable at all, and.. unblockable of course. Constant signal or trigger signal though? First case would allow to just shoot communication area of the trigger device...?) deadman's switch only checks for her heart beating, not if her brain is present at all, or whether she's conscious. Just the.. pacemaker neurons firing/muscle contraction, or even just mechanical motion?
But eh, epic battle, power growth, etc.
Next up... The end of chapter 20. This is uh, a bit over the top? Like, Bakuda got basically a full on breakdown going, her traumas stabbed all over, her mob of people scattered and battered, her equipment broken in various ways, entire area around messed up, and effects of bombs (that got upgraded after Tattletale kept pushing on her trigger because of course it would 1UP her power at the best moment).
Only for backup to arrive, give her new grenade launcher, and get to get up and brush off like it was all nothing and have even more stuff and more backup? It's.. concerning.
If the Bakuda fight gotten powered up so much, what about the rest of things happening? And it seems that the story is going right all by stations of canon so far. So it kinda makes me wonder if this can be kept up. Unless author decides to make things go less over the top like Bakuda. Which I'm rather doubtful, but that's just opinion without actual factual support.
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- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Actually it was a reference to playing way too much Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Probably for the same reason everyone was playing too much Animal Crossing: New Horizons)
One of the hardest things about this fic is managing the pacing. It's largely a consequence of the structure of the original writing exercise. A lot of the elements are being incorporated into the story as they're rolled, which makes maintaining a smooth narrative a challenge. Looking back there are things I would have changed to help the pace flow better, including probably cutting the Bakuda fight down to about half its current length, as I feel that it got away from me.
In this story I've been trying to maintain a flawed main character who doesn't have the best mindset for cape work. He didn't use tranquilizer because he didn't have any on hand and the avenues or powers that would have allowed for him to get some (The Alchemy Lab) didn't occur to him, mostly due to being present for less than a day. Likewise, a lot of sub-par decisions have been due to serious lack of experience and the use of both thinker powers and mental alterations as a crutch.
As for the pacemaker being unhackable and overly complicated, I think was a fair assumption given that Armsmaster (presumably with Dragon's help) wasn't able to crack it. We also didn't see anyone have their bomb detonate due to signal interference, so probably some exotic effects backing it up. The whole set up actually seems in line with the definition of a tinker mega-project.
During the last chapter I feel like I lost the emotional thread of the fight, particularly with the note I ended on. Looking back, the final moment just evoked exasperation and frustration, which isn't what I wanted going into the last part of the arc.
The next chapter will reveal the magnitude of the butterflies that have hit so far and how the stations of canon aren't really standing anymore. There's a lot more going on than there appears, but that doesn't help a frustrated reader until the explanation comes through. Still, I'm looking forward to dealing with the post-fight elements of the story, particularly the MC's public debut.
In this story I've been trying to maintain a flawed main character who doesn't have the best mindset for cape work. He didn't use tranquilizer because he didn't have any on hand and the avenues or powers that would have allowed for him to get some (The Alchemy Lab) didn't occur to him, mostly due to being present for less than a day. Likewise, a lot of sub-par decisions have been due to serious lack of experience and the use of both thinker powers and mental alterations as a crutch.
As for the pacemaker being unhackable and overly complicated, I think was a fair assumption given that Armsmaster (presumably with Dragon's help) wasn't able to crack it. We also didn't see anyone have their bomb detonate due to signal interference, so probably some exotic effects backing it up. The whole set up actually seems in line with the definition of a tinker mega-project.
During the last chapter I feel like I lost the emotional thread of the fight, particularly with the note I ended on. Looking back, the final moment just evoked exasperation and frustration, which isn't what I wanted going into the last part of the arc.
The next chapter will reveal the magnitude of the butterflies that have hit so far and how the stations of canon aren't really standing anymore. There's a lot more going on than there appears, but that doesn't help a frustrated reader until the explanation comes through. Still, I'm looking forward to dealing with the post-fight elements of the story, particularly the MC's public debut.
Saphire
Lurking dragon
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Huh, apparently spoiler word count is there in the inline editor for the forum, but having nothing outside still invokes the "reply is too short". Oh well.
Yeah, the fight has run off quite far in those four chapters. It feels less like a single encounter and more like an entire day of small scale war waged between two major tinkers. Though yeah, maintaining any semblance of pacing sounds difficult when the main character's power is more or less "constant random growth". The current length is a bit on the higher end and just barely feels okay, but the last part makes it sound a bit worse than what it was probably intended.
The way Bakuda recovers and gets backup definitely invokes feeling that there's going to be either a few more chapters worth of the same fight. Or that the villains will curbstomp the main character and co and they have to run away, in rather anticlimatic way. Though this one is mostly guessing and opinion.
The "unhackable pacemaker watchdog" and "no tranqulizers" is somewhat understandable, honestly. Was mostly my nitpicking from being a bit frustrated and irritated at the way it went and so.
After what happened in Bakuda fight so far, hopefully Coil, Levi, S9 and etc won't be much of a problem. This version of her is honestly pretty overpowered, as it sounds like she had quite a few dozens of bombs in this fight alone, which is either putting all into one place or having way too much stockpiled. Addition of March here made Bakuda from a menace into a basically S9 level event, and thankfully she did not get to start messing more than in this small area...
Alsolad to hear that canon is going off the rails. By the way, the Coil interlude was actually somewhat okay, which is quite the achievement. Usually, he's annoying and frustrating as hell and any interlude with him that is not him getting caught is just more frustration and desire for him to just be finally gone from story. Yet here he just makes plans you can expect of Worm. Which means that a lot of the awful things are his fault and getting rid of him is going to fix a lot, hooray. Kinda kept wondering in interlude if Joe running off was a "oh we are in simulation" reaction from not-shard and just faking it for Coil. And is magic really magic, and precogs somehow can deal with it, or is it just some not-shard effects?
Also curious, why did Joe ended up getting "run away" feeling towards Scion when considering if he could fight him with all the power of Forge? That he NEEDS Taylor for this sounds a bit strange, and highly limiting on the power of said Forge. Is this meant to be Worm-only fic and I misunderstood "Jumpchain" premise? Though even then there's so many problems in Worm, beyond BB and Scion...
The way Bakuda recovers and gets backup definitely invokes feeling that there's going to be either a few more chapters worth of the same fight. Or that the villains will curbstomp the main character and co and they have to run away, in rather anticlimatic way. Though this one is mostly guessing and opinion.
The "unhackable pacemaker watchdog" and "no tranqulizers" is somewhat understandable, honestly. Was mostly my nitpicking from being a bit frustrated and irritated at the way it went and so.
After what happened in Bakuda fight so far, hopefully Coil, Levi, S9 and etc won't be much of a problem. This version of her is honestly pretty overpowered, as it sounds like she had quite a few dozens of bombs in this fight alone, which is either putting all into one place or having way too much stockpiled. Addition of March here made Bakuda from a menace into a basically S9 level event, and thankfully she did not get to start messing more than in this small area...
Alsolad to hear that canon is going off the rails. By the way, the Coil interlude was actually somewhat okay, which is quite the achievement. Usually, he's annoying and frustrating as hell and any interlude with him that is not him getting caught is just more frustration and desire for him to just be finally gone from story. Yet here he just makes plans you can expect of Worm. Which means that a lot of the awful things are his fault and getting rid of him is going to fix a lot, hooray. Kinda kept wondering in interlude if Joe running off was a "oh we are in simulation" reaction from not-shard and just faking it for Coil. And is magic really magic, and precogs somehow can deal with it, or is it just some not-shard effects?
Also curious, why did Joe ended up getting "run away" feeling towards Scion when considering if he could fight him with all the power of Forge? That he NEEDS Taylor for this sounds a bit strange, and highly limiting on the power of said Forge. Is this meant to be Worm-only fic and I misunderstood "Jumpchain" premise? Though even then there's so many problems in Worm, beyond BB and Scion...
Arimai
Curmudgeon
@LordRoustabout
NB: 237 words are too short and add nothing to the thread? You (SV devs and owner) paid too much to whoever designed the algorithm that governs this counter.
The biggest problem I had with the fight is that the damn main character had a bloody enhanced matter printer so the lack of tranquillizer is a copout. Especially as your new printer can make anything your base printer can and more because it is from Mass Effect. Your character has the experience, muscle memory and knowledge of an experienced combat engineer whose been through multiple campaigns. And yet the moment combat starts he acts like a bloody green recruit. You can't build up how much experience and skill he has and then have him throw all that away to act like a twit. That ME pistol you upgraded should have ended Bakuda's threat three seconds after Lisa told him about her toe rings. The SI had multiple clear shots at Bakuda. The pistol can fire everything from incendiaries to radioactive polonium rounds flash forged by its fabricator. He should have blown her leg off with incendiary rounds.
He keeps saying I'll kill her if I have to but fails to act in neutralizing her threat. Going for showy, flashy moves with his robot instead. Your SI wasted his numerical superiority and high ground. Bakuda could not be tased? Okay then. Why were your SI's drones not disabling the other combatants? Your ME drones can emit Massive EMP discharges and can block signals. Jammers should have been the first priority of the drones after AAM duties.
He keeps saying I'll kill her if I have to but fails to act in neutralizing her threat. Going for showy, flashy moves with his robot instead. Your SI wasted his numerical superiority and high ground. Bakuda could not be tased? Okay then. Why were your SI's drones not disabling the other combatants? Your ME drones can emit Massive EMP discharges and can block signals. Jammers should have been the first priority of the drones after AAM duties.
NB: 237 words are too short and add nothing to the thread? You (SV devs and owner) paid too much to whoever designed the algorithm that governs this counter.
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LordofTentacles
Surprisingly Sturdy
- Location
- Louisiana
This is my favorite chapter so far. The interactions between them are so good, and he comes off as a mumbling crazy person is how I like it. Thank you for your work.
Arimai
Curmudgeon
@LordRoustabout don't mistake my frustration for hatred of the story. Outside of several irritating sections I quite enjoyed your story.
9 Acquisitions
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
9 Acquisitions
Escape was a frustrating formula to work with. I could combine wax and vinegar for the power to teleport. It sounded amazing, but the formula would only work to get me 'out' of places. I couldn't use it to cross the city, I couldn't even use it for tactical advantages in combat. It was totally useless in open areas without a concept of inside and outside to work with. Additionally, I could only vaguely affect where the formula would deposit me.
Fortunately I had enough control to make sure I appeared at a rear exit of the hospital. The door was a fire exit, so there was no chance of someone opening it and discovering me. Also the affinity Decadence gave me with surveillance devices let me make sure I was in a blindspot. The area had sparse coverage to begin with, so it wasn't that much of a challenge.
I quickly accessed my workshop through the door and slipped out of my costume. Dropping the coat, mask, and metal details instantly transformed me back to a normal civilian. At that point it was just a matter of following the route I'd previously identified to avoid security cameras until I was far enough away from the PRT hospital to blend into the crowd.
Getting away from the hospital was a lot easier than what my infiltration had entailed. Still, sneaking into a place like that was something I never would have thought I be able to handle a week ago. As it stood the exercise barely challenged my abilities. I'd thought I'd need to use my monomolecular pen knife to bypass doors but it seemed that now I could pick locks. None of my abilities specifically were related to lock picking, but my understanding of mechanics and crafting skills was so excessive that any pin and tumbler lock might as well have been an open door. Electronic locks and sensors were more of a challenge, but I was able to find alternate routes or bypass the systems with a bit of effort. That was actually a bit surprising as I hadn't practiced much with those kinds of skills. It was odd using them for the first time to get around security systems, but I was able to handle electronics infinitely more complicated than what they had in this place.
I was able to pick out surveillance cameras but I hadn't been able to avoid them all. Fortunately there was an advantage to Decadence covering all aspects of design. A bit of alteration to my hair, the slightest touches of pharmacy makeup on my face and a change in how my clothes sat and I looked like a completely different person. Even if they could pick me out from every other civilian walking into this place they would never be able to match me to the person who appeared on their tapes. Same with any member of the hospital staff who might have spotted me. I hadn't gotten a second glance on my way in, so I think I was probably safe on that front.
I had gotten damn lucky when searching for Panacea. I half expected to have to jump out, hit her with the Miracle Cure formula, and then immediately use my Escape formula. I'd spotted her slipping into the basement and had just enough time to duck into my workshop to change and cut her off when there was no one around.
I wasn't sure how I was feeling about Panacea at this point. My passenger cared about her. Not as much as Taylor, but at least on the same level as any of the Undersiders. There was so much mixed up stuff around her I couldn't tell if I'd done any good. From her reactions it was obvious there was something to my passenger's predictions regarding her home life. She had tried to downplay it but it was clear how much it was bothering her. It was a strange experience looking as someone else's family drama. I may not have helped on that front but at least she wouldn't be nursing an injury for the next six weeks.
I thought Panacea would be pressing me for information, but she got almost nothing out of me. Plenty of stuff about my power, but I'd decided I was willing to share that anyway. In regards to grilling me on the Undersiders she either got distracted or is really bad at the whole subtle interrogation thing. The only new pieces of information she'd picked up was Tattletale's headache and the nature of my arrangement with them. And that Taylor wasn't a tinker.
I still felt kind of embarrassed about that hairpin. The idea that I'd need proof was a last minute decision. I originally thought about just taking a metal sample, but I figured they'd need some evidence that I could make things. Machinist was an unbelievable acceleration power for anything involving mechanics or fabrication. When it was combined with my Smithing and two design perks I'd let things get away from me. From her expression when I tossed it to her I could tell she thought it was ridiculous. Honestly, I was kind of relieved when her sister barged in if just for the distraction.
Also, it's good to know my Force Field formula counters impact along with damage. It would have sucked to get the injury from the hit negated only to be sent flying through half a dozen walls. I was right on the money about Glory Girl's restraint. That blow would have nearly collapsed my chest, and that's counting the boost of my durability. There's also the impact damage from being sent flying. Like, that was legitimately attempted murder. Well, she was a hero cape, so probably involuntary manslaughter. A villain would definitely get murder two.
Everything I did tonight was definitely going to be figured out by Lisa and thus communicated to the boss. Even if she didn't have information sources inside the Protectorate she had enough insight to be able to figure out something was up, if not from the reactions to this then when Panacea showed up without injuries. That would probably be an interesting conversation. I ran through everything I'd said. Nothing gave details on the Undersiders, except the crack about Lisa not being able to figure out my tinkering. I let them know who I was and that I was hired, but that was entirely on my side. No details of powers, no locations, not even information on what I had made them.
I didn't like the idea that everything I did and everything I was capable of was being conveyed to a mystery crime lord, but the fact was that my abilities were growing faster than she would be able to report. She might have a hint about the upper level of technology I could create, but with the blind spots in her power and how the more esoteric applications of my abilities seemed to stress her out I doubted she had a complete picture. I would still need to prepare for repercussions, both from her and from her boss.
Lisa might be angry, or she might just be exasperated. Either way I doubt this is going to end our relationship. And no matter what I stand by my position of not letting Panacea stay injured.
The day had been draining in the extreme. I was coming off a brutal work blitz with no proper sleep, and then this rushed infiltration and clandestine meeting. Now I was walking towards the docks in an evening drizzle and just wanted to crawl into bed. I'd made a commitment, both to myself, and to Mr. Laborn but there was no way I was dragging my tired ass to the gym tonight.
I was also in no mood to deal with Aisha. Since I didn't know who her snitch was I had no guarantee that she wouldn't show up for a 'completely spontaneous' surprise workout session. Instead I took the time honored strategy of cowardly putting off dealing with things. Maybe the girl could find a life outside of pestering me. She probably had all kinds of people to harass, some of whom might even be age appropriate for her.
As it stood I had only missed out on two days of scheduled workouts and runs. Still, that was exactly the kind of thing I promised myself I wouldn't let happen. I doubted it would be easier to keep a training schedule when my projects ramped up, much less during Bakuda's inevitable attacks.
That was the thing. Bakuda. She was definitely counting down to something. It had been nearly a week since Lung's capture. There's no telling the amount of tech she could have built up in that time. I badly needed to get started on countermeasures. My alchemy and reinforcement would only carry me so far. With Machinist I could do projects that should take days in a matter of hours. The cash I'd gotten from the Undersiders wouldn't help anyone when the bombing started. I would need to get started tomorrow. Prioritize what can make a difference, work like a madman, and just maybe I'd be able to get ahead of things.
But there was something I needed to deal with first, before planning, before sleep, before anything. During my infiltration, along with a few failed connections, my power had latched on to the strongest mote it had managed so far. It was from the Clothing constellation and was actually one of two motes clustered together. By expending all of the reach I had developed my power was able to latch onto the larger of the two motes. The one I connected to was an object. I couldn't get a good sense of the other one, but I could tell it was the skills needed to work with what the larger mote provided. One mote for materials, one for crafting ability. That meant I would have to figure out how to use what I received without any help. With something this powerful it might be able to turn the tide in the coming chaos. That's why sleep was not an option. I had to get back to my workshop and start my analysis.
I had to figure out what the hell I was supposed to do with a spool of Life Fibers.
At the moment I didn't have much to go on. I knew it could be used to enhance clothing, but that was about it. Fortunately I had an excellent quality lab to work with.
As soon as I got back to my apartment I opened my workshop. This was the first time I had gotten a small item and I wasn't sure how it would arrive. It turned out a locker had been placed in the wall of my entry room. Inside was a medium sized spool of glowing red thread.
So I had a spool of material that was more expensive than any ability I'd received so far. I know not all powers have an equal relationship between strength and cost, but there had to be something extraordinary about this thread. I carefully moved the spool into my Laboratorium to see what I could learn.
The first think I learned was how many Xeno alarms my Laboratorium had. As soon as the spool touched the scanner every light in the oversized room was blaring red, the cybernetic skulls were thrashing around and more than a dozen fail-safes were trying to activate. I had to scramble to the command throne just to stop the plasma incinerator from activating.
I didn't even know I had one of those.
It took half an hour of overrides before things calmed down enough for me to actually get a reading. It took another fifteen minutes of disabling safeties to get a reading that wasn't a full page of warning signs and caution symbols. Finally after all that I found out what I was dealing with.
The thread was an alien parasite. Life fibers were, in fact, alive. The thread was composed of multiple cells, but each was impossibly long and thin. And when I say impossibly thin I really mean that. I don't think they actually follow the laws of physics and there are a lot of aspects that seemed borderline unbelievable. For one thing they were incredibly durable. As in leagues beyond anything I could even conceive of making. This stuff made my best hyper alloys look like a joke and even if they were damaged there seemed to be a mechanism where they would restore themselves almost instantly.
My analysis could extrapolate how they fed on living creatures, either their blood or neural energy. They also seemed to have some mutagenic properties that let them alter their host. The hint about enhancing clothing made sense after I started looking into their feeding mechanism. Limiting the fibers to surface contact severely reduced the stress on the host's system. Rather than burning out the host it could maintain the relationship indefinitely without serious damage.
The potential for genetic augmentation was fascinating. The fibers seemed to work to accelerate evolution, pushing their hosts towards more robust bodies with larger brains and advanced nervous systems. They worked to enhance whatever species they came into contact with. In theory they could drive a planet towards developing sapient life, but that seemed more of a byproduct of their self-interest. Those traits led to better hosts for the life fibers to inhabit.
There was also evidence of intelligence, or at least the potential for it. The cells were all seemingly identical, but the energy exchange between them resembled a neural network. What I had on the spool was highly truncated. Projections from my lab's computers indicated there would normally be a significant mass of fibers coordinating the rest of them in a kind of hive mind. What I had here were the only life fibers in the universe, essentially a baby of its species. Not even that, more of a zygote.
It was naturally parasitic, but capable of a symbiotic relationship. It was also a living thing with the potential of developing intelligence. This wasn't a tool or resource to be exploited. It was a potential intelligent being and I needed to treat it as such.
Seeing as it could be used as clothing there were some possibilities. I didn't know how to combine it with other materials and if I used it by itself I'd estimate there was enough to maybe make a pair of gloves. I had no idea what kind of impact either act would have on the lifeform. I would have to look after it and see how it develops.
I drew up some estimates for nutritional needs. It seemed that it was capable of stasis pretty much indefinably, as in for thousands and thousands of years with no issue. If I wanted to awaken the life fibers it would need food, either bio-neural energy or blood. Bio-neural energy provided less sustenance and required continuous contact. So I would either have to maintain skin contact with the spool or introduce it to my blood. Neither of those seemed like a particularly good idea until I knew more about them.
Almost all of the knowledge I had received since I got my powers was based around mechanical principles. The only exception was Nanite Sciences. Those Nanites, unlike the ones from Grease Monkey or Machinist, had so many biological and medical applications that even though the bulk of the knowledge from that power revolved around construction and programing of nanomachines it necessitated a firm grounding in biology, particularly microbiology.
A functional set of nanites would actually be perfect for managing life fibers. Unfortunately I was months away from having that project at a workable state, and that was assuming I had all the facilities and resources that I needed. Instead I would just have to work with the biological knowledge I had and try not to mess this up. It was more than a little infuriating that the knowledge of how to work with something was separated from the material to be worked with.
I wasn't ready to leave things at that. I loaded myself with a full suite of defensive formulas and deactivated the stasis and suspension fields around the spool while leaving the scanners running. I was about to engage in the most elemental manner of scientific discovery known to man. The first and most effective method of information gathering understood at a core level by every human on the planet. I reached out and poked the spool with my finger.
This wasn't just because poking is the basis for scientific discovery. Life fibers could absorb neural energy through the skin. I needed data on the process, not just the extrapolation my lab provided. Based on everything I'd learned so far this should present almost no risk of injury.
I also wasn't getting any major concerns about this action from my passenger, which helped with the decision.
When my finger contacted the spool of red fibers there was a flare of energy and the whole mass began to glow. That was nothing compared to my experience. It felt like lightning was shooting up my arm. Someone was taking a sandblaster to my exhaustion and replacing it with ten cups of coffee and a shot of adrenalin. The fibers seemed to twitch and writhe on top of each other as well as squeeze down on the spool with incredible pressure.
I pulled my hand away and the energy vanished leaving me even more exhausted than before. I reactivated the stasis field and reviewed the scanned data, both from the fibers and my own body. There was a fascinating interaction between the life fibers and a human being. The ultimate potential was something I couldn't even guess at this point but at the very least it would be able to provide drastic physical enhancement. There would be significant stress on the person's body, especially if there wasn't some way of moderating it. That would be what the clothing integration could be for. Unfortunately I had no idea how to manage that. Working with life fibers in their raw state was a terrifying prospect, but I needed to press on, both for the sake of the lifeform and for the potential benefits I could see from it.
I wouldn't be accomplishing any of that tonight. I decided the best thing for now was to collect more data. I assembled a suite of scanners around the spool and left it under observation in my Laboratorium, making sure to suspend the numerous Xeno purging protocols before I left.
Heading back to my apartment I started making a much needed meal as I considered my next move. I had no illusions about Bakuda. Eventually she was going to make a move. Whatever she was planning it would probably be before Lung was moved to the Birdcage. She might want to cut loose with her tech, but if the ABB lost Lung they would be on borrowed time. Would she try to ransom him, or go for a jailbreak? I assumed he was being held in the Rig, which would be a hard target even for Oni Lee. Or so I assumed. I didn't know what his range or limitations were, so he might be able to jump into the holding cells from half way across the city.
So now that I had resources I needed to decide what I would work on. Ideally I would do the standard tinker procedure, build improved equipment to improve the quality and range of devices I would be able to create. If I put everything I had into upgrading my workshop and spend a few days on it I could be able to manage some serious technology, not just the material science tricks I'd pulled for the Undersiders. The question was whether I had the time to spare for that.
There was also the problem that such an upgrade could easily take all the resources I'd assembles to date. Having the capacity for advanced construction without being able to afford any of it is not a problem I wanted to run into. Even if they could afford it I wasn't currently comfortable doing more builds for the Undersiders and calling on their boss for resources was an absolute non-starter.
I needed some gear that would let me function properly as a cape. I'd proven I could manage to some extent last weekend, but a city wide bombing spree was a different matter than a throw down with Oni Lee, especially since I think he was trying to keep the tinker tech grenades quiet at that point. That was an advantage I wouldn't be able to rely on in the future.
So I needed to figure out what would serve me best in the coming crisis. The list I had made when Panacea asked me in the hospital had been made up on the spot, but most of it held up. I needed better electronic warfare options. Well, I needed any electronic warfare options. I also needed mobility, in case last Sunday's street level patrol at walking pace didn't drive that home. My dark alchemy would carry me pretty well, but it wouldn't hurt to have some offensive options between 'hit with stick' and 'wrath of god'.
The problem was there was a serious bottleneck as to what I could build at the moment. I might be able to manage some of the higher level items I could conceive of, but the fabrication process would be tedious in the extreme. I would have to create huge amounts of new alloys and I was doubtful even with full cannibalization of all the electronics I currently had at my disposal if I would be able to manage anything close to the computing power and control systems I would need for running something like a proper hardsuit. Also, none of that touched on the horror of powering tech like that. I needed a fusion system to break out any of the serious weapons or machinery, and getting one running is its own nightmare project.
When the time you need to complete a specific item starts to approach the time needed to get fully programed nanites up and running you need to reassess your priorities.
So, reevaluate the problem. The easiest of my projects to deal with is probably mobility. I wouldn't say I could literally rebuild an engine in my sleep, but it's a close thing. A car or air vehicle would be difficult to conceal without the kind of stealth systems Squealer was rumored to use. I needed something that would address mobility both in and out of cape identity.
I could build an incredible motorcycle.
The only problem was I didn't know how to ride a motorcycle. Oh, I knew how to operate one. I knew every aspect of that. I knew how they functioned, and what maneuvers different kinds of bikes would be able to manage just from their technical specs. I just had no practical experience.
But I could build the kind of bike that only existed in science fiction. If I did that I could also probably rig a basic assistance program and some gyroscopic controls to keep me from killing myself. Even if I didn't end up using it for cape work it would get me around the city much faster. With my workshop key giving me access to my cape equipment anywhere with a door I could do rapid response to a nearby area, change in my workshop, and then deal with the problem without any issue.
It wasn't a perfect solution, but it was leagues better than hoping I could manage with my current level of mobility. I did not want a repeat of this morning's trudge through the city.
After I finished eating I pulled up New Hampshire's transport regulations on my laptop. It seemed I could get a learner's permit for a motorcycle with just a written test. That was more limited than I would have liked, but motorcycle license tests needed to be scheduled well in advance. If I could find something in budget I could get on the road tomorrow. Anything would do considering I would be rebuilding it completely.
I could also load my bike with a good amount of technology. Taking advantage of the power of the engine, especially once I was done upgrading it, I would be able to run a decent set of equipment off it. I'd still be limited to what I could make, but I could probably manage some decent scanners and basic ECM. The bike could act as a mobile support point, especially if I could build an advanced enough control program for it
The day was catching up with me in a bad way. I made a few token searches for what I could find in terms of used motorcycles, then finally let myself collapse to sleep.
I had not turned off my watch alarm. It was probably for the best since I would have been happy to sleep until the crack of noon. Still, it took just about all of my willpower and no shortage of encouraging feelings from my passenger to haul myself out of bed, well off of mattress, and back into my morning routine.
Toast, coffee, run. That was the routine I had held to, and that was the routine I had decided I would not let slide just because my tinkering picked up. It wasn't as bad once I made it to the bay and started along the boardwalk. Yesterday's rain had cleared the air and it was just on the edge of a chill. That was my absolute favorite exercise weather. This entire endeavor would get a lot more trying once the summer heat started to set in. Maybe by then I'd be established enough to get a gym membership somewhere air conditioned. The Boxing gym was great and cheap, but its idea of a cardio area was a set of jump ropes. I hadn't been there in the summer, but I'm pretty sure they managed by sticking a fan by the door rather than the monstrous cooling costs a building like that would incur.
Since I got the Life Fiber Spool my forge had missed a couple of attempted connections, but on my way back from my run the Clothing constellation swung by and made a link. Sadly it wasn't the one I'd need to work with life fibers. No, this one was much stranger, which is really saying something. This wasn't a lifeform that could enhance things with the potential for intelligence. No, the Celestial Forge had just given me a fully intelligent being.
It was an expert crafter with telekinetic powers and thinker abilities that could both divine aspects of the future and details about anyone on the planet. Its crafting abilities could be shared with other people, eventually allowing them to develop skills approaching its level. It could also instantly transform a quantity of money into its value in raw materials, effectively bypassing all purchase and supply chain concerns. On top of that it was an ageless and tireless construct completely with no biological needs or vulnerabilities.
All of that sounded incredible, but there was one qualifier that moderated things. One massive, looming qualifier. All of these abilities were limited to one specific field. Not robotics, not weapon design, and not vehicles.
It was fashion.
My power had given me an immortal super powered fashion designer that manifested as an animated pair of gloves. The insanity of it was almost enough to overshadow the fact that I had just been given an intelligent creature like it was a prize from a cereal box. Two creatures if you counted the life fibers. I didn't know if they'd been created by my power or snatched from somewhere else, though there was a giant room full of skulls I had the same concern about. I remembered how the spool arrived and realized that I may be confining what is effectively a person to a tiny locker sealed in an extra-dimensional space.
As I rushed back to my apartment another horrible thought occurred. Was the intelligence attached to the gloves human? By that I meant was it a person trapped in glove form now? I hoped not. I thought the cyber skulls of my Laboratorium were the worst my power could manage. I didn't even want to think about someone sealed into the form of a pair of gloves for eternity.
I dashed up the shaky stairs to my apartment and barely took the time to bolt the front door behind me before rushing to the back closet and throwing open my workshop door. Like with the spool a new locker had been added to my entryway, though this had a more stylish feel than the industrial look of the one that appeared before. I'm not sure what the term was for the design, but the locker door had little flourishes on it that reminded me of something vaguely French.
The door was two feet square and centered at chest height. When I pulled it open there was a velvet stand like you would find in a store window. It supported a pair of pure white gloves. When I say pure white I mean it on an almost unnatural level. They were so bright they looked almost unreal. And then they started to move.
At first I thought they were on some kind of mannequin or stand that was holding their shape, but as they lifted up I could clearly see they were holding the form of hands with absolutely nothing inside them. The gloves rose into the air and floated out of the locker. They paused in front of me leaving me at a loss for how to proceed. This was a new lifeform. Either a completely new person or an intelligence that had just been created by my power. I had no idea how I should interact with it. There were too many questions. What did it want? How could I help it? Did it even want to stay here? Should I let it out? Could it function in the world?
All that was put on hold as the gloves lunged forward and started tugging at the light jacket I had worn on my run. It took a few seconds, but eventually I figured out that they were trying to take it off, not throttle me. I awkwardly slipped out of the coat and watched as the gloves held it up against the wall. They let go and the jacket stayed suspended in the air.
The gloves held themselves in the proportion that a human would normally have and started gesturing. It wasn't as clear as speech, but the impression I got was that they weren't happy with my jacket. No, they weren't happy with everything I was wearing.
"What's wrong with it?"
The gloves threw themselves up in and exasperated gesture and plainly pointed towards my jacket. When I continued to look confused they started tracing seams, feeling material, turning the jacket inside out and displaying the lining, and making strong gestures that seemed to express how it didn't go with anything else I was wearing.
"Ok, it doesn't look good." The gloves expression suggested that was a gross understatement. "But this is work out clothing. It's not like this is my cape costume."
As soon as I said that the gloves immediately redirected themselves towards my costume which was currently in a loose pile next to my mattress. The splayed their fingers in shock, them mimed fainting at the sight of it.
"It's..." What the hell was I doing? Why was I arguing with a pair of gloves? A few minutes ago I had been worried about imprisoning some intelligence and now I'm defending fashion decisions to a pair of hand coverings.
The gloves mimed rolling up their sleeves, which somehow stretched the cuffs to the length of opera gloves. They then used their new size to be able to fold their arms indignantly at me. Apparently Garment Gloves could shapeshift but used the power solely for the expression of scorn.
I knew they were trying to get to me, but damn it I had worked hard on that costume! "What's wrong with it?"
In response to my question the pieces of my cape outfit floated out of the pile. The Coat stayed in the air while the rest of the items carefully folded themselves up and arranged themselves on my desk in a manner that seemed like a personal attack.
"Hey, I worked hard on that. You think you can do better?"
That was apparently the wrong thing to say. The gloves leapt up in excitement and started disassembling my costume. I mean totally disassembling it. Seams were being pulled apart, buttons removed, even the shoes I wore were dismantled in front of my eyes. I made a few frantic grabs into the cloud, but it was clearly too far gone for me to have any hope of stopping it.
Inside the storm of clothing the gloves had found one of my notebooks and were scribbling in it frantically. Eventually the telekinetic chaos dropped away and I was able to climb over the piled and neatly arranged cloth, threat and other materials to see what the gloves had done.
They had drawn a sketch of a new costume. I had to admit, it was good. It took the broad themes of my previous design and ironed out the last artefacts of when I was scavenging for materials. This looked tailored and professional. There was a cowl instead of the bandana combo and the coat had been completely redesigned to be tailored with what seemed like more of a military cut. The other items of clothing were actually parts of the costume and not random pieces from my wardrobe. The mask, metal panels, and gauntlet had all been redesigned to fit with the new style. The gloves tapped the pencil against those items.
"What?"
They tapped again.
"Oh, yes. I can make those." I looked at the pile of cloth. "Can you make that with this?"
They waved a clear negative gesture, then rubbed the thumb and index finger of one hand.
"So you need money?" I hadn't budgeted for this, but I was dealing with an entirely new entity. If this let me start off on good terms it was worth it. My passenger was amused by the whole situation and was being no help at all.
I considered what I could afford. "Is a hundred dollars enough?" The gloves mimed horror. Fine. "Two hundred?" A less extreme reaction, but still a slight indication upward with one hand. "Three hundred, final offer." They clap the gloves together in excitement.
Well, that was settled. "I have to go. Are you good?" They made a negative gesture. "What do you need?" Thumb and forefinger rubbing, gesture to themselves. "You want to be paid?" Their movements seemed to indicate the tragedy of a lack of clothing. "You want funding for your own projects?" There were happy glove movements.
Well, they were effectively a person locked in my closet. Anything I could do to make it easier for them. I got an extra pair hundred dollar bills along with the funding for my costume and handed them to the gloves. The money vanished from their hands and fabric and thread started manifesting around them.
That may be limited to clothing materials, but there had to be a way for me to leverage that for my other projects. I left them to shower and get ready to head to the DMV. When I left the shower the T-shirt and jeans I usually wore were nowhere to be found and had been replaced with a loose approximation of the items that looked like they fell out of a designer catalog. I looked at the open door of my workshop where the gloves were somehow giving the impression that they were whistling innocently.
I sealed my workshop before I got changed. After putting on the new clothes, which were actually a great fit and really comfortable, I realized I had locked the gloves in my workshop along with every item of clothing I owned.
I elected not to think about that while I made my way to the department of motor vehicles.
It was a little ridiculous that my first step towards serious tinkering involved a test for a motorcycle learner's permit. I had downloaded a copy of the guide book and between a quick review and my frankly ridiculous level of mechanical understanding it wasn't really a challenge. Getting to the DMV right at opening hours also helped speed things along. After the written exam there was a vision test and a $30 fee, at which point I had my permit. I was restricted to riding between sunrise and sunset and couldn't carry passengers, but at least there weren't any limits on the types of motorcycle I could own.
This led to the real challenge. I only had a few grand in cash at the moment. I also didn't have confidence in my cash flow. Plus there were tax concerns if I started paying rent and utilities through undeclared income, but that was an end-of-the-month problem. The point was I needed to somehow manage to get the vehicle and all licensing and insurance taken care of without blowing a significant amount of my funds. That meant getting the cheapest bike I could.
I was planning such an extensive overhaul that I could pretty much just shop based on the frame. My web search had proven fruitful. When you don't care about quality and just want a vehicle there are always options. I did need to take the bus out of town to reach the place, but everything I'd seen said it would be worth it.
The place was called 'Power Motor Approval' and was probably the biggest used vehicle dealership within travel distance of the city. I use biggest in the literal sense, not in terms of grandeur or success. The lot had a spill over area onto surrounding plots and fields that was honestly shocking in scope. I'm not convinced the place actually owned any of the land their cars had flowed onto, but this was another one of Brockton's depressed areas. If anyone actually owned these properties they weren't under any illusions about their value. I imagine that during the city's industrial boom this place was probably a lot more reputable and had close ties with the now ruined industrial estates that surrounded it. At the moment it was more a motor graveyard than a dealership, and probably only a zoning decision away from counting as a junkyard.
This place was also a wonderland for tinkers. There was an ongoing feel of 'what I could do with this' that pervaded the entire place. It was like a scrap pile except everything was still technically functional. It may have been paranoia, but I wondered if they kept an eye out for anyone showing tinkerish behavior to tip off the PRT. Well, that was the best case scenario. Worst case the Empire or one of the other gangs. Hell, I wouldn't put it past some people to try to grab and sell an unequipped tinker to any number of organizations. There were some chilling rumors about the Fallen and how some of the cells shored up their membership.
The bikes were off to the side and made up less than five percent of the lot's stock. I skipped right past the nicer models that were going for over ten grand and headed straight to the bikes that were stacked like cordwood. This was where I would find my bike. Going deep enough into the pile started showing bikes with stickers under two thousand, and for good reason. A cursory inspection could find a plethora of problems with all of them, and not just excessive mileage.
It didn't take long to attract a sales person, and it also didn't take long for him to realize he was badly out of his depth. He left to get a more experienced sales person, who switched out for an even more senior salesman, who brought a junior mechanic to tag along, who then passed me up the chain two more times until I was talking with their head mechanic and a member of the sales staff who had been with the company since the 80s.
It wasn't anything cool. I wasn't being incredibly charming, or threatening to expose some scam they were pulling, though I wouldn't be surprised if there was something like that going on with some of the cars here. The thing is I'm generally not great with people and conversations make me uncomfortable. There's one exception to that. If it's a technical discussion I can go on for hours with no problem. It's a trait that served me well in college. Really, that's all that was happening here. They easily bought my cover story about being an engineering student and needing a vehicle on a tight budget, also with a partial rebuild in the cards. When the stuff I was asking became too technical for the person I was talking to I got passed up the ladder. I don't think they had any illusions about getting a serious commission out of me, and if it wasn't a slow Friday morning they would likely have had better things to do, but as it stood I spent a chunk of the morning discussing technical specs, changes in engine design over the years, and maintenance strategies with two professionals who probably spent most of their time convincing people that 'yes, the engine is in fact supposed to sound like that'.
I wish I could say I'd gotten some killer deal, or that they'd thrown in some extra parts after I smooth-talked them. No, at the end of the day they were professionals and I was just a slightly interesting client. I got a 'functional' motorcycle with registration, helmet, and the minimum level of insurance necessary, but still paid more than the thing was worth. There was probably some amusement in the fact that I knew exactly how bad a deal I was getting, which likely saved me from being completely raked over the coals.
The bike I ended up with wasn't truly terrible, but it was probably the last thing I thought I would end up with. It had a good deal of mileage and the bodywork wasn't in great condition, but those weren't the main issues. The big problem was that it was a Japanese motorcycle.
Since Leviathan hit Kyushu the Japanese motor industry had been in shambles. There were still some companies in business, but they were shadows of their former selves. Mostly they opened branch manufacturing facilities in places like Indonesia, Thailand, or Malaysia. Those facilities had little to none of the quality the parent companies were known for and the parts that came out of them were jokes. Keeping any Japanese vehicle operational was an exercise in frustration, and that was for cars with major dealerships. For motorcycles they were basically on a death march. Even enthusiasts couldn't keep them going and switched over to other manufacturers. The lucky ones were bought out by American or European companies that started putting out decent replacement parts and even the occasional new model.
Suzuki was not one of the lucky ones.
The motorcycle I rode out of the Power Motor Approval lot had been patched together with some of the cheapest and most slipshod parts south Asia could churn out. Everyone who knew anything about bikes wouldn't be caught dead on this thing, and if I wasn't planning to rebuild it from the ground up I would never have stooped to make the purchase. Still, with my mechanical knowledge I might be able to turn a Suzuki GSX-R 750 into something other than an embarrassment.
The bike got me back to the city, but I could pick up on every problem it had over the course of the drive. I couldn't think of any part of it that was in good enough condition to leave as is. Also, like the automatic transmission on the van I was essentially leveraging mechanical knowledge in place of vehicle operation skill. It wasn't the smoothest or most stable ride, but then again I wasn't exactly street racing. Cautious turns and moderate speed got me within a few blocks of my apartment without any hiccups.
As I looked for a way to get my bike into my workshop I felt the forge move again. It was the Alchemy constellation and my power latched to a tiny mote. The oddly named ability was called Kazooie Alchemy.
It let me make potions.
This was a fundamentally exciting concept. All of my alchemy so far had been closer to casting spells with material components than creating elixirs for later use. This ability addressed that disparity. With it I could brew and create actual potions. I was getting over how supernatural a lot of my powers seemed to be. When you had possessed gloves making clothes for you in your secret expanding closet drawing the line at potion brewing seemed kind of arbitrary.
The potions weren't difficult to make. The ingredients were mundane and fairly inexpensive. With nothing but a pot and a heat source I could brew one in about an hour. A professional laboratory set up would help me cut down on that time and potentially boost the quality, but it wasn't essential to production.
Unfortunately I could only make three types of potions. Their effects would last a few minutes at most and mixing them was a horrible idea. Also the potions would only affect me, there was an element of the ability that made them chemical messes for anyone else who tried to drink them. Still, the three effects I could create were seriously powerful.
The first and least noteworthy was an invisibility potion. Totally undetectable by sight until the potion wore off or I took some damage, which would dispel the effect. Other than that it was perfect invisibility, stranger powers in a bottle.
The second effect generated a type of shielding that completely negated damage. This would be colossally significant if I didn't have an alchemy formula that did basically the same thing for a shorter period. Still, this was total, walk up to Behemoth and say give me your best shot invincibility.
It still didn't excite me as much as the third potion I could now make. With that mixture I would be able to generate two copies of myself. They would only last a few minutes or until they took a hit and I didn't have any link to them after creation, but they did have all the equipment I was carrying. With one minor ability I had gotten the power to beat Oni Lee and Bakuda at their own game. The significance of what I could manage with this cannot be understated.
I was going to make so many missiles.
I just needed a place I could brew them inconspicuously. They might not need expensive chemicals, but the brewing process would produce copious amounts of colorful smoke and a smell like a chemical spill in an aroma therapy center. My workshop didn't have anything close to the ventilation needs to handle this and trying it in my kitchenette would bring the police or PRT to my door in short order.
It was much too powerful to let that stop me. Brockton had an abundance of abandoned buildings. It looked like I would finally have to set up a real world lab. It was bound to happen eventually, but I can't help but feel a little disappointed in myself.
Finding a location for brewing would be a problem for later. I found an out of the way alley that I could pull into and started to figure out how to get this thing into my workshop. Unfortunately that would have to go through my entryway, which meant squeezing the bike past everything I'd stored there each time I wanted to store or deploy it. It wasn't exactly set up for dramatic launches onto the street, but being able to always have access to my bike was worth the inconvenience.
I did find a larger door that made accessing the entryway less of a trial. One thing I had learned was that the main door scaled to whatever size I used to access it. Any size door. I tried it on a cubby locker once and got a roughly one foot square entrance to my workshop.
As I opened the large loading door to access my workshop I was understandably surprised to be greeted by the shape of a woman in evening wear. I say shape because there wasn't actually a woman there. The gloves had apparently made a red evening dress and were suspending it between them with their telekinesis in a manner that made it look like it and the gloves were actually being worn by an invisible woman.
Once I got over my shock I realized it was actually a lot less distracting than seeing disembodied gloves flying around. The dress was arranged so it was 'sitting' at my desk chair and turned to face me as I entered. The simulated body movement also helped the gloves emote, which was a serious benefit.
"Oh, uh, hi?"
The gloves waved in greetings.
"Nice dress?"
They rose in a way that made it looked like they were standing up. The illusion was perfect and if I didn't know how their powers worked I would have thought it was an invisible person standing before me. They 'stepped' forward and twirled to show off the dress. They had even made shoes for themselves and were managing them as well as any other aspect of the outfit.
Something occurred to me. "Sorry if this is rude, but are you female?"
The gloves made a gesture to where their pelvis would be, then an irreverent gesture that seemed vaguely positive.
"It doesn't matter, but sure?" I guessed at a translation.
There was an excited response and an enthusiastic gesture towards the dress, and a dismissive one to a suit hanging on the wall.
"Female because women's clothes are better?"
Again enthusiasm from them, or I guess that should be 'her', if that's what she wanted.
"So what should I call you? The ability that brought you here, or created you, or whatever is called Garment Gloves..."
There was an excited snap.
"You want that as your name?"
More expressions of positivity.
"So Garment?"
There was a happy gesture.
"Right, ok Garment. I need to get this bike into the workshop."
She leaned around me in a way that a normal human would, 'looked' at the bike, then reacted with horror. In a flurry of motion various items of clothing floated off surfaces to places as far from the path I'd have to take as possible. It ended with her 'standing' on the chair and making shoeing gestures as I wheeled the admittedly rusty and oil soaked machine through her workspace.
My metal workshop was largely untouched, but the components of the costume Garment had designed were laid out for assembly. It looked nearly finished and I wondered why she had left it like that.
Once the bike was settled in the center of the workspace I turned to see Garment at the door. "Do you need some help with that?" Given the level of skill on display from what she had thrown together I couldn't imagine what she would need me for.
What followed was a bunch of abstract gestures that I had a hard time deciphering. Eventually I got fed up and happened upon an idea. I got one of the spare laptops Tattletale had included with my supplies and booted it up. I loaded a word processor and set it in front of Garment.
It seemed that while Garment may have been a genius in terms of clothing they didn't include basic computer use in whatever skillset she'd been granted. She typed by hunting through the keyboard letter by letter with the speed of a glacier and the grace of a drunken sloth. Gradually a word appeared on the screen.
P...O...W...E...R...S
"You want to use my powers?" This brought on an excited flurry. It made sense, my Made to Last ability would make the clothing impervious to time and the elements. Making it in the workshop would let it repair itself in forty eight hours if it was ever damaged. My style abilities combined with her fashion sense and tailoring skill would produce a level of quality that dwarfed anything I could even imagine.
"How do you know about my powers?"
That merely got a shrug and a dismissive gesture. Well, that explained nothing. But I guess if she came from my powers it made sense that she would know about them. That was still bothering me. I had a sentient being confined to my workshop. I wasn't going to pretend this was something normal. I had to make sure she was happy with whatever this arrangement turned out to be.
"Look, Garment, I don't really get how you came here or what it means, but I want you to be ok. So what do you want?"
She made a contemplative gesture, then an exclamation followed by indications towards her dress and the half-finished costume.
"Clothes? You want to make clothes?"
The excitement was bubbling off her.
"Ok, I'll make sure you can make all the clothes you want."
That got a little hop of excitement.
"I need to move the entrance of the workshop before someone finds it. I'll see you back at the apartment."
She waved goodbye as I left and sealed the door behind me. As I started walking home something occurred to me. I didn't own a suit. In fact, I didn't recognize any of the clothes she had 'saved' from my bike. The duffle bag I used as a dresser was looking very flat and there had been a cardboard box in the corner with the word 'RAGS' scrawled on it.
I needed to have a word with her. I was going to have to put some limits on that promise before she dismantled everything I owned and I was drowning in formalwear.
Jumpchain abilities this chapter:
Life Fiber Spool (Kill la Kill) 400:
A medium-sized spool of Life Fiber. It's only enough to maybe make a pair of gloves out of, but with the proper knowledge, one could create Goku Uniforms- Or enhance existing articles of clothing to be like Goku Uniforms. One spool of thread is enough to make several one-star outfits, three two-star outfits, or a single three-star outfit, assuming you have the knowledge of how to work with Life Fibers
Garment Gloves (Dodgeball) 200:
These are a pair of pure white gloves. Bound to them is an intelligence with a mind for fashion: a designer, seamstress, clothier, and tailor without mortal peer. It has the ability to scry for fashion based information from international trends to precise measurements. Given materials and orders, it will industriously produce fine apparel, producing any modifications, clothing, footwear, accessories, etc that is within theoretical mortal ability. It has sufficient telekinesis to move itself and to independently suspend materials. It must be provided with materials, though it may be provided a lump sum or budget with which to magically acquire materials at cost.
You may wear the gloves to channel the skills (but not powers) of the entity, perhaps even learning from it.
Alchemy (Banjo-Kazooie) 100:
You are incredibly capable at mixing together mundane ingredients to create effects that can only be described as magical. For a short time these potions can create temporary copies of you, turn you invisible, or give you shielding.v
Escape was a frustrating formula to work with. I could combine wax and vinegar for the power to teleport. It sounded amazing, but the formula would only work to get me 'out' of places. I couldn't use it to cross the city, I couldn't even use it for tactical advantages in combat. It was totally useless in open areas without a concept of inside and outside to work with. Additionally, I could only vaguely affect where the formula would deposit me.
Fortunately I had enough control to make sure I appeared at a rear exit of the hospital. The door was a fire exit, so there was no chance of someone opening it and discovering me. Also the affinity Decadence gave me with surveillance devices let me make sure I was in a blindspot. The area had sparse coverage to begin with, so it wasn't that much of a challenge.
I quickly accessed my workshop through the door and slipped out of my costume. Dropping the coat, mask, and metal details instantly transformed me back to a normal civilian. At that point it was just a matter of following the route I'd previously identified to avoid security cameras until I was far enough away from the PRT hospital to blend into the crowd.
Getting away from the hospital was a lot easier than what my infiltration had entailed. Still, sneaking into a place like that was something I never would have thought I be able to handle a week ago. As it stood the exercise barely challenged my abilities. I'd thought I'd need to use my monomolecular pen knife to bypass doors but it seemed that now I could pick locks. None of my abilities specifically were related to lock picking, but my understanding of mechanics and crafting skills was so excessive that any pin and tumbler lock might as well have been an open door. Electronic locks and sensors were more of a challenge, but I was able to find alternate routes or bypass the systems with a bit of effort. That was actually a bit surprising as I hadn't practiced much with those kinds of skills. It was odd using them for the first time to get around security systems, but I was able to handle electronics infinitely more complicated than what they had in this place.
I was able to pick out surveillance cameras but I hadn't been able to avoid them all. Fortunately there was an advantage to Decadence covering all aspects of design. A bit of alteration to my hair, the slightest touches of pharmacy makeup on my face and a change in how my clothes sat and I looked like a completely different person. Even if they could pick me out from every other civilian walking into this place they would never be able to match me to the person who appeared on their tapes. Same with any member of the hospital staff who might have spotted me. I hadn't gotten a second glance on my way in, so I think I was probably safe on that front.
I had gotten damn lucky when searching for Panacea. I half expected to have to jump out, hit her with the Miracle Cure formula, and then immediately use my Escape formula. I'd spotted her slipping into the basement and had just enough time to duck into my workshop to change and cut her off when there was no one around.
I wasn't sure how I was feeling about Panacea at this point. My passenger cared about her. Not as much as Taylor, but at least on the same level as any of the Undersiders. There was so much mixed up stuff around her I couldn't tell if I'd done any good. From her reactions it was obvious there was something to my passenger's predictions regarding her home life. She had tried to downplay it but it was clear how much it was bothering her. It was a strange experience looking as someone else's family drama. I may not have helped on that front but at least she wouldn't be nursing an injury for the next six weeks.
I thought Panacea would be pressing me for information, but she got almost nothing out of me. Plenty of stuff about my power, but I'd decided I was willing to share that anyway. In regards to grilling me on the Undersiders she either got distracted or is really bad at the whole subtle interrogation thing. The only new pieces of information she'd picked up was Tattletale's headache and the nature of my arrangement with them. And that Taylor wasn't a tinker.
I still felt kind of embarrassed about that hairpin. The idea that I'd need proof was a last minute decision. I originally thought about just taking a metal sample, but I figured they'd need some evidence that I could make things. Machinist was an unbelievable acceleration power for anything involving mechanics or fabrication. When it was combined with my Smithing and two design perks I'd let things get away from me. From her expression when I tossed it to her I could tell she thought it was ridiculous. Honestly, I was kind of relieved when her sister barged in if just for the distraction.
Also, it's good to know my Force Field formula counters impact along with damage. It would have sucked to get the injury from the hit negated only to be sent flying through half a dozen walls. I was right on the money about Glory Girl's restraint. That blow would have nearly collapsed my chest, and that's counting the boost of my durability. There's also the impact damage from being sent flying. Like, that was legitimately attempted murder. Well, she was a hero cape, so probably involuntary manslaughter. A villain would definitely get murder two.
Everything I did tonight was definitely going to be figured out by Lisa and thus communicated to the boss. Even if she didn't have information sources inside the Protectorate she had enough insight to be able to figure out something was up, if not from the reactions to this then when Panacea showed up without injuries. That would probably be an interesting conversation. I ran through everything I'd said. Nothing gave details on the Undersiders, except the crack about Lisa not being able to figure out my tinkering. I let them know who I was and that I was hired, but that was entirely on my side. No details of powers, no locations, not even information on what I had made them.
I didn't like the idea that everything I did and everything I was capable of was being conveyed to a mystery crime lord, but the fact was that my abilities were growing faster than she would be able to report. She might have a hint about the upper level of technology I could create, but with the blind spots in her power and how the more esoteric applications of my abilities seemed to stress her out I doubted she had a complete picture. I would still need to prepare for repercussions, both from her and from her boss.
Lisa might be angry, or she might just be exasperated. Either way I doubt this is going to end our relationship. And no matter what I stand by my position of not letting Panacea stay injured.
The day had been draining in the extreme. I was coming off a brutal work blitz with no proper sleep, and then this rushed infiltration and clandestine meeting. Now I was walking towards the docks in an evening drizzle and just wanted to crawl into bed. I'd made a commitment, both to myself, and to Mr. Laborn but there was no way I was dragging my tired ass to the gym tonight.
I was also in no mood to deal with Aisha. Since I didn't know who her snitch was I had no guarantee that she wouldn't show up for a 'completely spontaneous' surprise workout session. Instead I took the time honored strategy of cowardly putting off dealing with things. Maybe the girl could find a life outside of pestering me. She probably had all kinds of people to harass, some of whom might even be age appropriate for her.
As it stood I had only missed out on two days of scheduled workouts and runs. Still, that was exactly the kind of thing I promised myself I wouldn't let happen. I doubted it would be easier to keep a training schedule when my projects ramped up, much less during Bakuda's inevitable attacks.
That was the thing. Bakuda. She was definitely counting down to something. It had been nearly a week since Lung's capture. There's no telling the amount of tech she could have built up in that time. I badly needed to get started on countermeasures. My alchemy and reinforcement would only carry me so far. With Machinist I could do projects that should take days in a matter of hours. The cash I'd gotten from the Undersiders wouldn't help anyone when the bombing started. I would need to get started tomorrow. Prioritize what can make a difference, work like a madman, and just maybe I'd be able to get ahead of things.
But there was something I needed to deal with first, before planning, before sleep, before anything. During my infiltration, along with a few failed connections, my power had latched on to the strongest mote it had managed so far. It was from the Clothing constellation and was actually one of two motes clustered together. By expending all of the reach I had developed my power was able to latch onto the larger of the two motes. The one I connected to was an object. I couldn't get a good sense of the other one, but I could tell it was the skills needed to work with what the larger mote provided. One mote for materials, one for crafting ability. That meant I would have to figure out how to use what I received without any help. With something this powerful it might be able to turn the tide in the coming chaos. That's why sleep was not an option. I had to get back to my workshop and start my analysis.
I had to figure out what the hell I was supposed to do with a spool of Life Fibers.
At the moment I didn't have much to go on. I knew it could be used to enhance clothing, but that was about it. Fortunately I had an excellent quality lab to work with.
As soon as I got back to my apartment I opened my workshop. This was the first time I had gotten a small item and I wasn't sure how it would arrive. It turned out a locker had been placed in the wall of my entry room. Inside was a medium sized spool of glowing red thread.
So I had a spool of material that was more expensive than any ability I'd received so far. I know not all powers have an equal relationship between strength and cost, but there had to be something extraordinary about this thread. I carefully moved the spool into my Laboratorium to see what I could learn.
The first think I learned was how many Xeno alarms my Laboratorium had. As soon as the spool touched the scanner every light in the oversized room was blaring red, the cybernetic skulls were thrashing around and more than a dozen fail-safes were trying to activate. I had to scramble to the command throne just to stop the plasma incinerator from activating.
I didn't even know I had one of those.
It took half an hour of overrides before things calmed down enough for me to actually get a reading. It took another fifteen minutes of disabling safeties to get a reading that wasn't a full page of warning signs and caution symbols. Finally after all that I found out what I was dealing with.
The thread was an alien parasite. Life fibers were, in fact, alive. The thread was composed of multiple cells, but each was impossibly long and thin. And when I say impossibly thin I really mean that. I don't think they actually follow the laws of physics and there are a lot of aspects that seemed borderline unbelievable. For one thing they were incredibly durable. As in leagues beyond anything I could even conceive of making. This stuff made my best hyper alloys look like a joke and even if they were damaged there seemed to be a mechanism where they would restore themselves almost instantly.
My analysis could extrapolate how they fed on living creatures, either their blood or neural energy. They also seemed to have some mutagenic properties that let them alter their host. The hint about enhancing clothing made sense after I started looking into their feeding mechanism. Limiting the fibers to surface contact severely reduced the stress on the host's system. Rather than burning out the host it could maintain the relationship indefinitely without serious damage.
The potential for genetic augmentation was fascinating. The fibers seemed to work to accelerate evolution, pushing their hosts towards more robust bodies with larger brains and advanced nervous systems. They worked to enhance whatever species they came into contact with. In theory they could drive a planet towards developing sapient life, but that seemed more of a byproduct of their self-interest. Those traits led to better hosts for the life fibers to inhabit.
There was also evidence of intelligence, or at least the potential for it. The cells were all seemingly identical, but the energy exchange between them resembled a neural network. What I had on the spool was highly truncated. Projections from my lab's computers indicated there would normally be a significant mass of fibers coordinating the rest of them in a kind of hive mind. What I had here were the only life fibers in the universe, essentially a baby of its species. Not even that, more of a zygote.
It was naturally parasitic, but capable of a symbiotic relationship. It was also a living thing with the potential of developing intelligence. This wasn't a tool or resource to be exploited. It was a potential intelligent being and I needed to treat it as such.
Seeing as it could be used as clothing there were some possibilities. I didn't know how to combine it with other materials and if I used it by itself I'd estimate there was enough to maybe make a pair of gloves. I had no idea what kind of impact either act would have on the lifeform. I would have to look after it and see how it develops.
I drew up some estimates for nutritional needs. It seemed that it was capable of stasis pretty much indefinably, as in for thousands and thousands of years with no issue. If I wanted to awaken the life fibers it would need food, either bio-neural energy or blood. Bio-neural energy provided less sustenance and required continuous contact. So I would either have to maintain skin contact with the spool or introduce it to my blood. Neither of those seemed like a particularly good idea until I knew more about them.
Almost all of the knowledge I had received since I got my powers was based around mechanical principles. The only exception was Nanite Sciences. Those Nanites, unlike the ones from Grease Monkey or Machinist, had so many biological and medical applications that even though the bulk of the knowledge from that power revolved around construction and programing of nanomachines it necessitated a firm grounding in biology, particularly microbiology.
A functional set of nanites would actually be perfect for managing life fibers. Unfortunately I was months away from having that project at a workable state, and that was assuming I had all the facilities and resources that I needed. Instead I would just have to work with the biological knowledge I had and try not to mess this up. It was more than a little infuriating that the knowledge of how to work with something was separated from the material to be worked with.
I wasn't ready to leave things at that. I loaded myself with a full suite of defensive formulas and deactivated the stasis and suspension fields around the spool while leaving the scanners running. I was about to engage in the most elemental manner of scientific discovery known to man. The first and most effective method of information gathering understood at a core level by every human on the planet. I reached out and poked the spool with my finger.
This wasn't just because poking is the basis for scientific discovery. Life fibers could absorb neural energy through the skin. I needed data on the process, not just the extrapolation my lab provided. Based on everything I'd learned so far this should present almost no risk of injury.
I also wasn't getting any major concerns about this action from my passenger, which helped with the decision.
When my finger contacted the spool of red fibers there was a flare of energy and the whole mass began to glow. That was nothing compared to my experience. It felt like lightning was shooting up my arm. Someone was taking a sandblaster to my exhaustion and replacing it with ten cups of coffee and a shot of adrenalin. The fibers seemed to twitch and writhe on top of each other as well as squeeze down on the spool with incredible pressure.
I pulled my hand away and the energy vanished leaving me even more exhausted than before. I reactivated the stasis field and reviewed the scanned data, both from the fibers and my own body. There was a fascinating interaction between the life fibers and a human being. The ultimate potential was something I couldn't even guess at this point but at the very least it would be able to provide drastic physical enhancement. There would be significant stress on the person's body, especially if there wasn't some way of moderating it. That would be what the clothing integration could be for. Unfortunately I had no idea how to manage that. Working with life fibers in their raw state was a terrifying prospect, but I needed to press on, both for the sake of the lifeform and for the potential benefits I could see from it.
I wouldn't be accomplishing any of that tonight. I decided the best thing for now was to collect more data. I assembled a suite of scanners around the spool and left it under observation in my Laboratorium, making sure to suspend the numerous Xeno purging protocols before I left.
Heading back to my apartment I started making a much needed meal as I considered my next move. I had no illusions about Bakuda. Eventually she was going to make a move. Whatever she was planning it would probably be before Lung was moved to the Birdcage. She might want to cut loose with her tech, but if the ABB lost Lung they would be on borrowed time. Would she try to ransom him, or go for a jailbreak? I assumed he was being held in the Rig, which would be a hard target even for Oni Lee. Or so I assumed. I didn't know what his range or limitations were, so he might be able to jump into the holding cells from half way across the city.
So now that I had resources I needed to decide what I would work on. Ideally I would do the standard tinker procedure, build improved equipment to improve the quality and range of devices I would be able to create. If I put everything I had into upgrading my workshop and spend a few days on it I could be able to manage some serious technology, not just the material science tricks I'd pulled for the Undersiders. The question was whether I had the time to spare for that.
There was also the problem that such an upgrade could easily take all the resources I'd assembles to date. Having the capacity for advanced construction without being able to afford any of it is not a problem I wanted to run into. Even if they could afford it I wasn't currently comfortable doing more builds for the Undersiders and calling on their boss for resources was an absolute non-starter.
I needed some gear that would let me function properly as a cape. I'd proven I could manage to some extent last weekend, but a city wide bombing spree was a different matter than a throw down with Oni Lee, especially since I think he was trying to keep the tinker tech grenades quiet at that point. That was an advantage I wouldn't be able to rely on in the future.
So I needed to figure out what would serve me best in the coming crisis. The list I had made when Panacea asked me in the hospital had been made up on the spot, but most of it held up. I needed better electronic warfare options. Well, I needed any electronic warfare options. I also needed mobility, in case last Sunday's street level patrol at walking pace didn't drive that home. My dark alchemy would carry me pretty well, but it wouldn't hurt to have some offensive options between 'hit with stick' and 'wrath of god'.
The problem was there was a serious bottleneck as to what I could build at the moment. I might be able to manage some of the higher level items I could conceive of, but the fabrication process would be tedious in the extreme. I would have to create huge amounts of new alloys and I was doubtful even with full cannibalization of all the electronics I currently had at my disposal if I would be able to manage anything close to the computing power and control systems I would need for running something like a proper hardsuit. Also, none of that touched on the horror of powering tech like that. I needed a fusion system to break out any of the serious weapons or machinery, and getting one running is its own nightmare project.
When the time you need to complete a specific item starts to approach the time needed to get fully programed nanites up and running you need to reassess your priorities.
So, reevaluate the problem. The easiest of my projects to deal with is probably mobility. I wouldn't say I could literally rebuild an engine in my sleep, but it's a close thing. A car or air vehicle would be difficult to conceal without the kind of stealth systems Squealer was rumored to use. I needed something that would address mobility both in and out of cape identity.
I could build an incredible motorcycle.
The only problem was I didn't know how to ride a motorcycle. Oh, I knew how to operate one. I knew every aspect of that. I knew how they functioned, and what maneuvers different kinds of bikes would be able to manage just from their technical specs. I just had no practical experience.
But I could build the kind of bike that only existed in science fiction. If I did that I could also probably rig a basic assistance program and some gyroscopic controls to keep me from killing myself. Even if I didn't end up using it for cape work it would get me around the city much faster. With my workshop key giving me access to my cape equipment anywhere with a door I could do rapid response to a nearby area, change in my workshop, and then deal with the problem without any issue.
It wasn't a perfect solution, but it was leagues better than hoping I could manage with my current level of mobility. I did not want a repeat of this morning's trudge through the city.
After I finished eating I pulled up New Hampshire's transport regulations on my laptop. It seemed I could get a learner's permit for a motorcycle with just a written test. That was more limited than I would have liked, but motorcycle license tests needed to be scheduled well in advance. If I could find something in budget I could get on the road tomorrow. Anything would do considering I would be rebuilding it completely.
I could also load my bike with a good amount of technology. Taking advantage of the power of the engine, especially once I was done upgrading it, I would be able to run a decent set of equipment off it. I'd still be limited to what I could make, but I could probably manage some decent scanners and basic ECM. The bike could act as a mobile support point, especially if I could build an advanced enough control program for it
The day was catching up with me in a bad way. I made a few token searches for what I could find in terms of used motorcycles, then finally let myself collapse to sleep.
I had not turned off my watch alarm. It was probably for the best since I would have been happy to sleep until the crack of noon. Still, it took just about all of my willpower and no shortage of encouraging feelings from my passenger to haul myself out of bed, well off of mattress, and back into my morning routine.
Toast, coffee, run. That was the routine I had held to, and that was the routine I had decided I would not let slide just because my tinkering picked up. It wasn't as bad once I made it to the bay and started along the boardwalk. Yesterday's rain had cleared the air and it was just on the edge of a chill. That was my absolute favorite exercise weather. This entire endeavor would get a lot more trying once the summer heat started to set in. Maybe by then I'd be established enough to get a gym membership somewhere air conditioned. The Boxing gym was great and cheap, but its idea of a cardio area was a set of jump ropes. I hadn't been there in the summer, but I'm pretty sure they managed by sticking a fan by the door rather than the monstrous cooling costs a building like that would incur.
Since I got the Life Fiber Spool my forge had missed a couple of attempted connections, but on my way back from my run the Clothing constellation swung by and made a link. Sadly it wasn't the one I'd need to work with life fibers. No, this one was much stranger, which is really saying something. This wasn't a lifeform that could enhance things with the potential for intelligence. No, the Celestial Forge had just given me a fully intelligent being.
It was an expert crafter with telekinetic powers and thinker abilities that could both divine aspects of the future and details about anyone on the planet. Its crafting abilities could be shared with other people, eventually allowing them to develop skills approaching its level. It could also instantly transform a quantity of money into its value in raw materials, effectively bypassing all purchase and supply chain concerns. On top of that it was an ageless and tireless construct completely with no biological needs or vulnerabilities.
All of that sounded incredible, but there was one qualifier that moderated things. One massive, looming qualifier. All of these abilities were limited to one specific field. Not robotics, not weapon design, and not vehicles.
It was fashion.
My power had given me an immortal super powered fashion designer that manifested as an animated pair of gloves. The insanity of it was almost enough to overshadow the fact that I had just been given an intelligent creature like it was a prize from a cereal box. Two creatures if you counted the life fibers. I didn't know if they'd been created by my power or snatched from somewhere else, though there was a giant room full of skulls I had the same concern about. I remembered how the spool arrived and realized that I may be confining what is effectively a person to a tiny locker sealed in an extra-dimensional space.
As I rushed back to my apartment another horrible thought occurred. Was the intelligence attached to the gloves human? By that I meant was it a person trapped in glove form now? I hoped not. I thought the cyber skulls of my Laboratorium were the worst my power could manage. I didn't even want to think about someone sealed into the form of a pair of gloves for eternity.
I dashed up the shaky stairs to my apartment and barely took the time to bolt the front door behind me before rushing to the back closet and throwing open my workshop door. Like with the spool a new locker had been added to my entryway, though this had a more stylish feel than the industrial look of the one that appeared before. I'm not sure what the term was for the design, but the locker door had little flourishes on it that reminded me of something vaguely French.
The door was two feet square and centered at chest height. When I pulled it open there was a velvet stand like you would find in a store window. It supported a pair of pure white gloves. When I say pure white I mean it on an almost unnatural level. They were so bright they looked almost unreal. And then they started to move.
At first I thought they were on some kind of mannequin or stand that was holding their shape, but as they lifted up I could clearly see they were holding the form of hands with absolutely nothing inside them. The gloves rose into the air and floated out of the locker. They paused in front of me leaving me at a loss for how to proceed. This was a new lifeform. Either a completely new person or an intelligence that had just been created by my power. I had no idea how I should interact with it. There were too many questions. What did it want? How could I help it? Did it even want to stay here? Should I let it out? Could it function in the world?
All that was put on hold as the gloves lunged forward and started tugging at the light jacket I had worn on my run. It took a few seconds, but eventually I figured out that they were trying to take it off, not throttle me. I awkwardly slipped out of the coat and watched as the gloves held it up against the wall. They let go and the jacket stayed suspended in the air.
The gloves held themselves in the proportion that a human would normally have and started gesturing. It wasn't as clear as speech, but the impression I got was that they weren't happy with my jacket. No, they weren't happy with everything I was wearing.
"What's wrong with it?"
The gloves threw themselves up in and exasperated gesture and plainly pointed towards my jacket. When I continued to look confused they started tracing seams, feeling material, turning the jacket inside out and displaying the lining, and making strong gestures that seemed to express how it didn't go with anything else I was wearing.
"Ok, it doesn't look good." The gloves expression suggested that was a gross understatement. "But this is work out clothing. It's not like this is my cape costume."
As soon as I said that the gloves immediately redirected themselves towards my costume which was currently in a loose pile next to my mattress. The splayed their fingers in shock, them mimed fainting at the sight of it.
"It's..." What the hell was I doing? Why was I arguing with a pair of gloves? A few minutes ago I had been worried about imprisoning some intelligence and now I'm defending fashion decisions to a pair of hand coverings.
The gloves mimed rolling up their sleeves, which somehow stretched the cuffs to the length of opera gloves. They then used their new size to be able to fold their arms indignantly at me. Apparently Garment Gloves could shapeshift but used the power solely for the expression of scorn.
I knew they were trying to get to me, but damn it I had worked hard on that costume! "What's wrong with it?"
In response to my question the pieces of my cape outfit floated out of the pile. The Coat stayed in the air while the rest of the items carefully folded themselves up and arranged themselves on my desk in a manner that seemed like a personal attack.
"Hey, I worked hard on that. You think you can do better?"
That was apparently the wrong thing to say. The gloves leapt up in excitement and started disassembling my costume. I mean totally disassembling it. Seams were being pulled apart, buttons removed, even the shoes I wore were dismantled in front of my eyes. I made a few frantic grabs into the cloud, but it was clearly too far gone for me to have any hope of stopping it.
Inside the storm of clothing the gloves had found one of my notebooks and were scribbling in it frantically. Eventually the telekinetic chaos dropped away and I was able to climb over the piled and neatly arranged cloth, threat and other materials to see what the gloves had done.
They had drawn a sketch of a new costume. I had to admit, it was good. It took the broad themes of my previous design and ironed out the last artefacts of when I was scavenging for materials. This looked tailored and professional. There was a cowl instead of the bandana combo and the coat had been completely redesigned to be tailored with what seemed like more of a military cut. The other items of clothing were actually parts of the costume and not random pieces from my wardrobe. The mask, metal panels, and gauntlet had all been redesigned to fit with the new style. The gloves tapped the pencil against those items.
"What?"
They tapped again.
"Oh, yes. I can make those." I looked at the pile of cloth. "Can you make that with this?"
They waved a clear negative gesture, then rubbed the thumb and index finger of one hand.
"So you need money?" I hadn't budgeted for this, but I was dealing with an entirely new entity. If this let me start off on good terms it was worth it. My passenger was amused by the whole situation and was being no help at all.
I considered what I could afford. "Is a hundred dollars enough?" The gloves mimed horror. Fine. "Two hundred?" A less extreme reaction, but still a slight indication upward with one hand. "Three hundred, final offer." They clap the gloves together in excitement.
Well, that was settled. "I have to go. Are you good?" They made a negative gesture. "What do you need?" Thumb and forefinger rubbing, gesture to themselves. "You want to be paid?" Their movements seemed to indicate the tragedy of a lack of clothing. "You want funding for your own projects?" There were happy glove movements.
Well, they were effectively a person locked in my closet. Anything I could do to make it easier for them. I got an extra pair hundred dollar bills along with the funding for my costume and handed them to the gloves. The money vanished from their hands and fabric and thread started manifesting around them.
That may be limited to clothing materials, but there had to be a way for me to leverage that for my other projects. I left them to shower and get ready to head to the DMV. When I left the shower the T-shirt and jeans I usually wore were nowhere to be found and had been replaced with a loose approximation of the items that looked like they fell out of a designer catalog. I looked at the open door of my workshop where the gloves were somehow giving the impression that they were whistling innocently.
I sealed my workshop before I got changed. After putting on the new clothes, which were actually a great fit and really comfortable, I realized I had locked the gloves in my workshop along with every item of clothing I owned.
I elected not to think about that while I made my way to the department of motor vehicles.
It was a little ridiculous that my first step towards serious tinkering involved a test for a motorcycle learner's permit. I had downloaded a copy of the guide book and between a quick review and my frankly ridiculous level of mechanical understanding it wasn't really a challenge. Getting to the DMV right at opening hours also helped speed things along. After the written exam there was a vision test and a $30 fee, at which point I had my permit. I was restricted to riding between sunrise and sunset and couldn't carry passengers, but at least there weren't any limits on the types of motorcycle I could own.
This led to the real challenge. I only had a few grand in cash at the moment. I also didn't have confidence in my cash flow. Plus there were tax concerns if I started paying rent and utilities through undeclared income, but that was an end-of-the-month problem. The point was I needed to somehow manage to get the vehicle and all licensing and insurance taken care of without blowing a significant amount of my funds. That meant getting the cheapest bike I could.
I was planning such an extensive overhaul that I could pretty much just shop based on the frame. My web search had proven fruitful. When you don't care about quality and just want a vehicle there are always options. I did need to take the bus out of town to reach the place, but everything I'd seen said it would be worth it.
The place was called 'Power Motor Approval' and was probably the biggest used vehicle dealership within travel distance of the city. I use biggest in the literal sense, not in terms of grandeur or success. The lot had a spill over area onto surrounding plots and fields that was honestly shocking in scope. I'm not convinced the place actually owned any of the land their cars had flowed onto, but this was another one of Brockton's depressed areas. If anyone actually owned these properties they weren't under any illusions about their value. I imagine that during the city's industrial boom this place was probably a lot more reputable and had close ties with the now ruined industrial estates that surrounded it. At the moment it was more a motor graveyard than a dealership, and probably only a zoning decision away from counting as a junkyard.
This place was also a wonderland for tinkers. There was an ongoing feel of 'what I could do with this' that pervaded the entire place. It was like a scrap pile except everything was still technically functional. It may have been paranoia, but I wondered if they kept an eye out for anyone showing tinkerish behavior to tip off the PRT. Well, that was the best case scenario. Worst case the Empire or one of the other gangs. Hell, I wouldn't put it past some people to try to grab and sell an unequipped tinker to any number of organizations. There were some chilling rumors about the Fallen and how some of the cells shored up their membership.
The bikes were off to the side and made up less than five percent of the lot's stock. I skipped right past the nicer models that were going for over ten grand and headed straight to the bikes that were stacked like cordwood. This was where I would find my bike. Going deep enough into the pile started showing bikes with stickers under two thousand, and for good reason. A cursory inspection could find a plethora of problems with all of them, and not just excessive mileage.
It didn't take long to attract a sales person, and it also didn't take long for him to realize he was badly out of his depth. He left to get a more experienced sales person, who switched out for an even more senior salesman, who brought a junior mechanic to tag along, who then passed me up the chain two more times until I was talking with their head mechanic and a member of the sales staff who had been with the company since the 80s.
It wasn't anything cool. I wasn't being incredibly charming, or threatening to expose some scam they were pulling, though I wouldn't be surprised if there was something like that going on with some of the cars here. The thing is I'm generally not great with people and conversations make me uncomfortable. There's one exception to that. If it's a technical discussion I can go on for hours with no problem. It's a trait that served me well in college. Really, that's all that was happening here. They easily bought my cover story about being an engineering student and needing a vehicle on a tight budget, also with a partial rebuild in the cards. When the stuff I was asking became too technical for the person I was talking to I got passed up the ladder. I don't think they had any illusions about getting a serious commission out of me, and if it wasn't a slow Friday morning they would likely have had better things to do, but as it stood I spent a chunk of the morning discussing technical specs, changes in engine design over the years, and maintenance strategies with two professionals who probably spent most of their time convincing people that 'yes, the engine is in fact supposed to sound like that'.
I wish I could say I'd gotten some killer deal, or that they'd thrown in some extra parts after I smooth-talked them. No, at the end of the day they were professionals and I was just a slightly interesting client. I got a 'functional' motorcycle with registration, helmet, and the minimum level of insurance necessary, but still paid more than the thing was worth. There was probably some amusement in the fact that I knew exactly how bad a deal I was getting, which likely saved me from being completely raked over the coals.
The bike I ended up with wasn't truly terrible, but it was probably the last thing I thought I would end up with. It had a good deal of mileage and the bodywork wasn't in great condition, but those weren't the main issues. The big problem was that it was a Japanese motorcycle.
Since Leviathan hit Kyushu the Japanese motor industry had been in shambles. There were still some companies in business, but they were shadows of their former selves. Mostly they opened branch manufacturing facilities in places like Indonesia, Thailand, or Malaysia. Those facilities had little to none of the quality the parent companies were known for and the parts that came out of them were jokes. Keeping any Japanese vehicle operational was an exercise in frustration, and that was for cars with major dealerships. For motorcycles they were basically on a death march. Even enthusiasts couldn't keep them going and switched over to other manufacturers. The lucky ones were bought out by American or European companies that started putting out decent replacement parts and even the occasional new model.
Suzuki was not one of the lucky ones.
The motorcycle I rode out of the Power Motor Approval lot had been patched together with some of the cheapest and most slipshod parts south Asia could churn out. Everyone who knew anything about bikes wouldn't be caught dead on this thing, and if I wasn't planning to rebuild it from the ground up I would never have stooped to make the purchase. Still, with my mechanical knowledge I might be able to turn a Suzuki GSX-R 750 into something other than an embarrassment.
The bike got me back to the city, but I could pick up on every problem it had over the course of the drive. I couldn't think of any part of it that was in good enough condition to leave as is. Also, like the automatic transmission on the van I was essentially leveraging mechanical knowledge in place of vehicle operation skill. It wasn't the smoothest or most stable ride, but then again I wasn't exactly street racing. Cautious turns and moderate speed got me within a few blocks of my apartment without any hiccups.
As I looked for a way to get my bike into my workshop I felt the forge move again. It was the Alchemy constellation and my power latched to a tiny mote. The oddly named ability was called Kazooie Alchemy.
It let me make potions.
This was a fundamentally exciting concept. All of my alchemy so far had been closer to casting spells with material components than creating elixirs for later use. This ability addressed that disparity. With it I could brew and create actual potions. I was getting over how supernatural a lot of my powers seemed to be. When you had possessed gloves making clothes for you in your secret expanding closet drawing the line at potion brewing seemed kind of arbitrary.
The potions weren't difficult to make. The ingredients were mundane and fairly inexpensive. With nothing but a pot and a heat source I could brew one in about an hour. A professional laboratory set up would help me cut down on that time and potentially boost the quality, but it wasn't essential to production.
Unfortunately I could only make three types of potions. Their effects would last a few minutes at most and mixing them was a horrible idea. Also the potions would only affect me, there was an element of the ability that made them chemical messes for anyone else who tried to drink them. Still, the three effects I could create were seriously powerful.
The first and least noteworthy was an invisibility potion. Totally undetectable by sight until the potion wore off or I took some damage, which would dispel the effect. Other than that it was perfect invisibility, stranger powers in a bottle.
The second effect generated a type of shielding that completely negated damage. This would be colossally significant if I didn't have an alchemy formula that did basically the same thing for a shorter period. Still, this was total, walk up to Behemoth and say give me your best shot invincibility.
It still didn't excite me as much as the third potion I could now make. With that mixture I would be able to generate two copies of myself. They would only last a few minutes or until they took a hit and I didn't have any link to them after creation, but they did have all the equipment I was carrying. With one minor ability I had gotten the power to beat Oni Lee and Bakuda at their own game. The significance of what I could manage with this cannot be understated.
I was going to make so many missiles.
I just needed a place I could brew them inconspicuously. They might not need expensive chemicals, but the brewing process would produce copious amounts of colorful smoke and a smell like a chemical spill in an aroma therapy center. My workshop didn't have anything close to the ventilation needs to handle this and trying it in my kitchenette would bring the police or PRT to my door in short order.
It was much too powerful to let that stop me. Brockton had an abundance of abandoned buildings. It looked like I would finally have to set up a real world lab. It was bound to happen eventually, but I can't help but feel a little disappointed in myself.
Finding a location for brewing would be a problem for later. I found an out of the way alley that I could pull into and started to figure out how to get this thing into my workshop. Unfortunately that would have to go through my entryway, which meant squeezing the bike past everything I'd stored there each time I wanted to store or deploy it. It wasn't exactly set up for dramatic launches onto the street, but being able to always have access to my bike was worth the inconvenience.
I did find a larger door that made accessing the entryway less of a trial. One thing I had learned was that the main door scaled to whatever size I used to access it. Any size door. I tried it on a cubby locker once and got a roughly one foot square entrance to my workshop.
As I opened the large loading door to access my workshop I was understandably surprised to be greeted by the shape of a woman in evening wear. I say shape because there wasn't actually a woman there. The gloves had apparently made a red evening dress and were suspending it between them with their telekinesis in a manner that made it look like it and the gloves were actually being worn by an invisible woman.
Once I got over my shock I realized it was actually a lot less distracting than seeing disembodied gloves flying around. The dress was arranged so it was 'sitting' at my desk chair and turned to face me as I entered. The simulated body movement also helped the gloves emote, which was a serious benefit.
"Oh, uh, hi?"
The gloves waved in greetings.
"Nice dress?"
They rose in a way that made it looked like they were standing up. The illusion was perfect and if I didn't know how their powers worked I would have thought it was an invisible person standing before me. They 'stepped' forward and twirled to show off the dress. They had even made shoes for themselves and were managing them as well as any other aspect of the outfit.
Something occurred to me. "Sorry if this is rude, but are you female?"
The gloves made a gesture to where their pelvis would be, then an irreverent gesture that seemed vaguely positive.
"It doesn't matter, but sure?" I guessed at a translation.
There was an excited response and an enthusiastic gesture towards the dress, and a dismissive one to a suit hanging on the wall.
"Female because women's clothes are better?"
Again enthusiasm from them, or I guess that should be 'her', if that's what she wanted.
"So what should I call you? The ability that brought you here, or created you, or whatever is called Garment Gloves..."
There was an excited snap.
"You want that as your name?"
More expressions of positivity.
"So Garment?"
There was a happy gesture.
"Right, ok Garment. I need to get this bike into the workshop."
She leaned around me in a way that a normal human would, 'looked' at the bike, then reacted with horror. In a flurry of motion various items of clothing floated off surfaces to places as far from the path I'd have to take as possible. It ended with her 'standing' on the chair and making shoeing gestures as I wheeled the admittedly rusty and oil soaked machine through her workspace.
My metal workshop was largely untouched, but the components of the costume Garment had designed were laid out for assembly. It looked nearly finished and I wondered why she had left it like that.
Once the bike was settled in the center of the workspace I turned to see Garment at the door. "Do you need some help with that?" Given the level of skill on display from what she had thrown together I couldn't imagine what she would need me for.
What followed was a bunch of abstract gestures that I had a hard time deciphering. Eventually I got fed up and happened upon an idea. I got one of the spare laptops Tattletale had included with my supplies and booted it up. I loaded a word processor and set it in front of Garment.
It seemed that while Garment may have been a genius in terms of clothing they didn't include basic computer use in whatever skillset she'd been granted. She typed by hunting through the keyboard letter by letter with the speed of a glacier and the grace of a drunken sloth. Gradually a word appeared on the screen.
P...O...W...E...R...S
"You want to use my powers?" This brought on an excited flurry. It made sense, my Made to Last ability would make the clothing impervious to time and the elements. Making it in the workshop would let it repair itself in forty eight hours if it was ever damaged. My style abilities combined with her fashion sense and tailoring skill would produce a level of quality that dwarfed anything I could even imagine.
"How do you know about my powers?"
That merely got a shrug and a dismissive gesture. Well, that explained nothing. But I guess if she came from my powers it made sense that she would know about them. That was still bothering me. I had a sentient being confined to my workshop. I wasn't going to pretend this was something normal. I had to make sure she was happy with whatever this arrangement turned out to be.
"Look, Garment, I don't really get how you came here or what it means, but I want you to be ok. So what do you want?"
She made a contemplative gesture, then an exclamation followed by indications towards her dress and the half-finished costume.
"Clothes? You want to make clothes?"
The excitement was bubbling off her.
"Ok, I'll make sure you can make all the clothes you want."
That got a little hop of excitement.
"I need to move the entrance of the workshop before someone finds it. I'll see you back at the apartment."
She waved goodbye as I left and sealed the door behind me. As I started walking home something occurred to me. I didn't own a suit. In fact, I didn't recognize any of the clothes she had 'saved' from my bike. The duffle bag I used as a dresser was looking very flat and there had been a cardboard box in the corner with the word 'RAGS' scrawled on it.
I needed to have a word with her. I was going to have to put some limits on that promise before she dismantled everything I owned and I was drowning in formalwear.
Jumpchain abilities this chapter:
Life Fiber Spool (Kill la Kill) 400:
A medium-sized spool of Life Fiber. It's only enough to maybe make a pair of gloves out of, but with the proper knowledge, one could create Goku Uniforms- Or enhance existing articles of clothing to be like Goku Uniforms. One spool of thread is enough to make several one-star outfits, three two-star outfits, or a single three-star outfit, assuming you have the knowledge of how to work with Life Fibers
Garment Gloves (Dodgeball) 200:
These are a pair of pure white gloves. Bound to them is an intelligence with a mind for fashion: a designer, seamstress, clothier, and tailor without mortal peer. It has the ability to scry for fashion based information from international trends to precise measurements. Given materials and orders, it will industriously produce fine apparel, producing any modifications, clothing, footwear, accessories, etc that is within theoretical mortal ability. It has sufficient telekinesis to move itself and to independently suspend materials. It must be provided with materials, though it may be provided a lump sum or budget with which to magically acquire materials at cost.
You may wear the gloves to channel the skills (but not powers) of the entity, perhaps even learning from it.
Alchemy (Banjo-Kazooie) 100:
You are incredibly capable at mixing together mundane ingredients to create effects that can only be described as magical. For a short time these potions can create temporary copies of you, turn you invisible, or give you shielding.v
- Location
- USA
Really great so far! (Caught up to the extra chapters in a binge XD)
One thing though, and maybe someone can help me, is where you get the ability descriptions and point cost from. I didn't see any expanded descriptions on the link to the doc, nor the cost. Is it simply a matter of researching the source (ie. Mass Effect, 40k) and whipping something up on your own? If so, some of the names and even the source seem pretty generic. For example, I have no idea what "Architect's Eye (LOSS)" is at the top of the doc, and not having much luck on searching. If I'm just blind to something, it wouldn't be the first time tho
One thing though, and maybe someone can help me, is where you get the ability descriptions and point cost from. I didn't see any expanded descriptions on the link to the doc, nor the cost. Is it simply a matter of researching the source (ie. Mass Effect, 40k) and whipping something up on your own? If so, some of the names and even the source seem pretty generic. For example, I have no idea what "Architect's Eye (LOSS)" is at the top of the doc, and not having much luck on searching. If I'm just blind to something, it wouldn't be the first time tho
- Location
- United States
The Celestial Forge is something people threw together for the Jumpchain CYOAs. The abilities/perks are what people playing them purchase with a point budget, hence the costs. SB and SV both have jumpchain threads you can look up if you're interested.
The perks themselves are typically based on the media/setting they represent, or on feats or capabilities of people in said media. Hence crafting perks let you do stuff like whip up mad science tech in your basement with scrap or stuff like that because characters do that kinda thing.