Preamble Gully
Gully braced herself and stepped out of the lobby of her modest hotel and into the world of Brockton Bay, ducking under the doorframe as she moved. As she straightened as far as her spine would allow she took in the ripple of reactions to her presence. As always she pretended not to notice them and shouldered her shovel before starting down the sidewalk.
The shovel's presence was calculated. Normally a person carrying a large tool would be threatening, at least in potential. Gully didn't need help to be threatening. The shovel was her cover. It made people look again when they saw her. That was the real secret. Without the shovel, without something odd but also normal for them to focus on, the reaction was always the same. Strained, wary, and at best cautiously polite.
But with a shovel? A shovel wasn't a sword, or a gun or spear. It wasn't glowing tinker tech or some pulsing manifestation of power. It was always as plain a shovel as she could manage to find. It was normal. People could look at the shovel without looking at her. They could ask about the shovel without mentioning anything about her… condition.
It was a distraction. An imperfect distraction, but she would take any she could get. Any distraction from the life she lived.
She took a breath and brushed at the hair covering her face with coarse, sausage-like fingers. Hands the size of microwaves, the tangled mass of scar tissue that served as her skin, obvious deformities in bone structure, proportions and symmetry. And those were just the surface-level differences.
Beneath her skin it was worse. Whatever nerves she had were buried beneath the coating of rough collagen that covered her body. Everything felt distant and detached, lacking any fine detail. The way she moved, breathed, and the very composition of her body was wrong. She didn't know how she knew it, but by some vestige of lost memory still knew what a human body was supposed to be. It was just enough connection to humanity to know how far she was from it.
That was the thing about Case 53s. Even those 'lucky' enough to have a vaguely human shape were miles away from normal biology. She remembered trading stories with Sanguine. Case 53s meeting and exchanging medical data the same way other people would talk about their favorite movies. The mess of a circulatory system within what appeared to be nothing more than a red-skinned boy was telling. As was her own layered biology, a nightmare that no surgeon would touch and that required specialized medical treatment for any injury more than skin deep.
Gully supposed she was lucky that in most cases 'skin deep' meant at least two inches.
She tried to put those thoughts out of her mind as she followed the already familiar route. This was always her starting point in her searches. In truth she had no idea what she was doing with her time in this city. Jumped across the country and into a war zone for the faintest chance of a better life.
But it was a chance. A real chance, the first she had. Weld's call had required all of her control, all the lessons in comportment and public perception that until then had mostly been a formality. She had drawn on all of them to keep herself from giving things away.
Restaurants. It was practically a joke. It was a joke. Weld knew she was a foodie. It was a small pleasure, something she could indulge in that was unconnected from every aspect of the body she was trapped in. In fact, for once it was an asset. Gully didn't actually need the amount of food her body size would suggest. Her actual caloric needs were fairly low, even by normal standards. Whatever effect had swollen her body to monstrous proportions was at least partially self-sustaining, a fact that was insufferable in every aspect save her Wards food budget.
For Weld food was a formality. Most of his budget went to his record collection. Despite her complete lack of an ear for music she would tolerate his enthusiastic extolment of the importance of high audio fidelity and the advantages of vinyl over various digital formats, just as he would listen to her rant about new foods, favorite combinations, and the San Diego restaurant scene.
She had assumed he was listening politely without registering anything, the way she did when he got deep into the history of Norwegian death metal. She certainly hadn't expected him to remember specific details from her rants. She never expected him to express an interest in visiting.
She could put the rest together. Big doesn't mean stupid, no matter what people might think of her. Weld's transfer had been a mess. He vanished from public appearances and any contact attempts immediately after the Cape Blackout. She'd seen the grainy video from the rig. She was afraid for Weld after what it appeared to show, and relieved when she saw him back at the conference. But he was different. Unlike most of the Protectorate she knew how far he could push his shapeshifting. The effort it took to clear surface impurities. The fact that he had never been able to control his finish. Something had happened. She had her theories as to what. Then he called.
It was obvious he was being watched, and obvious why. The sudden interest in restaurants was the first clue. She didn't miss the fact that he was particularly interested in places with food so spicy that they joked about making customers sign a medical waiver before being seated. Whatever had restored some of his lost sense hadn't taken it all the way. It hadn't been enough to fix everything, but it had fixed something.
Then that little trick at the end of the video call. The light toss of an obviously metal pen. A fraction of a second of contact, and obviously past the notice of whoever was watching him, but a detail as significant as his taste. He could control his metal absorption. Maybe it wasn't perfect. It had only been an instant of contact, but he had done it. Going from no control to minor control… Well, there were Case 53s who would do anything to have that.
She hadn't wasted any time. Calls were made to other Case 53s to confirm what she suspected. Weld hadn't called every one of them, but he had made an effort. More than a few of his hints had been missed, but it was enough confirmation. Something or someone in Brockton Bay could heal Case 53s. Maybe not entirely, and maybe not permanently, but they could do it. They could make a difference.
There was really no question as to who it was. Everyone had seen that broadcast. Healing technology like that was more than the most likely cause, it was a near certainty. The villain Grue had looked like something out of one of David Cronenberg or Junji Ito's horror movies. Then he was fixed. Whether the darkness cape was actually a Case 53 under that smoke was irrelevant. Apeiron had healed him. If he could handle that, then what else was he capable of?
Gully turned a corner and came face to face with exactly what Apeiron was capable of. She always started here. It must have been her dozenth visit in the past two days. She wasn't the only one. Once the Protectorate had given up on isolating the scene it had turned into one of the most popular sites in the city.
The frozen bubble of time dominated the center of Batchelder Square. It was clear the pedestrian routes hadn't been designed with the expectation of losing the ability to cut across the space, resulting in pedestrian congestion as they circled around the site. Despite the detour none of them seemed to mind. It was understandable. Not with a display like that.
Apeiron's workmanship. His robots fighting a local duplicator villain, trapped in time. The Protectorate wasn't drawing attention to the significance of that composition, but the public had clued into it, or at least the posters of PHO had.
Robots and villains. No civilians. As far as she was aware there had been no official announcement regarding it, but there was certainly no shortage of commentary about how convenient it was that Apeiron's robot had attacked in such a way that every person in the blast radius was thrown out of the time bubble. Most of it was centered on how terrifying it was to have that powerful an attack with that level of control, but there was also commentary on what it could say about Apeiron's character and nature.
That was what gave Gully hope. A single trapped person would have turned the square into a memorial. Instead, it stood as a testament to the tinker's power. And possibly the tinker's charity.
Weld, despite the purported value of his record collection, did not have extensive resources to call upon. Yet somehow he had made a deal with Apeiron for specific treatment. The number of people seeking the same thing was terrifying, but apparently Weld had managed it. She didn't know the details, but whatever he had given up wasn't enough to compromise his position in the Wards. He was even still listed as team leader. At worst there seemed to be a period of isolation, reasonable for the subject of any unknown medical procedure.
As Gully looked at the dazzling display frozen in time she felt even more self-conscious than usual. What place did she have next to something like this? Apeiron obviously valued beauty. His works had started stunning and progressed to a level of artistry that one could barely put into words. Weld may have had as many problems with his condition as any Case 53, but there was a good reason he was effectively their spokesman. Nobody would argue with the suggestion that, despite any mitigating factors, he was the best looking of all of them.
Was that why Apeiron had helped him? She thought about Khepri. Rumors were unconfirmed, but there was so denying that the girl was thin, model height, and had amazing hair. Was that the kind of standard Apeiron used? Did she have any hope? Was she wasting her time? The grim clouds of dark thoughts began circling through her mind, threatening to swallow her up.
"Excuse me?"
Gully blinked and looked down to the voice. She always had to look down to speak to people, but this was an exceptional amount of down. The speaker was a child, maybe four or five with a gleam of wonder in his eyes.
"Are you a hero?" The boy asked in a reverent voice.
Gully smiled. A genuine smile, not the one she practiced for public appearances. She quickly remembered that genuine smiles tended to do horrible things to the placement of the skin on the left side of her face and immediately shifted to the more subdued expression she had developed with the help of a California PRT publicist.
God but she hated that woman. That was when she started wearing her hair over her face. Every piece of advice had involved minimizing her… everything. Her height, her presence, her atypical features, her implied threat. She hated it all, but most of all, she hated how it worked. Children would either react to her with wide-eyed cape wonder or with cringing terror. Following the vile woman's advice had helped with shift reactions so the former was becoming much more common than the later. It had also served to dramatically increase her standing in popularity polls. She was actually doing fairly well, with the caveat of 'for a Case 53' going unsaid.
She put those thoughts out of her mind and gave the boy a professional smile. "Yes I am. My name is Gully and I'm visiting from California." She spoke as softly as she could to minimize the gravely effect of her voice. Luckily the boy didn't react with anything but even more enthusiasm.
He smiled widely as he looked up at her. "My aunt is from California, but we don't visit because my mom…"
"Henry!" Called a woman with a close family resemblance, most likely demonstrating the near thinker-like ability of mothers to know when their children are about to embarrass them. "I hope you're not bothering this… lady."
The woman at least didn't finish her sentence like a question, but all of the brash enthusiasm her son had shown was absent. There was the concern, the contained wariness that Gully was used to. That she'd needed to become used to.
"It's no problem as all." She replied in her most professional voice. "I'm not on duty at the moment, and I'm always happy to meet someone this enthusiastic."
"I'm sorry…" The woman trailed off into awkwardness and absently noted the boy tugging at Gully's hand.
"Can I have an auto graph?" He asked, pronouncing it like two words. Gully smiled again and reached into a pocket of her costume. Her hands couldn't manage a normal pen, and writing was a chore. As such she'd taken to carrying pre-signed papers for people who asked. Not that many did, but there was always someone.
"Of course." She handed the boy a slip of paper with her name signed over a stylized shovel. Obviously she wasn't going to walk around with a stack of headshots. This was another of the compromises she'd arrived at.
"What do we say?" The mother prodded the boy.
"Thank you." He called out musically while grinning at the paper.
"Thank you very much." The mother offered, and the concern dropped away. In its place was something worse.
Pity.
She held firm under the overly sympathetic gaze of the woman as she wrangled her excitable child down the sidewalk. She managed that until the woman was gone, then immediately sank back to the edge of the square. The thoughts were coming back, those dark clouds threatening to swallow her up.
"Sorry about that." A voice said. She struggled to find the energy to face it. "Normally they don't push for that kind of thing outside of the tourist stops, but this place has kind of been adopted as one."
She looked towards the voice, and for once didn't need to completely drop her head to face the person. She was still at least a foot taller, but compared to most people it was a world of difference. It reminded her of talking to Everett when he went out in his power armor. Sometimes, when he used his heavier suits, she could practically feel normal when she walked next to him….
She banished those thoughts and focused on the current situation. The height difference was enough that she could still see the top of the man's head, but it was at least minor enough that she felt like she was talking to an adult.
Although this perspective did make it clear that he used a ridiculous amount of hair gel.
Past that the seven-foot-tall man was wearing a white and yellow costume with a professional cut. New Wave, she remembered from her quick review of the local cape scene. Manpower. Public cape, real name was something Pelham. Ned or Neil.
"It's alright. I'm used to it. They don't really respect privacy in California. PR duty never ends." She assured the man. "You're Manpower? From New Wave?"
There was a little awkwardness, though she at least got the sense it was unrelated to her condition. "Manpower. New Wave is… adjusting to the current situation." He explained while trying to conceal a pained expression. "You Californian? LA?"
"San Diego." She explained. "I'm with the Wards team."
He nodded. "Well, thank you for coming down. The city's in a rough time, and we can use all the help we can get."
Looking closer she could see serious signs of stress. She was guessing the man's powers covered for him physically to some extent, but mentally was another story. His eyes were tired, her stance was slightly slumped, and he seemed incredibly genuine in his gratitude for her presence. Gully just nodded and decided not to elaborate on the details of her trip.
Instead, she gave him a light grin and made an attempt at lifting the mood. "So, is this some giant cape solidarity thing?"
That got a brief laugh. "Not really, but I know it's not an easy thing."
She appreciated him not going further or adding any qualifiers about her having it worse. The man was excessively tall, but somehow still had normal proportions. He would look normal in promotional shots and only out of place compared to the rest of his team. She suddenly realized that next to him she probably just looked slightly oversized. Not the hulking monster, but only out of scale.
She smiled her genuine smile on the inside as she noted the way the attitudes of the pedestrians had shifted. Between the illusion of scale and the presence of a local hero there was nothing to be concerned about. She could enjoy a moment of peace before she dove into her next, most likely futile search for any lead on Apeiron.
She turned to Manpower and considered a question. She hated answering stuff like this, but he had approached her, and probably had to field it often enough himself.
"Uh, if you don't mind, can I ask…"
"The height?" He responded. She nodded. He lifted a hand and tiny sparks danced across his skin. "My power gives me this electromagnetic field. It's really short range, but pretty strong. One of the effects is a force field. Gives me strength and durability." For some reason he looked regretful at that, but continued his story. "Triggered as a teenager. The field reinforces me, kind of stresses my body, so I don't need to work out much, but it also made my growth spurts kind of nuts." He shrugged. "Body grows in response to stress, and my power stressed my body. Ended up taller than my parents and my kids."
She nodded. "Just straight up power mutation for me."
"Case 53?" He asked. She nodded again and was grateful he didn't go any further.
It did, however, bring her mind back to the purpose of her visit. Her desperate hope. Her fear of having that hope snatched away.
"That rough time for the city?" She asked. "How much of that is due to him?"
She gestured at the center of the square and watched the man's reaction. It was a more complicated response than she expected, with shades of what looked like anger, guilt, shame, frustration, and despair flickering by in a matter of seconds. Finally, he took a breath and spoke.
"It's not him." He said and shook his head. "Don't get me wrong, Apeiron is a wrecking ball of a cape. You're not going to find anyone less discriminate in their impact on a situation, but all he's done is show what a mess we were already in." He sighed and looked off into the distance. "He hasn't knocked down anything that wasn't about to fall apart anyway."
His voice was pained and regretful. Gully marveled at the unusual experience of making someone else uncomfortable for reasons that had nothing to do with her appearance.
She didn't like it.
To her relief Manpower pushed on from whatever grim thoughts were upon him. "Anyway, the main focus is the gangs. ABB has gone beyond the pale, that's where our attention needs to be. It's going to be a mess, and that's not getting into what will happen with the Merchants and Empire."
Gully nodded grimly. It was a serious reminder of the situation she had thrown herself in. Even so, she didn't regret it. She had a chance. That was all that mattered.
There was a tone from her pocket that caused her to tense and quickly reach to dig out the mobile device. It was a custom job from Facetime, meticulous in how normal it was. Gully couldn't use anything smaller than a tablet and most touch screens didn't register her fingers. The communications tinker had embraced the challenge and built a smartphone designed to be remarkably unremarkable. In her hands it looked normal, and that was the point. A standard phone, scaled up and accessible, nothing else.
To her surprise there was a hum from Manpower's pockets that caused him to fish out his own device. His was one of the oversized note-phones, though with his scale he held it like a typical smartphone. A quick glance confirmed they were both looking at the same alert.
"Okay, you're from out of town." He explained. "So, you probably don't get how weird it is for Uber and Leet to be a serious source of cape news."
She shook her head. "I've seen some of their work." Really just the fail compilations on YouTube. "I get how nobody saw this coming."
She checked the alert. It was a possible lead on Apeiron, one of the few that had potential to pan out. She was guessing half the city was tuned into their announcements.
There had been one earlier in the day, touting an upcoming video of one of their operations, not a live or delayed feed but fully edited. People had scrambled to figure out what it was referring to, with the only consensus being that it must have been something from outside the city. Gully expected either an update or maybe a full video to drop.
Instead, it was something completely different. "New stream announcement. Delayed broadcast, to begin soon." She read. "Not from Uber and Leet. March?"
She turned to Manpower and saw the worried expression on his face. "ABB." He muttered, then turned to her. "I'm sorry to say this, but I'm really glad to have you in the city. This is probably going to get bad."
She nodded and kept an eye on her phone. As bad as it could get, there was a chance Apeiron could be involved. For that she could bend her promise to the director. It wouldn't hurt to make this a working vacation.
40 Knock Down
Once again I found myself staring down the notorious bomb tinker of the ABB. For some reason it seemed everything involving Bakuda had to involve as much posturing, excess, and pageantry as possible. Whatever reputation I had amassed for showmanship had its genesis in my attempts to upstage her opening performance. Now I was right back where I'd been on Saturday night, only this time the posturing was conducted through a video call rather than a direct standoff.
It was obvious how much effort Bakuda had put into this particular display. She had 'spontaneously' begun the call while perfectly arranged on an overbuilt throne-like chair, perched just so that she gave the impression of irreverence and authority. Throughout the scene it was painfully clear how carefully every detail had been managed to allow the impression she was trying to convey.
She was in her full costume, a costume that had been seriously upgraded from her previous appearance. There was a new gasmask, this one more streamlined and of dubious usefulness in actually protecting from inhaled toxins, but much more striking in appearance. I was reminded that, unlike with my own work, most people needed to make tradeoffs between style and function. What Bakuda was currently using was probably a slight step above a Halloween gasmask, maybe on the level of a painter's mask, but not the practical item she had been in her previous appearance.
In exchange she had gone whole-hog on the design. Shaped lenses with nearly luminescent red tint gave the impression that she was glaring down at the camera. The material was carefully arranged, coded to match the rest of her outfit and provide an impression of symmetry, and was framed by her uncovered and obviously styled hair. The one deviation from the ordered appearance being a line that had been painted vertically across one lens, the same place where her previous mask had been split by Taylor's knife.
It was the kind of detail that would obscure her vision, if there was any vision from that eye to obscure. I was guessing whatever trick had managed to restore her limbs wasn't as effective on something as complicated as a human eye.
The restored limbs were specifically framed in the shot, with her gloved right hand delicately gesturing and her formerly severed leg crossed on top of the one that had been merely damaged. She bounced it slightly so that the dangling movement drew attention to its restored state. It further served to draw the eye to her new costume, conveying the fact that she had traded out her vaguely military look for an extremely military look.
Previously she had the appearance of someone who had hunted through an Army Surplus with the intention of finding clothes for a night of clubbing. So essentially a mess of basic military clothing framed in a way to attempt to be attention-grabbing. Her new outfit was a world apart from the earlier improvised feel. It was obviously fitted and meticulously tailored. The look was in line with what you would find in an officer dress uniform, but with enough flourishes to clearly set it apart from any specific armed force.
Dark navy cloth made up the base of the costume with gold braiding and buttons peppered across it. She still had the pouches and equipment bandoleers, but they had been dressed up and incorporated into the new theme. Green and red was used for accent coloring at the seams and cuffs and the costume was finished by a pair of high boots and leather gloves.
It was clear that a lot of work had gone into the outfit, as well as the specific framing of the shot, the lighting, the camera angle, and the general feel of the presentation. Despite the seriousness of the situation, I found myself wondering exactly how she pulled this together. Did she kidnap a tailor? A cinematographer? Was there a division of conscripted civilians put on ABB costuming and image management duty instead of being sent into the streets? How much work had gone towards this? Was it my fault? Had I accidentally started a cape fashion war over who could be the best dressed parahuman in Brockton Bay? A potentially endless conflict, and one where, no matter the resolution, Garment would no doubt consider it an event worthy of celebration.
It's likely that the only reason I was so aware of Bakuda's efforts to control her image was the sheer number of powers I had that granted skills and insights in that particular area. I was wearing the product of more aesthetic powers than I could casually quantify and, despite my mere seconds of preparation time, I had managed the framing of my own shot to a level that matched or exceeded the results of Bakuda's careful work. A specific angle capturing the sky behind me, careful management of light and shadows to highlight the armored plates spread across my costume, a particular positioning of my body, the result of a power I couldn't disable if I wanted to, and, of course, Garment's dramatic control of my cape as it flared behind me.
That item in particular added a dynamic flair to my shot that made Bakuda look static and sedentary. Combined with the naturally, or possibly supernaturally, intimidating design of my costume and it seemed I had put the other tinker on the back foot, something I would need to maintain if I was going to stretch out this call long enough to trace her location.
Bakuda leaned forward and made an attempt to regain the initiative. "I was wondering how long it would take you to find this line. Perhaps we overestimated your abilities. Maybe I should have made things simpler for you?"
I shifted my posture in preparation for my response. Full face mask talking to full face mask didn't allow the best conveyance of nuance, though I noticed that Bakuda had slightly dialed down her voice modulation so a hint of her tone could now come through. Someone probably explained to her the importance of inflection in communication and how an emotionless robotic voice, while intimidating, isn't the best for conveying information.
The toolkits constellation passed by as I made my reply. "So sorry to hold you in suspense. Had I known you were sitting by the phone desperately waiting for my call I would NEVER have kept you waiting."
Bakuda froze upon hearing my words, and I could practically see the error messages playing in her head. It's possible a little bit of Inexplicable Innuendo had slipped through in that response, but the result seemed to buy me a few seconds of flabbergasted exasperation, and that was time I could seriously use.
Bakuda hadn't set this call up as a casual chat. She clearly knew I would be attempting to trace her and had done everything possible to obscure her final location. With the sheer mess of proxies and remote connections she had set up I was surprised we weren't speaking to each other with a three second delay. There was evidence of her own work in the obscurement of the trace as well as new technologies that I'm guessing came from Leet, and also a third design. More consistent in design than Leet's work, it was a kind of extremely advanced software compression that made everything more difficult to pick through. Additionally, there was probably some contribution from March, and the thinker was no doubt counting on her timing ability to cut things off before I found her.
But I wasn't the person I had been on Saturday night. That was regrettably true in my mindset as well as my abilities, though this time the second detail was more relevant than the first. My fight with Dragon had become public, and I knew it had been picked over in both professional and amateur analysis. Exactly what we had been doing to most of the systems was beyond layman understanding, but for someone like March it could probably provide estimations of how long it would take me to bypass certain digital obstacles. Combined with an understanding of the scope of Bakuda's countermeasures, there was a good chance that the bait of this conversation, Bakuda's location, could be snatched away at the last minute.
It was lucky for me that any assessment of my confrontation with Dragon wasn't relevant anymore. The insight from the power I'd gotten towards the end of that fight specifically facilitated adaptation to new problems, and the upgrade to my divine nature took my inherent connection to machines up to eleven. Also, while I lacked the support of my computer core, I had upgraded my omni-tool, which was currently running a more developed copy of Survey. To take things even further, the nanobots in my system were able to assemble themselves into support and computational structures, allowing massively increased processing power and data access, with a portion of that running on truly divine machinery.
As a consequence, not only was I able to bypass Bakuda's obstructions, but I was able to do so subtly. Using the light touch I had developed to conceal my electronic presence from Dragon's recent attentions I was able to push forward with the trace while also creating the impression that I was slowly chipping away at defenses that I had long since bypassed.
I just needed to keep the conversation going long enough for that approach to pay off. Fortunately, Bakuda wasn't willing to be upstaged again, and was scrambling to take back control of the exchange.
"You wish…" There was a slight pause where she seemed to realize that didn't exactly line up with my statement and worked to find something else. The slight shifts in my posture in response didn't seem to be helping with her lapse in focus. "Um, you… You have no idea what you've blundered into." She tried to make a dramatic sweep of her hand to accentuate the statement, but the shot wasn't really framed right for it to be conveyed properly.
I, however, was completely unencumbered and therefore could move in a way to emphasize all of my statements, somewhat to my own regret. Classy Contortionist was constantly running in the background. I could sort of direct it, but not while splitting my focus like this, and it seemed to mesh with my other style and fashion powers to do its own thing. I was going to end up going half mad if I tried to manage it on top of the dialogue and hacking, so I decided to just let it run and hope for the best. Honestly, as much as I dreaded the outcome, I would rather take a hit to my reputation than miss the opportunity to end this insanity.
"I've got a decent picture of what you're planning." I said with derision. I really didn't, but it wouldn't help to admit that. Still, I could safely stick to general terms. "More hiding behind the helpless while deploying a force that is unskilled, untrained, and unwilling all in the hope of somehow carrying out your schemes. And, of course, leaning on your new thinker to make up for the deficiencies in your own abilities." My face wasn't visible through my mask and cowl, but I leaned forward in a way that made my visor gleam in the light. "How is March? Tell me, did she coordinate this as closely as everything else? How much did she have to script for you to prevent a repeat of our last encounter?"
I saw the frustration ripple through her as her carefully coordinated positioning began to falter. She quickly tried to settle herself, but I could see how much it bothered her. I just needed to keep that line without pushing her to the point where she disconnected or took some other drastic action. Given how dispersed the cells of conscripts were, I had a major concern about how badly this could go if I wasn't able to take down their commander.
Though that may have been what they were counting on me to do. Working against powerful thinkers was an exercise in frustration, and I just hoped I could counter or overpower anything they had prepared.
"Like she matters in any of this. Logistics doesn't mean anything without power to back it up." She leaned forward and placed a hand on her knee. "Whatever you think you've seen out there, you have no idea what's waiting for you."
"Promises, promises." I said despondently. "But it's alright. I've seen what you can do, so I've come to expect a measure of disappointment."
"Disappoint…" Bakuda bit down on the word before she could launch into another rant and started gripping her knee with her right hand. It took her a moment to put together a reply, which I used to navigate a particularly creative and frustrating set of server protocols that were obscuring the path of the signal.
"You are the one who's disappointing." She spat. I shifted my stance slightly and saw Bakuda force down another frustrated reaction. "You're stumbling along, blind to the world around you. You think you are the only tinker who can develop, who can innovate and advance? You have no idea." Her hand was massaging her knee as she spoke and she seemed to be struggling to avoid looking at it.
I sighed. "If you want me to ask about your limbs that badly, just go ahead and explain. I'll listen."
I swear I could see her reshuffling a script inside her head. It made me seriously wonder how much of this had been planned out, and to what level of detail.
"You think you're special, don't you?" I didn't say anything in reply, but a slight change in posture seemed to convey things for her. "Figure you just flash some shiny toys and everyone will fall over themselves chasing what you can do?" She started pulling at her right glove. "Medical work? Bio-tinkering? Please, child's play. Think your healing tech is special?" She whipped off the glove and lifted an intact hand. "Think again."
The hand was there, fully restored. That said, I wouldn't call it good as new. There was discoloration on the surface and some concerning texture to the skin, including the suggestion of some unhealthy growth.
"What did you do?" Once again Bakuda faltered in her response. Whatever reaction she was expecting it probably wasn't a measure of sympathetic concern.
Still, she tried to rally. "I healed myself. You thought you were the only one who could come up with that kind of technology? I had this done in no time. Did you seriously think you accomplished anything? That the bug bitch could actually hurt me? You should know by now, anything you can do, anything any tinker can do, I can top. I can do anything."
"Can you cure cancer?" I asked flatly.
"What?" She froze at the apparent non sequitur.
"I'm pretty sure that's cancer." I gestured at the hand. "Is that how you did it? Did you seriously make a cancer bomb to grow your limbs back?"
"No!" She barked. "Idiot, it's healing. Better healing than you could ever do. It's the instant triggering of massive restoration, beyond what anyone else could accomplish. The induction of rapid, unlimited cell growth…"
"That is practically the definition of cancer. And I'm pretty certain some of those growths are malignant." She quickly moved to hide her right hand from the camera. "Tell me, how many poor conscripts did you fill with tumors during the test runs before you happened on something that looked like it worked?"
"Idiot! You don't know what you're talking about." She barked, but her body language was closing in on herself.
"Did you at least build a chemotherapy grenade?" I asked. "Or maybe you have an oncologist among the civilians you're hiding behind?"
"Shut up!" Somehow her petulant tone managed to punch through the distortion of her voice synthesizer. "I don't need your dime store diagnosis." She struggled to pull her right glove back on. "It doesn't matter how you try to play this. You know how our work measures up. The cost from the last time you faced it."
"What?" She seemed smug, but I really wasn't sure what she was talking about.
"You think you can play dumb? Ha, not when your failure will stand like a monument until the end of time." Bakuda folded her arms and glared down at the camera.
I blinked. "Are you talking about Monday?"
"Of course I am. Unlike you, I can control the fundamental forces of the universe. That robot is trapped for the rest of eternity, and no matter what you try, you're never getting it back."
"Why would I want it back?" I asked.
"What?" Bakuda started, then quickly recovered. "That's what you're playing at? You want to pretend it doesn't matter? Acting like…"
"Bakuda, that's three-day-old technology. Even if I could get it back, I don't know what I would do with it at this point. I mean, maybe as a curiosity…"
Bakuda was once more at a loss for words, and honestly, between that and her probably rapidly advancing cancer, I would have felt bad for her if she wasn't such a thoroughly detestable person. The more I could drag this out the more time I had to tackle the excessive paranoia that had turned what would otherwise be a simple trace into an electronic snake's nest. I was actually grateful at the apparent fact that Bakuda couldn't handle a social interaction more complicated than ranting to a field of hostage minions.
Bakuda looked to be about to say something when a voice came from somewhere out of frame, lighter than hers and without the electronic distortion.
"Three-day-old technology? My, isn't that precious."
I tensed as a short woman in a rabbit mask and military uniform slipped into frame. Well, I made to tense, but I felt my pose power shift the motion into something more confident and natural. It seemed even when shocked and with disaster-level alarm bells ringing in my head, that power would regulate my body language to keep me looking good. At most I probably seemed slightly surprised by the intrusion when I would otherwise be reacting with the same frantic energy I was now desperately directing towards my tracing attempts.
Bakuda glared at the thinker as she sidled next to her and perched on the arm of the armchair/throne. The girl responded to her with a glance, rabbit face meeting gasmask. "You heard him, he doesn't want it back. That means it's just waiting there for anyone who cares to take it. Isn't that wonderful?" She turned towards the camera with that and tilted her head playfully.
The implications of having my technology looted were concerning, as were the implications that either March or Bakuda could bring down the time stop fields. I actually may not have been giving Bakuda enough credit if she was seriously able to reverse the effects of her chaos tinker creations.
As an additional benefit, between my mask and posing power I was able to keep from revealing the slightest hint of what would actually happen if the field went down. That duplicate was already disappearing. If the field dropped he would vanish, and all his equipment along with him. Just as well that they should focus on a dry well in place of any potentially vulnerable target.
I looked at the irreverent posture of the rabbit cape as the Magic constellation passed by without making a connection. This was it. My first encounter with a world-ending threat. The person on the other side of this call was a threat on the level of the worst the world could offer. Given that I couldn't throttle her through a video call I was left with no option but to play along and drag this out until I could find them.
"March." I called out, causing both capes to look at the camera, though March approached the low-angle lenses with an inquisitive posture and a slight tilt of her head in sharp contrast to Bakuda trying to resume an imperialistic pose. "So, the rabbit's finally poking her head out of her warren. I had been wondering when Bakuda would finally need to pull you out of her hat. The rest of her little magic show certainly wasn't serving to impress."
"My, how flattering." She cooed. If my posture wasn't being managed by an independent power I probably would have shuddered at that. "And such a charmer. You didn't mention that. Ah, such a shame."
Now my skin really was crawling. It's a particular feeling to desperately want to fold into the smallest profile possible only to have a power make slight alterations that served to convey a sense of presence and confidence that couldn't be more alien in the situation.
"I can't say I was overly impressed by what I saw of your work on Monday." I baited. "Or your meager attempts to counter me in the aftermath. Impressive timing, but inexpertly applied. I'm guessing you're new to playing at this level."
"Oh? Wouldn't people say the same about you?" She rotated her head to the point where the rabbit ears were almost sitting parallel to the ground. It was a disquieting image to say the least. "Of course, I think we both know better. So many things that only we know."
Well, that was concerning, and made only more concerning by the fact that I had no idea what she was talking about. Bakuda was glancing between March and the camera, generally looking uncomfortable with the intrusion. I could understand why. One of the major rules of command was to never give an order you didn't expect to be obeyed. Her shooing March off camera wouldn't look good. Her trying and failing would destroy any shreds of authority she had left.
"Knowledge that will soon become markedly rarer." The gas-masked tinker broke in, forcing another shift into her formal posture, a process that contrasted sharply with March's behavior.
"You seem rather confident about that threat. For a self-professed genius, I expected at least basic pattern recognition skills." I addressed her, causing March's rabbit mask to swing towards her companion.
"He wants to know about patterns. Should we tell him? Time for the big reveal." The real discomforting thing about March's behavior was not just the lack of acknowledgement of the serious nature of any situations, but the way she approached them. March was short, and from what could be discerned was either in her teens or early twenties at most. That said, she conducted things with the feel of a schoolyard game. Worse, she didn't give the impression that it was an act. There was something about this girl that really didn't see the conflicts she was in as anything serious. I don't know what banished any fear of death from the girl, but it made the prospect of facing her, and of the damage that she could do, all the more daunting.
Whatever March's issues were, they didn't stop Bakuda from picking up the thread. "Indeed." She made another flourish as she settled back on her throne. "You want patterns? You think I can't manage them? What do you think brought you here?"
"An overly wide and poorly executed communication base that was largely unsecured and imprecisely managed for the number of people it was intended to coordinate." I quipped. "If the dumpster fire of logistics that led me to this call was intentionally implemented for my benefit then I'm impressed by your commitment, if nothing else." My response was clearly not what Bakuda wanted to hear, and March's ongoing enjoyment at our exchange wasn't helping. I probably needed to dial things back just to avoid a rage quit before I had their location.
"More dismissive bravado. You've seen what we have, what's in place." She glared down through her lenses. "Ten times the forces we had a week ago. Positioned, armed, and ready to strike. And there's nothing you can do about it." She scoffed and watched my reaction.
"And this is a threat to me how?" I asked. "Will your collection of schoolchildren, office workers, and grandmothers be expected to succeed where your parahumans have failed? Or is it desperation because you're running out of capes that I haven't personally defeated." Really it was just Lung and March that I had to face. The rest of my confrontations hadn't been decisive victories with lasting consequences, but generally the cape who runs is universally regarded as the loser of the conflict.
For some reason that hit a nerve more strongly than I expected from the brittle tinker. "Posturing! I should have expected it. Claim indifference all you want, we both know you'll be rushing in. You can't help yourself, can you, 'mercenary'?"
I didn't really think my cover story would hold up perfectly, but I wasn't going to abandon it. I made a dismissive gesture to the camera and shifted my posture to match. "Imply whatever you want. I am perfectly entitled to find your actions stupid and distasteful, though I suppose I should have come to expect that from you." I saw how much that annoyed her. "So, is that it? Another spree of attacks meant to accomplish what exactly? Smash and grab robberies? A fight over power structures that are barely holding together? Or are you just trying to make the city completely unlivable? Chasing the honor of ruling a pile of rubble?"
"Big talk, but you know what we can do. We're poised, we're ready, and we outgun every other group in the city combined." Bakuda sat taller while she made her proud declaration.
"Any GROUP, maybe. And are you that eager for a repeat of Saturday night? You do remember how that resolved, or have you elected to pretend it didn't happen, perhaps put it out of your mind in the face of your upcoming battle with what is probably a rapidly progressing form of…"
"My medical technology is perfect!" She cut me off. I could hear her panting through the gasmask's filter and see her hands shaking in anger. "And you said it yourself, everything is personal. Your attempts at denial are pathetic."
"But they're so cute!" Echoed March, once more leaning in towards the camera. "So stern and collected, and we haven't even explained the best part." She laughed and it was like a melody played painfully off key. Still musical, but fundamentally wrong.
I steeled myself as I made my reply. "So, you have schemes, precisely timed and loaded for destruction. Theoretically devastating but ultimately meaningless. If you could strike at me you wouldn't have needed this farce to get my attention. You have made a commendable effort to secure my attention, but forgive me if I fail to see what you were intending to accomplish."
Bakuda seemed to latch on to that. "I suppose small minds must be forgiven. I'll try to make things simpler, to help you keep up." She posed again, and it was starting to become obvious and unnatural. Was I leading this on? Was Bakuda trying to keep up with the effects of an inhumanly perfect posing power through a series of actions that looked to be particularly uncomfortable for her spine? Despite what it probably said about how I was presenting myself I took some mild pleasure in her discomfort.
"You see, it's all in place." March gestured with her hands as she spoke. "Little dominos ready to fall wherever we want them. One strike, one reaction, one reaction to a reaction, and it all falls down. Even if you see it there's nothing to be done. The collapse will happen."
I felt a chill go up my spine. The ABB conscripts had been spread wide. They were pretty much as dispersed as possible without making their actions completely obvious. Actions could be set that would draw responses from the Empire, Merchants, Protectorate, and PRT. Normally I would say that kind of thing would be impossible to arrange, but that was assuming you had some precise goal, some grand objective.
That wasn't what March or the ABB were going for. This wasn't the arrangement of a Rube Goldberg machine meant to display masterful control of a situation, to make capes dance like puppets, and secure success against all odds. That would have been too easy to disrupt. A single piece out of place, an unexpected show of force, and it would fail. No, this was someone who had the power to set events in motion on that level, and instead was using the weight of her abilities to sow chaos. March was throwing a Molotov grenade in the form of expendable assets at the city and arranging the impact to cause as much chaos as she could.
This was a cliché. One that didn't actually happen, not in the real cape community. The villain calls up the hero, makes grand threats and claims, and sends the hero scrambling to stop them. I didn't know exactly how March would play it from this point. In the movies sometimes it would just be an announcement of the scheme, and them leaving the hero to desperately try to stop it. Sometimes there would be demands: unless you do this, go here, or complete this task then the city will be whatever-ed. Sometimes it would go deeper. There would be a trade, an act of extortion, a heel-face turn, or any number of other improbable things.
In the real world the villain's threats would go to a PRT assessment team. They would make calls based on department and national policies and most likely take the decision out of the hands of any official hero. There would need to be a proven threat on the level of the Slaughterhouse Nine for any conditions to be entertained, and even then there would be a constant effort to find another way out of the situation.
Was it my reputation for overdramatic spectacle that brought this on? March was disturbingly theatrical, and I could see her trying something like this. She had the skill to cause horrendous damage with the ABB forces, and would no doubt have a trap hidden in any terms she gave. She was expecting me to play the hero, meaning she assumed my mercenary persona was either false or that I was invested enough in the city that I would do whatever I could to save it.
And she was right. It wasn't surprising that the thinker had gotten a read on me and set up a trap. If it was just a matter of me against the ABB then I would probably do just what she was leading me to, take the course of action with the least damage, and accept the fact that I would be going into a situation where my best hope would be a neutral outcome, and extension of the status quo. Risk my life and risk victory for the ABB to get the reward of being right back where I started.
The Knowledge constellation passed by as I reflected on the grim reality of the situation. The fact was that this wasn't just about a conflict with one gang. The stakes were higher, and March didn't know what she was betting against. I couldn't afford to fold given what was in play. The fate of the world twice over, the unspecified apocalypse and March's own 'worse than Endbringers' potential were out there. It was enough that I could, I would, have to accept the damage the ABB could do if it meant stopping them.
"So it seems." I answered, to the clear delight of both capes sharing the call.
"Exactly." Bakuda shouted in triumph. "Power and direction." She spared a glance at the rabbit mask, apparently willing to forgive the intrusion in her moment of triumph. "Already in motion, and if you want to have any chance of stopping it…"
"You." I cut her off.
"What?" She gasped.
"Stopping you." I explained. "Whatever you were thinking, did you really expect me to play along? Follow directions from a bomb tinker and a timing thinker?"
March was giving me the most serious look she could through her cartoonish mask. "You're serious?" She sounded halfway between amazed and intrigued.
"I'm not going to chase you down this rabbit hole. Whatever Wonderland you've prepared, it can get by on its own." Bakuda was rapidly shifting from confusion to fuming anger, but whatever frustration March was feeling was apparently mitigated by my indulgence in fantasy metaphor.
"The city will burn." Bakuda threatened.
"As will you." I replied. "Or have you forgotten that as well? That consequence of your last overreach? You can play with scale and position, but what convinced you that this would end any better than Saturday night?"
I could see her anger building and desperately hoped she wouldn't drop the connection. I was close, so close I could feel it. That's not an expression. My technology sense was informing me of the proximity, of the presence of just a few more links until I drove the trace home.
Too late I realized I might have been able to stretch this out by playing along, by listening to their schemes, and pretending to take their trap seriously. Still, there was no way to know if that would work. They could just as easily have sent some instructions and dropped the call while laughing. I could only hope Bakuda's ego would keep her on the line and that March's timing was working from the wrong information.
"Saturday night, again with Saturday night. Like it was some great victory." Bakuda ranted as March looked on with curiosity. "What did you accomplish? Injury? Healed. Defeat? Restored stronger. Or maybe your precious little surgery session. You've heard how that turned out?"
"Despite theories to the contrary I don't actually control other people's actions. The Protectorate decisions towards the survivors is their own affair." I responded more calmly that I felt, and with a wave of unease. There was no way she would be bringing this up without the intention to take it somewhere horrible.
"Yes." Bakuda leaned back. "The Protectorate picked up some of them. And some went on their own. And some left town. But the rest…"
"Little dominos." March added. "All that work, and for what?"
It was a pure psychological attack, and an effective one. Pictures leapt to mind, of the youngest of the hostages I had freed, of the families reunited, and of the people who had put others before themselves. It was easy to accept the risk, the fact that people would die, when they were just 'people'. Just a vague crowd of potential humanity, not individuals with faces and emotions and tears in their eyes when they hugged their children.
In reality, the fact that some of these people would have gone under Bakuda's knife twice was meaningless. There was no reason to hold them above any of the other people who had been dragged from their lives and forces into a situation that would probably see many of them die. That was a factually correct point of view, but also one nearly impossible for someone to hold on to.
And I couldn't. That is to say, the me that was a fresh trigger with barely three weeks of cape experience mostly spent in a workshop couldn't. The me that was an experienced soldier? The me that came from a mindset both alien and robotic? The me that saw the world from a divine perspective beyond normal humanity? The me that had been balancing the fate of the world, the threat of the Simurgh, and the implications of powers more horrible than the human mind could fully comprehend?
That me, that was the me who could make this decision.
"So…" I stated coldly. My stance shifted again and I saw a ripple of apprehension pass through both capes. "You lashed out at those who slipped your grasp. Breaking toys that would be taken from you. And you thought this childish ploy would stay my hand against you?"
Survey took the slightest of breaks from supporting my tracking attempt to present a minute summary from her earlier analysis. Specifically, on the people I had saved on Saturday night. The numbers in PRT custody, the numbers confirmed or suspected to have left the city. The numbers who were definitely not involved in the ABB attacks. Things weren't as bad as Bakuda was presenting them. She had, at most, gotten 20%. Probably significantly less. She was relying on me not knowing that. It didn't change the hard decision I'd made, but it did soften it slightly.
"You… You say that, but can you back it up?" Bakuda quickly schooled her stammer, but the edge of unease was still in her voice. "Maybe I should introduce you to what you're dealing with."
With no obvious command from Bakuda a second video stream was added to the call. What it showed wasn't a pretty sight. Tied to a chair was a middle-aged man with thinning hair and familiar janitor's coveralls. That was about all I could tell because his face was a swollen mess. The flesh was an unhealthy color and blood had dripped onto his chest. One arm seemed to be broken, and he was breathing shallowly. I was barely able to recognize him in that state, and had to work to conceal my reaction.
Bakuda made no such effort. "Your little helper from that mop up attempt. Everyone was talking about what he did. How BRAVE he was. Well, I've made something special for him, and if you want to see him alive…"
"No." The simple word took more effort that I expected, and I hated myself for saying it. Without my posing power I would never have been able to deliver it with confidence. Confidence I definitely wasn't feeling.
That simple word had a drastic impact. Bakuda looked like someone had knocked the air out of her with a sledge hammer. Even March broke from her dreamy irreverence for a moment and focused intently on me. I endured the reaction and focused on tracing the last of the signal's path.
"Excuse me?" Bakuda half screeched through her voice modulator. "If you don't…"
"What if I DON'T?" I snapped. "He'll suffer? He'll die? And will no one else? Will it end? No. You don't get to stand in a river of blood and make deals for people's lives. Don't insult me with false offers to discount your barbarism. I keep my contracts, and if you think for a moment I would entertain this farce of an agreement then you are talking to the wrong person."
Chen was a good man. Probably one of the best I had met since I started as a cape. He had made a difference in the aftermath of the storage locker battle, from the moment he shot Bakuda's lieutenant to his organization of the conscripts. Most of all, his insistence that everyone else be treated before him. That he be the last to have his bomb removed.
Chen wanted to put other lives ahead of his own. He specifically thanked me for that. I hated the idea of leaving him at Bakuda's mercy, but I refused to let someone else die for a man who made his position on that clear.
Once again, it was a hard choice. This was the kind of situation that sets a trap for your mind and emotions. Without what I had gone through, the changes to my mind, the powers reinforcing it, and the weight of the responsibilities I was dealing with, I don't know if I could have done this.
If I was just leaving him to die then that would be a grim chapter in my life as a cape. A dark note on the early days of my power. Instead, there was a ray of hope. A moment of victory buried behind all the plans for murder and destruction, and one I was careful to conceal as I fully went to work.
"Well, hasn't this been enlightening." March quipped smugly. She glanced at Bakuda who was bringing a hand to the side of her gasmask. "Not that it matters. The dominos will fall with or without you. Do have fun watching the collapse, and we'll see how you manage. Such a shame you couldn't draw things out long enough to finish your little trace, but…"
"He's in." Bakuda's voice was exceptionally robotic as she spoke, one hand to the side of her mask while staring off into space.
March whipped around to face the gas-masked tinker. "What?"
"He finished the trace. All of this, we were just watching a diversion. He has the location." I could see tension build in her body and smiled behind my mask. Out of curiosity I found the little strand of code that had alerted her to my infiltration.
"I assume that digital tripwire was your work? Rather clever, actually. I suppose you can produce the odd interesting trinket while working within your specialty." Bakuda bristled at the barb, but clear panic was starting to take the place of any personal grievance. Her attitude was echoed by March, and it was heartening to see her shift from childlike irreverence to desperate scrambling.
"No. We need… We need to cut the link. Start the operation. I need a line to the assets, and we have to move."
She looked back at the camera and saw me make one last wave. "Go ahead. We'll see how the dominos fall. Please enjoy watching the collapse. I'll see you soon."
The call closed at their end, and was quickly followed by frantic attempts to cut lines of access to the building. Not that it would do them any good at this point. At best they might protect some of their networked systems, but there was nothing they could do to hide anymore.
I lifted my left wrist and channeled magicka into the magitech converted in my lantern shield. Simulated cybertonium acted beyond the reach of conventional space and drew matter from my subspace pocket. A glowing framework formed around me, then shone brightly as the full suit of motoroid armor materialized. I kicked off into the air while continuing to force magicka into the band.
The contents of the pocket weren't duplicated by my potions, only what I had on my body. That meant pulling as much of the equipment I had prepared beforehand, all to facilitate the heaviest loadout possible. And I wanted the heaviest possible loadout, because I was going to come down on the ABB like the hammer of God.
I drained my reserves to their limit, pulling weapons, potions, and equipment from my storage pocket. Finally, I had done all I could. Magicka reserves were spent and I was armed to the teeth. I triggered the armor's potion reservoir and downed the duplicate potion.
One after another my duplicates slid out of my body, armors taking position next to me as we launched into the sky. It had taken seconds to put together a force with the firepower of an Endbringer response, and it was all headed for the ABB.
Or so I thought, until I received a notice from my duplicates.
"You need to hang back."
My shock at the statement would have sent me into a tailspin if not for Fleet's management of the armor's flight systems. "Why?" I desperately transmitted to both duplicates.
"You want to hurt Bakuda, but that's not the best course." A map was displayed by the first duplicate through the connections between our implants. "The difference in firepower between one of us hitting a target and all three is academic. The ABB has two main locations. We need to be the ones to take point. They will have traps and countermeasures. Let us take the hit. You can always make more duplicates and come in later, but we can't make more of you."
There was a pause as the three of us felt the Celestial Forge connect to a rather awesome giant robot power in the Vehicles constellation, but as a group decided to put any comment aside until a better time.
"I'll take the second location, he'll hit Bakuda's lab." The second explained. "If we're lucky we can get all their capes at once. If not you can make the second strike, or close off escape routes."
"I don't like it." I replied lamely. It was petty, but I wanted to be on the front lines. With Tetra and decent control of my Aura I was the heaviest hitter among us. I did not like my duplicates sacrificing themselves, and frankly it was disturbing how comfortable they were with the concept.
"You don't have to, but remember, the second mouse gets the cheese. Besides, Chen is at the second location." He relayed the data pulled from his data stream. It had actually been a live feed rather than a recording, suggesting that there was some grisly scene planned involving the man until I had cut their plans out from under them.
I barely needed to reply. We all wanted to save Chen. We wanted to save everyone, but he was a face, a personality, and a set of meaningful actions, not just one of the masses. I knew about what he did at the storage locker, about his wife and daughter smuggled out of the city ahead of Bakuda's recruitment of them. I wanted to help him. I couldn't do it myself, and might not be able to do it at all, but if I could help him while bringing down the ABB then I had to take whatever path allowed that.
Personal satisfaction could wait. It could always wait. "Go. Keep me updated. I'll try to do what I can about the other attacks."
They signaled their thanks and split off with all the speed their repulsors could manage. Meanwhile I started the grim task of trying to figure out the most effective way of countering multiple simultaneous attacks by groups of armed and coerced civilians that were being coordinated by a doomsday level timing tinker.
It was like the traveling salesman problem on nightmare difficulty. With my duplicates focused on the ABB headquarters and Bakuda's lab it was up to me to cover as much of the city as possible. Which meant picking targets and spreading my limited reach as far as I could.
As I simultaneously plotted out my course, fabricated and deployed my upgraded drones to secondary sites, and began the route to my primary location, I remembered the advantage of good communications. Time to actually use what I put in place yesterday.
"Apeiron calling all Undersiders."
The call went out to each of the quantum linked watches I had made. Unsurprisingly, they were all wearing their respective watch, though I refrained from digging any further as they sounded off.
Alec replied first in an easy voice. "Hey, what's up?"
Then came Tattletale's significantly more concerned response. "Oh God, what's wrong?"
Brian was next, with an awkward-sounding reply. "Uh, I can't really talk now, in the middle of some personal stuff."
Taylor's voice followed him. "Um, IS it something serious? I can talk, but is there something…"
She was cut off by Rachel, who shouted her answer over the sound of barking and screaming crowds. "Can't talk now. Bad time."
I smiled before I answered them. "Just wanted to let you know that the ABB is about to launch a mass series of coordinated attacks orchestrated by March and using newly conscripted civilians armed with a mix of conventional weapons and Bakuda's explosives. I'll be working to disrupt the coordination and attacking the two central locations for the gang that I was able to identify."
There was silence on the call with the exception of a muttered expletive from Brian and the continued barking and shouting background noise from Rachel. Unsurprisingly it was Rachel who broke the silence first.
"Any of this happening in the South Docks near Mason Park, or southeast of Lord's Port?" She asked.
"No." I responded while moving to the first target location. Southeast of Lord's Port would line up with the location I had tracked her knife to, probably her home outside the hideout. Mason Park was practically Empire territory, and it was slightly concerning why she would ask about it. Concerning for another time, given what I had on my plate.
I had picked up trigger signals going out to individual cells of conscripts signaling the beginning of the attacks. "The attack teams are mostly dispersed through ABB territory, with pushes near Merchant and Empire borders and semi-isolated groups set to extend into Downtown."
"Good." The girl replied. "Let me know if that changes. I need to go." She ended the call, taking the shouting and barking with her.
"Shit." Came Tattletale's voice. "Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit."
"Lisa?" Brian asked.
"It's going to be a madhouse. Attacks spread like that, the attitude of the other gangs, National Guard presence, Protectorate response, the Wards back in play…" She listed quickly. "Oh, fuck this is bad."
"Should we do something?" Taylor asked. "Go somewhere? Is there anything we can…"
"No. Stay inside. Please Taylor, stay off the streets, and for God's sake stay out of costume. It shouldn't push into residential areas, but there could be some spillover, and there is probably another level to this whole mess, but I can't… God." She gasped.
"Got it." Came Alec's voice. "Stay in, play video games, and hope the power doesn't go out again. If it does I'm claiming all the ice cream in the hideout." His words were irreverent as ever, but his voice wasn't as steady as you would expect from him.
"Is that going to work?" Brian replied quickly. I got the sense that he was ducking around someone, probably using the silent response feature of the forcefield.
"Well enough. I… I need to try to get on top of this. Joe, can you…" Tattletale asked in a pleading voice.
"I'll update you if anything changes." I got the sense that it was less than Tattletale wanted.
"Uh, good luck?" Taylor replied a bit lamely.
"Thanks." I replied to the group and closed the chat. As I approached my first target Tattletale reached out on a private connection.
"You know this is a trap specifically for you." It wasn't a question. "You know and you're still running into it."
"They used themselves as bait. It made it worth the risk." I answered plainly. "I'm taking precautions."
"You don't…" There was a pause before she continued. "Nothing I say is going to deter you, and I can't help you, not against March. I'm going to do what I can from here. Please, try not to get yourself killed."
"I'll do my best." I responded with dark humor. "Anything else?"
There was the sound of a keyboard. "Fuck. Okay, March is broadcasting this."
"Seriously?" I asked.
"On delay, but she just started putting out your talk." There was the sound of her taking a breath and mumbled "Jesus Christ."
I sighed. "Figures, though I hoped against it." And would now be stressing slightly over the public reaction for the entirety of the coming conflict, which may have been March's intention. "I'll manage. Let me know if you figure out anything."
"I promise." She responded and the call closed. I shook my head and tried not to think about how the broadcast would play with the already frenetic media. Well, no helping it now. Anything else I needed to do?
Yes. A quick thought opened one final call.
"Aisha?"
There was a brief moment before the girl replied. "Yeah? Can't talk for long. My brother's over and I had to duck him. What is it?"
"The ABB made their move. It's going to get messy." I replied flatly.
There was a pause and some more shuffling before she spoke again. "How bad is it? Do you need me out there?"
I really didn't want her dragged into this, especially not with her nonexistent level of training. "Not immediately. The situation is currently up in the air. March is planning something and I'm trying to scout it out. I'll let you know if I need you, but I don't want you where you could get caught in one of Bakuda's exotic bombs. That armor won't protect against everything."
"Got it. Let me know if I can help." She answered, and muttered something about 'all the times to discuss living arrangements'.
"I promise." I replied and cut the call, diving towards my first target.
The most frustrating part about fighting a thinker was the constant second-guessing of yourself. Were you disrupting their plans, or only playing into a higher level of the game? Personally, I'm willing to bet most thinkers were much less confident that they presented themselves and were willing to claim things went 'just as planned' in the event of any possible positive outcome. Tattletale was the best example of this, as seen in the slow deterioration of the girl's mental state as she repeatedly had to admit to not knowing things and that her plans were not working out.
March was worse than Tattletale. That was true in every respect, even without getting into the fact that she scrambled powers when there didn't seem to be any reasonable mechanism to explain the scrambling.
Seriously, if there was an easy way to block Tattletale I would be running it as a priority research project.
As strong and dangerous as March was, I still had the advantage of my passenger, and he had at least been able to confirm that the oldest and most reliable thinker countermeasure still applied. However March's timing and planning power worked, it was still subject to a lack of information. According to my passenger March couldn't perfectly prepare for factors she didn't know about. His confidence in the threat she presented dropped when unknowns were introduced. Her threshold of necessary information seemed much lower than with most thinkers, but it was something I could use.
Whatever plan she had for the civilian conscripts probably assumed the level of technology I had displayed before, meaning deadly with a capital Dead.
That was not what I deployed as I dove towards a mobilizing group in one of the downtown plazas. They were all in civilian clothing and led by a single gang member. About fifteen in all, and sensors showed a spread of small firearms with three carrying Bakuda's work.
I arrived just as they opened their attack. A trio of grenades from what looked like modified M79 launchers streaked across the plaza.
It was a disturbing preview of what was coming. They weren't targeting anything of critical importance, just a moderately crowded open area. The strike would cause death, panic, and trigger a response. Probably a deliberate redirection of Protectorate assets away from the attack deeper in gang territory, given the proximity to the PRT headquarters.
That wouldn't happen. My motoroid's point defense was a pair of fold-out miniaturized laser turrets mounted on the shoulders of the suit. They took the location that had been previously held by the bulky wheel turbines before they were replaced by mass effect thrusters and then dedicated repulsor technology.
The weapons themselves were originally from the database provided by my Weaponsmith power. Before they were stripped down, upgraded, miniaturized, and streamlined to the point of being able to be easily mounted on my suit, the guns were a type of heavy weapon known as a multilaser. It served as an effective means of providing heavy concentrations of high strength but low penetration laser fire.
Once again, that was by the standards of Weaponsmith. By any reasonable metric it was an absolute beast, and that was before I applied my range of upgrades and shrank the entire assembly to the size of a handgun. The result was a weapon that would throw out a terrifying number of shots with pinpoint accuracy against anything that approached my motoroid. And anything fired within its range.
A trio of cracks echoed through the square as lasbolts ionized the air on their way to slagging the launched grenades. Two of the armaments were completely destroyed while the third managed to leak an asymmetric burst of flame in its final moments as the explosive's payload was critically compromised. The shell spiraled off and buried itself in the pavement as the crowd scattered.
There was a ripple of panic from the conscripts, and frantic attempts to find what happened. Untrained and unbloodied they clustered together for safety. It was perfect.
This group wasn't a serious opponent. They were a threat because of the ordinance they carried, but nothing else. They only had a few rounds for their launchers, just enough to demand a response. When it came they would act as a time sink for whatever March had planned for them to encounter, fighting under threat of execution. Maybe the authorities would be able to take them down nonlethally, or maybe it would be a bloodbath. The point was moot, because I was here.
Unlike my last fight with Uber and Leet I didn't show up to this dance underdressed. To stretch the analogy, I went out adorned in the family diamonds, which in this case meant enough missiles to upstage the combined efforts of Leet, Bakuda, and that rocket tinker from the west coast.
I was obscenely proud of the projectile streaking towards the unsuspecting crowd. My miniaturization power let me reduce full-scale armaments to micro missiles. That would have allowed me to carry over fifty on my upgraded motoroid, but I didn't stop there. Variable weapon technology allowed items to be further compressed. Not normally the kind of thing used on expendable munitions, but said munitions weren't usually built at hundreds of times normal speed in batches of five while hybridized with secondary technology.
The end result was the size of a large bullet, which quickly expanded to the dimensions of a can of Red Bull upon launch, and then tracked unerringly towards the target, in this case the perfectly clustered group of frightened conscripts.
A few of them were observant enough to spot the incoming projectile, but those who saw it didn't even have enough time to even shout a warning. A shout would be meaningless as the missile detonated in a stunning sonic pulse accompanied by a miniaturized webber warhead. In a fraction of a second the entire squad was battered, stunned, and entrapped in near-indestructible strands of tranquilizer-soaked webbing.
I barely slowed my pass to confirm the effect before banking towards my next target and leaving the attack force disabled and the people in the square thoroughly confused.
As I moved to review the progress of my drones and duplicates I felt another connection form, this time to the Quality constellation. In a demonstration of the complete madness that was the Celestial Forge this was another giant robot power.
The power was material-based, and functioned as an improved version of my Advanced Materials power. It was called Exotic Compatibility and helped integrate new, exotic materials into my work. It also improved my ability to research new materials, and that research could help improve production numbers. Beyond those useful but mundane aspects it also allowed me to treat any material as plain iron while working or forging it, right until I started building with it. Effectively it allowed me to take the strongest adamantium alloy and melt or mill it like an iron block.
Useful power, so why was it a 'Giant Robot' power? Because it came with a giant robot. Specifically, it came with an OZ-06MS Leo mobile suit, which was a fancy way of saying a 16-meter-tall fusion-powered death machine with head mounted 60mm 'machine guns', as if you could refer to something that caliber as anything less than a cannon, and what was essentially a lightsaber.
Why did a material science and management power come with a giant robot in an obviously military design? Who knows? The more serious question was, why did I get two of them in a row?
My previous power, placed on the back-burner due to the situation at hand, was from the Vehicle constellation. While it was surprising to get a giant robot from the Forge, it at least made sense for it to come from a vehicle-based power.
That power was called Anaheim Degree, and was a comprehensive degree in the science of building giant robots. I mean that literally. It came with an actual diploma. I have no idea who would accept the validity of something like that, but it was there all the same.
The crazy thing was it wasn't just the science needed to keep a giant robot operating, it was a field of physics whose very existence necessitated giant robots. As in, it completely rewrote the rules of warfare to the point where fifty-foot-tall robots became practical, and in fact necessary, on the battlefield.
All because of the concentrated bullshit that was the Minovsky Particle.
The power, along with a full breakdown of giant robot or 'mobile suit' systems, covered all the principles behind a new fundamental particle. The particle was a byproduct of a device called the Minovsky-Ionesco reactor. If I hadn't already been up to my neck in fusion systems the idea of easy helium-3 and hydrogen fusion with no neutron radiation would be incredible. Now, while I had better power options, the reactor was still incredible because it produced high density bullshit as a byproduct.
Helium-3 reacts with the inner walls of the reactor and suddenly everyone needs to get in a giant robot in order to fight. Minovsky particles were either positively or negatively charged with zero rest mass and the incredible and unbelievable property to arrange themselves in a cubic lattice, called an I-field, when released.
And they stayed like that. A giant invisible mesh of charged particles. Particles that blocked low frequency electro-magnetic communication. Particles that distorted light. Particles that obscured infra-red signals. Particles that shorted out all but the most heavily shielded electronics. Particles that would hang around, messing everything up, for at least 29 days.
Suddenly long-range targeting didn't work. Tracking missiles would burn out on their way to a target. Laser weaponry would scatter and miss. Your only option was to get almost on top of your enemy and blow them away with short range or even melee weapons. The giant robot the power provided was a perfect example of this. It even had a complete Minovsky ultracompact fusion reactor constantly churning out the bullshit that justified its existence.
It was insane. It was a perversion of physics to make giant robots practical and I didn't know if I should be thrilled or insulted. Just like the insanity of my last giant robot, with fold-carbon producing annihilation reactions outside the physical universe and then using them to run a jet turbine. It would seem any giant robot would need to do horrible things to physics in order to merely exist, except the second giant robot power I had gotten today, complete with a second giant robot, had none of that. It was a testament to conventional physics, or as far as conventional physics could be pushed with a fifty-foot-tall fusion-powered walking war machine.
That's what probably got me most about these. They were war machines. Not tinker tech, but military. Definitely military. They were also both called 'mobile suits' despite the completely different technical bases. The first, the LM111E02 Gun-EZ, at least had the insane science behind it that would justify giant military robots, but the Leo had no reason to be a robot other than the fact that giant robots were awesome.
That was definitely the worst part of this. I had just gotten TWO giant robots, the first of which came with a hangar that had the insane power to deploy the mobile suit to me from within my sealed workshop, and I couldn't do anything with them. I couldn't geek out over now having three giant robots, or the fact that I was one robot conversion of my F-18 from being able to play 2 on 2 giant robot basketball. But no, I couldn't even enjoy the prospect. I couldn't waste time looking forward to it, or consider the incredible applications of a strike force of Endbringer-sized mechs, all because I was neck-deep in an ABB plot to either kill me or bring down the city trying.
To that end I reviewed the reports from my drones and duplicates. The drones I had deployed weren't the ones that had mildly irritated Oni Lee during my last confrontation. Those had still been standard combat drones, the design that came with the omni-tool, the same model I had indistinct memories of using in another life of space combat. They were marvelously designed, functional, simple, effective, and rapidly deployable.
But I wasn't the same person. Standard drones with mild upgrades in performance weren't enough anymore, not with the mountains of knowledge I'd acquired. The already basic design had been simplified, improving performance at the same time. Miniaturization of features allowed more power and features. Hybridization to combine disparate advanced designs, improving armament, shielding, and speed. An experimental use of Arcane Craft to allow greater channeling of the forces of a mass effect field. And finally, integration into the Technosorcery enhancements of my omni-tool.
When I deployed the drones they formed in their standard shape, a glowing transparent carbide shell suspended in a mass field. The inherent design work and engravings that I couldn't avoid were now supplemented by runic arrays. Runes of middling power compared to my personal work, but still enough to grant additional effects, particularly when combined with Elven Enchantment.
The drones were magic. They were constructs beyond pure technology, sitting somewhere between science and sorcery. Pushed further by the enhancement from Lack of Materials and the craftsmanship of a demigod, no matter how indirect, and they were capable of something extraordinary.
They started as carbide spheres, little orbs of potential. Then they followed the natural progression for an object of their shape. They opened. They hatched.
The drones that sped off after the advance teams of ABB conscripts weren't the bobbing balls of crystal I had used to this point. The plates had opened, split, aligned, and taken on a new shape. Gleaming control surfaces and sharp protrusions all beautifully complimented the advanced design. What streaked out into the city while I devoted my attention to the attack on the plaza wasn't an engineering drone. It was a crystal beast of magic and machine ready to strike down this madness.
My own flyby had been so fast I had barely been noticed before I was off to my next target. The drones, extraordinary as they were, did not have that level of efficiency in terms of their personal arsenal. But what weapons they did have were masterfully designed, supplemented by runes, enhanced by elven magic, and protected by kinetic barriers. Across the reach of Downtown hawk-like constructs of glowing crystal fell on teams of already frightened conscripts like a judgement from the sky.
Whatever sequence of events and precise timing March had used to coordinate her attacks obviously didn't account for the arrival of a near-mythical beast on a suicidal trajectory into the heart of her attack squads. It would have been a tremendously deadly assault if not for the water runes.
The runes printed on the drones weren't worth a damn, but they would manage some effects. Water was the least aggressive of the elements, and could be used to create a mitigating effect. Meaning weapons that would have shattered bones, cooked internal organs, or incinerated half a human body were… not lethal. It wasn't the miracle work with a dedicated inscription tool that bedecked my own non-lethal ordinance, but the drones were leaving bruises and burns where there would otherwise be broken bodies.
The water runes also had a mild aesthetic effect that meshed with the electrical weaponry of the drones, creating a dark cloud effect within the glowing core and trailing behind them as they flew.
The drone strikes were brutal, but I had accepted that as regrettably necessary. Without some noteworthy injury I doubted that any refusals to fight would be entertained. In fact, most of the conscripts were taking their first scrape as an excuse to collapse on the ground in obvious and highly advertised agony. The few times the ABB minders attempted to rally the conscripts the drones turned on them and they were put down far less gently.
As I wheeled towards my next target the forge made another connection, this time to a small mote from the Clothing constellation called Talented: Tailoring. It did what you would expect it would do, granting talent for tailoring. Significant talent, and in all kinds of tailoring and all related fields. That was the real distinction of this power. In addition to being able to produce high-tier work from low-rate materials, more than I already could, it provided skill and insight to everything that could be considered part of the tailoring field.
That extended much further than expected. The core skills were covered, of course, but also the production and maintenance of the tools of the craft. Planning and organizing work, including time management and scheduling. Every aspect of running a tailoring business also fell under the umbrella of this power. Stock organization, management of employees, securing business permits, managing finances, taxes, and bookkeeping. If it was even remotely related to being a tailor it was covered by this power. If I had gotten it yesterday I could have set up Garment's shop in my sleep. As it stood I would probably end up helping her manage a lot more details of that location than I had expected.
Maybe I could train Survey up to cover for me. There was remotest of chances that Garment would go for that.
I continued my flight as I checked on my duplicates. My trace of Bakuda had led to an old factory, one that was technically refurbished to justify the traffic it no doubt received, but with no official paperwork on file. Another gap in the local bureaucracy that served to make life so easy for the city's supervillains.
My duplicate had barely begun his approach when the fireworks started. Given the near immediate departure and relatively low travel time it was probable that both Bakuda and March were still on site when he arrived. That would probably explain why he was greeted by a series of preemptive airburst detonations. Then came the missiles, picked out of the air like mosquitos into a bug zapper. Attempts to overwhelm the point defense weren't showing success, so tactics shifted to area denial.
By that I meant that Bakuda, March, or whoever was in charge of the ordnance began purposely detonating some of the nastier bombs around the building. Two time stop bombs sprung up around likely avenues of attack, heavily corrosive and electrified gas was swirling around the ground, there were four persistent tornados on one side, and walls of crystal were quickly sealing other entrances.
Given the level of resistance I think the lab could be counted as a high value target, particularly when compared to the other location. The second duplicate was just arriving at the other confirmed ABB location, one of the city's older housing blocks. It was deep in ABB territory, practically central to their zone of control. Deep enough that, at a guess, you could pick a random building in the neighborhood and it would probably have some connection to the ABB.
Whatever its affiliation it was clearly less well defended than Bakuda's location. The sight of an approaching motoroid flanked by crystalline magitech constructs caused a pair of men in ABB colors to draw pistols. They then looked at their pistols, then at the weight of power bearing down on them. One fished out a cellphone, only to find no bars thanks to the basic jamming field, at which point they both seemed to freeze up in indecision.
The decision was taken out of their hands as my duplicate simply ploughed through the door at full thrust. Between his wake, the trailing drones, and their kinetic fields the guards were sent flying. The screech of a metal guitar riff that accompanied the act probably didn't help either. While sensors confirmed they were without serious injury they seemed to decide to follow the precedent set by the conscripts and lay unmoving in the rubble rather than chase after the magical robot swarm with anything but a pair of 9mm pistols.
"Inside the second location. Beginning search and information gathering." The communication was accompanied by images and scanner readings of the site.
The first duplicate responded to the second's message. "Primary location still resisting. I think I can refer to this as 'scorched earth defense'. Going to take a while to punch through."
"Acknowledged." I replied. "I've disabled the spearhead force that was pushing into Downtown, but attacks in the Docks have begun. I'm going to try to hit the ones pushing close to residential areas." It would leave the strikes designed to provoke gang responses un-countered, but would minimize the initial civilian damage. It might technically be better to accept higher civilian casualties if it kept the other parahuman gangs from escalating, but I wasn't playing politics. I was fine leaving that particular problem to the Protectorate.
The actual scale of the assault hit me as sensor readings and media analysis flooded in. I had broken the spearhead, but the groups I had hit didn't make up ten percent of the forces deployed, and the rest of them had managed their coordinated attacks.
It was bad. Arson strikes setting more buildings ablaze. A series of fissures rendering key roads impassable. A building slowly being consumed and converted into crystal while people fled through exits that hadn't been sealed off yet.
I decided to revise my plans. Residential areas would be the priority, but if March was going to make this a free-for-all then she was going to see how well I could answer. I had speed. I had numbers. And I had a motoroid full of weapons to unleash. And I had no reason to hold back. It was time to let people know what I could do.
This was going to be an event.
The ABB had deployed an army in support of their scheme. I had myself, two duplicates, three motoroids, Fleet, Survey, my still developing nanobot A.I., as many drones as could be produced, and Garment. This is normally where someone would make some glib comment about it being an even fight, or how they felt sorry for the other guys. I wasn't going to do that, because despite all the advantages I had, this was hard.
No specific fight was a challenge. The very idea was laughable. Even getting away from the softer teams sent out to act as speedbumps and into forces designed for specific purposes didn't make any meaningful difference. Frankly, whether the person in question was a hardened gang member or a conscript who had never held a weapon in their life made no difference to me.
It did make a difference to everyone else.
That was the core of March's plan. The forces she deployed were dispersed and precisely placed. They had specific instructions, tasks and armaments. Some I was able to deal with decisively through a clean strike from the air and the deployment of my new non-lethal weaponry. Those were encounters I treasured. They were neat, clean, and, providing I could get to the site in time, mostly bloodless. They were also becoming increasingly rare.
The six teams I had taken out with my drones were on a simple mission to cause enough devastation that they would provoke and occupy a Protectorate response. There was probably a cynical edge to that concerning the safety of people in the city's downtown would be prioritized over attacks in the Docks. Said attacks in the Docks and surrounding areas were a lot more complicated than that.
Complicated wasn't nearly enough to stop me. I had most of the city's plans memorized and was armed well beyond what the situation could warrant. I was in a suit of immensely advanced armor capable of high-speed flight and maneuverability.
I was also trying to fight half a city. Without the assistance of Survey and Fleet I would probably have gone insane just from the effort of planning the response.
The Vehicles constellation missed a connection as I moved like lightning, sparing as little time as possible on each encounter. I fell upon an exposed group of conscripts sneaking through an alley, a single web missile taking them out of the equation. Meanwhile a pair of my drones shredded the side of a van carrying a half squad as it sped from the site of a drive by bombing. The vehicle rolled in the combined gravity fields of the drones, finding itself upside down and pinned between two other cars.
I angled my motoroid and dove through the side of a building where a squad had set up gunning positions to strike at one of the major avenues into the docks. Specifically, one that would be a likely path for the National Guard forces that were standing by. The surprised faces of the conscripted force barely had time to register before I ploughed out through the other wall, leaving a knockout gas shell behind me.
I turned into a steep climb as my other drones split across the area in a desperate attempt to expand my scanning range. It was information I both desperately needed and didn't want to see.
When March had mentioned dominos, I assumed it was some kind of metaphor, not a reference to the compounding nature of the attacks. Different bombs hitting different areas with interactions that made both of them worse, then compounded with the next wave of strikes. The idea that I could be in any way selective in how I managed this mess was hubris.
I quickly checked with my duplicates and found their missions weren't much easier. Bakuda's full arsenal combined with what I assumed to be March's timing was turning the attack on her lab into an exercise in frustration. My first duplicate had needed to pull back from half a dozen spatial or temporal explosions and was using modified drones and long ranged weapons to basically overwhelm the defenders. Live hacking of Bakuda's tracking rockets had caused a shift to timed mortars that were proving to be more dangerous, particularly once they shifted to explosives that would still trigger under laser fire.
My second duplicate was having his own issues. The housing block was both built like a labyrinth and essentially the tip of a criminal iceberg. I'm not sure if it had sat on top of an old fallout shelter or if the gang had illegally expanded it somehow, but there was easily three times as much space below ground as above, all clogged with traps, bombs, conscripts, and some kind of technology for blocking scanning. Currently the second duplicate was tearing apart one of the emitters while his own drones prowled through the complex.
That left me as the only one who could deal with the nightmare gripping the surface. It was a situation I could only hope to meet with overwhelming force. If this was just a matter of countering untrained gang members I could keep flying around and picking them off. With the chaos posed to spread across the city I couldn't hope to do that. At my current rate by the time the last of the ABB forces was subdued a third the city would be uninhabitable with the rest spilling into calculated chaos.
I needed to go all out and bring the full force of my arsenal to bear. That didn't mean my motoroid, my drones, or my terrifying array of missiles. It meant stepping out of the armor and fighting in person, because that was where the real power was.
I saw my first target as three pillars of flame burst up from a section of street. The men launching the bomb seemed terrified of their own weapons, but pressed forward nonetheless. It was one of dozens of destructive effects spreading across the Docks.
I sent my motoroid into a steep dive on a dead angle for the devastation. On the way down I confirmed my trajectory with Fleet and Survey while handing off primary control of my drones and motoroid to the A.I.s. I also signaled Garment and reached out to Tetra through the Dragon's Pulse.
Rapid communication with four people and not a word spoken between them.
At the bottom of the dive, before the Motoroid began to pull up, the armor opened, releasing me towards the ground. Garment's white cape wrapped around me like a cocoon, twirling and flaring as I launched towards the street. Just before impact Garment flared the cloak, allowing me to flip around and hit the street in a three-point stance.
The asphalt cratered around the force of my landing, spreading out in a perfect spider web of cracks. There was a moment where all the sounds of chaos faded, leaving only the crackle of incendiary bombs and the roar of repulsors as my motoroid and drones pulled away, off to attempt piecemeal attacks on individual groups while I was left to fight against the brewing disaster.
With a wordless exchange through the Dragon's Pulse Tetra tightened her grip, hugging reactive threads close to my body. The red glow of active life fibers began to bleed through the fabric of my costume, casting a radiance that filled the stretching shadows of the late day with harsh crimson light.
I felt the power. The strength of the life fiber energy flowing through me. I could take it now. A drain that would have killed me at an earlier point had, through repeated exposure, allowed me to tolerate its strain without constant medical attention. Then I became a demigod with a nature that could both withstand and empower the fibers. Then I became a greater demigod, born for forge work of such strain and tedium that the life Tetra could absorb through my skin was trivial.
But not the power she granted. That coursed through me like the fires of a sun. It empowered me to new heights, levels where the petty concerns of what should be physically possible became academic.
Behind me one of the more experienced ABB soldiers lifted a grenade launcher in a shaking grip. I felt it through the Dragon Pulse as his body wavered and fear warred with pride and even more fear. I saw it through the fires of creation, the heat from his body as sweat dripped from his temples and his heart beat in his ears. I could even, just faintly, detect him through my Aura, that vague sense of danger, uneasiness like being in a dark room and feeling shivers on the back of your neck.
He raised the launcher and fired. An arm swept towards him. Blue lines of woven dust glowed more brightly than should have been possible. Energetic crystals of nature's wrath manifest sewed into precise circuity with divine and fey taught workmanship, supplemented by runic magic and guided by a master of elemental weaponry.
Light seemed to drain from the street as a type of cold that was anything but natural boiled forth to meet the shot. Rime spread across the street, painting it a deep blue and sending tendrils of ice up to meet anything in its path. The tinker tech grenade was frozen in midair, grasping crystals anchoring it to the icy street. The conscripts panicked as their body temperatures dropped and frost gripped their shoes.
The frigid air, a combination of the power of ice and wind dust, ran headlong into the pillars of fire wrought by Bakuda's bombs. The intense heat barely slowed the advance as frost raced up the columns of fire, consuming them until three miniature mountains of delicate interlaced crystals stood where the seeds of an inferno had once burned.
I looked back at the shivering conscripts and the wide eyes of those who had been trying to flee from them. Then another detonation sounded. I received telemetry from my motoroid, drew upon the overwhelming, intoxicating power of the life fibers, and launched myself in a blur of crimson light.
My trajectory took me to an altercation near Empire territory. It looked like some of the Empire's unpowered troops were getting into a shootout with one of the ABB's strike teams. Evidence of tinker tech explosives were visible in the damage to what I assumed to be some kind of front business.
I landed like a comet, the impact of my boots sending waves of pavement towards the Empire thugs while a sweep of my cape and direction from my aura activated a gravity Dust circuit, sending a wave of purple energy towards the conscripts. The activated gravity Dust swept up the conscripts, their cover, and several nearby parked cars. And it kept moving, carrying them down the street, picking up refuse, loose items, and several more cars before depositing everyone and everything in a jumbled mess, all holding just enough suspension energy to ensure the prison of street items didn't crush anyone trapped within it.
The pattern continued. I moved at ground level dashing in bursts too fast to see, or launching like a ballistic missile, taking on the disasters wrought by March and Bakuda's combined effort as well as occasional targets of opportunity. My drones and motoroid flew overwatch, dropping non-lethal munitions on occasional strike teams or splitting off to cover fronts I couldn't handle.
Meanwhile my duplicates struggled with their own personal challenges. The first had managed to push his way inside through extensive use of drone sacrifices empowered with a wide array of runic elemental patterns until the combination of exotic effects generated by Bakuda's bombs had been defeated. That merely granted him the honor of picking his way through a trapped interior, with many traps detonated in advance to attempt to seal off the area. It was a situation frustrating enough that the first duplicate was preparing a set of alchemy arrays to disassemble the entire building.
The second duplicate was also picking his way through the tarpit of ABB defenses, but without the risk of the devastation to follow Bakuda's death was able to take a much more aggressive stance. The interior was already being remodeled through a combination of transmutation, pyromancy, Dust weaponry, and the knowledge that a man with divine boots had the right to demand a door from any wall he chose. The second location was yielding a trove of information and documentation on the ABB's works. Every physical holding that had slipped through the purge of the electronic assets was stored and referenced here.
That, regrettably, meant the worst aspects of the ABB's operation. Brothels with unwilling workers, drug dealing, extortion rackets, and a plethora of less visceral but still vile enterprises. The duplicate was marching through it all, and was happy to share his plans for the place and the gang in general once we were done.
Working on the surface, I was largely in line with his thinking. Through a combination of Dust, alchemy, pyrokinesis, and just overwhelming power I was countering one deadly active effect after another, but that did nothing for the aftermath. The cost in human life and livelihood was on display. Brockton had recovered from the blackout, but that was the ABB being opportunistic, not deliberately destructive. This was a harsh lesson in how bad things could have been.
There was an additional concern boiling in the back of my brain. Through all of this I hadn't seen a single cape. There was no sign of Lung building steam for a showdown with me or the other powers of the city. No sight of Oni Lee flickering through the chaos with a satchel of bombs. He could have managed half of this damage by himself, but there was no sign of him.
The conscripts were better at provoking a response, as I was beginning to see hints of from other gangs and the direction of the PRT headquarters, but they were nothing when compared to the ABB's teleporting ninja. The assault teams even represented a loss of resources that was meaningless to Oni Lee. Assuming Bakuda and March were pinned down by my first duplicate and it was true that Uber and Leet were out of the city, where did that leave the original members of the ABB?
No answer to that question was likely to be good. It was possible they were staying hidden. I was certainly willing to snipe either cape if they showed their face and the ABB couldn't afford to lose either of them. They could be busy somewhere else in the city, but I was running every sensor and monitoring program I could. If they were doing anything they were managing a masterful job of keeping it quiet. The third possibility was both the most likely and the most concerning. They were being held back in some March-directed trap.
As much as I tried to brush things off March had been right. I wanted to save the city. I might have been willing to split my forces to avoid sacrificing more important goals, but I couldn't let her plan run rampant. Not when I was able to see the pieces come together.
A body of scientific, chemical, engineering, architectural, and biological knowledge combined with reverse engineering powers to rapidly inform me of the effects of Bakuda's bombs and the regrettable consequences if they were allowed to persist and compound with each other. I knew the city's layout and could see the defects in its design. The cascade of destruction wasn't something I would be able to arrange, but it was something I could identify and attempt to stop.
And every time I acted, every use of a new technology or technique gave March another datapoint to play with. The powers I was throwing around were immense and bordered on unstoppable, but knowledge of them, of the effects they could bring to bear, might give that girl the pieces she needed to mount an attack.
I wasn't using everything, I wasn't even using a tenth of what I had, but every bit of information that slipped away weakened my position. Like how I used a combination of pyrokinesis, flame alchemy, and woven burn dust to flash fry a silicon-based bio-slime that had been trying to eat the street as the Forge failed to connect to the Toolkits constellation. There wasn't much that could stand against something like that, but that knowledge I could do it was a point against me.
I was brought out of that concern by a surprising development. Comm Chatter had activated, but activated in a way I never really expected. Radio communication? Sure. Phone calls? Of course. Land lines? Ridiculous, but so were a lot of my powers.
Now text messages? That I didn't see coming.
'Fuck. Where r u guys. Getting owned here.'
'Place North of BW. What's going on.'
'Ape Iron is owning us'
'Ape Iron?'
'Autocorrect. Can u get out here?'
'On boss detail. Rabbit's orders.'
'Fuck. No 1 here can fight. How did I get stuck with this?'
"You pissed off the rabbit? That'll get you stuck with the cannon fodder.'
'Fuck. Is she dead? Saw blasts from the lab?'
'Still getting orders. Timing. So probably not. How bad is it?'
'Biblical.'
'Shit."
'Tell me u r heading out?'
'No idea. Nobody knows where this is going.'
'Fuck'
'Try to stay safe.'
'…'
'You there?'
'…'
'Man?"
'…'
'Shit.'
While the end of the exchange seemed obvious, it happened to coincide with the deployment of a concentrated burst of lighting Dust and micro-EMP weapons on one of the more technologically equipped teams, effectively reducing their exposed electronics to sparking wrecks. And, since these people were versed in Bakuda's tech, resulted in them immediately throwing down all of their explosives and running for their lives.
I opened a link to my duplicates. "You get that?"
"It's a lead on Lung's location. You're going, aren't you?" The first replied.
"Best chance to hit them before they're completely ready for us." I responded, relaying commands to Fleet and Survey. "I'm going to hit hard and with every defense I can manage."
"Almost closed into the main lab. Also got into the computer system. They're trying to wipe it, and detonate failsafes in the facility. There's a chance they slipped out somehow, maybe more stealth tech. I can't leave this. There's data on the dead man switch that hasn't been deleted and I can still secure it."
"I'm into their records. The ABB have a stake in a container yard near the north ferry stop. That's probably what they were talking about. I'm rooting out the last of the information, but if I'm gone this place will be torched." There was a pause from the second duplicate. "And I've found Chen. It's going to take some work, even to get him moved."
I frowned at that. Forces spread thin at a critical moment. I couldn't call them back, but I couldn't let this slip. "We can't risk March putting a plan in place. I need to hit them before they're ready. This is probably Lung and might be Oni Lee as well. You know what it means if we can take them out." There was a grudging agreement through the link. "I'll maintain distance and full sensors. Hit with drones and ranged attacks. No risks. You two use your discretion at those sites. Do what you can. I'll do the same."
Agreement echoed through the link and I turned towards the north side of the city, my motoroid and drones falling in behind me. I had a target, and for once I didn't need to hold back. With the sun sinking in the sky I assembled the full force of my power and directed it towards the head of the ABB.
It was time to end this.
********
EMERGENCY NEWS ALERT
A major cape conflict has broken out in central Brockton Bay. All citizens advised to avoid areas of risk and remain indoors.
Primary instigators of the conflict are believed to be forces of the ABB, predominantly unpowered individuals armed with an expansive array of tinker tech explosives. While the majority of these forces appear to be coerced civilians it is advised that they be treated as extremely dangerous and avoided at all cost. There has as of yet been no confirmed sightings of ABB parahuman forces.
Additional major alterations have been observed around a facility located at 23 North Lye Street. Extensive uses of exotic munitions have been observed in the area. Due to the highly dangerous nature of these effects, it is recommended that all individuals vacate the region around the facility until the area is deemed safe to access.
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Alert Updates:
The main force engaged with the ABB consists of the parahuman tinker Apeiron, who appears to have deployed a fleet of constructs in opposition to ABB forces. It has not been confirmed if the ABB instigated the conflict or were acting in response to Apeiron, though a recording of a failed negotiation between the groups was streamed during the early stages of the conflict. Deployed constructs consist of a highly maneuverable airborne force, primarily glowing crystalline drones with an avian design.
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Observed abilities include high speed flight, electrical discharges, personal shielding, possible gravity manipulation, and highly-damaging melee attacks. Reports suggest between six and twenty-seven of these drones have been deployed. The drones are accompanied by more heavily armed humanoid models, observed deploying support fire and sustained bombardments on ABB forces. It is believed at least seven of these constructs are active in the field.
(Pictured)
Apeiron has been observed moving through the conflict area. As expected, new capacities have been displayed on this appearance, primarily consisting of elemental and matter manipulation of an unknown mechanism. Additionally, Apeiron has deployed a revised costume with unknown technical capabilities. Analysis is ongoing.
(Pictured)
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Responses have been observed from Empire 88 parahumans, who have begun confrontations with the southernmost forces of the ABB assault. Unconfirmed reports suggest the potential deployment of Parahuman forces from the Archer's Bridge Merchants. Given the potential of a protracted conflict between parahuman elements authorities recommend all citizens seek to withdraw from areas of conflict or immediately seek shelter. A reminder that the state of emergency curfew had been extended from 9:00pm through 5:00am, and may be extended further following the current conflict.
Protectorate forces have been marshaled to move against elements of the expanding conflict. Ward forces remain on standby, and expanded deployment of PRT troops and National Guard forces is being prepared. A force of Protectorate and independent heroes have been assembled, but conditions within the conflict area are impeding deployment of conventional forces and support units. There is no confirmation of the status of any Protectorate heroes who may have been patrolling within the conflict zone upon the beginning of the confrontation.
The Guild hero Dragon has announced that she will be accelerating the deployment of her Cetus response suit, and is expected to deploy it upon arrival to the city, estimated at 40-65 minutes. It is unknown if Dragon will be acting as an independent Guild agent or in support of Protectorate forces.
Updates will continue to be provided as the situation develops.
Jumpchain abilities this chapter:
Anaheim Degree (Gundam UC) 200:
You have the knowledge (and the paper to prove it to people and shove in their faces to establish superiority) of how to build MS. It's trickier than it looks, honestly. Weight balances, servo designs, energy reserves-it's all down to a science and you know how to build the basics. Who knows what you can learn from a bit of hands-on training...
Mass Production Mobile Suit: Gun-EZ (Gundam UC) Free:
The GM. The Jegan. The Zaku II. The Gun-EZ. The Den'an Zon. They are not powerful; they are not the best of the best, for they are designed for the common soldier. Everyone starts out piloting one of these, just gotta work your way up. (Or like the higher-up on the faction ladders, just buy a better one.)
60mm Vulcans: These are usually head-mounted in pairs (and this comes in a pair), but don't expect to win anything with these- they're usually used against missiles, small vehicles and fragile equipment like sensors. They can't even penetrate the armor of a Zaku II.
Beam Saber: The standard melee weapon even during the OYW, these laser swords can slice through MS armor pretty well- they are swords, though, and getting close to an MS may be the toughest thing you'll do here. You may also choose instead a pair of Heat weaponry like knives or an axe or a Heat Saber.
Hangar (Gundam UC) Free:
This is an addition to the warehouse designed specifically for housing the MS and any vehicles you bought from this Jump, nothing more, nothing less. It does not have space effectively for anything else. You may summon a Mobile Suit remotely, but it will take a minute to launch, a few minutes to travel and you will still have to clamber inside once it lands. The land battleship and cruiser will take much longer, at least 3x as long, probably more, and you cannot call and dismiss them at will- it takes time to reset. 1 day (24 hours) for a Mobile Suit or small vehicle and 3 days (72 hours) for any form of ship
Exotic Compatibility (Gundam: After Colony) 400:
You have a way of working with quirky and strange materials-in your hands and machinery, it assumes the forging and abilities of plain Iron until you begin building with it. You also can integrate exotic materials into your constructions a lot easier, and if you don't know what a material is or what it can do, you're very good at researching applications and properties of said materials. This research could also go into things such as improving production numbers and similar.
Leo (Gundam: After Colony) Free:
This is an adorable, lovable little scrapper we call the Leo, and it's actually fairly decent for a Mook- it's got armor enough to survive a few shots from its own gun, it's able to be modified with little trouble (adding a space-movement backpack or shoulder cannons) and it doesn't have restricted hands. Still, it's just a Mook, but can you resist the needy stare of this cutie?
Talented: Tailoring (Inukami) 100:
You are an expert at any non-combat related skill. Cooking? You can make a five star meal with low rate ingredients
