Brockton's Celestial Forge (Worm/Jumpchain)
- Thread starter LordRoustabout
- Start date
Huh, fascinating story, and I really like the concept of him getting more powers the more you write. It is an excellent balancing tool.
I do wish that some newer Jumps were included, as there have been several new potential sources for Crafting abilities that could fit in well with everything shown, but really, even with the Celestial Forge being four years old, it still provides an amazing amount of versatility, as the chapters you've put forward so far show.
Looking forward to seeing where this goes from here.
I do wish that some newer Jumps were included, as there have been several new potential sources for Crafting abilities that could fit in well with everything shown, but really, even with the Celestial Forge being four years old, it still provides an amazing amount of versatility, as the chapters you've put forward so far show.
Looking forward to seeing where this goes from here.
I found and blew through this story on ao3 today before re-finding it here. So I feel the need to restate one of my comments...
I'm pretty sure this is talking about the primarchs... has he failed to identify The Emperor's Fabulous Fucking Hawk-boy? Or is it just one of the imperial saints?
I'm pretty sure this is talking about the primarchs... has he failed to identify The Emperor's Fabulous Fucking Hawk-boy? Or is it just one of the imperial saints?
The author has a list of crafting perks and randomly rolls for them when he has enough points saved up.
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Anything parahuman related is treated as magic by Jumpchain abilities. Because of that Case 53s and monstrous capes fall under the 'mystical curse' category in the power description, so the "probably beyond your nanites" quote applies. That said, with enough work or knowledge from the Magitech constellation it would be possible to make incremental progress towards a cure.
I just caught your comment on Ao3. You got it exactly right. The "beautifully depicted woman with angel wings and golden armor" was Sanguinius, aka. the most beautiful of the primarchs. Imperial artists can go a little overboard with that aspect, so without context it can be an easy mistake to make, especially when you consider how he'd be depicted next to someone like Leman Russ.
- Location
- Christchurch, New Zealand
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Liking this story! Garment is best grill for sure.
Joe's passenger seems to have an incredibly skewed view of events. I'm looking forward to finding out more about what's going on there.
Either it's that it's looking at things from a fundamentally non-human perspective, or it's someone who has an extremely idealised and cliff notes view of what happened in Worm.
The importance it places upon Taylor but not Amy for example. Khepri would not exist without Amy jailbreaking Taylor's powers. And victory over Zion using phycological attacks should be easy with metaknowledge.
Also, a lot of people seem to be offended by someone who should be super-smart making badly thought out decisions. I think there's a big difference between book smarts and street smarts. Or, in other words Intelligence vs Wisdom.
As a helpdesk grunt myself I can confidently say some of the most dumb things I've heard of are done by people with Dr. in front of their name.
"Critical medical software down for everyone!" = I can't figure out how to turn on a computer monitor.
Joe's passenger seems to have an incredibly skewed view of events. I'm looking forward to finding out more about what's going on there.
Either it's that it's looking at things from a fundamentally non-human perspective, or it's someone who has an extremely idealised and cliff notes view of what happened in Worm.
The importance it places upon Taylor but not Amy for example. Khepri would not exist without Amy jailbreaking Taylor's powers. And victory over Zion using phycological attacks should be easy with metaknowledge.
Also, a lot of people seem to be offended by someone who should be super-smart making badly thought out decisions. I think there's a big difference between book smarts and street smarts. Or, in other words Intelligence vs Wisdom.
As a helpdesk grunt myself I can confidently say some of the most dumb things I've heard of are done by people with Dr. in front of their name.
"Critical medical software down for everyone!" = I can't figure out how to turn on a computer monitor.
- Location
- United States
Honestly while I understand it's easy to feel frustrated at what looked like contrived conflict, I've seen a lot of criticism which seems to assume that if people don't take the absolutely optimum route as scene from a reader's birds eye perspective, while they're sitting at a computer in a comfortable and relaxed setting, that the character is stupid. It shows up in all kinds of fics.
It's easy as a reader to forget that the characters are in a situation, with blood pumping in their ears, tons of sensory stimuli, stress, their entire system firing on all cylinders, or even in peaceful settings they still don't have a magical strategy guide to applying their talents and abilities optimally.
The human factor is very real and very viable, and it's kinda funny how as readers we seem to feel it shatters our suspension of disbelief. I mean, I've almost microwaved bowels of cereal more than once before I've realized what I was doing. I think I can forgive the guy surrounded by super-tech bombs and an urban warzone for not 360 no-scoping the entire situation.
It's easy as a reader to forget that the characters are in a situation, with blood pumping in their ears, tons of sensory stimuli, stress, their entire system firing on all cylinders, or even in peaceful settings they still don't have a magical strategy guide to applying their talents and abilities optimally.
The human factor is very real and very viable, and it's kinda funny how as readers we seem to feel it shatters our suspension of disbelief. I mean, I've almost microwaved bowels of cereal more than once before I've realized what I was doing. I think I can forgive the guy surrounded by super-tech bombs and an urban warzone for not 360 no-scoping the entire situation.
- Location
- Internet, The
Mostly fun story. A bit miffed whenever weird and seemingly purposeless coincidence are used (e.g. unknowingly having tried to date Parian), but it was generally a pleasant read.
A bit surprised at the PRT taking everything about what he said seriously except the one thing he actually warned them about (Bakuda being seriously dangerous and about to start a citywide bombing spree).
A bit surprised at the PRT taking everything about what he said seriously except the one thing he actually warned them about (Bakuda being seriously dangerous and about to start a citywide bombing spree).
mourning
dessert
new guy's work
"van's shocks", assuming that "shocks" is short for "shock absorbers"
those
same vein as
17 Confrontation
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
17 Confrontation
I don't think I've ever moved as quickly as I did on my way out of Dr. Campbell's office. I'm not sure how much the life fiber exposure had enhanced my body, but I was treating stairs as gentle suggestions rather than actual things necessary to move between floors. If the stairwell had an open interior I seriously think I would have tried dropping down the center of it and trusting my healing and reinforcement to deal with any damage. All I wanted was to get out of this building and desperately try to do SOMETHING.
I felt, well I felt a lot of things right now. There was a certain emotional turmoil that came with even normal therapy sessions. A tour through the absolute worst day of my life was significantly more than a normal therapy session. If the city hadn't decided to descend into chaos I would probably have spent a good chunk of the night venting frustration on a punching bag at the gym then trying to catch up on something like a normal sleep schedule. Instead I was off rushing into a fight I was decidedly not ready for.
I was taking entire flights of stairs in a single bound when I felt the Celestial Forge connect to another mote. I was split between being annoyed at the interruption and being grateful for something else to think about than the impending doom of the city. It was actually only the second mote I had connected to from the Crafting constellation. The last one was Smithing, which gave me expert level ability in creating weapons and armor. This mote also gave the ability to make weapons, but weapons of a much more serious nature.
I thought I was good at making blades. I could make legendarily forged swords. I could make monomolecular edged weapons. I could make blades infused with runic magic. I could even forge melee weapons out of pure energon, though that was still theoretical and would require a bit of setup. I thought I had a handle on this melee weapon thing. With one this power I suddenly realized how ignorant that line of thinking was.
The power was called High-Frequency Manufacturer. Like many of my crafting powers I'm not sure what it enabled was physically possible before I got the ability to do it. Right now it seemed so blindingly obvious and so insanely effective I was embarrassed for not having realized it sooner. By applying an extreme frequency alternating current to a weapon I could then cause it to vibrate at levels where the edge would destabilize molecular bonds. Essentially I could turn anything with an edge into a weapon that could cut through anything.
Except force fields, because they seemed specifically designed to ruin my shit.
It was so easy to set up. Of course, that was easy by the standards of my current skill set and would probably have been a serious challenge if I was coming into this blind, but that wasn't really the point. This technology was actually seriously better than monomolecular blades. All that stuff about not being able to handle dense or thick material didn't apply to HF weapons. In fact, by stressing the charge frequency you could extend the destabilization area induced by the vibrations and actually split objects that were thicker than the length of your weapon. With a good enough weapon and enough power I could literally cut a building in half.
It was an incredibly powerful ability and would do absolutely nothing to help with the chaos currently being unleashed on Brockton Bay. I was not ready to counter this nightmare. The best I could hope would be to mitigate some of the damage, but that was a daunting prospect. This wasn't like a normal villain attack. Once a bombing happened the perpetrator didn't just stick around and wait for someone to show up. Just rushing to bomb sites wouldn't help me track down the ABB. I needed to stop Bakuda, but Lord knows where she was. Probably in a command center coordinating all of this mess.
At the moment my only serious option was to try to stop Lung from escaping. That meant getting to the Rig and engaging what would probably be a seriously boosted dragon-man alongside a team of heroes that would not be well disposed towards me. It was a shit plan, and depending on how powered up Lung was when I arrived it could easily turn into a disaster. Unfortunately at the moment it was my only option.
I burst out of the office onto the darkened streets of Brockton Bay. The late twilight sky was a deep purple rapidly fading to black. The city was not actually an inferno like I had feared, but from the looks of things we were under a complete blackout and I could still hear the occasional explosion. Not a constant barrage, but there really isn't an appropriate amount of your city to be blowing up at any given time.
Fortunately due to the dark area and lack of power I wouldn't have to worry about security cameras. I could find the nearest door, access my workshop, then hopefully get to the Rig before Lung either escaped or powered up to a point where no one would be able to stop him. That was when I heard my phone ring.
My work phone.
I pulled it out of my jacket as I kept moving towards my bike. A quick glance at the display showed Tattletale's number.
"What?" I barked as I held the phone to my ear and I kept moving.
There was heavy breathing on the line and serious background noise, like a crowd of people in chaos. "Hey." Tattletale's voice had a desperate edge to it. "You know that deal we set up? I'm going to have to call it in now."
"What? What's going on?"
"Well, we've run into a little..." There was the sound of a blast and what could have been raining debris. "Fuck it, there's no time to be cute. We're pinned down by the ABB. They jumped us when we were checking on the take from the bank. If you can't get here soon we're pretty much done for."
It sounded like she was running while trying to keep up with the call. I grimaced at the implications. This was absolutely the worst time for the Undersiders to need a bail out. There was no way a city wide blackout wouldn't have been coordinated with Lung's escape attempt. Any chance of stopping this depended on me acting immediately. With no idea about Bakuda's location Lung was my only option.
But if what Tattletale said was true, and from the desperation in her voice I didn't doubt it, the Undersiders were screwed. They had been at odds with the ABB and were instrumental in Lung's capture. It made sense that the gang would want revenge, I just expected any moves to be attempted after Lung was free.
"What happened?" I didn't like this. I mean I really didn't like this. Going to save them meant letting Lung go free. With Oni Lee having access to Bakuda's arsenal and no real preparation on the part of the Protectorate I didn't give them decent odds of countering the breakout. But if I abandoned the Undersiders that would mean abandoning Taylor. I still didn't know exactly how she was significant to saving the world. My passenger was damping the emotions connected to her, but there was still that conviction about her saving everyone.
I kind of resented my obligation here. I couldn't let her die. Even if that meant letting Lung free and giving up my chance to stop Bakuda's rampage.
"Bakuda's here."
...or maybe not.
"We're at the storage site past the train yard. She set a trap, turned the entire area into a damn arena for us. She's got Uber and Leet along with dozens of conscripted civilians. She put bombs in their heads to keep them loyal."
A sense of dread settled into my stomach. There it was. That was the bad, the serious, worst of the worst cape stuff I'd been anticipating. This wasn't the unfortunate but tolerable level of depravity the public had come to expect from supervillains. This was full on Slaughterhouse shit.
It also perfectly validated my concerns regarding using that storage site. I thanked my thinker power for that. At least I could go full bore without worrying about accidently damaging Garment's wardrobe. Priorities, right?
"I know the place." I signaled for my bike to follow and opened my workshop using the door of a nearby maintenance shed. "I'll get there as soon as I can. What else can you tell me?"
Her breathing was labored and it sounded like there was more than exhaustion behind that. "Bakuda's put a contingency in place, a pacemaker or something like that. Her heart stops and every bomb she's made goes off, both the implanted ones and everything around the city."
I winced at the news. That was a serious level of human shielding. It took lethal force completely off the table. I didn't know if I was actually able to kill someone, but Bakuda's current actions might have driven me to make the attempt.
No, that wasn't right. I did actually know if I would be able to kill someone. I had a lifetime of military training and experience drilled into my brain. I was a hundred percent confident that if it came down to it I would be able to take the shot, and that kind of terrified me. I might regret it and moralize over it later, but I had personal experience that would let me follow through. No matter how vague or indistinct that experience was it was still there and couldn't be denied. Effectively I was a trained, blooded soldier. It was chilling in terms of what it meant for my mind, but undoubtably an asset for going into this situation.
I guess that's one more quarter for the jar.
I put the phone on speaker and started stripping out of my clothes and changing into my new costume.
"The ABB is too coordinated. They have someone guiding things from behind the scenes. New cape, probably a thinker. I can't get a reading on them."
I put aside the concerns over my mental state and focused on the new aspects of this crisis while doing my absolute best to set a speed record for changing clothes. I decided then and there, once I get a shred of cybertonium I'm building a subspace storage pocket for all my equipment. I'm not getting caught in this nonsense again.
Tattletale continued as I struggled to get my armor pieces attached. "Bakuda's not doing random strikes. This is insanely well coordinated. Everything has been precisely timed. The blackout isn't just in the city. She's managed to knock out the entire region."
That was a nightmare, both in terms of the effects and what it would take to coordinate. Taking out a power station or relay wouldn't do it. You'd either need a large scale EMP, which had obviously not been used, or need to trigger a specific overload cascade in the power network. Possible, but insanely complicated.
"What's your situation? How long can you hold out?"
I pulled on my cowl and visor and started attaching my pouches of reagents. Fortunately I had them prepped, unfortunately it was a general loadout and not one specialized for Bakuda. In fact, I was terribly unprepared for this situation on almost every level. I was at a point of every second counting as I scrambled for what little equipment I had available. My scanner was pocketed, I had my micromanipulators and built in omni-tool, but precious little else was field-ready. I started the transfer of a truncated copy of Survey to my Omni-tool and an update of Fleet's motoroid software. The omni-tool was already designed to support virtual intelligences, so there would be no difficulty given the current level of Survey's development. With that set I quickly dug into the rest of the equipment that came with my combat engineer power.
"Our situation is fucked." She replied bitterly. "Bitch was taken out before we got here and they split us up. I think Khepri's still holding out but I'm pretty sure she got Grue and Regent. I don't know how long we can manage. They're basically toying with us right now."
I grabbed my heavy pistol and started rummaging through the rest of the equipment. The medi gel was irrelevant next to the rest of my healing powers, plus it was technically a product of biological engineering and I didn't want to be associated with that. I had some grenades, but they were less powerful than my alchemy and without using my armor I didn't have a convenient way of managing them or the spare time to deal with that problem. In a pile of weapon parts and mods where something caught my eye. It wasn't designed for use with a pistol, but I could make it work, even in the field. With the upgrades I could manage it would bring enough force to bear in case things went to hell.
I'd gotten what I could and couldn't spare any more time. I just needed to get on the road.
"I've thrown them off, so I should be safe for the moment, but I have no idea how long that will..."
There was the sound of an explosion followed by the crumbling of collapsing masonry. Tattletale's voice went quiet. Probably from moving the phone away from her head. There was a faint reply to her with a robotic tinge to it. The Vehicles constellation passed by without a connection as there was a thump and the sound of the phone hitting the ground.
I locked away the last of my gear and sealed the workshop door. There was just enough time for the A.I.s to finish transferring and updating before the link to the computational core was severed. With a quick command my bike shifted from its street mode to the monstrosity of armor and aerodynamics that signified my cape vehicle.
"And who is this?" The voice that came from the phone was a robotic monotone, but clearly a processed human voice rather than a synthesizer. My passenger's reaction confirmed who it belonged to.
"Bakuda, I presume?" I mounted my bike and keyed in the location with Survey while shifting full control to Fleet. I needed to focus on this call. I was probably the worst person to try to play social dynamics against a supervillain, and that was on my best day. After a draining therapy session this was the last thing I was ready for. Still, any time she spent talking to me was time she wasn't spending hunting the Undersiders. "I understand you've been giving my clients a hard time."
My bike tore out of the parking lot, though with the engine running as quietly as possible. With the Magitek drive most of the engine noise was simulated to avoid attracting attention when opperating in civilian mode. In times like this the bike counted as a ninja motorcycle in more ways than one.
"Ah," The robotic voice replied. "So the mouthy girl decided to call her little friend. What, did she want you to ride to the rescue?"
Yes, that was literally what I was doing. Well, that and stalling Bakuda and trying to manage last minute alterations to my gear. My motoroid was completely unarmed, a condition I was doing my best to rectify. Normally attempting something like that would have been a joke while the bike was working itself to top speed while swerving around the traffic and stopped cars of a city in the grips of a blackout. Luckily I had my Black Thumb power which allowed me to work on vehicles while they were operating. Insane? Most definitely, but that didn't change the fact that I could manage it as well as if the bike was sitting in the center of my workbench.
"There were requests of that nature. I don't suppose I could convince you to let them off with a maiming? Good customers are so hard to find."
An electronic laugh echoed through the phone. "No, I'm afraid we're taking this all the way." There was a pause as someone spoke from too far away for the phone to pick up. "Fuck you, bitch." Another pause. "I AM a genius." More response that I couldn't hear. "You think so? You FUCKING THINK SO?"
Tattletale, what the hell are you doing? I was splitting my focus three ways while also dealing with serious emotional aftermath and even I could tell this was a terrible idea. And as someone with an omni-tool up to the elbow in and active engine while making micro adjustments with the other hand and trying not to fall off a swerving high-speed motorcycle my threshold for a terrible idea really meant something.
"Bakuda?" I tried to get the bomb tinker back on the phone as I made alterations to the front shocks of the motoroid.
There was no response as I heard her rant in a metallic voice. Phrases like "Twelve steps ahead", "Certified Genius", "Greatest Tinker", and "True Fear" were only audible because of the volume at which the bomb tinker must have been screaming them. Tattletale sure had a talent for making people murderously angry. Hell, I was her ally and every time we interacted I'd ended up wanting to throttle her at least once.
Well, the exchange lasted longer than I thought it would, certainly longer than I would have been able to keep her on the line. I was speeding past the end of the boardwalk before things finally came to a head.
Let me just say, having an A.I. navigate through packed Saturday night traffic at maximum possible speed while you also are trying to rush a last minute upgrade onto a still running machine that you are currently riding is a fundamentally terrifying experience. The fact that it was only a prelude to rushing into a heavily trapped murder arena being run by a infuriated bomb tinker really showed the direction my night was headed.
With one final exchange of snark with mad rantings there was a sound like an old house settling if it had been pumped through a stadium sound system. It was accompanied by a scream that was legitimately bloodcurdling, followed by shallow, raspy breathing.
The robotic voice came over the line once more. "Looks like you'll have to find some new clients. I don't think this one is going to be up for cape work for a long... EVER. Tough shit for you." The phone cut off, leaving my bike weaving through darkened streets towards the train yard.
I took a breath as I tried to process things. There was absolutely nothing I could do. My bike was already moving as fast as possible, certainly faster than I would be able to manage if I was driving. In this area speed wasn't the limiting factor, maneuverability was. The A.I. had to take brutal corners and swerve around the scattered traffic. The roads were less packed than near the boardwalk but I didn't have a straight shot across the city any more. I trusted my A.I.s to manage the route and driving and distracted myself with my pistol.
She wasn't dead. Not yet, at least. Judging by the breathing and Bakuda's taunt she probably just did something unspeakably horrible to her. That was okay. Well, it wasn't okay, but it's not dead. I can't fix dead. Anything else I can probably manage. I tried to stop thinking about it as I shifted to firearm modification at over a hundred miles per hour.
The mod was easy enough to adapt with my current skills, and I could even manage some upgrades. As it was part of my personal equipment I was able to work blindingly fast. The end result was brutal overkill, but I had a feeling I would need a significant display of strength if I was going to get through this.
Survey sent an alert to my omni-tool. I had a message. A message from Survey. To Survey. It took me longer than it should have to figure out what was happening.
I activated the video link and an image of Garment appeared on my display. It was taken from the webcam of her laptop and showed her in the darkened apartment lit only by the computer screen. She made a concerned gesture.
"I'm fine. Garment, I have to go help some people."
She made a gesture at herself, then to me. Well, to the screen of the laptop, which my omni-tool confirmed had my image on it.
"There's no time. My..." I struggled to find the right word to use. Friends? Clients? Acquaintances? Obligations? "Some people I know are going to get hurt, may already be hurt. If I don't get to them immediately they might not make it."
She made a distressed gesture, and frankly I agreed with her. I would have been nervous enough going into this situation with every resource at my disposal. This wasn't the kind of battle you wanted to face halfcocked. Still, you fight with the army you have, not the army you want. The timing for this was just about as bad as it could possibly have been.
Actually, was that the work of their new cape, or was that overly paranoid? I mean, assuming Tattletale was right that meant they had unknown thinker support, which could be a God damn nightmare. And I was rushing right into it.
"Garment, I'll be alright." I didn't have full confidence in my words, but I pressed on. "You stay safe. I'll be back as soon as I can."
We were approaching the storage facility. With how time critical things were I couldn't afford to scout the place out and go in quiet. I needed to enter heavy and make the biggest impact I could. Survey helpfully offered some suggestions based on the layout from satellite imagery. I input some data based on parameters that were requested by the program, mainly outlines of my capabilities and the needs of the situation. Survey updated the proposal in response.
Well, it was certainly dynamic. I transferred it to Fleet and readied my reagents.
The storage facility was impossible to miss. With the rest of the city in pitch darkness it was brightly lit by what looked like a series of flares somehow suspended in the air above the site. They cast the entire area in an unnatural white glow. There was a low cinderblock wall around the facility and some cars parked by the main entrance with a few members of the ABB milling around them. The occasional rumble could be heard from inside the facility.
The main entrance was guarded and possibly trapped. Fortunately I had another option. My bike sped towards the outer wall as I checked my omni-tool's sensors to make sure there were no hidden surprises on my chosen route. With the all clear I readied a combination of two drams of ethanol with a measure of ash. This was the first time I had mixed dark alchemy. The back of a speeding bike wasn't the best place for something like that, but the stability of my micromanipulator gloves made the action trivial.
The mixture glowed as I threw it down, but with a somehow harsher light than what was produced by my restorative formulas. The flickering mass flew towards the wall and shone brightly. Then the wall exploded.
I was ready for the blast and debris. My bike's hyper alloy paneling could handle much worse than the light pelting of concrete fragments and my own durability was so excessive that my only serious concern in this fight would be Bakuda's more exotic offerings. Unfortunately I think she leaned heavily towards exotic offerings for most of her work.
I had been partially guided by my sense of the location of my knives. It confirmed all of them were present in the facility, but getting closer I could feel a cluster of the knives I had made for Alec, Brian, and Rachel along with the scepter near the center of the facility. The stiletto was in another part of the site and the baton and knife I made for Taylor were further into the rows of units. I had focused on the cluster on the hope of finding the Undersiders, whether captured or injured.
As the wall exploded my bike roared through the blast before turning into a sideways slide and coming to a perfect stop. I turned towards the cluster of equipment I had sensed and found myself facing a woman in a gas mask flanked by two tough looking men in ABB colors all standing on a set of shipping crates. Around us was a much larger crowd of conscripted henchmen who were not nearly as adept at concealing their shock.
I took in the aftermath of my entrance. The wall was a mess of settling rubble with a few unfortunate conscripts groaning on the ground around it. They were barely visible through the massive cloud of concrete dust around the breach. A sort of contrail had been drawn from the cloud by my passing and wisps and curls of dust flowed off my costume. From the arrangement I'm guessing Bakuda had been mid rant/speech when the blast went off. On top of one of the storage units I could see the figures of Uber and Leet staring down at the commotion.
Well, after an entrance like that I wasn't about to let someone else seize the initiative. I raised a gloved hand and pointed towards Bakuda, and specifically the knives she and her henchmen were holding. Concrete dust swirled through the air as I moved and I let it settle before calling out across the courtyard.
"Those don't belong to you."
The two ABB members looked down at the knives in their hands. The left one was holding my karambit and the right one my parrying dagger. Both were sheathed, as was the bowie knife at Bakuda's hip. The bomb tinker tried to regain her footing, but was clearly put off.
"So that bitch's rescue squad finally showed up." She over gestured during her speech, possibly to make up for the monotone of her voice. I was recognizing the limits of communication that were imposed by full face masks. They were great for concealing identity but horrible for conveying nuance. With her synthesizer stripping the tone from her voice Bakuda seemingly had to emote like a bad actor to get her point across.
I had considered how to handle this. Given my current reputation, coming in with a speech about justice and rescue of innocents was bound to fall flat, especially considering who I was here to rescue. In fact, any indication that I was approaching this from the perspective of a hero would probably just have her jump straight to grenades. Instead I decided to play up the reputation I had earned and go as mercenary as possible.
"I have a contract with the Undersiders. I intend to honor it." I didn't have Bakuda's built in amplification but the new material of my cowl didn't muffle my voice like the bandana had. Plus the courtyard was still in stunned silence.
"Big talk." She made an overdramatic gesture as the Celestial Forge missed a connection to the time constellation. "Too bad you'll never live up to it." She waved a hand across the stunned masses. "Look around. This is what power looks like. Did Tattletale tell you about this? Did she make you think you had a chance? That girl's signed your death warrant. Called you in with your tricks and trinkets?" She pulled out my bowie knife and flashed it to the crowd. "Kid's stuff. What do you have that can stand up to the might of the ABB?"
Some of the braver members of the group were beginning to look emboldened. There were few firearms among the conscripts, but everyone had some kind of armament. Grips were beginning to be adjusted on weapons and the more aggressive members of the group were starting to shift forward. I knew I could handle anything but a mass charge, but without some counter display I could be likely to face just that. I needed to make a point before anyone got it in their head to try their luck.
I triggered the motoroid's transformation. The vehicle folded up around me in a smooth transition between motorcycle and power armor, though still with that five part electronic grinding sound that was oddly familiar despite just being a discharge from the servo-capacitors. A boom echoed around the courtyard as I brought down a foot with a combined seven hundred pounds of weight, cracking the concrete underneath it. The members of the group that had been edging forward were now slinking back from the eight feet of hyper alloy power armor. I seemed to have successfully reaffirmed my intimidation.
Well, except for Uber and Leet who for some reason were gesturing excitedly at each other and rapidly whispering back and forth, but those guys were nuts. They were probably more excited about fighting a robot suit than they were concerned about getting hurt in the conflict. To be honest as long as I was holding myself back I doubted they would pick up worse injuries from a confrontation with me than they typically endured during one of their usual broadcasts.
I activated a speaker added during the last upgrade and my voice boomed across the courtyard, dwarfing Bakuda's electronic cadence.
"I think the question you should be asking is, what do you have that can stand up to me?" This was a pissing match, but I was dragging it out intentionally. From the looks of things they had been bombarding the section of the storage area where I could detect the baton and knife I made for Taylor. That had clearly stopped, and likely would until the showboating had finished. I could feel the items moving through the area. The longer I drew this out the better the chance that Taylor would be able to rally.
"Right," She scoffed in what might have been a dismissive manner without the voice synthesizer turning everything into a monotone. She was clearly trying to remain aloof, but she suddenly seemed defensive as she looked at my armor. "And who the hell are you?"
I was kind of amazed she had given me such a perfect setup. I swung out one of my armor's new weapons and pointed it at her. "My name is Apeiron, and I'm here for the Undersiders."
Once again she was on the back foot. Bakuda had been showboating, and I had stolen her thunder. I knew she could go straight to bombs at any time, but I had the sense she wanted more out of this than a clean victory. They wouldn't have gone through the trouble of all of this nonsense if the only point was to eliminate the Undersiders. This was either personal or some kind of reputation thing. If she was going for a political victory then dropping me with a grenade might pull it off, but if she missed she'd lose more face then she could afford.
That was still something I was very concerned about. I hadn't had time to integrate any ranged weapons into my motoroid. Even if I had I wasn't at the point of trusting my A.I.s to be able to handle point defense against grenades or missiles. In the event that she opened fire my plan was to engage my turbines at maximum power and blindly launch myself out of here. I could figure out my next step when I was safely beyond bombardment range.
My omni-tool had a fairly advanced scanning system and right now Survey was leveraging the technology for all it was worth. It was plotting out life signs, geographical data, and energy signatures, which provided disturbing news on all fronts. There were close to a hundred conscripts here, eighty seven detected and likely more behind the storage units. Looking at the crowd I could plainly see the civilians that had been forced into service. They hadn't even changed their clothes. It was like they grabbed people out of their jobs or off the street and shoved a bat into their hands. I spotted people in office wear, coveralls, high visibility vests, and even school uniforms for some of the younger members. The younger members skewed very young, like middle school age if not less.
This whole situation was horrible, but something like that was just a new level of vile.
A scan of the facility showed that the layout of those units didn't match the satellite records. Clearly a lot of bombs had gone off here. My additional entryway wasn't the only spur-of-the-moment renovation that had been done. Entire sections of the facility had been torn apart during this encounter. What's more some of the exotic effects were still active. A large crystal formation was clustered near the north east corner, at least three units were still burning, and there was a spherical region that looked normal but my scanners couldn't penetrate.
The reason for this was clear from a simple sweep for energy sources. In addition to the clear blip from everyone present, even the people who looked like career ABB, I was getting dozens of readings from the facility. This place had been absolutely peppered with explosives, and they were too complex for me to tell what kind of bomb they were before they went off. With my defenses the bombs would either be completely meaningless or utterly devastating with very little middle ground. I needed to do whatever I could to avoid a fight here.
Fortunately there was the possibility I might be able to do just that. Before Bakuda could respond I lowered my arm and swung the weapon back into place, the entire crowd following the movement.
"Give me the Undersiders and we're done here. You can keep the 'trinkets' for all I care, but I'm fulfilling my contract."
That 'keep the trinkets' thing was the only reason I was considering this. I couldn't let Bakuda go free, but if she actually took the knives I'd be able to trace her anywhere she went. Perfectly undetectable, unblockable tracking. I could swoop in properly prepared and take out her, her lab, and any cronies all in one strike.
I just prayed I had managed to keep the hope out of my voice when I made that offer.
Bakuda actually seemed to be considering it. "I can respect a mercenary attitude." She looked up towards Uber and Leet who, to her disgust, were still geeking out over my suit for some reason. "That is, a PROFESSIONAL mercenary attitude. Tell you what, after sorting out that mouthy girl I'm feeling a bit generous. You can have what's left of the rest of them, but I'm keeping the bug girl." She flicked the knife. "Lung has business with her. Let's say she's a welcome home present."
God damn it. So close. I wasn't willing to give up Taylor. If I let her go I might be able to save her, heal whatever they had planned, and bring Bakuda to justice, but savior of the world or not there was no way I was delivering a teenage girl into who knows what tortures.
I also wasn't too comfortable with that 'what's left of them' comment. I just hoped they weren't dead. I mean, I was betting against it. Bakuda seemed to like a captive audience, and probably in the literal sense of the word. I couldn't see her killing them if only because it would ruin the flow of her ranting.
"I can't accept that. Khepri is part of the contract, nonnegotiable." I shifted my stance to be slightly more aggressive but kept my weapons undeployed.
"No fucking way." The bomb tinker's behavior was dismissive and cautious, but not overly aggressive yet. A good sign, but I had no idea how long it would last. "That bitch is ABB enemy number one. Only way you're taking her out of here will be in three different body bags."
God damn it Taylor, what the hell did you do? Judging from past behavior I'd be tempted to make a joke about severed body parts, but this was serious.
So how the hell did I play this? Coming to an agreement was a lost cause. I could see that plainly. I wasn't going to talk her around, plus there was nothing I'd be willing to offer. I was right back to dragging this out and hoping Taylor could use the time to get her shit together. And also hope that the rest of the Undersiders weren't slowly bleeding out.
So, the goal had shifted from objective based conversation to keeping her talking until something can be accomplished. Fortunately her underlings seem too terrified to attempt anything while she was center stage. So I just had to keep her wound up enough that she kept talking, but not hit the point where the bombs start flying. Her grenade launcher was currently slung on her back rather than in her hand and I was fairly confident I could launch out of here in the time it took her to reach for it.
Safely launching out of here is another matter, but both me and the motoroid were fairly durable. Frankly I'd take my chances with a terminal velocity impact over some of the bullshit that got unleashed on Cornell.
And that's another alchemy power from the Celestial Forge. Natural Alchemy, like potion making, but science based, not magical. Well, natural energy based. Still useful, and the science aspect will help with other endeavors. Not really relevant to the current situation and I needed to say something before I lost the initiative.
"You think you can back up that claim?" The statement may have been overly aggressive, but if this was going to end in blood I was at least going to pick the route we took to get there. I put as much derision into the tone as I could and Bakuda stepped back like she'd been struck. Her hand twitched towards her grenade launcher, then stopped and looked around. I was a bit concerned she'd jump straight to violence, but it seemed she still wanted to play to the crowd.
"That's fucking rich coming from you. Some nobody shows up and thinks they can dictate terms to me? You think that janky robot suit is worth anything? Every baby tinker shits out some crap like that day one."
It was interesting that she jumped straight to the topic of tinkering. Judging by how Tattletale had set her off and the fact that she had also triggered due to something relating to college it was easy to guess where she was coming from.
I remembered people like her from when I was in school. No room for failure because their entire self-image was tied up in being the best. That mentality barely worked in high school. Take a half dozen people who all needed to be number one and put them in the same class and things get messy real fast. Was that what happened with her? I was getting something to that extent from my passenger, but it wasn't clear.
Those people were also the most insufferable ones to work with. Even if they actually had the skills to back up their claims their 'confidence' in their abilities was always paper thin. Just a hint that you might be ahead of them in any area was like an act of war. In the worst cases even the perception that someone could be better than them was inexcusable and had to be corrected.
What was clear was the idea of someone outshining her bothered her badly, and that was something I could use. Survey had transferred a sensor reading to me, faint but still promising. It looked like scattered groups of insects were making their way towards the storage facility. They were only visible because of how tightly packed the swarms were, but Taylor was clearly still in this fight. I just needed to buy her some time.
I shifted my stance slightly and the crowd reacted. Bakuda wasn't wrong about every tinker making power armor. Power armor was technically possible even with mundane mechanical skills. Almost every tinker had enough crafting ability to get a suit together. The thing was the vast majority of them were absolute crap. They had a limited range of motion, moved like tanks, were prone to falling over, and tended to look like they'd been made out of broken refrigerators. That was probably because they usually were made out of broken refrigerators.
My suit did not fit that description. This was the end product of over a dozen mechanical powers with Garment approved aesthetics applied to it. It moved more smoothly than most people were capable of and had power and strength to back up its speed. Just the subtle shifting of weight was able to communicate how agile it was. Bakuda may have been trying to downplay it, but it was clearly of a class well beyond 'janky'.
I made a series of subtle movements over the full range of the suits movements. "I don't know, I think it holds up." Sarcasm and derision. I had the feeling Bakuda wanted a direct challenge that she'd be free to swat down. She was the one playing games with reputation and power balance. I guess I was as well, but I wasn't trying to establish myself as a crime lord. The social stakes were higher for her, so odds were she'd keep posturing.
As I hoped she kept on talking rather than launch an attack. "Can't be hot shit if these losers were able to buy you off."
Right, I guess that was a bit of a quandary that didn't exactly line up. Even Tattletales analysis probably wasn't worth a rescue with this kind of equipment. I tried to play it off. "I'm satisfied with our arrangement."
Bakuda made an overly dismissive gesture. "Yeah, right. What are you working for, trading cards and lunch money?"
I shifted my stance again. "Not every business relationship is based on finances."
Plenty of capes worked on mutual support. Thinkers and tinkers propped up other teams all the time. From Bakuda's reactions she seemed to get it.
"So that's it then." There was something to her posture I couldn't quite place.
"Pretty much." I shifted my armor again and gestured to her. "Offer still stands. Give me Khepri and the rest of them and we're done here."
My answer seemed to offend her somehow. "And here I thought I found a decent merc. Didn't expect you to get so personal."
Was that what this was about? Too invested in the people I worked with? Well, if her main experience is with Uber and Leet I could understand the appeal of keeping a professional distance. "In this business everything is personal."
"So you think that's worth the trouble?" Once again there was something in her posture I felt I wasn't picking up on.
"It is to me." I tried to be glib in my response, but it didn't seem to land well.
There was an electronic scoff from her mask. "That bitch got you making her the best toys, and now riding to her rescue as well?"
The conversation was definitely getting away from me. There were parts of this I wasn't following and now was definitely not the time to be on shaky footing.
"I don't expect you to understand." Mostly I said that because I didn't understand where this conversation was going. I checked in with Survey again. Thick cinderblocks weren't the best medium for scanning through, much less accounting for the after effects of the bombs and the random crap in the storage units. I couldn't get a clear picture of what was happening deeper in the facility, but I hoped Taylor was getting her shit together because from how Bakuda was reacting, things weren't going to stay civil much longer.
"Don't you fucking tell me what I can't understand. You think this high school shit means anything to me? I'm a fucking genius!"
In my experience there are few things more concerning that someone who presents themselves as a genius. I mean, I had multiple powers that boosted my intelligence and I wouldn't be comfortable yelling that to the world. What kind of person could just profess their genius without shame?
I could recognize aspects of her personality from my college days, but I had the feeling we were coming at this from completely opposite sides. Someone who was inordinately built up rather than torn down. It was weird even considering the idea that a person could have been so excessively extolled that they could seriously hold this kind of image of themselves. No wonder she had crashed so hard.
Maybe it was because I was coming into this straight from therapy, maybe it was the frustrations I had been dealing with before she decided to throw the city into hell, but I just wasn't feeling that tolerant at the moment. If I was going to taunt the bomb tinker I was going to hit her where it hurt.
"So what?"
My dismissive tone seemed to drag her out of her rant.
"Ex-fucking-cuse me?"
"So you're a genius. Like that means anything? There are what, thirty million people in the world with that IQ bracket? Do you seriously think it's really a point of distinction?"
She actually didn't open fire on me, but it seemed like that was only because she was too angry to consider the possibility.
"It doesn't matter what you fucking think. I'm the greatest tinker alive." She gestured at the devastation around her. "Look at this." She specifically pointed at the towering mass of crystal. "Can your pea brain even comprehend what I've done here?"
I seriously looked at the effect of the bomb. "Looks like some kind of silicon seed structure designed for molecular propagation with the integration of surrounding solids. From the discoloration I'm guessing you either pulled in a few of your own people when you set it off, or someone was using one of these lockers to store something particularly wet and meaty."
Bakuda would probably have reacted less if I had clocked her in the mouth. I enjoyed putting her off balance, but that was something I had real cause to be concerned about. I had no defense against that kind of bomb and if the crystal progression hadn't experienced pattern collapse it would have turned into the kind of thing that got an S-class response.
"That... That's right!" She struggled to regain her momentum. "Total molecular control. And I cooked it up on a whim, just to see what would happen." Seemingly back on pace she planted her feet and gestured to the crowd. "Power and fear! That's what this is about. While you've been chasing after your bug bitch I've taken this city! True control. These people will do whatever I tell them, whenever I tell them, all because they fear me!"
This was getting dangerously close to either an ordered attack or some kind of bombing demonstration. I needed to know how she could trigger the cranial and planted bombs. Until then I couldn't even risk trying to capture her. That said, I wasn't about to let some poor kid get detonated just to provide a data point. Fortunately Bakuda was almost embarrassingly easy to side track.
"Cranial bombs, right?"
She glared at me, but when it became evident I wasn't going to press further she launched into a speech.
"Exactly. These people know they only live because I allow it. I can kill them with a thought and they only live as long as I do. That's loyalty. That's fear. That's power."
"That's the only thing keeping you safe." My voice was flat as I interrupted her.
The bomb tinker recoiled and glared across the courtyard at me. "What?"
"These people are saving your life. Right now they're the only reason you're still breathing. Actually, everyone here owes their lives to Tattletale. Her tip about your little dead man's switch is the only reason I didn't open this discussion by reducing you to a charred smear."
The scary thing was I knew I would have done it. One look around at the children and old women with bombs in their heads was enough to convince me, not to mention all the other everyday citizens whose only crime was happening to match the ABB's recruitment demographics. What she was doing here was beyond monstrous. It was vile.
I believed in the unwritten rules. I accepted people broke them all the time in a myriad of small ways, but blatant breaches like this were beyond the pale. The only way Bakuda could get out of this mess without a kill order is if somehow the politics of the situation held it up. Everyone would have been thinking that SOMEONE should take her out. I just happened to have the war veteran experience that meant I both could and would have followed through on the idea. That terrified me, but not as much as it seemed like it should have.
And that's another quarter for the jar.
She glanced around in agitation. "Big fucking talk. What the hell do you think you could do against the ABB?"
We were entering the end game here. There weren't many places I could go that would escalate things past death threats. It was time to play the last of my cards. I leaned forward slightly as I spoke. "Maybe you should ask Oni Lee." There were questioning glances from the crowd. "By the way, how's his arm doing? Was that a clean break? He didn't stick around long enough for me to find out."
Murmurs were starting to circulate through the crowd to Bakuda's clear annoyance. One of the henchmen leaned in towards her and whispered something, but she brushed him off.
"No." She seemed to be trying to whisper, but the metallic voice of the synthesizer was clear across the courtyard.
He tried again and she glared at him. "We don't need her help on this. I've got it under control."
The gang member nearly backed down, but steeled himself. He started speaking up, so I could just make out his response with my suit's sensors. "He's the guy that took on the demon. We're supposed to call it in if he showed up. At this point all the timing we've been given is already shot. What difference does it make?"
"She can play conductor as much as she wants but she's not in charge. I don't need to check in with her. I don't answer to anyone!" As Bakuda turned increasingly manic the gang member fell back reverently. I noticed everyone seems to be edging as far as they could from him. "This is my plan, my genius! I don't take orders from some eleventh hour recruit!"
Seemingly mollified Bakuda turned back to me. "So you got a lucky hit in and thought you could handle the whole organization? Well tough shit, that overconfidence is going to get you killed." The fact that Bakuda was the one talking about overconfidence struck me as a breathtaking lack of self-awareness.
While she was posturing a moth suddenly landed on the visor of my suit. I managed to avoid reacting, but based on the twitched of the insect I noticed a faint trail of bugs hanging in the air leading towards the eastern rows of storage lockers. A quick check confirmed that the knife and baton were in that direction.
Thank God, Taylor was finally ready. I had no idea if she had anything prepared, but if she was setting this up then at least she wasn't pinned down or incapacitated.
"I'll give you one chance to stand down." Her stance was aggressive and she shifted her position to the edge of the shipping crate. "Admit you're out of your league, step off, and just maybe I won't use you to test out some new ideas and let Oni Lee play with whatever's left."
There were a few ways I had considered opening things, but if she was going to give me this kind of opportunity I might as well take it.
"I guess I have no choice." I opened the paneling of my armor and stepped out onto the courtyard, noting a failed connection from the knowledge constellation as I went. Bakuda relaxed as I exited the motoroid and she made some dismissive gestures to the ganger who had spoken up. Behind me the motoroid's plating sealed itself again.
The focus of the crowd shifted to me as I strode forward and flung back the coat of my costume. Doing so revealed my now intricately designed and highly modified heavy pistol. Runework and alterations performed on the back of a speeding bike were a challenge, but I was still happy with the result.
It was brutal overkill, but I doubted anything else would really do in this situation.
"I'm glad at least one of you small brained plebeians has the sense to stand down when you're out matched."
Here it was, the final bout of showmanship before the shit completely hit the fan. I squared my shoulders and called across the courtyard. "I'm not standing down."
Bakuda tensed and the crowd went dead silent. "What?"
"I just needed a second pair of hands." With a signal the motoroid strode next to me. The crowd watched open mouthed as the armor moved smoothly without an occupant. It fell into place at my side and with a flourish deployed both weapons.
There was a limit to what I was capable of building on the ride over, though much less of one than there logically should have been. With my powers and abilities the handful of minutes I spent working on the bike while it was peeling through the city was the equivalent of days of dedicated construction in a fully equipped workshop. Between the depth of my mechanical knowledge, the precision of my micromanipulators, and the instant fabrication of my omni-tool I was able to complete a pair of advanced melee weapons in blinding speed.
I still wanted to reduce the chance of fatalities, which is why I went with blunt weapons. The motoroid essentially had a pair of tonfas or nightsticks built into its forearms. They had been repurposed from the bike's structure and a simple fabricated servo bracket allowed free rotation around the wrist. That could potentially allow the motoroid to use martial arts techniques based on the weapon, but right now it mainly allowed dramatic deployments. When both tonfas swung into place a metallic crack echoed around the courtyard and more than a few of the conscripts took an involuntary step back.
A pair of blunt instruments wouldn't have been a deciding factor in a fight like this, nor would they have gotten the response I needed. Luckily I had just received the ability to easily turn anything into a high-frequency weapon. A rapidly fabricated resonant capacitor calibrated to the specific inductance of the tonfa was all it took. Blunt HF weapons didn't have the insane cutting power of HF blades, but they were incredibly durable, both in terms of strength and the ability to resist molecular alteration.
They also crackled with faint partial discharges of the alternating current, which judging by the reactions of the crowd, looked intimidating as hell.
But once again, glowing beat sticks weren't going to be the kind of display I needed to win the day. That's where my runecraft came in. The strength of the runes was highly variable, but could be increased based on the nature of the weapon, the method of inscription, and the detail of the rune work.
Larger weapons could handle more power than smaller ones. A dagger or a collapsible baton could only support fairly weak effects. A solid bar of metal that needed robot strength to wield had a significantly higher threshold.
Inscription method also mattered. Printed runes would only have a sliver of the power of those inscribed by hand. The power could be further boosted by arcane methods and rituals in the inscription process, but the important thing was that the work was done personally by my hand.
Detail was also a big factor. I hadn't learned how significant it was until I decided to dive into inscriptions after gaining my Decadence power. That seemingly meaningless design power had boosted the quality of my rune work to the point where what was planned as an incidental boost became enough to propel Taylor into villainous infamy. I had gotten two more style powers since then along with a set of gloves that let me work at a borderline impossible level of detail.
Both tonfas were fully inscribed and may have been the most powerful weapons I'd ever made. Well, that was a title they could have held until I started work on my pistol.
At the sound of the tonfas deploying I dropped a hand to the grip of my pistol and activated the interface of my omni-tool. Tension rippled through the crowd as my left forearm was sheathed in orange holographic mass fields.
Bakuda glared at me while trying to make it look like she wasn't edging for her grenade launcher. "Big deal. You've seen what I can do. Are you really stupid enough to think you have a chance?"
I glanced down at my omni-tool. The interface was much easier to use now that I was out of that armor. I had faintly hoped that I would be able to crack that dead man's signal and end this madness. Unfortunately that seemed to be something so near and dear to her specialization to the point that even with Survey's help I could barely make sense of it. Between the levels of encryption, the semi random frequency changes, and what I'm sure must have been some exotic effects I wasn't getting an easy way out of this mess. Which left the hard way.
"I don't know if I do…"
I activated a very familiar command that I had actually never used before. With a flash of mass fields and instant fabrication a combat drone deployed into the air next to me. However, two things were different about this deployment.
The first difference from my combat experience was that I now had a burgeoning A.I. in my omni-tool. With it able to direct my drone suddenly it was capable of more complicated commands than just 'fuck that guy and anyone close to him'. Survey would be able to direct the drone for reconnaissance, distraction, and even interception of attacks.
The second difference was something I didn't think would make as much of an impact as it had. Fun fact, I actually couldn't turn off any of my powers. There was no way I could make something without all of my applicable crafting abilities coming into play. So every set of clothes I made would fit perfectly, every item would be nigh-impervious to the effects of time and, thanks to Beauty in the Arts, everything I made would look good on a level that bordered on the divine. It seemed it didn't matter if it was made by hand or automatic fabrication program, the effect still applied.
A combat drone is normally a series of partial spheres of cheaply fabricated material around a ball of charged plasma and a temporarily projected mass field. It doesn't exactly look bad, just fairly utilitarian. It certainly isn't supposed to have subtle contours, embossed designs along the surface, and a silhouette that evoked the idea of a celestial being. The glowing drone floated next to me like a divine messenger to the absolute shock of those assembled.
I squared off between my eight foot armored motoroid and my elegantly designed combat drone and stared down the bomb tinker.
"...but we might."
Whatever spell cast by the drone's appearance was broken when Bakuda screamed and raised her grenade launcher. I had been ready for this. The pistol was in my hand and tracked on the target before the grenade began its arc across the courtyard. The reason that Taylor had been able to dismember Aegis so easily was the speed granted by the wind runes on her knife. They were significantly less advanced than the ones I had engraved onto my pistol. The faster draw speed, lack of air resistance, and projected shockwaves were boons when using the pistol even if they were all secondary to its true purpose.
Drawing on my new lifetime of experience I settled into a firing stance and drew a perfect bead on the grenade. As I squeezed the trigger a sliver of metal the size of a grain of sand was sheared from the ammo block and subjected to mass effects and electromagnetic acceleration that launched it with the speed and effective inertia of a high caliber rifle round. With the wind runes supporting it the round tore through the air and shattered the grenade at the apex of its arc.
There was a sudden greasy feeling in the air that was immediately followed by a blinding lightshow. The sky above the facility filled with lightning, bolts spreading out like spider webs clawing at the night. Occasional tendrils found their way to the ground, melting the metal roofs of any storage units they touched. When it finally passed a good half of the flares that had lit the sky were flickering out and dropping towards the ground.
It didn't escape my notice that the particular discharge of the bomb would have been devastating to both my drone and motoroid. Also probably to everyone on my side of the courtyard. Bakuda may have been able to make tactical decisions even when maddeningly angry, but those decisions didn't seem to include any concern for friendly fire casualties.
I had started moving long before the discharge had dissipated. Combat instincts from wars I didn't fight drove me forward as I pulled a prepared formula from my bandoleer. Two drams of oil and a lump of wax. It was the mixture for my weakest attack formula, Flash.
Bakuda assumed she was invincible because of her contingency, that no one would risk attacking her. That wasn't exactly true. If you could be sure your attack wouldn't be enough to stop her heart then you were free to go nuts. It was just unacceptably risky with a lot of offensive options. Bullets and blades could catch arteries or something vital you didn't mean to hit. Blunt force could cause a punctured lung or brain damage that would be the end of things. Using electricity against someone with that kind of implant was just insane.
Fire was another matter. If you were using a fire ability that you could precisely control, perhaps thanks to a set of micromanipulator gloves used for the mixing of the formula, and spread the effect thin enough, such as across three idiots who decided to stand on an elevated platform, then you could be certain the effect wouldn't be enough to kill. To hurt, most certainly, but nothing worse than a few second degree burns.
I threw down the balefully glowing mixture and three large orange sparks wheeled out of it. Each was about a foot wide and I could feel the heat radiating from them as they flew away. They soared unerringly towards the shipping crates that had been used for an improvised stage. Bakuda raised her grenade launcher, seemingly at a loss for what to do. One of the gang members looked dumfounded and the approaching blasts while the other was swifter and made a leap to the ground. It did him no good as the spark veered to follow his movement.
The dark alchemy burst over them in a roiling wave of fire. Within a second it was gone, leaving burnt flesh and smoldering clothing. Bakuda's mechanical voice screamed profanities as she hauled herself up and tried to angle the grenade launcher towards me with a shaky grip. I was already moving towards the storage units with my drone, tracking the rough trail of bugs left by Taylor. Bakuda paused at the last second.
"Where's the fucking robot?"
The scream of turbines echoed across the facility and drew everyone's eyes to the sky. There, plummeting out of the night, was the clear form of my motoroid in the process of power bombing the courtyard.
When Taylor had tried out her baton Alec had made a joke about her using it to create a seismic event. That was a ridiculous idea. Impact earth runes were a completely different application from tremor earth runes.
As much as I needed a dramatic display I still wanted to avoid casualties as much as possible. Completely outfitting the HF tonfas with impact runes would have blasted the remains of anyone hit by them over a distance of two to three city blocks, depending on what the wind was doing at the time. With tremor runes they would be knocked down, maybe buried a bit, but largely alright. Well, they would still have been hit by a hyper alloy bar held by a five hundred pound super strong robot, so not exactly alright, but no worse than your typical industrial accident or mid-speed collision.
Tremor runes had another advantage. Against stationary targets with no way to disperse the force their effects could be devastating. The power of the shockwaves were proportional to the strength of the impact. This kind of thing was something I had dismissed long ago since nothing I could build would have held up to the stresses involved. The strike would destroy the weapons and probably my motoroid along with it. Of course, that was before I got a way to specifically strengthen the weapons, and in a manner particularly effective against vibrations.
Oh, and that's a new connection to a mote from the Crafting constellation. Weapon Modification. Now I'll be able to make these things even better when I get a chance.
With a carefully timed leap I latched onto my drone with my omni-tool just before the motoroid impacted an empty section in the center of the courtyard. Drones were not designed for this kind of thing. Survey was stressing its systems to the absolute limit in an attempt to keep me off the ground and even then I had to cheat with my omni-tool's mass field to stay aloft. As a result I was spared the effects and got an excellent view of the results of my plan.
Once again I may have slightly underestimated the effectiveness of my rune craft.
The ground in the center of the courtyard bowed and rippled in a way I had never seen outside of cartoons. Knowing it wasn't a cartoon and the physical reality of the situation I was immensely grateful that I was currently suspended from my drone. The entire mass of conscripts was knocked off their feet and the facility... well I'd be tempted to say it looked like a bomb went off, but considering this place had already seen multiple explosions that probably wasn't the most enlightening descriptor.
This was the real reason I had exited the motoroid. I still didn't know if my reinforcement protected my brain tissue to the same extent that it protected the surface of my body. I had been meaning to experiment with that in controlled conditions. Power bombing the surface of the earth with a seismic weapon was definitely not controlled conditions. From the aftermath I was very glad to not be inside that suit.
Everything was damaged. Some units had completely collapsed, some were crumbling, and some looked like they would fall apart in a stiff breeze. The lucky ones, mostly further away from the impact site were just sporting networks of fresh cracks or the occasional missing brick. Even considering all of that everything still looked better than the state of the ground.
My motoroid slowly rose to its feet in the actual crater it had made. The impact had torn apart the surface of the courtyard and exposed the foundation. Deep cracks and fissures spread out from the crater in a jagged network. The entire facility looked like it had been shattered like a pane of glass. It looked like the fissures extended all the way through the foundation of the site, as a few of the units that were still standing now listed at a concerning angle.
I was shocked by the level of destruction, but my new military instincts were drawing me forward, leaving no time for introspection. I dropped from the drone, drawing my pistol again. This was one last tactical move and display of power.
When combined, my technical skills greatly outstrip any of my individual powers. As such, as an engineer I may have been able to mount an incompatible weapon mod onto a pistol and sort of get it to work. With the weight of my other abilities in addition to the pure cheat that was Hybridization Theory I could take what would have been a loosely functional object and turn it into a work of art. As such not only was I able to mount the omni-blade bayonet onto the pistol, I was able to significantly improve it.
An omni-blade is a flash fabricated superheated silicon-carbide blade capable of being generated by an omni-tool. It can be used in melee combat, though military engineers generally prefer to use incendiary bursts when fighting at that range. Because of its extreme usefulness a scaled down fabricator and mass field was designed to allow for an omni-blade to be used as a weapon mount.
I didn't leave it at that. I had approached this with the knowledge of a master swordsmith, the combined science of an alien civilization, and more enhancements to mechanics than can be properly comprehended. By stressing the mass field and fabricator output I was able to more than double the size of the blade. I optimized the shape and flow perfectly for my ergonomics and fighting style. The blade composition was tweaked based on my knowledge of other monomolecular weaponry and innate understanding of material science. Finally, and most significantly, I integrated a resonant capacitor into the weapon.
As I moved forward I activated my pistol's melee weapon. A thirty four inch glowing orange blade crackling with HF discharges sprang forth. The strength of an HF blade scales with the quality of the original weapon. My customized omni-blade was a very, very good weapon.
A trio of jeeps were parked near the side of the courtyard. They were small enough to fit between the rows of lockers and my guess was they'd been used to run down the Undersiders during this sick game. With the courtyard shattered they wouldn't be getting any other vehicles in here, but these had a high enough ground clearance that they could still navigate the less damaged parts of the site.
I wasn't going to let that happen.
I overloaded the HF current as I neared the vehicles. While slowly walking forward I swung the blade once, twice, three times. The wind runes turned each slice of the weapon into a blazingly quick movement, leaving only an arc of baleful orange light. Despite being well out of the reach of the blade the jeeps split in half. Then they split again. Then those pieces got further subdivided. Crackling slices extended into the walls and ground around the wrecks, some of them frighteningly deep.
I looked over the courtyard. The conscripts were pulling themselves slowly to their feet, the frantic shouts of the professional gang members doing little to help things along. Some of the ones closer to the impact were sporting light injuries, but my sensors didn't pick up anything fatal or life threatening. My motoroid had specifically targeted the point furthest from the crowds. Maximum shock with minimum injury.
Bakuda was still smoldering from my alchemy formula and swearing loudly in her robotic voice. One of her lackeys was fighting through the pain of his own burns to dig her grenade launcher out of a partially collapsed wall while the other helped the bomb tinker to her feet.
The crowd's attention seemed split between us. Half were looking to Bakuda for direction and the other half were looking to me with no small amount of fear. More than a few were following every movement of my blade with filching apprehension. Bakuda finally pulled herself together enough to make another attempt at grandstanding, though this time from the top of a pile of rubble.
I wasn't going to let her take back the initiative. Before she could start I pointed my blade into the sky and pulsed the capacitor just enough to cause a halo of sparks to burst from the sword. Most eyes turned to me, but the smarter ones followed the direction I was pointing to the form of my combat drone, floating high above the courtyard.
Coordination with the drone and motoroid was all handled through my omni-tool. The commands were unnecessary and pure showmanship, but at this point showmanship had a necessity of its own.
"Overwatch." As the word echoed across the courtyard the components of the drone started to glow. Small bursts of electricity began to appear around it as it tracked the actions of the people below.
I dropped my blade to point at the form of my motoroid, rising from the crater. The raw fear on the faces of some of the conscripts was chilling, but I pushed forward.
"Engage." With a completely unnecessary nod the motoroid began spinning up its turbines, filling the courtyard with a cloud of concrete dust.
Just before it washed over me I drew a bead on Bakuda with my sword. Then, to the sound of my motoroid launching itself into the fight, I retracted my blade and disappeared into the dust, following the breadcrumb trail of insects leading me to Taylor.
Jumpchain abilities this chapter:
High-Frequency Manufacturer (Metal Gear Rising) 300:
A blade launderer, huh? Anyway, you can now make a HF blade out of anything you want. Depending on the original craftsmanship of the weapon, it could be good or shit. But if you picked this, you probably have something in mind.
Must be a physical object. No lightsabers and the like.
Yes, blunt objects can become HF weapons. No, they can't cut. They only get stronger, and can resist other HF weapons.
Alchemy (Samurai Jack) 200:
The ancient science of mixing specific ingredients and then infusing them with natural energy. You know how to make a wide array of potions with both beneficial and harmful effects.
Weapon Modifications (Archer) 100:
You design and modify weapons with flair, creativity, and skill.
I don't think I've ever moved as quickly as I did on my way out of Dr. Campbell's office. I'm not sure how much the life fiber exposure had enhanced my body, but I was treating stairs as gentle suggestions rather than actual things necessary to move between floors. If the stairwell had an open interior I seriously think I would have tried dropping down the center of it and trusting my healing and reinforcement to deal with any damage. All I wanted was to get out of this building and desperately try to do SOMETHING.
I felt, well I felt a lot of things right now. There was a certain emotional turmoil that came with even normal therapy sessions. A tour through the absolute worst day of my life was significantly more than a normal therapy session. If the city hadn't decided to descend into chaos I would probably have spent a good chunk of the night venting frustration on a punching bag at the gym then trying to catch up on something like a normal sleep schedule. Instead I was off rushing into a fight I was decidedly not ready for.
I was taking entire flights of stairs in a single bound when I felt the Celestial Forge connect to another mote. I was split between being annoyed at the interruption and being grateful for something else to think about than the impending doom of the city. It was actually only the second mote I had connected to from the Crafting constellation. The last one was Smithing, which gave me expert level ability in creating weapons and armor. This mote also gave the ability to make weapons, but weapons of a much more serious nature.
I thought I was good at making blades. I could make legendarily forged swords. I could make monomolecular edged weapons. I could make blades infused with runic magic. I could even forge melee weapons out of pure energon, though that was still theoretical and would require a bit of setup. I thought I had a handle on this melee weapon thing. With one this power I suddenly realized how ignorant that line of thinking was.
The power was called High-Frequency Manufacturer. Like many of my crafting powers I'm not sure what it enabled was physically possible before I got the ability to do it. Right now it seemed so blindingly obvious and so insanely effective I was embarrassed for not having realized it sooner. By applying an extreme frequency alternating current to a weapon I could then cause it to vibrate at levels where the edge would destabilize molecular bonds. Essentially I could turn anything with an edge into a weapon that could cut through anything.
Except force fields, because they seemed specifically designed to ruin my shit.
It was so easy to set up. Of course, that was easy by the standards of my current skill set and would probably have been a serious challenge if I was coming into this blind, but that wasn't really the point. This technology was actually seriously better than monomolecular blades. All that stuff about not being able to handle dense or thick material didn't apply to HF weapons. In fact, by stressing the charge frequency you could extend the destabilization area induced by the vibrations and actually split objects that were thicker than the length of your weapon. With a good enough weapon and enough power I could literally cut a building in half.
It was an incredibly powerful ability and would do absolutely nothing to help with the chaos currently being unleashed on Brockton Bay. I was not ready to counter this nightmare. The best I could hope would be to mitigate some of the damage, but that was a daunting prospect. This wasn't like a normal villain attack. Once a bombing happened the perpetrator didn't just stick around and wait for someone to show up. Just rushing to bomb sites wouldn't help me track down the ABB. I needed to stop Bakuda, but Lord knows where she was. Probably in a command center coordinating all of this mess.
At the moment my only serious option was to try to stop Lung from escaping. That meant getting to the Rig and engaging what would probably be a seriously boosted dragon-man alongside a team of heroes that would not be well disposed towards me. It was a shit plan, and depending on how powered up Lung was when I arrived it could easily turn into a disaster. Unfortunately at the moment it was my only option.
I burst out of the office onto the darkened streets of Brockton Bay. The late twilight sky was a deep purple rapidly fading to black. The city was not actually an inferno like I had feared, but from the looks of things we were under a complete blackout and I could still hear the occasional explosion. Not a constant barrage, but there really isn't an appropriate amount of your city to be blowing up at any given time.
Fortunately due to the dark area and lack of power I wouldn't have to worry about security cameras. I could find the nearest door, access my workshop, then hopefully get to the Rig before Lung either escaped or powered up to a point where no one would be able to stop him. That was when I heard my phone ring.
My work phone.
I pulled it out of my jacket as I kept moving towards my bike. A quick glance at the display showed Tattletale's number.
"What?" I barked as I held the phone to my ear and I kept moving.
There was heavy breathing on the line and serious background noise, like a crowd of people in chaos. "Hey." Tattletale's voice had a desperate edge to it. "You know that deal we set up? I'm going to have to call it in now."
"What? What's going on?"
"Well, we've run into a little..." There was the sound of a blast and what could have been raining debris. "Fuck it, there's no time to be cute. We're pinned down by the ABB. They jumped us when we were checking on the take from the bank. If you can't get here soon we're pretty much done for."
It sounded like she was running while trying to keep up with the call. I grimaced at the implications. This was absolutely the worst time for the Undersiders to need a bail out. There was no way a city wide blackout wouldn't have been coordinated with Lung's escape attempt. Any chance of stopping this depended on me acting immediately. With no idea about Bakuda's location Lung was my only option.
But if what Tattletale said was true, and from the desperation in her voice I didn't doubt it, the Undersiders were screwed. They had been at odds with the ABB and were instrumental in Lung's capture. It made sense that the gang would want revenge, I just expected any moves to be attempted after Lung was free.
"What happened?" I didn't like this. I mean I really didn't like this. Going to save them meant letting Lung go free. With Oni Lee having access to Bakuda's arsenal and no real preparation on the part of the Protectorate I didn't give them decent odds of countering the breakout. But if I abandoned the Undersiders that would mean abandoning Taylor. I still didn't know exactly how she was significant to saving the world. My passenger was damping the emotions connected to her, but there was still that conviction about her saving everyone.
I kind of resented my obligation here. I couldn't let her die. Even if that meant letting Lung free and giving up my chance to stop Bakuda's rampage.
"Bakuda's here."
...or maybe not.
"We're at the storage site past the train yard. She set a trap, turned the entire area into a damn arena for us. She's got Uber and Leet along with dozens of conscripted civilians. She put bombs in their heads to keep them loyal."
A sense of dread settled into my stomach. There it was. That was the bad, the serious, worst of the worst cape stuff I'd been anticipating. This wasn't the unfortunate but tolerable level of depravity the public had come to expect from supervillains. This was full on Slaughterhouse shit.
It also perfectly validated my concerns regarding using that storage site. I thanked my thinker power for that. At least I could go full bore without worrying about accidently damaging Garment's wardrobe. Priorities, right?
"I know the place." I signaled for my bike to follow and opened my workshop using the door of a nearby maintenance shed. "I'll get there as soon as I can. What else can you tell me?"
Her breathing was labored and it sounded like there was more than exhaustion behind that. "Bakuda's put a contingency in place, a pacemaker or something like that. Her heart stops and every bomb she's made goes off, both the implanted ones and everything around the city."
I winced at the news. That was a serious level of human shielding. It took lethal force completely off the table. I didn't know if I was actually able to kill someone, but Bakuda's current actions might have driven me to make the attempt.
No, that wasn't right. I did actually know if I would be able to kill someone. I had a lifetime of military training and experience drilled into my brain. I was a hundred percent confident that if it came down to it I would be able to take the shot, and that kind of terrified me. I might regret it and moralize over it later, but I had personal experience that would let me follow through. No matter how vague or indistinct that experience was it was still there and couldn't be denied. Effectively I was a trained, blooded soldier. It was chilling in terms of what it meant for my mind, but undoubtably an asset for going into this situation.
I guess that's one more quarter for the jar.
I put the phone on speaker and started stripping out of my clothes and changing into my new costume.
"The ABB is too coordinated. They have someone guiding things from behind the scenes. New cape, probably a thinker. I can't get a reading on them."
I put aside the concerns over my mental state and focused on the new aspects of this crisis while doing my absolute best to set a speed record for changing clothes. I decided then and there, once I get a shred of cybertonium I'm building a subspace storage pocket for all my equipment. I'm not getting caught in this nonsense again.
Tattletale continued as I struggled to get my armor pieces attached. "Bakuda's not doing random strikes. This is insanely well coordinated. Everything has been precisely timed. The blackout isn't just in the city. She's managed to knock out the entire region."
That was a nightmare, both in terms of the effects and what it would take to coordinate. Taking out a power station or relay wouldn't do it. You'd either need a large scale EMP, which had obviously not been used, or need to trigger a specific overload cascade in the power network. Possible, but insanely complicated.
"What's your situation? How long can you hold out?"
I pulled on my cowl and visor and started attaching my pouches of reagents. Fortunately I had them prepped, unfortunately it was a general loadout and not one specialized for Bakuda. In fact, I was terribly unprepared for this situation on almost every level. I was at a point of every second counting as I scrambled for what little equipment I had available. My scanner was pocketed, I had my micromanipulators and built in omni-tool, but precious little else was field-ready. I started the transfer of a truncated copy of Survey to my Omni-tool and an update of Fleet's motoroid software. The omni-tool was already designed to support virtual intelligences, so there would be no difficulty given the current level of Survey's development. With that set I quickly dug into the rest of the equipment that came with my combat engineer power.
"Our situation is fucked." She replied bitterly. "Bitch was taken out before we got here and they split us up. I think Khepri's still holding out but I'm pretty sure she got Grue and Regent. I don't know how long we can manage. They're basically toying with us right now."
I grabbed my heavy pistol and started rummaging through the rest of the equipment. The medi gel was irrelevant next to the rest of my healing powers, plus it was technically a product of biological engineering and I didn't want to be associated with that. I had some grenades, but they were less powerful than my alchemy and without using my armor I didn't have a convenient way of managing them or the spare time to deal with that problem. In a pile of weapon parts and mods where something caught my eye. It wasn't designed for use with a pistol, but I could make it work, even in the field. With the upgrades I could manage it would bring enough force to bear in case things went to hell.
I'd gotten what I could and couldn't spare any more time. I just needed to get on the road.
"I've thrown them off, so I should be safe for the moment, but I have no idea how long that will..."
There was the sound of an explosion followed by the crumbling of collapsing masonry. Tattletale's voice went quiet. Probably from moving the phone away from her head. There was a faint reply to her with a robotic tinge to it. The Vehicles constellation passed by without a connection as there was a thump and the sound of the phone hitting the ground.
I locked away the last of my gear and sealed the workshop door. There was just enough time for the A.I.s to finish transferring and updating before the link to the computational core was severed. With a quick command my bike shifted from its street mode to the monstrosity of armor and aerodynamics that signified my cape vehicle.
"And who is this?" The voice that came from the phone was a robotic monotone, but clearly a processed human voice rather than a synthesizer. My passenger's reaction confirmed who it belonged to.
"Bakuda, I presume?" I mounted my bike and keyed in the location with Survey while shifting full control to Fleet. I needed to focus on this call. I was probably the worst person to try to play social dynamics against a supervillain, and that was on my best day. After a draining therapy session this was the last thing I was ready for. Still, any time she spent talking to me was time she wasn't spending hunting the Undersiders. "I understand you've been giving my clients a hard time."
My bike tore out of the parking lot, though with the engine running as quietly as possible. With the Magitek drive most of the engine noise was simulated to avoid attracting attention when opperating in civilian mode. In times like this the bike counted as a ninja motorcycle in more ways than one.
"Ah," The robotic voice replied. "So the mouthy girl decided to call her little friend. What, did she want you to ride to the rescue?"
Yes, that was literally what I was doing. Well, that and stalling Bakuda and trying to manage last minute alterations to my gear. My motoroid was completely unarmed, a condition I was doing my best to rectify. Normally attempting something like that would have been a joke while the bike was working itself to top speed while swerving around the traffic and stopped cars of a city in the grips of a blackout. Luckily I had my Black Thumb power which allowed me to work on vehicles while they were operating. Insane? Most definitely, but that didn't change the fact that I could manage it as well as if the bike was sitting in the center of my workbench.
"There were requests of that nature. I don't suppose I could convince you to let them off with a maiming? Good customers are so hard to find."
An electronic laugh echoed through the phone. "No, I'm afraid we're taking this all the way." There was a pause as someone spoke from too far away for the phone to pick up. "Fuck you, bitch." Another pause. "I AM a genius." More response that I couldn't hear. "You think so? You FUCKING THINK SO?"
Tattletale, what the hell are you doing? I was splitting my focus three ways while also dealing with serious emotional aftermath and even I could tell this was a terrible idea. And as someone with an omni-tool up to the elbow in and active engine while making micro adjustments with the other hand and trying not to fall off a swerving high-speed motorcycle my threshold for a terrible idea really meant something.
"Bakuda?" I tried to get the bomb tinker back on the phone as I made alterations to the front shocks of the motoroid.
There was no response as I heard her rant in a metallic voice. Phrases like "Twelve steps ahead", "Certified Genius", "Greatest Tinker", and "True Fear" were only audible because of the volume at which the bomb tinker must have been screaming them. Tattletale sure had a talent for making people murderously angry. Hell, I was her ally and every time we interacted I'd ended up wanting to throttle her at least once.
Well, the exchange lasted longer than I thought it would, certainly longer than I would have been able to keep her on the line. I was speeding past the end of the boardwalk before things finally came to a head.
Let me just say, having an A.I. navigate through packed Saturday night traffic at maximum possible speed while you also are trying to rush a last minute upgrade onto a still running machine that you are currently riding is a fundamentally terrifying experience. The fact that it was only a prelude to rushing into a heavily trapped murder arena being run by a infuriated bomb tinker really showed the direction my night was headed.
With one final exchange of snark with mad rantings there was a sound like an old house settling if it had been pumped through a stadium sound system. It was accompanied by a scream that was legitimately bloodcurdling, followed by shallow, raspy breathing.
The robotic voice came over the line once more. "Looks like you'll have to find some new clients. I don't think this one is going to be up for cape work for a long... EVER. Tough shit for you." The phone cut off, leaving my bike weaving through darkened streets towards the train yard.
I took a breath as I tried to process things. There was absolutely nothing I could do. My bike was already moving as fast as possible, certainly faster than I would be able to manage if I was driving. In this area speed wasn't the limiting factor, maneuverability was. The A.I. had to take brutal corners and swerve around the scattered traffic. The roads were less packed than near the boardwalk but I didn't have a straight shot across the city any more. I trusted my A.I.s to manage the route and driving and distracted myself with my pistol.
She wasn't dead. Not yet, at least. Judging by the breathing and Bakuda's taunt she probably just did something unspeakably horrible to her. That was okay. Well, it wasn't okay, but it's not dead. I can't fix dead. Anything else I can probably manage. I tried to stop thinking about it as I shifted to firearm modification at over a hundred miles per hour.
The mod was easy enough to adapt with my current skills, and I could even manage some upgrades. As it was part of my personal equipment I was able to work blindingly fast. The end result was brutal overkill, but I had a feeling I would need a significant display of strength if I was going to get through this.
Survey sent an alert to my omni-tool. I had a message. A message from Survey. To Survey. It took me longer than it should have to figure out what was happening.
I activated the video link and an image of Garment appeared on my display. It was taken from the webcam of her laptop and showed her in the darkened apartment lit only by the computer screen. She made a concerned gesture.
"I'm fine. Garment, I have to go help some people."
She made a gesture at herself, then to me. Well, to the screen of the laptop, which my omni-tool confirmed had my image on it.
"There's no time. My..." I struggled to find the right word to use. Friends? Clients? Acquaintances? Obligations? "Some people I know are going to get hurt, may already be hurt. If I don't get to them immediately they might not make it."
She made a distressed gesture, and frankly I agreed with her. I would have been nervous enough going into this situation with every resource at my disposal. This wasn't the kind of battle you wanted to face halfcocked. Still, you fight with the army you have, not the army you want. The timing for this was just about as bad as it could possibly have been.
Actually, was that the work of their new cape, or was that overly paranoid? I mean, assuming Tattletale was right that meant they had unknown thinker support, which could be a God damn nightmare. And I was rushing right into it.
"Garment, I'll be alright." I didn't have full confidence in my words, but I pressed on. "You stay safe. I'll be back as soon as I can."
We were approaching the storage facility. With how time critical things were I couldn't afford to scout the place out and go in quiet. I needed to enter heavy and make the biggest impact I could. Survey helpfully offered some suggestions based on the layout from satellite imagery. I input some data based on parameters that were requested by the program, mainly outlines of my capabilities and the needs of the situation. Survey updated the proposal in response.
Well, it was certainly dynamic. I transferred it to Fleet and readied my reagents.
The storage facility was impossible to miss. With the rest of the city in pitch darkness it was brightly lit by what looked like a series of flares somehow suspended in the air above the site. They cast the entire area in an unnatural white glow. There was a low cinderblock wall around the facility and some cars parked by the main entrance with a few members of the ABB milling around them. The occasional rumble could be heard from inside the facility.
The main entrance was guarded and possibly trapped. Fortunately I had another option. My bike sped towards the outer wall as I checked my omni-tool's sensors to make sure there were no hidden surprises on my chosen route. With the all clear I readied a combination of two drams of ethanol with a measure of ash. This was the first time I had mixed dark alchemy. The back of a speeding bike wasn't the best place for something like that, but the stability of my micromanipulator gloves made the action trivial.
The mixture glowed as I threw it down, but with a somehow harsher light than what was produced by my restorative formulas. The flickering mass flew towards the wall and shone brightly. Then the wall exploded.
I was ready for the blast and debris. My bike's hyper alloy paneling could handle much worse than the light pelting of concrete fragments and my own durability was so excessive that my only serious concern in this fight would be Bakuda's more exotic offerings. Unfortunately I think she leaned heavily towards exotic offerings for most of her work.
I had been partially guided by my sense of the location of my knives. It confirmed all of them were present in the facility, but getting closer I could feel a cluster of the knives I had made for Alec, Brian, and Rachel along with the scepter near the center of the facility. The stiletto was in another part of the site and the baton and knife I made for Taylor were further into the rows of units. I had focused on the cluster on the hope of finding the Undersiders, whether captured or injured.
As the wall exploded my bike roared through the blast before turning into a sideways slide and coming to a perfect stop. I turned towards the cluster of equipment I had sensed and found myself facing a woman in a gas mask flanked by two tough looking men in ABB colors all standing on a set of shipping crates. Around us was a much larger crowd of conscripted henchmen who were not nearly as adept at concealing their shock.
I took in the aftermath of my entrance. The wall was a mess of settling rubble with a few unfortunate conscripts groaning on the ground around it. They were barely visible through the massive cloud of concrete dust around the breach. A sort of contrail had been drawn from the cloud by my passing and wisps and curls of dust flowed off my costume. From the arrangement I'm guessing Bakuda had been mid rant/speech when the blast went off. On top of one of the storage units I could see the figures of Uber and Leet staring down at the commotion.
Well, after an entrance like that I wasn't about to let someone else seize the initiative. I raised a gloved hand and pointed towards Bakuda, and specifically the knives she and her henchmen were holding. Concrete dust swirled through the air as I moved and I let it settle before calling out across the courtyard.
"Those don't belong to you."
The two ABB members looked down at the knives in their hands. The left one was holding my karambit and the right one my parrying dagger. Both were sheathed, as was the bowie knife at Bakuda's hip. The bomb tinker tried to regain her footing, but was clearly put off.
"So that bitch's rescue squad finally showed up." She over gestured during her speech, possibly to make up for the monotone of her voice. I was recognizing the limits of communication that were imposed by full face masks. They were great for concealing identity but horrible for conveying nuance. With her synthesizer stripping the tone from her voice Bakuda seemingly had to emote like a bad actor to get her point across.
I had considered how to handle this. Given my current reputation, coming in with a speech about justice and rescue of innocents was bound to fall flat, especially considering who I was here to rescue. In fact, any indication that I was approaching this from the perspective of a hero would probably just have her jump straight to grenades. Instead I decided to play up the reputation I had earned and go as mercenary as possible.
"I have a contract with the Undersiders. I intend to honor it." I didn't have Bakuda's built in amplification but the new material of my cowl didn't muffle my voice like the bandana had. Plus the courtyard was still in stunned silence.
"Big talk." She made an overdramatic gesture as the Celestial Forge missed a connection to the time constellation. "Too bad you'll never live up to it." She waved a hand across the stunned masses. "Look around. This is what power looks like. Did Tattletale tell you about this? Did she make you think you had a chance? That girl's signed your death warrant. Called you in with your tricks and trinkets?" She pulled out my bowie knife and flashed it to the crowd. "Kid's stuff. What do you have that can stand up to the might of the ABB?"
Some of the braver members of the group were beginning to look emboldened. There were few firearms among the conscripts, but everyone had some kind of armament. Grips were beginning to be adjusted on weapons and the more aggressive members of the group were starting to shift forward. I knew I could handle anything but a mass charge, but without some counter display I could be likely to face just that. I needed to make a point before anyone got it in their head to try their luck.
I triggered the motoroid's transformation. The vehicle folded up around me in a smooth transition between motorcycle and power armor, though still with that five part electronic grinding sound that was oddly familiar despite just being a discharge from the servo-capacitors. A boom echoed around the courtyard as I brought down a foot with a combined seven hundred pounds of weight, cracking the concrete underneath it. The members of the group that had been edging forward were now slinking back from the eight feet of hyper alloy power armor. I seemed to have successfully reaffirmed my intimidation.
Well, except for Uber and Leet who for some reason were gesturing excitedly at each other and rapidly whispering back and forth, but those guys were nuts. They were probably more excited about fighting a robot suit than they were concerned about getting hurt in the conflict. To be honest as long as I was holding myself back I doubted they would pick up worse injuries from a confrontation with me than they typically endured during one of their usual broadcasts.
I activated a speaker added during the last upgrade and my voice boomed across the courtyard, dwarfing Bakuda's electronic cadence.
"I think the question you should be asking is, what do you have that can stand up to me?" This was a pissing match, but I was dragging it out intentionally. From the looks of things they had been bombarding the section of the storage area where I could detect the baton and knife I made for Taylor. That had clearly stopped, and likely would until the showboating had finished. I could feel the items moving through the area. The longer I drew this out the better the chance that Taylor would be able to rally.
"Right," She scoffed in what might have been a dismissive manner without the voice synthesizer turning everything into a monotone. She was clearly trying to remain aloof, but she suddenly seemed defensive as she looked at my armor. "And who the hell are you?"
I was kind of amazed she had given me such a perfect setup. I swung out one of my armor's new weapons and pointed it at her. "My name is Apeiron, and I'm here for the Undersiders."
Once again she was on the back foot. Bakuda had been showboating, and I had stolen her thunder. I knew she could go straight to bombs at any time, but I had the sense she wanted more out of this than a clean victory. They wouldn't have gone through the trouble of all of this nonsense if the only point was to eliminate the Undersiders. This was either personal or some kind of reputation thing. If she was going for a political victory then dropping me with a grenade might pull it off, but if she missed she'd lose more face then she could afford.
That was still something I was very concerned about. I hadn't had time to integrate any ranged weapons into my motoroid. Even if I had I wasn't at the point of trusting my A.I.s to be able to handle point defense against grenades or missiles. In the event that she opened fire my plan was to engage my turbines at maximum power and blindly launch myself out of here. I could figure out my next step when I was safely beyond bombardment range.
My omni-tool had a fairly advanced scanning system and right now Survey was leveraging the technology for all it was worth. It was plotting out life signs, geographical data, and energy signatures, which provided disturbing news on all fronts. There were close to a hundred conscripts here, eighty seven detected and likely more behind the storage units. Looking at the crowd I could plainly see the civilians that had been forced into service. They hadn't even changed their clothes. It was like they grabbed people out of their jobs or off the street and shoved a bat into their hands. I spotted people in office wear, coveralls, high visibility vests, and even school uniforms for some of the younger members. The younger members skewed very young, like middle school age if not less.
This whole situation was horrible, but something like that was just a new level of vile.
A scan of the facility showed that the layout of those units didn't match the satellite records. Clearly a lot of bombs had gone off here. My additional entryway wasn't the only spur-of-the-moment renovation that had been done. Entire sections of the facility had been torn apart during this encounter. What's more some of the exotic effects were still active. A large crystal formation was clustered near the north east corner, at least three units were still burning, and there was a spherical region that looked normal but my scanners couldn't penetrate.
The reason for this was clear from a simple sweep for energy sources. In addition to the clear blip from everyone present, even the people who looked like career ABB, I was getting dozens of readings from the facility. This place had been absolutely peppered with explosives, and they were too complex for me to tell what kind of bomb they were before they went off. With my defenses the bombs would either be completely meaningless or utterly devastating with very little middle ground. I needed to do whatever I could to avoid a fight here.
Fortunately there was the possibility I might be able to do just that. Before Bakuda could respond I lowered my arm and swung the weapon back into place, the entire crowd following the movement.
"Give me the Undersiders and we're done here. You can keep the 'trinkets' for all I care, but I'm fulfilling my contract."
That 'keep the trinkets' thing was the only reason I was considering this. I couldn't let Bakuda go free, but if she actually took the knives I'd be able to trace her anywhere she went. Perfectly undetectable, unblockable tracking. I could swoop in properly prepared and take out her, her lab, and any cronies all in one strike.
I just prayed I had managed to keep the hope out of my voice when I made that offer.
Bakuda actually seemed to be considering it. "I can respect a mercenary attitude." She looked up towards Uber and Leet who, to her disgust, were still geeking out over my suit for some reason. "That is, a PROFESSIONAL mercenary attitude. Tell you what, after sorting out that mouthy girl I'm feeling a bit generous. You can have what's left of the rest of them, but I'm keeping the bug girl." She flicked the knife. "Lung has business with her. Let's say she's a welcome home present."
God damn it. So close. I wasn't willing to give up Taylor. If I let her go I might be able to save her, heal whatever they had planned, and bring Bakuda to justice, but savior of the world or not there was no way I was delivering a teenage girl into who knows what tortures.
I also wasn't too comfortable with that 'what's left of them' comment. I just hoped they weren't dead. I mean, I was betting against it. Bakuda seemed to like a captive audience, and probably in the literal sense of the word. I couldn't see her killing them if only because it would ruin the flow of her ranting.
"I can't accept that. Khepri is part of the contract, nonnegotiable." I shifted my stance to be slightly more aggressive but kept my weapons undeployed.
"No fucking way." The bomb tinker's behavior was dismissive and cautious, but not overly aggressive yet. A good sign, but I had no idea how long it would last. "That bitch is ABB enemy number one. Only way you're taking her out of here will be in three different body bags."
God damn it Taylor, what the hell did you do? Judging from past behavior I'd be tempted to make a joke about severed body parts, but this was serious.
So how the hell did I play this? Coming to an agreement was a lost cause. I could see that plainly. I wasn't going to talk her around, plus there was nothing I'd be willing to offer. I was right back to dragging this out and hoping Taylor could use the time to get her shit together. And also hope that the rest of the Undersiders weren't slowly bleeding out.
So, the goal had shifted from objective based conversation to keeping her talking until something can be accomplished. Fortunately her underlings seem too terrified to attempt anything while she was center stage. So I just had to keep her wound up enough that she kept talking, but not hit the point where the bombs start flying. Her grenade launcher was currently slung on her back rather than in her hand and I was fairly confident I could launch out of here in the time it took her to reach for it.
Safely launching out of here is another matter, but both me and the motoroid were fairly durable. Frankly I'd take my chances with a terminal velocity impact over some of the bullshit that got unleashed on Cornell.
And that's another alchemy power from the Celestial Forge. Natural Alchemy, like potion making, but science based, not magical. Well, natural energy based. Still useful, and the science aspect will help with other endeavors. Not really relevant to the current situation and I needed to say something before I lost the initiative.
"You think you can back up that claim?" The statement may have been overly aggressive, but if this was going to end in blood I was at least going to pick the route we took to get there. I put as much derision into the tone as I could and Bakuda stepped back like she'd been struck. Her hand twitched towards her grenade launcher, then stopped and looked around. I was a bit concerned she'd jump straight to violence, but it seemed she still wanted to play to the crowd.
"That's fucking rich coming from you. Some nobody shows up and thinks they can dictate terms to me? You think that janky robot suit is worth anything? Every baby tinker shits out some crap like that day one."
It was interesting that she jumped straight to the topic of tinkering. Judging by how Tattletale had set her off and the fact that she had also triggered due to something relating to college it was easy to guess where she was coming from.
I remembered people like her from when I was in school. No room for failure because their entire self-image was tied up in being the best. That mentality barely worked in high school. Take a half dozen people who all needed to be number one and put them in the same class and things get messy real fast. Was that what happened with her? I was getting something to that extent from my passenger, but it wasn't clear.
Those people were also the most insufferable ones to work with. Even if they actually had the skills to back up their claims their 'confidence' in their abilities was always paper thin. Just a hint that you might be ahead of them in any area was like an act of war. In the worst cases even the perception that someone could be better than them was inexcusable and had to be corrected.
What was clear was the idea of someone outshining her bothered her badly, and that was something I could use. Survey had transferred a sensor reading to me, faint but still promising. It looked like scattered groups of insects were making their way towards the storage facility. They were only visible because of how tightly packed the swarms were, but Taylor was clearly still in this fight. I just needed to buy her some time.
I shifted my stance slightly and the crowd reacted. Bakuda wasn't wrong about every tinker making power armor. Power armor was technically possible even with mundane mechanical skills. Almost every tinker had enough crafting ability to get a suit together. The thing was the vast majority of them were absolute crap. They had a limited range of motion, moved like tanks, were prone to falling over, and tended to look like they'd been made out of broken refrigerators. That was probably because they usually were made out of broken refrigerators.
My suit did not fit that description. This was the end product of over a dozen mechanical powers with Garment approved aesthetics applied to it. It moved more smoothly than most people were capable of and had power and strength to back up its speed. Just the subtle shifting of weight was able to communicate how agile it was. Bakuda may have been trying to downplay it, but it was clearly of a class well beyond 'janky'.
I made a series of subtle movements over the full range of the suits movements. "I don't know, I think it holds up." Sarcasm and derision. I had the feeling Bakuda wanted a direct challenge that she'd be free to swat down. She was the one playing games with reputation and power balance. I guess I was as well, but I wasn't trying to establish myself as a crime lord. The social stakes were higher for her, so odds were she'd keep posturing.
As I hoped she kept on talking rather than launch an attack. "Can't be hot shit if these losers were able to buy you off."
Right, I guess that was a bit of a quandary that didn't exactly line up. Even Tattletales analysis probably wasn't worth a rescue with this kind of equipment. I tried to play it off. "I'm satisfied with our arrangement."
Bakuda made an overly dismissive gesture. "Yeah, right. What are you working for, trading cards and lunch money?"
I shifted my stance again. "Not every business relationship is based on finances."
Plenty of capes worked on mutual support. Thinkers and tinkers propped up other teams all the time. From Bakuda's reactions she seemed to get it.
"So that's it then." There was something to her posture I couldn't quite place.
"Pretty much." I shifted my armor again and gestured to her. "Offer still stands. Give me Khepri and the rest of them and we're done here."
My answer seemed to offend her somehow. "And here I thought I found a decent merc. Didn't expect you to get so personal."
Was that what this was about? Too invested in the people I worked with? Well, if her main experience is with Uber and Leet I could understand the appeal of keeping a professional distance. "In this business everything is personal."
"So you think that's worth the trouble?" Once again there was something in her posture I felt I wasn't picking up on.
"It is to me." I tried to be glib in my response, but it didn't seem to land well.
There was an electronic scoff from her mask. "That bitch got you making her the best toys, and now riding to her rescue as well?"
The conversation was definitely getting away from me. There were parts of this I wasn't following and now was definitely not the time to be on shaky footing.
"I don't expect you to understand." Mostly I said that because I didn't understand where this conversation was going. I checked in with Survey again. Thick cinderblocks weren't the best medium for scanning through, much less accounting for the after effects of the bombs and the random crap in the storage units. I couldn't get a clear picture of what was happening deeper in the facility, but I hoped Taylor was getting her shit together because from how Bakuda was reacting, things weren't going to stay civil much longer.
"Don't you fucking tell me what I can't understand. You think this high school shit means anything to me? I'm a fucking genius!"
In my experience there are few things more concerning that someone who presents themselves as a genius. I mean, I had multiple powers that boosted my intelligence and I wouldn't be comfortable yelling that to the world. What kind of person could just profess their genius without shame?
I could recognize aspects of her personality from my college days, but I had the feeling we were coming at this from completely opposite sides. Someone who was inordinately built up rather than torn down. It was weird even considering the idea that a person could have been so excessively extolled that they could seriously hold this kind of image of themselves. No wonder she had crashed so hard.
Maybe it was because I was coming into this straight from therapy, maybe it was the frustrations I had been dealing with before she decided to throw the city into hell, but I just wasn't feeling that tolerant at the moment. If I was going to taunt the bomb tinker I was going to hit her where it hurt.
"So what?"
My dismissive tone seemed to drag her out of her rant.
"Ex-fucking-cuse me?"
"So you're a genius. Like that means anything? There are what, thirty million people in the world with that IQ bracket? Do you seriously think it's really a point of distinction?"
She actually didn't open fire on me, but it seemed like that was only because she was too angry to consider the possibility.
"It doesn't matter what you fucking think. I'm the greatest tinker alive." She gestured at the devastation around her. "Look at this." She specifically pointed at the towering mass of crystal. "Can your pea brain even comprehend what I've done here?"
I seriously looked at the effect of the bomb. "Looks like some kind of silicon seed structure designed for molecular propagation with the integration of surrounding solids. From the discoloration I'm guessing you either pulled in a few of your own people when you set it off, or someone was using one of these lockers to store something particularly wet and meaty."
Bakuda would probably have reacted less if I had clocked her in the mouth. I enjoyed putting her off balance, but that was something I had real cause to be concerned about. I had no defense against that kind of bomb and if the crystal progression hadn't experienced pattern collapse it would have turned into the kind of thing that got an S-class response.
"That... That's right!" She struggled to regain her momentum. "Total molecular control. And I cooked it up on a whim, just to see what would happen." Seemingly back on pace she planted her feet and gestured to the crowd. "Power and fear! That's what this is about. While you've been chasing after your bug bitch I've taken this city! True control. These people will do whatever I tell them, whenever I tell them, all because they fear me!"
This was getting dangerously close to either an ordered attack or some kind of bombing demonstration. I needed to know how she could trigger the cranial and planted bombs. Until then I couldn't even risk trying to capture her. That said, I wasn't about to let some poor kid get detonated just to provide a data point. Fortunately Bakuda was almost embarrassingly easy to side track.
"Cranial bombs, right?"
She glared at me, but when it became evident I wasn't going to press further she launched into a speech.
"Exactly. These people know they only live because I allow it. I can kill them with a thought and they only live as long as I do. That's loyalty. That's fear. That's power."
"That's the only thing keeping you safe." My voice was flat as I interrupted her.
The bomb tinker recoiled and glared across the courtyard at me. "What?"
"These people are saving your life. Right now they're the only reason you're still breathing. Actually, everyone here owes their lives to Tattletale. Her tip about your little dead man's switch is the only reason I didn't open this discussion by reducing you to a charred smear."
The scary thing was I knew I would have done it. One look around at the children and old women with bombs in their heads was enough to convince me, not to mention all the other everyday citizens whose only crime was happening to match the ABB's recruitment demographics. What she was doing here was beyond monstrous. It was vile.
I believed in the unwritten rules. I accepted people broke them all the time in a myriad of small ways, but blatant breaches like this were beyond the pale. The only way Bakuda could get out of this mess without a kill order is if somehow the politics of the situation held it up. Everyone would have been thinking that SOMEONE should take her out. I just happened to have the war veteran experience that meant I both could and would have followed through on the idea. That terrified me, but not as much as it seemed like it should have.
And that's another quarter for the jar.
She glanced around in agitation. "Big fucking talk. What the hell do you think you could do against the ABB?"
We were entering the end game here. There weren't many places I could go that would escalate things past death threats. It was time to play the last of my cards. I leaned forward slightly as I spoke. "Maybe you should ask Oni Lee." There were questioning glances from the crowd. "By the way, how's his arm doing? Was that a clean break? He didn't stick around long enough for me to find out."
Murmurs were starting to circulate through the crowd to Bakuda's clear annoyance. One of the henchmen leaned in towards her and whispered something, but she brushed him off.
"No." She seemed to be trying to whisper, but the metallic voice of the synthesizer was clear across the courtyard.
He tried again and she glared at him. "We don't need her help on this. I've got it under control."
The gang member nearly backed down, but steeled himself. He started speaking up, so I could just make out his response with my suit's sensors. "He's the guy that took on the demon. We're supposed to call it in if he showed up. At this point all the timing we've been given is already shot. What difference does it make?"
"She can play conductor as much as she wants but she's not in charge. I don't need to check in with her. I don't answer to anyone!" As Bakuda turned increasingly manic the gang member fell back reverently. I noticed everyone seems to be edging as far as they could from him. "This is my plan, my genius! I don't take orders from some eleventh hour recruit!"
Seemingly mollified Bakuda turned back to me. "So you got a lucky hit in and thought you could handle the whole organization? Well tough shit, that overconfidence is going to get you killed." The fact that Bakuda was the one talking about overconfidence struck me as a breathtaking lack of self-awareness.
While she was posturing a moth suddenly landed on the visor of my suit. I managed to avoid reacting, but based on the twitched of the insect I noticed a faint trail of bugs hanging in the air leading towards the eastern rows of storage lockers. A quick check confirmed that the knife and baton were in that direction.
Thank God, Taylor was finally ready. I had no idea if she had anything prepared, but if she was setting this up then at least she wasn't pinned down or incapacitated.
"I'll give you one chance to stand down." Her stance was aggressive and she shifted her position to the edge of the shipping crate. "Admit you're out of your league, step off, and just maybe I won't use you to test out some new ideas and let Oni Lee play with whatever's left."
There were a few ways I had considered opening things, but if she was going to give me this kind of opportunity I might as well take it.
"I guess I have no choice." I opened the paneling of my armor and stepped out onto the courtyard, noting a failed connection from the knowledge constellation as I went. Bakuda relaxed as I exited the motoroid and she made some dismissive gestures to the ganger who had spoken up. Behind me the motoroid's plating sealed itself again.
The focus of the crowd shifted to me as I strode forward and flung back the coat of my costume. Doing so revealed my now intricately designed and highly modified heavy pistol. Runework and alterations performed on the back of a speeding bike were a challenge, but I was still happy with the result.
It was brutal overkill, but I doubted anything else would really do in this situation.
"I'm glad at least one of you small brained plebeians has the sense to stand down when you're out matched."
Here it was, the final bout of showmanship before the shit completely hit the fan. I squared my shoulders and called across the courtyard. "I'm not standing down."
Bakuda tensed and the crowd went dead silent. "What?"
"I just needed a second pair of hands." With a signal the motoroid strode next to me. The crowd watched open mouthed as the armor moved smoothly without an occupant. It fell into place at my side and with a flourish deployed both weapons.
There was a limit to what I was capable of building on the ride over, though much less of one than there logically should have been. With my powers and abilities the handful of minutes I spent working on the bike while it was peeling through the city was the equivalent of days of dedicated construction in a fully equipped workshop. Between the depth of my mechanical knowledge, the precision of my micromanipulators, and the instant fabrication of my omni-tool I was able to complete a pair of advanced melee weapons in blinding speed.
I still wanted to reduce the chance of fatalities, which is why I went with blunt weapons. The motoroid essentially had a pair of tonfas or nightsticks built into its forearms. They had been repurposed from the bike's structure and a simple fabricated servo bracket allowed free rotation around the wrist. That could potentially allow the motoroid to use martial arts techniques based on the weapon, but right now it mainly allowed dramatic deployments. When both tonfas swung into place a metallic crack echoed around the courtyard and more than a few of the conscripts took an involuntary step back.
A pair of blunt instruments wouldn't have been a deciding factor in a fight like this, nor would they have gotten the response I needed. Luckily I had just received the ability to easily turn anything into a high-frequency weapon. A rapidly fabricated resonant capacitor calibrated to the specific inductance of the tonfa was all it took. Blunt HF weapons didn't have the insane cutting power of HF blades, but they were incredibly durable, both in terms of strength and the ability to resist molecular alteration.
They also crackled with faint partial discharges of the alternating current, which judging by the reactions of the crowd, looked intimidating as hell.
But once again, glowing beat sticks weren't going to be the kind of display I needed to win the day. That's where my runecraft came in. The strength of the runes was highly variable, but could be increased based on the nature of the weapon, the method of inscription, and the detail of the rune work.
Larger weapons could handle more power than smaller ones. A dagger or a collapsible baton could only support fairly weak effects. A solid bar of metal that needed robot strength to wield had a significantly higher threshold.
Inscription method also mattered. Printed runes would only have a sliver of the power of those inscribed by hand. The power could be further boosted by arcane methods and rituals in the inscription process, but the important thing was that the work was done personally by my hand.
Detail was also a big factor. I hadn't learned how significant it was until I decided to dive into inscriptions after gaining my Decadence power. That seemingly meaningless design power had boosted the quality of my rune work to the point where what was planned as an incidental boost became enough to propel Taylor into villainous infamy. I had gotten two more style powers since then along with a set of gloves that let me work at a borderline impossible level of detail.
Both tonfas were fully inscribed and may have been the most powerful weapons I'd ever made. Well, that was a title they could have held until I started work on my pistol.
At the sound of the tonfas deploying I dropped a hand to the grip of my pistol and activated the interface of my omni-tool. Tension rippled through the crowd as my left forearm was sheathed in orange holographic mass fields.
Bakuda glared at me while trying to make it look like she wasn't edging for her grenade launcher. "Big deal. You've seen what I can do. Are you really stupid enough to think you have a chance?"
I glanced down at my omni-tool. The interface was much easier to use now that I was out of that armor. I had faintly hoped that I would be able to crack that dead man's signal and end this madness. Unfortunately that seemed to be something so near and dear to her specialization to the point that even with Survey's help I could barely make sense of it. Between the levels of encryption, the semi random frequency changes, and what I'm sure must have been some exotic effects I wasn't getting an easy way out of this mess. Which left the hard way.
"I don't know if I do…"
I activated a very familiar command that I had actually never used before. With a flash of mass fields and instant fabrication a combat drone deployed into the air next to me. However, two things were different about this deployment.
The first difference from my combat experience was that I now had a burgeoning A.I. in my omni-tool. With it able to direct my drone suddenly it was capable of more complicated commands than just 'fuck that guy and anyone close to him'. Survey would be able to direct the drone for reconnaissance, distraction, and even interception of attacks.
The second difference was something I didn't think would make as much of an impact as it had. Fun fact, I actually couldn't turn off any of my powers. There was no way I could make something without all of my applicable crafting abilities coming into play. So every set of clothes I made would fit perfectly, every item would be nigh-impervious to the effects of time and, thanks to Beauty in the Arts, everything I made would look good on a level that bordered on the divine. It seemed it didn't matter if it was made by hand or automatic fabrication program, the effect still applied.
A combat drone is normally a series of partial spheres of cheaply fabricated material around a ball of charged plasma and a temporarily projected mass field. It doesn't exactly look bad, just fairly utilitarian. It certainly isn't supposed to have subtle contours, embossed designs along the surface, and a silhouette that evoked the idea of a celestial being. The glowing drone floated next to me like a divine messenger to the absolute shock of those assembled.
I squared off between my eight foot armored motoroid and my elegantly designed combat drone and stared down the bomb tinker.
"...but we might."
Whatever spell cast by the drone's appearance was broken when Bakuda screamed and raised her grenade launcher. I had been ready for this. The pistol was in my hand and tracked on the target before the grenade began its arc across the courtyard. The reason that Taylor had been able to dismember Aegis so easily was the speed granted by the wind runes on her knife. They were significantly less advanced than the ones I had engraved onto my pistol. The faster draw speed, lack of air resistance, and projected shockwaves were boons when using the pistol even if they were all secondary to its true purpose.
Drawing on my new lifetime of experience I settled into a firing stance and drew a perfect bead on the grenade. As I squeezed the trigger a sliver of metal the size of a grain of sand was sheared from the ammo block and subjected to mass effects and electromagnetic acceleration that launched it with the speed and effective inertia of a high caliber rifle round. With the wind runes supporting it the round tore through the air and shattered the grenade at the apex of its arc.
There was a sudden greasy feeling in the air that was immediately followed by a blinding lightshow. The sky above the facility filled with lightning, bolts spreading out like spider webs clawing at the night. Occasional tendrils found their way to the ground, melting the metal roofs of any storage units they touched. When it finally passed a good half of the flares that had lit the sky were flickering out and dropping towards the ground.
It didn't escape my notice that the particular discharge of the bomb would have been devastating to both my drone and motoroid. Also probably to everyone on my side of the courtyard. Bakuda may have been able to make tactical decisions even when maddeningly angry, but those decisions didn't seem to include any concern for friendly fire casualties.
I had started moving long before the discharge had dissipated. Combat instincts from wars I didn't fight drove me forward as I pulled a prepared formula from my bandoleer. Two drams of oil and a lump of wax. It was the mixture for my weakest attack formula, Flash.
Bakuda assumed she was invincible because of her contingency, that no one would risk attacking her. That wasn't exactly true. If you could be sure your attack wouldn't be enough to stop her heart then you were free to go nuts. It was just unacceptably risky with a lot of offensive options. Bullets and blades could catch arteries or something vital you didn't mean to hit. Blunt force could cause a punctured lung or brain damage that would be the end of things. Using electricity against someone with that kind of implant was just insane.
Fire was another matter. If you were using a fire ability that you could precisely control, perhaps thanks to a set of micromanipulator gloves used for the mixing of the formula, and spread the effect thin enough, such as across three idiots who decided to stand on an elevated platform, then you could be certain the effect wouldn't be enough to kill. To hurt, most certainly, but nothing worse than a few second degree burns.
I threw down the balefully glowing mixture and three large orange sparks wheeled out of it. Each was about a foot wide and I could feel the heat radiating from them as they flew away. They soared unerringly towards the shipping crates that had been used for an improvised stage. Bakuda raised her grenade launcher, seemingly at a loss for what to do. One of the gang members looked dumfounded and the approaching blasts while the other was swifter and made a leap to the ground. It did him no good as the spark veered to follow his movement.
The dark alchemy burst over them in a roiling wave of fire. Within a second it was gone, leaving burnt flesh and smoldering clothing. Bakuda's mechanical voice screamed profanities as she hauled herself up and tried to angle the grenade launcher towards me with a shaky grip. I was already moving towards the storage units with my drone, tracking the rough trail of bugs left by Taylor. Bakuda paused at the last second.
"Where's the fucking robot?"
The scream of turbines echoed across the facility and drew everyone's eyes to the sky. There, plummeting out of the night, was the clear form of my motoroid in the process of power bombing the courtyard.
When Taylor had tried out her baton Alec had made a joke about her using it to create a seismic event. That was a ridiculous idea. Impact earth runes were a completely different application from tremor earth runes.
As much as I needed a dramatic display I still wanted to avoid casualties as much as possible. Completely outfitting the HF tonfas with impact runes would have blasted the remains of anyone hit by them over a distance of two to three city blocks, depending on what the wind was doing at the time. With tremor runes they would be knocked down, maybe buried a bit, but largely alright. Well, they would still have been hit by a hyper alloy bar held by a five hundred pound super strong robot, so not exactly alright, but no worse than your typical industrial accident or mid-speed collision.
Tremor runes had another advantage. Against stationary targets with no way to disperse the force their effects could be devastating. The power of the shockwaves were proportional to the strength of the impact. This kind of thing was something I had dismissed long ago since nothing I could build would have held up to the stresses involved. The strike would destroy the weapons and probably my motoroid along with it. Of course, that was before I got a way to specifically strengthen the weapons, and in a manner particularly effective against vibrations.
Oh, and that's a new connection to a mote from the Crafting constellation. Weapon Modification. Now I'll be able to make these things even better when I get a chance.
With a carefully timed leap I latched onto my drone with my omni-tool just before the motoroid impacted an empty section in the center of the courtyard. Drones were not designed for this kind of thing. Survey was stressing its systems to the absolute limit in an attempt to keep me off the ground and even then I had to cheat with my omni-tool's mass field to stay aloft. As a result I was spared the effects and got an excellent view of the results of my plan.
Once again I may have slightly underestimated the effectiveness of my rune craft.
The ground in the center of the courtyard bowed and rippled in a way I had never seen outside of cartoons. Knowing it wasn't a cartoon and the physical reality of the situation I was immensely grateful that I was currently suspended from my drone. The entire mass of conscripts was knocked off their feet and the facility... well I'd be tempted to say it looked like a bomb went off, but considering this place had already seen multiple explosions that probably wasn't the most enlightening descriptor.
This was the real reason I had exited the motoroid. I still didn't know if my reinforcement protected my brain tissue to the same extent that it protected the surface of my body. I had been meaning to experiment with that in controlled conditions. Power bombing the surface of the earth with a seismic weapon was definitely not controlled conditions. From the aftermath I was very glad to not be inside that suit.
Everything was damaged. Some units had completely collapsed, some were crumbling, and some looked like they would fall apart in a stiff breeze. The lucky ones, mostly further away from the impact site were just sporting networks of fresh cracks or the occasional missing brick. Even considering all of that everything still looked better than the state of the ground.
My motoroid slowly rose to its feet in the actual crater it had made. The impact had torn apart the surface of the courtyard and exposed the foundation. Deep cracks and fissures spread out from the crater in a jagged network. The entire facility looked like it had been shattered like a pane of glass. It looked like the fissures extended all the way through the foundation of the site, as a few of the units that were still standing now listed at a concerning angle.
I was shocked by the level of destruction, but my new military instincts were drawing me forward, leaving no time for introspection. I dropped from the drone, drawing my pistol again. This was one last tactical move and display of power.
When combined, my technical skills greatly outstrip any of my individual powers. As such, as an engineer I may have been able to mount an incompatible weapon mod onto a pistol and sort of get it to work. With the weight of my other abilities in addition to the pure cheat that was Hybridization Theory I could take what would have been a loosely functional object and turn it into a work of art. As such not only was I able to mount the omni-blade bayonet onto the pistol, I was able to significantly improve it.
An omni-blade is a flash fabricated superheated silicon-carbide blade capable of being generated by an omni-tool. It can be used in melee combat, though military engineers generally prefer to use incendiary bursts when fighting at that range. Because of its extreme usefulness a scaled down fabricator and mass field was designed to allow for an omni-blade to be used as a weapon mount.
I didn't leave it at that. I had approached this with the knowledge of a master swordsmith, the combined science of an alien civilization, and more enhancements to mechanics than can be properly comprehended. By stressing the mass field and fabricator output I was able to more than double the size of the blade. I optimized the shape and flow perfectly for my ergonomics and fighting style. The blade composition was tweaked based on my knowledge of other monomolecular weaponry and innate understanding of material science. Finally, and most significantly, I integrated a resonant capacitor into the weapon.
As I moved forward I activated my pistol's melee weapon. A thirty four inch glowing orange blade crackling with HF discharges sprang forth. The strength of an HF blade scales with the quality of the original weapon. My customized omni-blade was a very, very good weapon.
A trio of jeeps were parked near the side of the courtyard. They were small enough to fit between the rows of lockers and my guess was they'd been used to run down the Undersiders during this sick game. With the courtyard shattered they wouldn't be getting any other vehicles in here, but these had a high enough ground clearance that they could still navigate the less damaged parts of the site.
I wasn't going to let that happen.
I overloaded the HF current as I neared the vehicles. While slowly walking forward I swung the blade once, twice, three times. The wind runes turned each slice of the weapon into a blazingly quick movement, leaving only an arc of baleful orange light. Despite being well out of the reach of the blade the jeeps split in half. Then they split again. Then those pieces got further subdivided. Crackling slices extended into the walls and ground around the wrecks, some of them frighteningly deep.
I looked over the courtyard. The conscripts were pulling themselves slowly to their feet, the frantic shouts of the professional gang members doing little to help things along. Some of the ones closer to the impact were sporting light injuries, but my sensors didn't pick up anything fatal or life threatening. My motoroid had specifically targeted the point furthest from the crowds. Maximum shock with minimum injury.
Bakuda was still smoldering from my alchemy formula and swearing loudly in her robotic voice. One of her lackeys was fighting through the pain of his own burns to dig her grenade launcher out of a partially collapsed wall while the other helped the bomb tinker to her feet.
The crowd's attention seemed split between us. Half were looking to Bakuda for direction and the other half were looking to me with no small amount of fear. More than a few were following every movement of my blade with filching apprehension. Bakuda finally pulled herself together enough to make another attempt at grandstanding, though this time from the top of a pile of rubble.
I wasn't going to let her take back the initiative. Before she could start I pointed my blade into the sky and pulsed the capacitor just enough to cause a halo of sparks to burst from the sword. Most eyes turned to me, but the smarter ones followed the direction I was pointing to the form of my combat drone, floating high above the courtyard.
Coordination with the drone and motoroid was all handled through my omni-tool. The commands were unnecessary and pure showmanship, but at this point showmanship had a necessity of its own.
"Overwatch." As the word echoed across the courtyard the components of the drone started to glow. Small bursts of electricity began to appear around it as it tracked the actions of the people below.
I dropped my blade to point at the form of my motoroid, rising from the crater. The raw fear on the faces of some of the conscripts was chilling, but I pushed forward.
"Engage." With a completely unnecessary nod the motoroid began spinning up its turbines, filling the courtyard with a cloud of concrete dust.
Just before it washed over me I drew a bead on Bakuda with my sword. Then, to the sound of my motoroid launching itself into the fight, I retracted my blade and disappeared into the dust, following the breadcrumb trail of insects leading me to Taylor.
Jumpchain abilities this chapter:
High-Frequency Manufacturer (Metal Gear Rising) 300:
A blade launderer, huh? Anyway, you can now make a HF blade out of anything you want. Depending on the original craftsmanship of the weapon, it could be good or shit. But if you picked this, you probably have something in mind.
Must be a physical object. No lightsabers and the like.
Yes, blunt objects can become HF weapons. No, they can't cut. They only get stronger, and can resist other HF weapons.
Alchemy (Samurai Jack) 200:
The ancient science of mixing specific ingredients and then infusing them with natural energy. You know how to make a wide array of potions with both beneficial and harmful effects.
Weapon Modifications (Archer) 100:
You design and modify weapons with flair, creativity, and skill.
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Thank you, corrected.
The "tried to date Parian" thing is a canon part of her backstory. Joe is actually an unnamed background character that was mentioned in her interlude.
The stuff the PRT did take seriously were the elements about the new cape in question, so all their digging was part of the threat assessment process. It's easier to commit resources to a demonstrated threat with evident powers than a nebulous one based on unconfirmed predictions. There was also a big concern that a new cape with connections to one gang was trying to divert attention to another gang. That combined with the short timeframe meant nothing was really done on the ABB front.
Pentekonter
Piano Cat
- Location
- The Internet
Makes me wonder how the public would react should it ever come out that the awesome, fashionable, and absurdly powerful tinker that just appeared and took on the entire might of the ABB actually approached the PRT about the possible Bakuda threat and the PRT did nothing.
Not that I can fault them per se. Such things are complicated, and the source was by all accounts seemingly untrustworthy, but hindsight is 20/20 and a grieving public will demand blood.
Also, furiously prepping my refresh key for the AO3 page.
nicolaas312
Supremely Nervous
- Location
- Thailand
Holy fucking shit I knew that It was gonna be fucking awesome and I'm still surprised at how awesome this was.
- Location
- Odessa
Thanks for update! Excellent chapter.
The moment public realizes that PRT was warned yet did absolutely nothing, except detaining Panacea, Heads will Roll!
I guess now PRT/Protectorate will think that MC specializes in shaker projectors that create various effects.
Didn't he turn off Decadence while making 'horrifying' version of his motoroid?
Was thinking along same lines, plus the fact that Panacea likely ended up unavaliable.
The moment public realizes that PRT was warned yet did absolutely nothing, except detaining Panacea, Heads will Roll!
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I went and read ahead on ff dot net and now I have to wait for an update. I'm now mad at myself for my lack of patience.
18 Regroup
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
18 Regroup
I disappeared into the dust choked rows of storage lockers ignoring the sound of the chaos behind me. I didn't expect my motoroid to accomplish much, and that was largely the point. Fleet's ability to direct the machine, both in motorcycle and bipedal mode, had improved dramatically but that only marginally extended to combat. The robot form had enough dexterity to handle itself, but there was no real combat programming beyond basic ability to swing the weapon. That was fine since I didn't really intend for it to hit anyone.
None of those conscripts could meaningfully damage my motoroid or my drone, so I just needed to keep them wary enough to stay clear. Bakuda had dozens of bombs that could utterly wreck them, but the motoroid was agile and the drone was disposable. They should be able to avoid or intercept anything coming their way. That would let them tie up the ABB force long enough for me to regroup with the Undersiders and plan my next move.
I picked my way past critically damaged storage lockers over uneven ground with pandemonium behind me and my heart hammering in my chest. My body was swimming in adrenalin and I felt light headed. I really couldn't believe I just did that. During the faceoff I had just focused on the next step, on trying to avoid showing any weakness, but the gravity of the situation was creeping up on me. This was full on life or death conflict, and the first time I had seen anything like it since my fight with Oni Lee. That seemed like ages ago when it was really what, six days? Actually slightly less than that.
Without the mindset of my military engineer power I had no idea how I would have been able to manage this. Even as I felt like panicking, instincts drew me forward, away from hostiles and towards allies and a more defensible position. I took a deep breath and pressed on. I could put another quarter in the jar later. Right now I was just grateful to be able to stay functional, no matter what that meant for the integrity of my mind.
I was following my sense of the equipment I built for Taylor along with her trail of insects when I felt the Celestial Forge. It made a connection to the Time constellation using every ounce of reach I had to spare. It wasn't the largest mots I had connected to, but the ability was so ridiculously overpowered that it nearly made me lose focus on what I was doing. Given the significance of the danger I was in that's really saying something.
The power was called Workaholic and was practically irreverent in how broken it was. In effect it boosted the output of all of my crafting. Either I could produce five times as many items, or what I was building would be roughly three times the size. By three times the size I meant three times in one dimension, so significantly more in total volume and mass. Actually, it worked out to slightly less than three times, since the mass would increase by a factor of twenty five rather than twenty seven. That had a nice symmetry to it. Either five times the finished product or five times five the material output.
The power would have been significant enough if it just let me boost my production speed, but there was another massively impactful element to it. The amount of initial resources required didn't change. I could start with the parts to build one robot and end up with five, or a robot nearly three times as tall. And the power was practically irreverent about the fact that it was making logistical requirements meaningless.
It actually felt like the ability was designed to be exploited. I could build something, break it down to base materials, and then use those materials again. Each time the multiplying effect would be applied. As long as I had what I needed for the initial construction I effectively had infinite resources. If was almost as if the universe had gotten fed up with all of my struggling with logistics and just wanted me to get to crafting.
Not that I'm complaining or anything, it was just a lot more significant than I expected from any mote of its strength. Also, having your entire logistical methodology upended in the middle of a battlefield was a bit difficult to process. Instead I put it out of my mind and pushed forward towards the location of my knife and baton.
Once I had a couple of rows of now damaged lockers between me and the courtyard the amount of dust in the air dropped to manageable levels. The impact on visibility had been drastic even away from the blast site. Within the courtyard I doubted they could see five feet in front of them. A quick check on the link to my motoroid and drone confirmed that was pretty much correct.
I made a note to build some proper visual enhancements into my visor. I had wonderful scanning tech in my omni-tool, but there was a whole range of possibilities for optical augmentation available to me. In fact, there were a lot of upgrades I could apply to my personal loadout, and it wasn't like I was working under a resource crunch any more.
Just a dire time crunch I didn't know about that had led to this rushed and sloppy rescue mission.
I had a sense of the equipment I was tracking, but that was 'as the crow flies' and I was currently working my way through a maze of storage lockers. I could vault to the roof of any one of these without trouble, but that would defeat the entire purpose of causing a distraction and slinking off. Fortunately it seemed Taylor's control of her bugs was at least as good as I had suspected. I wasn't just following a scattered path, she was spelling out directional arrows with insects as I went.
I started to accelerate down the rows of lockers, slowing only to periodically check my omni-tool's readings. The route seemed a bit convoluted, but from the looks of things Taylor was directing me around active bombs and past devices that had already exploded. It provided a wonderful and horrifying tour of what Bakuda was capable of as well as extensive justification for my passenger's concern about her rampage.
I passed lockers that had turned to glass or melted into a puddle of liquid. In one area the path dipped as a perfectly spherical cut had been taken out of it and the surrounding lockers. Exotic effects, like sprays of corrosive green slime, were mixed with the signs of more conventional explosives, though those were still drastically powerful. Conventional was a relative term since I was sure one of the blast showed indications of a fuel-air mixture explosive and another seemed to have deployed a shower of white phosphorous.
It wasn't the scale of the damage that disturbed me, nor was it the exotic effects that I knew I had no defense against. The horrifying element was the collateral damage. Bakuda's inclination to send a tinker tech bomb at me with her own people in the blast radius was clearly not a new occurrence. I saw the signs of at least a half dozen conscripts who had been caught in the effects of her bombs. A portly man partially reduced to a gooey splatter, a pair of scorched shadows on one of the walls with no trace of the people they came from, or the bodies of people who were 'just' subject to normal explosives.
I found myself leaning even more heavily on my passenger and military experience to force myself forward. I had a feeling this would turn my gourd later, but right now I had a job to do.
My meandering route had taken me deeper into the facility, but I was close enough that I could practically feel the slight separation between my knife and baton. With one final turn I found myself mask to mask with the newest supervillain of Brockton Bay.
From the look of things most certainly she had seen better days.
This wasn't the Khepri that had struck a tall, imposing image as she strode out of the bank and dismembered Aegis without a second glance. Taylor was panting for all the air she could pull through her mask. One of her yellow lenses was cracked and her hair was matted with sweat. Her costume was streaked with dust and soot and from the way she was standing she seemed to be favoring her left side. The baton was in her right hand and she held the knife in a reverse grip in her left. Both weapons were shaking slightly from the force of the death grip she had on them.
She may have been the last Undersider standing, but earning that accomplishment had clearly taken a toll.
She barely reacted upon seeing me, instead struggling to catch her breath. I took a moment to check my omni-tool for readings on any nearby bombs or hostiles. Cinderblocks weren't the best medium to scan through, but from what I could see the immediate area was clear. Taylor had finally reacted when I started manipulating the holographic interface that sheathed my left forearm.
"It looks clear." I offered. "From what I can see there aren't any explosives or ABB in the immediate area."
Taylor nodded at my words, but kept panting. "I know. Been tracking. With bugs."
I raised an eyebrow. "You can do that?"
She nodded, still fighting for air. "Can sense them. Not enough for more than that. Been running." She sucked in a deep breath through her mask. "Running non-stop."
It was a grim prospect and I didn't envy her it. I took a look around this part of the improvised arena. Between the traps and the swarms of conscripts it must have been a nightmare. There was damage from exploded bombs and nearby another one of the jeeps had crashed into a storage unit and totaled itself. It seemed to have veered off course, so my guess was either Brian or Alec had disrupted the driver.
For some reason all the seats of the jeep were pink. I hadn't thought anything of it at the time but the seats in the other jeeps had been red, orange, and blue. I groaned internally at the implications. I know this place was a maze, but it was full of conscripted civilians and was being used to hunt teenagers. Who could think it would be good humor to add a Pac-Man reference to that kind of nightmare?
"Uber and Leet?"
Taylor cringed and nodded. "Hired, signed up, something. I don't know. It's not like one of their normal shows. They've got their shit together for this."
It was weird hearing the normally reserved girl swear, but I'm pretty sure this situation warranted a free pass for as much profanity as you could want. I had some choice phrases of my own being held in reserve.
"Seriously? Uber and Leet?" Honestly, I had pretty much dismissed them as a factor. The idea that either of them were being considered a serious threat, particularly for the Undersiders, was a jarring concept.
Taylor had finally caught her breath and relaxed her hold on her weapons from 'death grip' to merely desperate. "They've been pulling out stuff from all the earlier shows. And it's been working."
"Seriously?" I couldn't keep the skepticism out of my voice.
Taylor nodded. "No failures yet, but they keep switching stuff around. They have some kind of new system for how they manage it." She sounded tired and despondent, and the idea that Uber and Leet had been a factor in driving her to that state was concerning.
To be completely honest, few things were more frightening than the idea of Uber and Leet with their shit together. I hadn't even considered them in my concerns when charging into this mess. I'd figured Bakuda wanted to bulk out her numbers for her debut, maybe tap into their normal audience to help build her rep. I didn't thing they would actually be a problem.
I would say I was surprised by them being a party to something like this, but I didn't know them well enough to really make that call. Their broadcasts had been common enough viewing at college that I had picked up some level of familiarity just by osmosis. Their jobs tended to have a mean spirited edge, but it never seemed like it was designed with a malicious purpose, just that they took the joke way too far. More a lack of moderating influence than a desire to do harm. Even then, people who didn't support what they were doing still tended to tune in to see them fall on their faces.
Make no mistake, the technology Leet could bring to bear was incredible. Compilations of their early jobs were still some of the best examples of what a high level tinker could manage. They just spiraled downward fast. Breakdowns, malfunctions, or catastrophic failures became more and more common. Uber started having to carry the team, and even then he could barely stay ahead of the buggy gear.
I'd heard dozens of theories for the drop off in the quality of Leet's work. Some people thought he was working with some exotic resource that he was running out of and trying to stretch across his later inventions. Some said he was getting complacent, letting quality control go and allowing more bugs making it into final products. There were some thoughts that his power might be failing, but people had such a shoddy understanding of how tinkers worked that there were no clear rulings on that.
Even with my expanded understanding I wasn't sure what the reason was. Tinkers with open specializations usually had some obscure limit on how they worked or what they could build. I hadn't looked into the situation enough to even try to figure things out.
Fortunately there was still no sign of anyone else in the area. A quick check on my drone and motoroid confirmed it was still chaos in the courtyard. Bakuda had tried a couple of potshots, but my drone was able to intercept them. At the moment the professional ABB members were scrambling for new equipment while the conscripts were in chaos. We had at least a few minutes.
"Are you okay?"
The look she shot me suggested she had some choice words about that question. Instead she did her best to answer. "Tired." She took a breath. "Heard you from before. Contract?"
I nodded. "Tattletale set up a deal for healing technology. She rather insistently called it in earlier tonight."
The Celestial Forged missed a connection to the Crafting constellation as Taylor responded while half-collapsing against the wall.
"Healing? You can do that?"
"Yeah, I'm guessing she didn't fill you in on the details either."
Taylor shook her head. "She's not great with that." She glanced towards the sounds of chaos from the courtyard. "Uh, this is a little far to go for a healing contract."
I snorted. "If Tattletale thinks I'm not tagging hazard pay to my bill she's got another thing coming." Taylor didn't seem to find the concept that amusing. "Do you need any healing?"
She sagged slightly at the question. It was obvious she did, but this seemed a better way to handle it than the practice of drive by medical care that I established with Panacea. "Yes. I mean, probably? There's been so much I don't even have a good idea of how bad things are."
"Right." I reached out. "Let me take care of that first."
She looked at my hand with concern. "What do you need to do?"
Right, her last experience with a 'healer' was when Panacea was threatening her with cancer and morbid obesity. I did my best to convey a non-threatening demeanor.
"Contact is enough. It will work through gloves and the suit. Is the shoulder alright?"
She nodded cautiously. "Left one? Right side caught a burst of something when Bakuda was dropping grenades from the courtyard."
I reached out and put my gloved hand on her left shoulder. This was also the first time I'd been able to really examine the costume. The fabric was tightly knit, and given her powers I was willing to bet that it was made of spider silk. I could tell the entire thing had been woven as a single piece rather than stitched together. It was impressive work. I mean, I could do better, but I had powers for that. She had obviously been leveraging her bug control pretty thoroughly.
I put the topic of costume design aside and focused on my nanites. Glowing blue circuitry lines appeared on my arm and spread across the surface of her costume as the tiny machines went to work. Through her lenses I saw Taylor's eyes go wide at the display. It only took a second of feedback to figure out what I was dealing with.
She was a mess.
I was honestly surprised she was still on her feet. It looked like she'd been running on a sprained ankle for a while now. She had numerous bruised ribs and that was on top of the two that were cracked. That should have made breathing agony, but somehow she was still managing. She had picked up enough contusions that her entire body was probably blooming into a giant bruise as we spoke. I was even getting evidence of earlier injuries. Possibly from training, or so I hoped because the only other explanation I could think of would be abuse.
I set the nanites to task. They were designed for much worse than this, and considering they didn't have to rebuild or replace any body parts it was basically a milk run for them. As her injuries started to vanish Taylor practically collapsed into my hand, but thankfully managed to stay upright. It was a relief to hear her breathing normalize.
"Doing alright?" I asked, looking down at her.
"God. I mean, yes, that's a lot better." She rolled her shoulders and took a deep breath. Her posture had become a lot less stiff, like she was coming back to herself somehow.
It occurred to me that at this moment I had an opportunity to bail from this mess. Taylor was safe. I could use my Escape formula to teleport both of us out of here, call back my motoroid, and get the fuck out. Assuming Bakuda kept the knives I would be able to track her down later. With the power I just received a few hours of crafting would let me put together a set of gear that would take her and all her forces to pieces. And all I would have to do is abandon four critically injured teenagers to whatever fate Bakuda had in store for them.
I didn't really like the Undersiders. They were nice enough as people, but I resented what they had come to represent. A lot of that was on me, but they had kind of come to symbolize the mess that came from reliance on my passenger. Being entrenched on the wrong side of the law, facilitating supervillains, and the association with an unknown crime lord all came about because I decided to blindly follow my passenger's lead. But that was ultimately my decision and I didn't feel right leaving a bunch of stupid kids to the horrors of this situation just because I regretted my own actions.
That was of course assuming I could even convince Taylor to bail. My passenger suggested she wouldn't be likely to abandon her friends, so short of knocking her out or suddenly getting a persuasion power from the Celestial Forge it looked like I was down to my original plan.
"What about the others? Do you know what happened to them?" I glanced briefly in the direction where I could sense my stiletto.
Taylor suddenly became agitated and she nodded shallowly. "Bakuda got them. I could only tell so much through my bugs, but it wasn't good."
I tensed as I asked the question I'd been dreading. "They still alive?"
Taylor shrunk into herself slightly. "Yes, but..."
I cut her off before she could go any further. "Good enough. Let's go."
"You don't understand, what she did..." She was becoming increasingly agitated.
I shook my head. "If it's not dead I should be able to handle it."
"What, seriously?" She pushed herself off the wall and approached me.
I shrugged. "It's good healing technology."
"That's not..." She stopped herself, shuddered, then continued. "Look, some of the things that were done, that Bakuda's been threatening, I don't think you can come back from something like that."
I gave her the most compassionate look that I could under the circumstances. We were two people with full face masks trying to communicate nuance to each other, which was just a recipe for frustration.
"It's really, really good healing technology. Trust me, those knives aren't the only thing Tattletale managed to get an insane discount on."
She looked at me uncertainly, then slowly nodded. I'm not sure if she was convinced, or just going along with it. I guess at this point she didn't have that many options. From the sound of things Bakuda had brutally cut her way through the Undersiders one by one. I didn't know what to expect, but the remains of the less lucky conscripts were telling enough.
"You can sense through your bugs, right? Do you have a location?" I had a rough indication of the direction of my stiletto, but that wasn't something I wanted to advertise. Also I had no guarantee that it wasn't sitting on the hip of another ABB gang member.
Taylor nodded. "Tattletale's closest. I know the route, but it isn't safe."
I pulled up a layout of the facility on my omni-tool, marking our location and every bomb I'd been able to detect. Taylor looked at the device hungrily.
"I can probably deal with most of the bombs. A lot of the triggers are using conventional detection methods, motion sensors or the like. Those are easy enough to fool."
She nodded and indicated a location on the map. "Tattletale's there. I mean, what's left of..."
"Right." I cut her off before she could get caught up in things and shifted the map to a zoom of the possible route. "Best to stay low. They should be pretty distracted, but I don't expect that to hold if we start jumping roofs."
"What's going on over there anyway?" She glanced towards the courtyard where the sounds of chaos and occasional impacts echoed forth. "I have a few bugs, but it's all over the place. I haven't been able to pick things out."
I grinned at her, even if my mask obscured it. "I left my robot and drone to keep them occupied."
She went still and tilted her head. "What? When did you get a robot? Robots?"
I made a dismissive gesture. "Friday."
She gave me a flat look through the yellow lenses of her goggles. "But didn't you come in on a motorcycle? And what happened to that armor you were wearing?"
I grinned a little wider. "Same answer to all those questions."
"Excuse me?" I was actually grateful to hear the exasperated tone over the grim, nearly defeated attitude she'd been showing since I ran into her.
"Motorcycle transforms into power armor that can function on its own." I shrugged. "Really all power armor should be able to if you know how to program it right."
She squared off against me. "And you built that on Friday?"
"Well, some of Friday." I responded flippantly.
"How long did it…" She cut herself off and started shaking her head. "What about that healing thing?"
I held up a hand. "Perfectly safe, but I'm going to have to hold off on the details."
"Great." She let out a breath. "What, was that a Saturday project?"
"No, I've been able to heal since before I ran into the Undersiders."
She looked like she wanted to follow up on that topic, but seemed to decide against it. "What about that thing?" She pointed at the glowing mass fields on my forearm.
"Omni-tool. Combination computer, scanner, and micro-fabricator."
"That from Friday too?" She gave me a flat look.
"This afternoon actually. Look, we should probably keep this to what's tactically relevant for the moment."
"Sure, alright." She glanced at the display again. "It can detect Bakuda's bombs?"
"At least some of them. I can't pick them up through solid walls, and some are easier to detect than others. We should be alright, but don't let your guard down."
She tightened her grip on her weapons. "Believe me, I won't."
We started picking our way through the network of storage units. Taylor only seemed half present and I found myself wondering how much information she was getting from her bugs. Fortunately she deemed to enlighten me.
"This place is wrecked." She glanced between the uneven ground and the cracked cinderblocks of the locker walls. "There are fissures through the foundation that extend to the outer walls." She considered things. "At least we have more ways out now. There are collapsed units and damage everywhere." Taylor shook her head. "I'd hate to think what would have happened if Bakuda did that inside the city."
"Sorry, did what?" I asked as we continued walking. She wasn't wrong about the damage. The shattered foundation had a tendency to shift angles between steps. The uneven ground made it impossible to maintain a normal stride.
"You were there right? Whatever she set off in the courtyard that did all this." She gestured around us.
"Oh..." I let the word draw out somewhat awkwardly.
"Oh what?" Her focus seemed to shift back from her power to her present surroundings, though it was less of a transition than I would have expected.
"Yeah, that wasn't Bakuda." I kept walking and ignored the girl glaring at me.
"Excuse me?"
I shrugged. "I figured I'd need something dramatic to put her off balance."
"Dramatic." Her voice was flat. "So you just grabbed a seismic weapon you had lying around?" There was an implication of 'why did you have a seismic weapon on hand and what were you planning to do with it?' that was strongly implied.
"Well, I didn't have it lying around, but when I got the call I figured I should try to get something ready." I knew I was needling her, but her exasperation seemed to keep her from dwelling on the darker aspects of the situation.
Plus it was fun.
"Are you telling me you built a weapon that did all this..." She gestured at the array of splintered concrete surrounding us. "Before you left for this rescue?"
I grinned. "Well, not BEFORE I left."
"What?"
"The bike has autopilot so I was able to get some work done on route."
"You made it in the time it took to ride here?"
"Well, it didn't take the entire time."
It turns out you can indeed see someone gape through a full face mask if the expression is strong enough. As amusing as this was, it did the job of getting her mind off what had happened to her teammates. I needed Taylor on task, so anything that kept her from ruminating on recent experiences was a plus.
As she processed the impossibility of my power I considered the nature of her own abilities.
"You said you could tell the whole facility was damaged?" My question seemed to draw her out of whatever train of thought she was working through.
"Uh, yeah. I can sense the location of any bugs in range. It's about three blocks, give or take. I get information from their senses, but it's hard to figure out."
I nodded. "Any limits on quantity or control?"
She shook her head. "As long as they're in range there's no problem. There's just so few bugs out here that I don't have much to work with. I've mostly been scouting with them, sometimes I've been able to throw people off, but nothing good for combat."
It made sense. The girl had all the traits of a serious master, range, scale, precision, and lethality. She could easily become a prominent cape, though I still wasn't seeing the application to actually saving the world.
That was something I was going to be keeping to myself until I could at least figure out the basics of it. Revealing that kind of detail would either cast my 'thinker power' into question or prove an invitation for every crazy nihilist on the planet. Worst case scenario it could even bring down the Endbringers. I hated having to deal with the entire mess myself, but I didn't see any other option. At least I had been able to pass off a reasonable explanation for the reason I was looking after her.
The Celestial Forge made a connection to a small mote from the Resources and Durability constellation. This one was called Element Analysis and it allowed me, with some work, to identify the elements of any material. More importantly, with some basic resources I could break anything down to its base elements. That would have been a huge boon for my nano assembly, but coupled with Workaholic it was pretty much an invitation to unlimited resources. With two powers I essentially had no logistical limits on what I could make. I would be able to build anything.
I just had to make it out of this situation first.
"Hold up." I stopped Taylor at an intersection. With my scanner we had been able to skirt most of the bombs but unfortunately the area was too saturated to provide a clear route. "There's a bomb." I pointed out an innocuous looking soda can on the ground that concealed one of Bakuda's devices.
"Can you handle that?" She looked apprehensively at the piece of litter.
I smiled at that. "It's using a standard ultrasonic transducer for its trigger. I mean completely standard, like store bought. I think she was throwing together everything she could for this mess."
Taylor nodded and I noticed a bug swoop past the can. "I can feel it. Sort of. Is that what she's using for the bombs?" There was a hopeful edge to her voice.
I shook my head. "Not all of them. This thing would be a lot easier if that was the case. I've been able to pick up more than a dozen different trigger mechanisms. I have no idea what the hell she's doing as far as these designs go."
That wasn't completely true. I had a rough idea, but I didn't want to sidetrack Taylor with tinker theory right now. Bakuda was showing signs of being a chaos tinker. Her work was all over the place and didn't seem that well directed. There were variations in trigger mechanism, area of effect, and even subtle differences in her exotic devices. I'm pretty sure she was just pointing her power in the right direction and seeing what came out.
It wasn't a possibility I enjoyed considering. While it meant she probably would have difficulty repeating certain designs exactly she would be building on previous successes and producing explosives with more variation that anyone would be able to account for. Even the drawback of being a chaos tinker, extensive testing, was completely side stepped by the presence of Oni Lee. Add in the mystery thinker coordinating things and you had a real nightmare scenario.
"So do we go around? Over the roof?"
I shook my head. "No route past, and the rooftop could give us away." I checked my omni-tool. I was specialized as a mechanic, not an operative, but I was still an engineer. Sabotage was basic battlefield practice, and typically against much more advanced systems than this. "I can overload the sensor without damaging the rest of the device."
Taylor watched my omni-tool intently. "How long will that ta..."
Before she finished speaking a guided surge of electricity jumped from my omni-tool to the soda can. There was a crackling sound and a wisp of smoke from the device, but no explosion. I checked my readings again.
"All clear, trigger's offline."
Taylor followed me as I cautiously approached the device. I pulled out my Diagnostic Tools when we reached the can.
"Let's see what we have here."
I worked the scanner while Taylor peered over my shoulder. When I got a look at the internals I let out a dry laugh.
"What?"
I turned to face her. "Bakuda must think she's funny. This is an ultra-high pressure liquid spray, built into a soda can."
"Yeah, that seems like her. What, is it like, poison or acid or something?"
"Doesn't need to be. At this pressure it's basically a water jet cutter. It would slice apart anyone it hits. Because of the pressure involved and the dissolved gas in the fluid even if you survived the attack you'd start to precipitate gas into your blood. Unless they got you in a hyperbolic chamber right away that would finish you off."
I could see her posture turn anxious at the thought. "Is it safe now?"
"The detonator's fried, and there's no remote trigger." I examined more closely. "Hold on."
"Hold on?" Taylor started edging away from me.
I stood up and packed away my scanner. "We need to move."
"What?" She looked at the bomb and seemed ready to bolt.
"It's not going to explode." I assured her. "But it had a link to Bakuda's systems. She'll know it's been knocked out, and that means..."
"She's coming."
"Her, or someone else. Or some grenades. So, we need to move."
I didn't need to tell her twice. As we moved I checked in with Fleet and Survey. Things were still chaos in the courtyard. Fleet was getting plenty of practice with those turbines, and to devastating effect. Since you don't see the thrust coming out of a jet engine so it's easy to imagine the flow as something like a light fan. In reality it's the kind of force that can send vehicles flying. My motoroid's turbines weren't on the level of a commercial airliner, but they were more than enough to badly inconvenience everyone in the area.
It also made landing a hit with a grenade a nightmare. The dust made aiming difficult, enough that my drone was picking as many shots out of the air as Survey could manage. Those that got through the turbines were able to send off course. That had its own consequences, as I was fed footage of the grisly after effects of a misaimed grenade on a group of scattered conscripts. I was able to push through it, but Taylor seemed more seriously impacted after glancing at my display. Rather than break down she seemed to withdraw into herself, which didn't seem like a good sign.
I noted more professional ABB members returning from somewhere holding what looked like rockets. Those would be significantly harder to dance around, but I guess I couldn't count on Bakuda pursuing a losing strategy forever. Hopefully we could collect the Undersiders before she got her act together enough to send someone after us.
"Two people are headed our way from the courtyard." Taylor's voice was borderline robotic and I wondered how much focus she was putting into her insects.
"Conscripts or gang members?"
"No," She swallowed. "It's Uber and Leet."
I never thought I would hear someone say those words with anything close to that level of concern and apprehension. "How long do we have?"
She shook her head. "Not long, they're using something to move over the roofs of the units. They're..." She trailed off and glanced at my map. "They're circling around, between us and Tattletale."
I cursed internally, but I guess our target would have been obvious. I pretty much declared my intention back at the courtyard. I considered trying to take the rooftops as well, but I didn't trust Taylor's footing and I was operating on accelerated physical conditioning and out-of-universe military training. I thought I could handle it, but didn't want to risk it while in the middle of a literal minefield.
We did make decent time, particularly since stealth wasn't the concern it previously was. I was freely frying bombs to open up routes with only a couple of close calls, one that detonated when disabled and one that was camouflaged beyond the ability of my sensors. Taylor was thankfully able to point it out and saved me from possibly blundering into a mystery explosive.
We had nearly reached Tattletale when Uber and Leet decided to make their appearance. By that I mean they literally made an appearance. There was a flash from the roof of one of the storage lockers and a blue backdrop appeared. Music started playing that I vaguely remembered from Mega Man stage selection, then the two least successful criminals in Brockton Bay appeared and started posing in front of it.
Taylor tensed, though from a surface level examination of the pair it was hard to share her apprehension. They looked like someone had covered them in glue and rolled them through a costume shop. No two items they were wearing seemed to come from the same game. I could pick out a few of them, such as the white gloves and Bowser horns from their Mario themed mint heist, but there was too much clutter to sort out anything. There was a mix of armor, martial arts clothing, cartoony weapons, and strange gadgets. I thought their outfits looked a bit disjointed back at the courtyard, but apparently they had added even more equipment in preparation for this.
They actually kept posing before the holographic backdrop as their names appeared beneath them in a blocky eight bit font. They were interrupted by the beeping of what sounded like a watch alarm and Leet made a cutting motion. While Uber finished his pointless showmanship Leet worked some device on his belt causing the music to cut off and the backdrop to collapse into motes of light. Almost immediately there was a crackling sound as a trail of smoke rose from the device, though Leet tucked it away and Uber made an attempt to distract from it.
To his credit few people could distract as well as Uber could.
"So, Apeiron has reunited with his Lady Khepri." He was using what I always thought of as his 'movie trailer' voice, booming and overly dramatic. "Are they bad enough dudes to rescue the Undersiders before time runs out?"
Next to me Taylor brought both weapons up in a defensive formation. "So, how do you want to play this?" She asked in a not-quite whisper.
I looked up at the pair of villains and sighed. "Frankly, I'm considering just blasting them full force and getting on with this."
Taylor shifted her stance and glared at them. "You know, I think I'd actually be alright with that."
The villains stopped posing and each dropped a hand to an item on their belts. "Hey, we can hear you." Leet called down to us.
"I'm well aware." I drew my eyes across them. "So what's the deal? This is a bit gruesome for your usual work."
Uber stood slightly taller as he answered in his over dramatic voice. "Personal request from a long-time fan. How could we refuse?"
"Simply and directly while you still had a shred of decency?" I glared up at them. Operating against an elevated position wasn't doing my military instincts any favors. "I assume you're referring to the ABB's new thinker. Anything you'd like to share?"
"I'm sorry, this is a spoiler-free confrontation." He wagged a finger from his free hand. "Wouldn't want to ruin it for the folks at home."
And that reminded me. These bastards streamed everything. Usually with enough of a delay to not actually give away their crimes, but they wouldn't be running with this level of showmanship if they weren't playing to an audience.
Well, probably an out-of-state audience considering the city and surrounding area was dark, but this would no doubt end up online at some point. Without looking I entered some commands through my omni-tool's haptic interface to scan for broadcasts, which I probably should have done from the moment I knew they would be on site.
"So what do you get out of this?" Somehow I doubted they would be quite as good at keeping secrets as Tattletale. It was a balance between drawing this out to get information and the potential of Bakuda rallying the ABB. Still, I needed to know about this thinker for one critical reason.
My passenger had nothing on them.
There was absolutely no reaction, no fear or confidence or affection. Not even indifference. It was just confusion. Whoever this was the safety net that had carried me was proving useless against them. Tattletale mentioned not being able to get a read, so there was the terrifying prospect of a stranger or counter-thinker power at work. At this point all I had was that Bakuda didn't like her and there was something about providing timing to the ABB. As such I was willing to stretch out this nonsense if there was a hope of filling in that terrifying blank spot.
Huh, I was going into a situation with the level of uncertainty normal people faced all the time. It's kind of incredible how quickly I got used to not having to deal with that.
"What we get is a chance to demonstrate our art, our passion, for a true fan of the craft."
"You see this as art?" I gestured at the damage around us. Okay, more than a little of that was due to my own efforts, but the effects of Bakuda's bombs were still prominently visible.
"Games are art. And in a world of chaos we're keeping that medium burning in the public consciousness."
"You tried to kill me with a jeep." Taylor's tone was a harsh contrast to Uber's showmanship.
"Oh. Hey Uber, she's the one that brought down Pinky. I wondered who managed that." Leet fiddled with some device pulled from his backpack and a series of sound effects played that even I could recognize. Power pill. Pac-Man eats ghost. That sound of the disembodied eyes rushing back to the center of the maze.
Taylor was not amused.
Just then the Celestial Forge connected to a mote from the Quality constellation. It was called Unnatural Skill:Smith. Once again, it functioned exactly as advertised. Absolutely legendary, unnatural skill at craftsmanship. Unlike Smithing this power had both breadth and depth. It covered everything from ancient weapon craft to advanced technology. It even gave the dexterity for high detail work and the knowledge to accomplish borderline supernatural feats.
Given the level of work I was capable of I was starting to wonder when it would actually count as supernatural. Considering my previous level of skill was approaching that realm, and this compounding with everything else it seemed like the distinction was becoming largely academic. I mean, with this I could build things that changed size, make modern technology with medieval smith tools, and work with actual supernatural metals.
Those would be fun to try to transmute, especially the bone steel. Really wasn't looking forward to that.
None of that was going to help me in this mess, so I put it aside and focused on the current standoff. After Leet little performance Taylor had fallen silent and was staring daggers at the villain tinker. I felt I should probably try something.
"Last warning." I reached towards one of my reagent pouches. "Get out of our way and you get to leave without a beating." From the way Taylor tightened her grip on the baton I was guessing she was more in favor of issuing said beating.
"No can do." Uber stepped forward. "We're seeing this through to the final level."
Leet moved next to him and struck a pose. "You aren't dealing with some shovelware knock off. This is classic, remastered, HD re-release Uber and Leet." He raised a finger towards us. "And you're going dow..."
He was cut off by a shotgun blast of concrete fragments. Taylor had smashed her baton along the wall of a storage unit. The enhanced impact had launched a spray of powder mixed with larger chunks of cinderblock at the pair. Uber recovered quickly, but Leet slipped and started to slide off the roof.
I grabbed my reagents and began mixing them as Uber started running in place. The red sneakers he was wearing created a kind of ring shaped blur as he built up speed. I quickly threw down the mixture for Flash. It was still my weakest formula but this time I wasn't pulling my punches. At full power and with it spread over only two targets they would be in for a visit to the burn ward and a lengthy recovery.
As the sparks wheeled out of the mixture Uber leapt into a ridiculously fast somersault while Leet dropped from the roof and grabbed something from his belt. The fire washed off him as familiar music started playing and his body began to flash. He held up a fist sized golden star and glared at me.
There was a pulse around Uber's spinning body that dispersed the flames and launched the burly cape towards us. I stepped forward and braced myself while Taylor dove out of the way.
The spinning dive collided with the effects of my Force Field formula, dispersing it but otherwise accomplishing precisely nothing. Inexplicably he bounced up into the air while still spinning and returned for another attack. The man hit like a truck, but between my reinforcement and low stance I shrugged him off. This time I was able to angle my body in a way that repelled him towards a nearby wall. In a display of acrobatics he kicked off the wall and landed on the ground, immediately building up speed again. That could have either been the equipment or Uber's power at work.
Taylor had climbed to her feet and was raining blows upon Leet's glowing form with her baton. Each of those strikes would have taken out a security door, but they didn't even budge the tinker. Still, he was attempting to put some distance between them as he fumbled with the equipment on his belt.
Uber started bouncing back and forth between the walls of the storage lockers with blinding speed. With each pass he took a shot at me. The blows did no damage but were unbalancing enough to stop me from drawing any more reagents. I was getting ready to queue up a plasma round from my omni-tool when another of those electric watch alarms sounded.
Uber immediately stopped and kicked off the oversized red shoes. He strode forward like nothing had happened, but I could see the shoes begin to twitch and seize on the ground.
"So I wanted to ask..." He dropped into a fighting stance and the wristbands on his arms briefly flared with blue flames. "Autobot or Decepticon?"
The question was so unexpected that without my military memories I probably would have dropped my guard. Instead I raised my omni-tool while reaching for a set of reagents. "What?"
"Your robot transformer. Autobot or Decepticon?" He started circling warily, but was clearly enjoying the banter. I didn't share his amusement.
"You want to talk about the ethical philosophy of drone software in the middle of a fight?" I mean there was devotion to a theme and then there was pure insanity.
"Come on, don't hold out on us." He darted forward and feinted with a jab before pulling back.
"It's neither. Which should have been obvious."
Uber actually seemed taken aback by that. "Seriously? But that doesn't..."
"Dude!" Leet called from where he had managed to pull back from Taylor's assault. "Tripredacus Council!" He had to shout over that stupid Mario Starman music that kept playing.
Uber grinned. "Of course. Third party agent. Should have seen it from the design."
"Obviously." Leet threw down the pokeballs he had pulled from his belt and in a flash of light a trio of creatures the looked like living cartoons appeared between him and Taylor. I recognized Charizard, but had no idea who the other two were. They looked something like salamanders that had crystals randomly attached to their bodies, so I'm guessing they were legendaries from one of the later games I never bothered with. There was another alarm sound and he quickly tossed the star aside. His body stopped flashing as the effect transferred to a patch of ground around the thrown piece of tinker tech. Said patch shortly began glowing a concerning color and emitting a column of smoke.
"Timing." The answer to this hit me like a flash.
Uber stiffened. "What?"
"It's all timing." I mixed two parts ash with a piece of iron and threw the reaction behind me. Black mist flew from the glowing mixture and formed dark clouds above the three hard light monsters. With a thunderous roar a trio of lightning bolts struck them. Their holograms flickered out, leaving fried emitters to fall to the ground. Khepri began to advance on an undefended Leet.
Uber's eyes darted over to his partner, then back to me. "You don't know what you're talking about."
I just grinned. "You haven't fixed the problem with any of your equipment. You just know when it will fail."
"So what?" He brought his wristbands together at his side, then thrust his hands forward with a cry of "Hadouken!"
The plasma ball rolled off my coat without meaningful effect. Clearly this was hitting a nerve and I meant to press it for all it was worth. "You're still the same screw-ups as before. You just have that new thinker propping you up."
In the corner of my eye Leet was messing with the latch of a case that had an octagon made out of red and white triangles on the cover. In his haste the lid flew open spilling small disks across the entire area. I shifted my focus back to Uber. The cape's wristbands were glowing as he slid forward into some kind of spinning uppercut. Luckily I was just able to dodge the strike.
Uber spun out of his failed punch and moved in for a grab, but I managed to counter his lunge with a slight motion of my blocking hand. My micromanipulators combined with the new dexterity from Unnatural Skilll were adding a level of precision to my blocks and punches I never would have imagined. I nearly turned the swing against him, but Uber was stronger than me and his power improved his fighting to near perfection once he had focused on a technique.
"The gear works. Doesn't matter if it's for a minute or an hour. It's just like managing battery life." He swung in with a rapid series of blows that I managed to deflect with minimal movements from a tight guard.
"You're ignoring the issue. Trading one problem for another. It's just going to blow up in your face again." Leet seemed to react to that, but I kept my focus on Uber. My combat training was carrying me through the fight by supplementing and mostly overriding my limited boxing experience. I did have to constantly remind myself not to activate my omni-tool's melee contingency. That thing could range from 'very lethal' to 'spectacularly lethal'.
"Gamers are used to working against the clock. It's a welcome challenge. We're going to show the world what Uber and Leet can do at the top of their game!"
He was gaining the upper hand. Uber was stronger, had more experience fighting capes, and was running a power that quickly brought his techniques to perfection. Despite my best efforts he managed to slip past my guard and land a grip on my shoulders.
For some reason the grip was stronger than it should have been, seemingly due to the effect of some kind of attractive force from his belt. And the red briefs he was wearing. The full implications didn't hit me until Uber had already flipped me upside down and launched into a spinning pile driver.
The ground lurched away as we rocketed into the air. I felt my stomach try to drop out of my throat and had to fight off intense dizziness as I stared at the spinning ground from a terrifying height. It was the kind of situation that made you quickly reevaluate your previously agreed level of restraint.
Closing distance to a tinker can seem like a good idea. Closing distance to a combat engineer is much less of a good idea. Closing distance to a combat engineer who is faced with a head first spinning body slam and thus no longer that concerned about lethal force is a down right terrible idea.
I triggered the melee contingency on my omni-tool and sent a burst of high energy plasma, fabricated from my energy and omni-gel reserves, directly at Uber. To my surprise it was accompanied by four more jets of plasma, because I can't turn my powers off and apparently Workaholic counts omni-tool fabrication as part of that power. I only had a fraction of a second to make sure it wasn't a single burst twenty five times the size. That would have reduced Uber to the consistency of an overcooked pork chop.
I doubt he was grateful for that consideration from the way he screamed and launched me away from him. As we were at the peak of a thirty foot jump I slammed down onto the edge of one of the storage units before dropping to the ground. It wasn't a pleasant sensation, but aside from being a bit jarring and disorienting I was fine.
The same couldn't be said for Uber who was nursing singed flesh and peeling off ruined pieces of equipment. The Celestial Forge missed a connection to the Time constellation as we squared off again.
"So that's it? All this madness for the sake of your egos? You're trying to convince people you haven't been churning out crap all these years?"
"Fuck you." The harshness of Leet's voice surprised me. Apparently that cut closer to the bone than I imagined. A quick glance showed things weren't going that well for Taylor. The disks Leet had scattered on the ground were some kind of fabricators, pulling in material from the broken concrete surface into animated constructs. It created the effect of a field of zombies clawing their way out of the earth. The sheer volume of them had put Taylor on the defensive. She'd finally brought my knife into play, but there were two zombies waiting for every one she dropped.
"Easy Leet." Uber placated. "Don't break character."
I wasn't about to let things stand at that. "No, let's hear it. If you're stepping up from petty theft to terrorism I want to know the reason."
"Petty!" Leet screeched. "I'll show you petty!" He fumbled with his backpack and produced a large gun with a thick glowing cylinder for a barrel and a series of claw like protrusions at the front.
Uber smirked at me. "I'd say not to let him bait you, but this is going to be good."
The barrel of the gun glowed orange as he adjusted something and a piece of debris jumped up to float in front of it. Leet angled the chunk of concrete with seemingly no effort and launched it towards me at an insane speed.
My reinforcement was more than enough to take the hit but there were Newtonian effects that I couldn't compensate for. More pieces of debris started flying towards me in a disorienting stream. It didn't help that Uber was launching into some kind of spinning lariat at the same time. Together it would have been an impressively coordinated attack if not for the fact that Leet immediately began choking on a cloud of insects and another of those watch alarms started to sound from Uber.
I was very grateful he decided to wear the wrestling briefs over his costume. You would think that was a given, but there were horror stories about some of their more spectacular failures.
Apparently Taylor had been able to coordinate the insects without the slightest pause in her zombie slicing. She moved through them like a maelstrom, the speed enhancement of the wind runes on full display. The knife seemed to be flying out of her hand as she fought. Even the seemingly endless supply of fabricated zombies was having a hard time keeping up with her.
If she wanted to distance herself from what happened to Aegis this was a crap way to do it. Leet was watching her nervously while checking some reading on the case that had held the zombie disks.
"Fuck it." He called over the melee while swatting away more bugs. "Uber, time to end this."
The burly cape grinned at me. "You don't know how long it's been since we've been able to use this."
"Think it'll have any more luck than your last nonsense?" They were frustrating, but I still didn't want them dead. An Overload burst from my omni-tool should put them down without any seriously lethal damage. I selected the blast while Uber took a guard position with his arms and raised his front knee.
"Don't underestimate us." There was a flash in front of him as he screamed "Shun Goku Satsu!"
The cape blurred as he surged forward. The burst of electricity from my omni-tool passed harmlessly through his shadowy form. Then he was upon me and everything went dark.
I can't explain the experience that followed without resorting to levels of profanity that would make a longshoreman faint. On a basic level I was suspended in a void as blows rained upon me, but that was not even scratching the surface of how bad the situation actually was. Each hit sent a tearing sensation right through the core of my being. My durability was still there, but did nothing for the pain and the damage still piled up. The pain was especially bad. It was like this was designed to be particularly torturous.
The blows weren't really blows, it was more like someone was reaching into my body and tearing things out of alignment. I tasted blood in my mouth and felt the splintering of bones. Muscles tore and agony rippled through my entire body.
When the world faded back I was lying on the ground and Uber was standing facing away from me with a large Asian character glowing on his back. To my even greater annoyance he launched into a grandiose speech.
"Raging Demon. Attacks the targets soul with the karmic weight of their sins."
"Fuck your soul" I choked out as I pulled myself to my feet. "That was a dressed up concentrated spatial disruption."
"I'm impressed you're still conscious." He played it off like a joke, but there was some real concern in his expression. "Few men can stand before that kind of power."
"It was certainly an inconvenience."
He frowned. "Those injuries..."
"Are nothing." I focused on my nanites and blue lines spread across my costume. I could feel the damage from the stupid attack vanish as they rebuilt my body. In the end the only sign of the attack was a series of tears across my costume.
Damn it, Garment was going to be furious with me.
Uber was gaping at me and Leet had stopped fiddling with a copy of Link's sword to join him. I turned to Taylor, who had been able to whittle the zombie hoard down to a pack defending the villain tinker.
"Khepri, how are you managing?"
She smashed a zombie's chest with her baton, causing it to collapse into a pile of the concrete it was formed from. Without looking she took the head of another with her blade. "Not enough bugs around here." She was playing things casual, but I could tell the constant combat was wearing on her endurance. I reached for one of my more obscure formulas.
"Oh, right. I meant to give this to you earlier. Either it'll solve that bug supply problem, or maim Uber and Leet within an inch of their lives."
"So win-win?"
I had no idea if this was going to work. If Taylor could interface with it then with her level of control it should let her protect herself for the rest of this nightmare. If not it was still one of my better attack formulas and would take Uber and Leet out of the fight barring anything short of additional invincibility gadgets.
Why did those have to be so common in videogames?
I mixed the two drams of water and one of vinegar. The reagents for my Sting formula. Because Evermore Alchemy was all over the place of course it had a way to conjure insects. I tossed down the mixture and it floated through the air before forming into a facsimile of a wasp's nest. Then the entire mass exploded into a swarm of insects that would put Japanese hornets to shame.
In normal circumstances they would blaze towards the target of the formula and tear into them, expending themselves after a single powerful sting. Instead the entire cloud held position before flowing over to Khepri. She seemed contemplative as she held them in a tight orbit around herself, then sent a single insect towards an approaching zombie.
It blasted through the creatures head like a gunshot before vanishing. Her posture shifted to an amused stance as the swarm dispersed, taking out the remaining zombies and tearing into Leet's equipment.
Uber moved to help him but this time didn't have his spatial nonsense defending him. My overload blast caught him and he collapsed into a flailing mess, various pieces of equipment sparking and twitching. I moved over and secured the barely conscious cape in a headlock.
"So I guess we can call this. Are you going to admit defeat or should the beating continue?"
Leet looked to me over the remains of his minions and twitching form of his teammate. A particular explosion from the direction of the courtyard seemed to catch his attention. He brought a finger to an earpiece and smirked at me.
"You think you've won? We just accomplished everything we set out to do."
I glanced down at my omni-tool and saw the reason for his smug demeanor.
"What's he talking about?" Taylor was drawing the ring of alchemical insects closer, causing Leet to tense, though the tinker didn't back down. Instead he turned to her and gloated.
"What I mean is that Bakuda has just..."
"She's taken out my drone. Rocket strike."
The tinker glared at me but continued. "That's right. Now that the cover's gone your robot will be next, then you'll have the whole of the ABB hunting you down."
I sighed. "I can't believe you were stalling us to take out my drone."
His smirk grew a cruel edge. "Didn't see that coming? What, didn't plan on loosing that in the field? All that wasted time and effort suddenly up in smoke. Thought you were the hot shot new tinker, huh? How does it feel to lose?"
The Vehicles constellation passed by without a connection. "You don't understand. I can't believe that was the point of all this. Just to take out a drone."
Leet was becoming agitated. "You can pretend it doesn't matter all you want, but your still down an asset. You've still lost all the time and effort it took to build it."
"What, this effort?"
I raised my omni-tool and began fabrication of a new drone. The capacitors had long since recovered from the last deployment. Oh, and with my Workaholic power insisting on affecting everything I did the single fabrication expanded to five drones. They appeared arranged in a pentagon formation behind me.
"Did you just make those? All of those?" His eyes were jumping between the rapidly spinning bugs and the array of glowing drones.
"What, you thought I was teleporting them in? Or using some kind of spatial pocket? Please."
"Leet…" Uber gurgled from beneath my hold. "Think it's time…" He struggled for breath against my arm. "For a reset."
The tinker nodded apprehensively. His hand dropped to a thick blue bracer. Suddenly his body vanished into a thin beam of light that launched into the sky. Beneath my grip Uber dissolved into a cloud of expanding spheres.
"The hell?" The insects she was controlling seemed to react more than Taylor did.
"Mega Man reference, I think. Covering some teleport effect." Given the rest of what had been displayed teleportation wasn't beyond the pale. I climbed to my feet as Taylor sheathed her blade.
Huh. That was the first time she had put it away since I had found her. It seemed like a positive thing.
I keyed some commands to Survey. My omni-tool wasn't really designed to command more than one drone, but between the A.I. coordination and the cheating nature of Workaholic it could be managed. Taylor watched as the cluster of glowing constructs rose into the sky and sped towards the courtyard.
Oh, they were going to ruin someone's day.
"Alright, let's get Tattletale before any other idiots show up."
Taylor nodded to me and we pushed past the aftermath of the fight towards the next member of the Undersiders, and hopefully, finally, some answers.
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Workaholic (Sonic The Hedgehog) 300:
Sometimes you wonder how some geniuses are able to build entire armadas within days or weeks of their last defeat. You become a walking factory of production. Building in masse is something that comes without issue to you. That one bot that took a week to build? Now that one bot is now 5. Or roughly 3x the size it was before. How do you even have the resources to build so much you say? The hell if I know.
Element Analysis (Bomberman 64: The Second Attack) 100:
With a little elbow grease, you can easily identify the elemental composition of ANY material and with the right resources, break it down to its base elements for further use.
Unnatural Skill:Smith (Percy Jackson) 200:
Whether from your heritage or just being that good you've got one particular mundane skill that your feats with border on supernatural. Whether you're a smith on the level of the Cyclopses, a near prescient tactician or a swordsman who is ny unstoppable with a blade your feats will be legendary. You are on a level within your skill such that only other beings of legend can hope to match you. This may be taken multiple times. You may not choose magic but you may choose a particular application of magic if you have it already (so curses, enchanting might work, more specific gets a bigger boost).
I disappeared into the dust choked rows of storage lockers ignoring the sound of the chaos behind me. I didn't expect my motoroid to accomplish much, and that was largely the point. Fleet's ability to direct the machine, both in motorcycle and bipedal mode, had improved dramatically but that only marginally extended to combat. The robot form had enough dexterity to handle itself, but there was no real combat programming beyond basic ability to swing the weapon. That was fine since I didn't really intend for it to hit anyone.
None of those conscripts could meaningfully damage my motoroid or my drone, so I just needed to keep them wary enough to stay clear. Bakuda had dozens of bombs that could utterly wreck them, but the motoroid was agile and the drone was disposable. They should be able to avoid or intercept anything coming their way. That would let them tie up the ABB force long enough for me to regroup with the Undersiders and plan my next move.
I picked my way past critically damaged storage lockers over uneven ground with pandemonium behind me and my heart hammering in my chest. My body was swimming in adrenalin and I felt light headed. I really couldn't believe I just did that. During the faceoff I had just focused on the next step, on trying to avoid showing any weakness, but the gravity of the situation was creeping up on me. This was full on life or death conflict, and the first time I had seen anything like it since my fight with Oni Lee. That seemed like ages ago when it was really what, six days? Actually slightly less than that.
Without the mindset of my military engineer power I had no idea how I would have been able to manage this. Even as I felt like panicking, instincts drew me forward, away from hostiles and towards allies and a more defensible position. I took a deep breath and pressed on. I could put another quarter in the jar later. Right now I was just grateful to be able to stay functional, no matter what that meant for the integrity of my mind.
I was following my sense of the equipment I built for Taylor along with her trail of insects when I felt the Celestial Forge. It made a connection to the Time constellation using every ounce of reach I had to spare. It wasn't the largest mots I had connected to, but the ability was so ridiculously overpowered that it nearly made me lose focus on what I was doing. Given the significance of the danger I was in that's really saying something.
The power was called Workaholic and was practically irreverent in how broken it was. In effect it boosted the output of all of my crafting. Either I could produce five times as many items, or what I was building would be roughly three times the size. By three times the size I meant three times in one dimension, so significantly more in total volume and mass. Actually, it worked out to slightly less than three times, since the mass would increase by a factor of twenty five rather than twenty seven. That had a nice symmetry to it. Either five times the finished product or five times five the material output.
The power would have been significant enough if it just let me boost my production speed, but there was another massively impactful element to it. The amount of initial resources required didn't change. I could start with the parts to build one robot and end up with five, or a robot nearly three times as tall. And the power was practically irreverent about the fact that it was making logistical requirements meaningless.
It actually felt like the ability was designed to be exploited. I could build something, break it down to base materials, and then use those materials again. Each time the multiplying effect would be applied. As long as I had what I needed for the initial construction I effectively had infinite resources. If was almost as if the universe had gotten fed up with all of my struggling with logistics and just wanted me to get to crafting.
Not that I'm complaining or anything, it was just a lot more significant than I expected from any mote of its strength. Also, having your entire logistical methodology upended in the middle of a battlefield was a bit difficult to process. Instead I put it out of my mind and pushed forward towards the location of my knife and baton.
Once I had a couple of rows of now damaged lockers between me and the courtyard the amount of dust in the air dropped to manageable levels. The impact on visibility had been drastic even away from the blast site. Within the courtyard I doubted they could see five feet in front of them. A quick check on the link to my motoroid and drone confirmed that was pretty much correct.
I made a note to build some proper visual enhancements into my visor. I had wonderful scanning tech in my omni-tool, but there was a whole range of possibilities for optical augmentation available to me. In fact, there were a lot of upgrades I could apply to my personal loadout, and it wasn't like I was working under a resource crunch any more.
Just a dire time crunch I didn't know about that had led to this rushed and sloppy rescue mission.
I had a sense of the equipment I was tracking, but that was 'as the crow flies' and I was currently working my way through a maze of storage lockers. I could vault to the roof of any one of these without trouble, but that would defeat the entire purpose of causing a distraction and slinking off. Fortunately it seemed Taylor's control of her bugs was at least as good as I had suspected. I wasn't just following a scattered path, she was spelling out directional arrows with insects as I went.
I started to accelerate down the rows of lockers, slowing only to periodically check my omni-tool's readings. The route seemed a bit convoluted, but from the looks of things Taylor was directing me around active bombs and past devices that had already exploded. It provided a wonderful and horrifying tour of what Bakuda was capable of as well as extensive justification for my passenger's concern about her rampage.
I passed lockers that had turned to glass or melted into a puddle of liquid. In one area the path dipped as a perfectly spherical cut had been taken out of it and the surrounding lockers. Exotic effects, like sprays of corrosive green slime, were mixed with the signs of more conventional explosives, though those were still drastically powerful. Conventional was a relative term since I was sure one of the blast showed indications of a fuel-air mixture explosive and another seemed to have deployed a shower of white phosphorous.
It wasn't the scale of the damage that disturbed me, nor was it the exotic effects that I knew I had no defense against. The horrifying element was the collateral damage. Bakuda's inclination to send a tinker tech bomb at me with her own people in the blast radius was clearly not a new occurrence. I saw the signs of at least a half dozen conscripts who had been caught in the effects of her bombs. A portly man partially reduced to a gooey splatter, a pair of scorched shadows on one of the walls with no trace of the people they came from, or the bodies of people who were 'just' subject to normal explosives.
I found myself leaning even more heavily on my passenger and military experience to force myself forward. I had a feeling this would turn my gourd later, but right now I had a job to do.
My meandering route had taken me deeper into the facility, but I was close enough that I could practically feel the slight separation between my knife and baton. With one final turn I found myself mask to mask with the newest supervillain of Brockton Bay.
From the look of things most certainly she had seen better days.
This wasn't the Khepri that had struck a tall, imposing image as she strode out of the bank and dismembered Aegis without a second glance. Taylor was panting for all the air she could pull through her mask. One of her yellow lenses was cracked and her hair was matted with sweat. Her costume was streaked with dust and soot and from the way she was standing she seemed to be favoring her left side. The baton was in her right hand and she held the knife in a reverse grip in her left. Both weapons were shaking slightly from the force of the death grip she had on them.
She may have been the last Undersider standing, but earning that accomplishment had clearly taken a toll.
She barely reacted upon seeing me, instead struggling to catch her breath. I took a moment to check my omni-tool for readings on any nearby bombs or hostiles. Cinderblocks weren't the best medium to scan through, but from what I could see the immediate area was clear. Taylor had finally reacted when I started manipulating the holographic interface that sheathed my left forearm.
"It looks clear." I offered. "From what I can see there aren't any explosives or ABB in the immediate area."
Taylor nodded at my words, but kept panting. "I know. Been tracking. With bugs."
I raised an eyebrow. "You can do that?"
She nodded, still fighting for air. "Can sense them. Not enough for more than that. Been running." She sucked in a deep breath through her mask. "Running non-stop."
It was a grim prospect and I didn't envy her it. I took a look around this part of the improvised arena. Between the traps and the swarms of conscripts it must have been a nightmare. There was damage from exploded bombs and nearby another one of the jeeps had crashed into a storage unit and totaled itself. It seemed to have veered off course, so my guess was either Brian or Alec had disrupted the driver.
For some reason all the seats of the jeep were pink. I hadn't thought anything of it at the time but the seats in the other jeeps had been red, orange, and blue. I groaned internally at the implications. I know this place was a maze, but it was full of conscripted civilians and was being used to hunt teenagers. Who could think it would be good humor to add a Pac-Man reference to that kind of nightmare?
"Uber and Leet?"
Taylor cringed and nodded. "Hired, signed up, something. I don't know. It's not like one of their normal shows. They've got their shit together for this."
It was weird hearing the normally reserved girl swear, but I'm pretty sure this situation warranted a free pass for as much profanity as you could want. I had some choice phrases of my own being held in reserve.
"Seriously? Uber and Leet?" Honestly, I had pretty much dismissed them as a factor. The idea that either of them were being considered a serious threat, particularly for the Undersiders, was a jarring concept.
Taylor had finally caught her breath and relaxed her hold on her weapons from 'death grip' to merely desperate. "They've been pulling out stuff from all the earlier shows. And it's been working."
"Seriously?" I couldn't keep the skepticism out of my voice.
Taylor nodded. "No failures yet, but they keep switching stuff around. They have some kind of new system for how they manage it." She sounded tired and despondent, and the idea that Uber and Leet had been a factor in driving her to that state was concerning.
To be completely honest, few things were more frightening than the idea of Uber and Leet with their shit together. I hadn't even considered them in my concerns when charging into this mess. I'd figured Bakuda wanted to bulk out her numbers for her debut, maybe tap into their normal audience to help build her rep. I didn't thing they would actually be a problem.
I would say I was surprised by them being a party to something like this, but I didn't know them well enough to really make that call. Their broadcasts had been common enough viewing at college that I had picked up some level of familiarity just by osmosis. Their jobs tended to have a mean spirited edge, but it never seemed like it was designed with a malicious purpose, just that they took the joke way too far. More a lack of moderating influence than a desire to do harm. Even then, people who didn't support what they were doing still tended to tune in to see them fall on their faces.
Make no mistake, the technology Leet could bring to bear was incredible. Compilations of their early jobs were still some of the best examples of what a high level tinker could manage. They just spiraled downward fast. Breakdowns, malfunctions, or catastrophic failures became more and more common. Uber started having to carry the team, and even then he could barely stay ahead of the buggy gear.
I'd heard dozens of theories for the drop off in the quality of Leet's work. Some people thought he was working with some exotic resource that he was running out of and trying to stretch across his later inventions. Some said he was getting complacent, letting quality control go and allowing more bugs making it into final products. There were some thoughts that his power might be failing, but people had such a shoddy understanding of how tinkers worked that there were no clear rulings on that.
Even with my expanded understanding I wasn't sure what the reason was. Tinkers with open specializations usually had some obscure limit on how they worked or what they could build. I hadn't looked into the situation enough to even try to figure things out.
Fortunately there was still no sign of anyone else in the area. A quick check on my drone and motoroid confirmed it was still chaos in the courtyard. Bakuda had tried a couple of potshots, but my drone was able to intercept them. At the moment the professional ABB members were scrambling for new equipment while the conscripts were in chaos. We had at least a few minutes.
"Are you okay?"
The look she shot me suggested she had some choice words about that question. Instead she did her best to answer. "Tired." She took a breath. "Heard you from before. Contract?"
I nodded. "Tattletale set up a deal for healing technology. She rather insistently called it in earlier tonight."
The Celestial Forged missed a connection to the Crafting constellation as Taylor responded while half-collapsing against the wall.
"Healing? You can do that?"
"Yeah, I'm guessing she didn't fill you in on the details either."
Taylor shook her head. "She's not great with that." She glanced towards the sounds of chaos from the courtyard. "Uh, this is a little far to go for a healing contract."
I snorted. "If Tattletale thinks I'm not tagging hazard pay to my bill she's got another thing coming." Taylor didn't seem to find the concept that amusing. "Do you need any healing?"
She sagged slightly at the question. It was obvious she did, but this seemed a better way to handle it than the practice of drive by medical care that I established with Panacea. "Yes. I mean, probably? There's been so much I don't even have a good idea of how bad things are."
"Right." I reached out. "Let me take care of that first."
She looked at my hand with concern. "What do you need to do?"
Right, her last experience with a 'healer' was when Panacea was threatening her with cancer and morbid obesity. I did my best to convey a non-threatening demeanor.
"Contact is enough. It will work through gloves and the suit. Is the shoulder alright?"
She nodded cautiously. "Left one? Right side caught a burst of something when Bakuda was dropping grenades from the courtyard."
I reached out and put my gloved hand on her left shoulder. This was also the first time I'd been able to really examine the costume. The fabric was tightly knit, and given her powers I was willing to bet that it was made of spider silk. I could tell the entire thing had been woven as a single piece rather than stitched together. It was impressive work. I mean, I could do better, but I had powers for that. She had obviously been leveraging her bug control pretty thoroughly.
I put the topic of costume design aside and focused on my nanites. Glowing blue circuitry lines appeared on my arm and spread across the surface of her costume as the tiny machines went to work. Through her lenses I saw Taylor's eyes go wide at the display. It only took a second of feedback to figure out what I was dealing with.
She was a mess.
I was honestly surprised she was still on her feet. It looked like she'd been running on a sprained ankle for a while now. She had numerous bruised ribs and that was on top of the two that were cracked. That should have made breathing agony, but somehow she was still managing. She had picked up enough contusions that her entire body was probably blooming into a giant bruise as we spoke. I was even getting evidence of earlier injuries. Possibly from training, or so I hoped because the only other explanation I could think of would be abuse.
I set the nanites to task. They were designed for much worse than this, and considering they didn't have to rebuild or replace any body parts it was basically a milk run for them. As her injuries started to vanish Taylor practically collapsed into my hand, but thankfully managed to stay upright. It was a relief to hear her breathing normalize.
"Doing alright?" I asked, looking down at her.
"God. I mean, yes, that's a lot better." She rolled her shoulders and took a deep breath. Her posture had become a lot less stiff, like she was coming back to herself somehow.
It occurred to me that at this moment I had an opportunity to bail from this mess. Taylor was safe. I could use my Escape formula to teleport both of us out of here, call back my motoroid, and get the fuck out. Assuming Bakuda kept the knives I would be able to track her down later. With the power I just received a few hours of crafting would let me put together a set of gear that would take her and all her forces to pieces. And all I would have to do is abandon four critically injured teenagers to whatever fate Bakuda had in store for them.
I didn't really like the Undersiders. They were nice enough as people, but I resented what they had come to represent. A lot of that was on me, but they had kind of come to symbolize the mess that came from reliance on my passenger. Being entrenched on the wrong side of the law, facilitating supervillains, and the association with an unknown crime lord all came about because I decided to blindly follow my passenger's lead. But that was ultimately my decision and I didn't feel right leaving a bunch of stupid kids to the horrors of this situation just because I regretted my own actions.
That was of course assuming I could even convince Taylor to bail. My passenger suggested she wouldn't be likely to abandon her friends, so short of knocking her out or suddenly getting a persuasion power from the Celestial Forge it looked like I was down to my original plan.
"What about the others? Do you know what happened to them?" I glanced briefly in the direction where I could sense my stiletto.
Taylor suddenly became agitated and she nodded shallowly. "Bakuda got them. I could only tell so much through my bugs, but it wasn't good."
I tensed as I asked the question I'd been dreading. "They still alive?"
Taylor shrunk into herself slightly. "Yes, but..."
I cut her off before she could go any further. "Good enough. Let's go."
"You don't understand, what she did..." She was becoming increasingly agitated.
I shook my head. "If it's not dead I should be able to handle it."
"What, seriously?" She pushed herself off the wall and approached me.
I shrugged. "It's good healing technology."
"That's not..." She stopped herself, shuddered, then continued. "Look, some of the things that were done, that Bakuda's been threatening, I don't think you can come back from something like that."
I gave her the most compassionate look that I could under the circumstances. We were two people with full face masks trying to communicate nuance to each other, which was just a recipe for frustration.
"It's really, really good healing technology. Trust me, those knives aren't the only thing Tattletale managed to get an insane discount on."
She looked at me uncertainly, then slowly nodded. I'm not sure if she was convinced, or just going along with it. I guess at this point she didn't have that many options. From the sound of things Bakuda had brutally cut her way through the Undersiders one by one. I didn't know what to expect, but the remains of the less lucky conscripts were telling enough.
"You can sense through your bugs, right? Do you have a location?" I had a rough indication of the direction of my stiletto, but that wasn't something I wanted to advertise. Also I had no guarantee that it wasn't sitting on the hip of another ABB gang member.
Taylor nodded. "Tattletale's closest. I know the route, but it isn't safe."
I pulled up a layout of the facility on my omni-tool, marking our location and every bomb I'd been able to detect. Taylor looked at the device hungrily.
"I can probably deal with most of the bombs. A lot of the triggers are using conventional detection methods, motion sensors or the like. Those are easy enough to fool."
She nodded and indicated a location on the map. "Tattletale's there. I mean, what's left of..."
"Right." I cut her off before she could get caught up in things and shifted the map to a zoom of the possible route. "Best to stay low. They should be pretty distracted, but I don't expect that to hold if we start jumping roofs."
"What's going on over there anyway?" She glanced towards the courtyard where the sounds of chaos and occasional impacts echoed forth. "I have a few bugs, but it's all over the place. I haven't been able to pick things out."
I grinned at her, even if my mask obscured it. "I left my robot and drone to keep them occupied."
She went still and tilted her head. "What? When did you get a robot? Robots?"
I made a dismissive gesture. "Friday."
She gave me a flat look through the yellow lenses of her goggles. "But didn't you come in on a motorcycle? And what happened to that armor you were wearing?"
I grinned a little wider. "Same answer to all those questions."
"Excuse me?" I was actually grateful to hear the exasperated tone over the grim, nearly defeated attitude she'd been showing since I ran into her.
"Motorcycle transforms into power armor that can function on its own." I shrugged. "Really all power armor should be able to if you know how to program it right."
She squared off against me. "And you built that on Friday?"
"Well, some of Friday." I responded flippantly.
"How long did it…" She cut herself off and started shaking her head. "What about that healing thing?"
I held up a hand. "Perfectly safe, but I'm going to have to hold off on the details."
"Great." She let out a breath. "What, was that a Saturday project?"
"No, I've been able to heal since before I ran into the Undersiders."
She looked like she wanted to follow up on that topic, but seemed to decide against it. "What about that thing?" She pointed at the glowing mass fields on my forearm.
"Omni-tool. Combination computer, scanner, and micro-fabricator."
"That from Friday too?" She gave me a flat look.
"This afternoon actually. Look, we should probably keep this to what's tactically relevant for the moment."
"Sure, alright." She glanced at the display again. "It can detect Bakuda's bombs?"
"At least some of them. I can't pick them up through solid walls, and some are easier to detect than others. We should be alright, but don't let your guard down."
She tightened her grip on her weapons. "Believe me, I won't."
We started picking our way through the network of storage units. Taylor only seemed half present and I found myself wondering how much information she was getting from her bugs. Fortunately she deemed to enlighten me.
"This place is wrecked." She glanced between the uneven ground and the cracked cinderblocks of the locker walls. "There are fissures through the foundation that extend to the outer walls." She considered things. "At least we have more ways out now. There are collapsed units and damage everywhere." Taylor shook her head. "I'd hate to think what would have happened if Bakuda did that inside the city."
"Sorry, did what?" I asked as we continued walking. She wasn't wrong about the damage. The shattered foundation had a tendency to shift angles between steps. The uneven ground made it impossible to maintain a normal stride.
"You were there right? Whatever she set off in the courtyard that did all this." She gestured around us.
"Oh..." I let the word draw out somewhat awkwardly.
"Oh what?" Her focus seemed to shift back from her power to her present surroundings, though it was less of a transition than I would have expected.
"Yeah, that wasn't Bakuda." I kept walking and ignored the girl glaring at me.
"Excuse me?"
I shrugged. "I figured I'd need something dramatic to put her off balance."
"Dramatic." Her voice was flat. "So you just grabbed a seismic weapon you had lying around?" There was an implication of 'why did you have a seismic weapon on hand and what were you planning to do with it?' that was strongly implied.
"Well, I didn't have it lying around, but when I got the call I figured I should try to get something ready." I knew I was needling her, but her exasperation seemed to keep her from dwelling on the darker aspects of the situation.
Plus it was fun.
"Are you telling me you built a weapon that did all this..." She gestured at the array of splintered concrete surrounding us. "Before you left for this rescue?"
I grinned. "Well, not BEFORE I left."
"What?"
"The bike has autopilot so I was able to get some work done on route."
"You made it in the time it took to ride here?"
"Well, it didn't take the entire time."
It turns out you can indeed see someone gape through a full face mask if the expression is strong enough. As amusing as this was, it did the job of getting her mind off what had happened to her teammates. I needed Taylor on task, so anything that kept her from ruminating on recent experiences was a plus.
As she processed the impossibility of my power I considered the nature of her own abilities.
"You said you could tell the whole facility was damaged?" My question seemed to draw her out of whatever train of thought she was working through.
"Uh, yeah. I can sense the location of any bugs in range. It's about three blocks, give or take. I get information from their senses, but it's hard to figure out."
I nodded. "Any limits on quantity or control?"
She shook her head. "As long as they're in range there's no problem. There's just so few bugs out here that I don't have much to work with. I've mostly been scouting with them, sometimes I've been able to throw people off, but nothing good for combat."
It made sense. The girl had all the traits of a serious master, range, scale, precision, and lethality. She could easily become a prominent cape, though I still wasn't seeing the application to actually saving the world.
That was something I was going to be keeping to myself until I could at least figure out the basics of it. Revealing that kind of detail would either cast my 'thinker power' into question or prove an invitation for every crazy nihilist on the planet. Worst case scenario it could even bring down the Endbringers. I hated having to deal with the entire mess myself, but I didn't see any other option. At least I had been able to pass off a reasonable explanation for the reason I was looking after her.
The Celestial Forge made a connection to a small mote from the Resources and Durability constellation. This one was called Element Analysis and it allowed me, with some work, to identify the elements of any material. More importantly, with some basic resources I could break anything down to its base elements. That would have been a huge boon for my nano assembly, but coupled with Workaholic it was pretty much an invitation to unlimited resources. With two powers I essentially had no logistical limits on what I could make. I would be able to build anything.
I just had to make it out of this situation first.
"Hold up." I stopped Taylor at an intersection. With my scanner we had been able to skirt most of the bombs but unfortunately the area was too saturated to provide a clear route. "There's a bomb." I pointed out an innocuous looking soda can on the ground that concealed one of Bakuda's devices.
"Can you handle that?" She looked apprehensively at the piece of litter.
I smiled at that. "It's using a standard ultrasonic transducer for its trigger. I mean completely standard, like store bought. I think she was throwing together everything she could for this mess."
Taylor nodded and I noticed a bug swoop past the can. "I can feel it. Sort of. Is that what she's using for the bombs?" There was a hopeful edge to her voice.
I shook my head. "Not all of them. This thing would be a lot easier if that was the case. I've been able to pick up more than a dozen different trigger mechanisms. I have no idea what the hell she's doing as far as these designs go."
That wasn't completely true. I had a rough idea, but I didn't want to sidetrack Taylor with tinker theory right now. Bakuda was showing signs of being a chaos tinker. Her work was all over the place and didn't seem that well directed. There were variations in trigger mechanism, area of effect, and even subtle differences in her exotic devices. I'm pretty sure she was just pointing her power in the right direction and seeing what came out.
It wasn't a possibility I enjoyed considering. While it meant she probably would have difficulty repeating certain designs exactly she would be building on previous successes and producing explosives with more variation that anyone would be able to account for. Even the drawback of being a chaos tinker, extensive testing, was completely side stepped by the presence of Oni Lee. Add in the mystery thinker coordinating things and you had a real nightmare scenario.
"So do we go around? Over the roof?"
I shook my head. "No route past, and the rooftop could give us away." I checked my omni-tool. I was specialized as a mechanic, not an operative, but I was still an engineer. Sabotage was basic battlefield practice, and typically against much more advanced systems than this. "I can overload the sensor without damaging the rest of the device."
Taylor watched my omni-tool intently. "How long will that ta..."
Before she finished speaking a guided surge of electricity jumped from my omni-tool to the soda can. There was a crackling sound and a wisp of smoke from the device, but no explosion. I checked my readings again.
"All clear, trigger's offline."
Taylor followed me as I cautiously approached the device. I pulled out my Diagnostic Tools when we reached the can.
"Let's see what we have here."
I worked the scanner while Taylor peered over my shoulder. When I got a look at the internals I let out a dry laugh.
"What?"
I turned to face her. "Bakuda must think she's funny. This is an ultra-high pressure liquid spray, built into a soda can."
"Yeah, that seems like her. What, is it like, poison or acid or something?"
"Doesn't need to be. At this pressure it's basically a water jet cutter. It would slice apart anyone it hits. Because of the pressure involved and the dissolved gas in the fluid even if you survived the attack you'd start to precipitate gas into your blood. Unless they got you in a hyperbolic chamber right away that would finish you off."
I could see her posture turn anxious at the thought. "Is it safe now?"
"The detonator's fried, and there's no remote trigger." I examined more closely. "Hold on."
"Hold on?" Taylor started edging away from me.
I stood up and packed away my scanner. "We need to move."
"What?" She looked at the bomb and seemed ready to bolt.
"It's not going to explode." I assured her. "But it had a link to Bakuda's systems. She'll know it's been knocked out, and that means..."
"She's coming."
"Her, or someone else. Or some grenades. So, we need to move."
I didn't need to tell her twice. As we moved I checked in with Fleet and Survey. Things were still chaos in the courtyard. Fleet was getting plenty of practice with those turbines, and to devastating effect. Since you don't see the thrust coming out of a jet engine so it's easy to imagine the flow as something like a light fan. In reality it's the kind of force that can send vehicles flying. My motoroid's turbines weren't on the level of a commercial airliner, but they were more than enough to badly inconvenience everyone in the area.
It also made landing a hit with a grenade a nightmare. The dust made aiming difficult, enough that my drone was picking as many shots out of the air as Survey could manage. Those that got through the turbines were able to send off course. That had its own consequences, as I was fed footage of the grisly after effects of a misaimed grenade on a group of scattered conscripts. I was able to push through it, but Taylor seemed more seriously impacted after glancing at my display. Rather than break down she seemed to withdraw into herself, which didn't seem like a good sign.
I noted more professional ABB members returning from somewhere holding what looked like rockets. Those would be significantly harder to dance around, but I guess I couldn't count on Bakuda pursuing a losing strategy forever. Hopefully we could collect the Undersiders before she got her act together enough to send someone after us.
"Two people are headed our way from the courtyard." Taylor's voice was borderline robotic and I wondered how much focus she was putting into her insects.
"Conscripts or gang members?"
"No," She swallowed. "It's Uber and Leet."
I never thought I would hear someone say those words with anything close to that level of concern and apprehension. "How long do we have?"
She shook her head. "Not long, they're using something to move over the roofs of the units. They're..." She trailed off and glanced at my map. "They're circling around, between us and Tattletale."
I cursed internally, but I guess our target would have been obvious. I pretty much declared my intention back at the courtyard. I considered trying to take the rooftops as well, but I didn't trust Taylor's footing and I was operating on accelerated physical conditioning and out-of-universe military training. I thought I could handle it, but didn't want to risk it while in the middle of a literal minefield.
We did make decent time, particularly since stealth wasn't the concern it previously was. I was freely frying bombs to open up routes with only a couple of close calls, one that detonated when disabled and one that was camouflaged beyond the ability of my sensors. Taylor was thankfully able to point it out and saved me from possibly blundering into a mystery explosive.
We had nearly reached Tattletale when Uber and Leet decided to make their appearance. By that I mean they literally made an appearance. There was a flash from the roof of one of the storage lockers and a blue backdrop appeared. Music started playing that I vaguely remembered from Mega Man stage selection, then the two least successful criminals in Brockton Bay appeared and started posing in front of it.
Taylor tensed, though from a surface level examination of the pair it was hard to share her apprehension. They looked like someone had covered them in glue and rolled them through a costume shop. No two items they were wearing seemed to come from the same game. I could pick out a few of them, such as the white gloves and Bowser horns from their Mario themed mint heist, but there was too much clutter to sort out anything. There was a mix of armor, martial arts clothing, cartoony weapons, and strange gadgets. I thought their outfits looked a bit disjointed back at the courtyard, but apparently they had added even more equipment in preparation for this.
They actually kept posing before the holographic backdrop as their names appeared beneath them in a blocky eight bit font. They were interrupted by the beeping of what sounded like a watch alarm and Leet made a cutting motion. While Uber finished his pointless showmanship Leet worked some device on his belt causing the music to cut off and the backdrop to collapse into motes of light. Almost immediately there was a crackling sound as a trail of smoke rose from the device, though Leet tucked it away and Uber made an attempt to distract from it.
To his credit few people could distract as well as Uber could.
"So, Apeiron has reunited with his Lady Khepri." He was using what I always thought of as his 'movie trailer' voice, booming and overly dramatic. "Are they bad enough dudes to rescue the Undersiders before time runs out?"
Next to me Taylor brought both weapons up in a defensive formation. "So, how do you want to play this?" She asked in a not-quite whisper.
I looked up at the pair of villains and sighed. "Frankly, I'm considering just blasting them full force and getting on with this."
Taylor shifted her stance and glared at them. "You know, I think I'd actually be alright with that."
The villains stopped posing and each dropped a hand to an item on their belts. "Hey, we can hear you." Leet called down to us.
"I'm well aware." I drew my eyes across them. "So what's the deal? This is a bit gruesome for your usual work."
Uber stood slightly taller as he answered in his over dramatic voice. "Personal request from a long-time fan. How could we refuse?"
"Simply and directly while you still had a shred of decency?" I glared up at them. Operating against an elevated position wasn't doing my military instincts any favors. "I assume you're referring to the ABB's new thinker. Anything you'd like to share?"
"I'm sorry, this is a spoiler-free confrontation." He wagged a finger from his free hand. "Wouldn't want to ruin it for the folks at home."
And that reminded me. These bastards streamed everything. Usually with enough of a delay to not actually give away their crimes, but they wouldn't be running with this level of showmanship if they weren't playing to an audience.
Well, probably an out-of-state audience considering the city and surrounding area was dark, but this would no doubt end up online at some point. Without looking I entered some commands through my omni-tool's haptic interface to scan for broadcasts, which I probably should have done from the moment I knew they would be on site.
"So what do you get out of this?" Somehow I doubted they would be quite as good at keeping secrets as Tattletale. It was a balance between drawing this out to get information and the potential of Bakuda rallying the ABB. Still, I needed to know about this thinker for one critical reason.
My passenger had nothing on them.
There was absolutely no reaction, no fear or confidence or affection. Not even indifference. It was just confusion. Whoever this was the safety net that had carried me was proving useless against them. Tattletale mentioned not being able to get a read, so there was the terrifying prospect of a stranger or counter-thinker power at work. At this point all I had was that Bakuda didn't like her and there was something about providing timing to the ABB. As such I was willing to stretch out this nonsense if there was a hope of filling in that terrifying blank spot.
Huh, I was going into a situation with the level of uncertainty normal people faced all the time. It's kind of incredible how quickly I got used to not having to deal with that.
"What we get is a chance to demonstrate our art, our passion, for a true fan of the craft."
"You see this as art?" I gestured at the damage around us. Okay, more than a little of that was due to my own efforts, but the effects of Bakuda's bombs were still prominently visible.
"Games are art. And in a world of chaos we're keeping that medium burning in the public consciousness."
"You tried to kill me with a jeep." Taylor's tone was a harsh contrast to Uber's showmanship.
"Oh. Hey Uber, she's the one that brought down Pinky. I wondered who managed that." Leet fiddled with some device pulled from his backpack and a series of sound effects played that even I could recognize. Power pill. Pac-Man eats ghost. That sound of the disembodied eyes rushing back to the center of the maze.
Taylor was not amused.
Just then the Celestial Forge connected to a mote from the Quality constellation. It was called Unnatural Skill:Smith. Once again, it functioned exactly as advertised. Absolutely legendary, unnatural skill at craftsmanship. Unlike Smithing this power had both breadth and depth. It covered everything from ancient weapon craft to advanced technology. It even gave the dexterity for high detail work and the knowledge to accomplish borderline supernatural feats.
Given the level of work I was capable of I was starting to wonder when it would actually count as supernatural. Considering my previous level of skill was approaching that realm, and this compounding with everything else it seemed like the distinction was becoming largely academic. I mean, with this I could build things that changed size, make modern technology with medieval smith tools, and work with actual supernatural metals.
Those would be fun to try to transmute, especially the bone steel. Really wasn't looking forward to that.
None of that was going to help me in this mess, so I put it aside and focused on the current standoff. After Leet little performance Taylor had fallen silent and was staring daggers at the villain tinker. I felt I should probably try something.
"Last warning." I reached towards one of my reagent pouches. "Get out of our way and you get to leave without a beating." From the way Taylor tightened her grip on the baton I was guessing she was more in favor of issuing said beating.
"No can do." Uber stepped forward. "We're seeing this through to the final level."
Leet moved next to him and struck a pose. "You aren't dealing with some shovelware knock off. This is classic, remastered, HD re-release Uber and Leet." He raised a finger towards us. "And you're going dow..."
He was cut off by a shotgun blast of concrete fragments. Taylor had smashed her baton along the wall of a storage unit. The enhanced impact had launched a spray of powder mixed with larger chunks of cinderblock at the pair. Uber recovered quickly, but Leet slipped and started to slide off the roof.
I grabbed my reagents and began mixing them as Uber started running in place. The red sneakers he was wearing created a kind of ring shaped blur as he built up speed. I quickly threw down the mixture for Flash. It was still my weakest formula but this time I wasn't pulling my punches. At full power and with it spread over only two targets they would be in for a visit to the burn ward and a lengthy recovery.
As the sparks wheeled out of the mixture Uber leapt into a ridiculously fast somersault while Leet dropped from the roof and grabbed something from his belt. The fire washed off him as familiar music started playing and his body began to flash. He held up a fist sized golden star and glared at me.
There was a pulse around Uber's spinning body that dispersed the flames and launched the burly cape towards us. I stepped forward and braced myself while Taylor dove out of the way.
The spinning dive collided with the effects of my Force Field formula, dispersing it but otherwise accomplishing precisely nothing. Inexplicably he bounced up into the air while still spinning and returned for another attack. The man hit like a truck, but between my reinforcement and low stance I shrugged him off. This time I was able to angle my body in a way that repelled him towards a nearby wall. In a display of acrobatics he kicked off the wall and landed on the ground, immediately building up speed again. That could have either been the equipment or Uber's power at work.
Taylor had climbed to her feet and was raining blows upon Leet's glowing form with her baton. Each of those strikes would have taken out a security door, but they didn't even budge the tinker. Still, he was attempting to put some distance between them as he fumbled with the equipment on his belt.
Uber started bouncing back and forth between the walls of the storage lockers with blinding speed. With each pass he took a shot at me. The blows did no damage but were unbalancing enough to stop me from drawing any more reagents. I was getting ready to queue up a plasma round from my omni-tool when another of those electric watch alarms sounded.
Uber immediately stopped and kicked off the oversized red shoes. He strode forward like nothing had happened, but I could see the shoes begin to twitch and seize on the ground.
"So I wanted to ask..." He dropped into a fighting stance and the wristbands on his arms briefly flared with blue flames. "Autobot or Decepticon?"
The question was so unexpected that without my military memories I probably would have dropped my guard. Instead I raised my omni-tool while reaching for a set of reagents. "What?"
"Your robot transformer. Autobot or Decepticon?" He started circling warily, but was clearly enjoying the banter. I didn't share his amusement.
"You want to talk about the ethical philosophy of drone software in the middle of a fight?" I mean there was devotion to a theme and then there was pure insanity.
"Come on, don't hold out on us." He darted forward and feinted with a jab before pulling back.
"It's neither. Which should have been obvious."
Uber actually seemed taken aback by that. "Seriously? But that doesn't..."
"Dude!" Leet called from where he had managed to pull back from Taylor's assault. "Tripredacus Council!" He had to shout over that stupid Mario Starman music that kept playing.
Uber grinned. "Of course. Third party agent. Should have seen it from the design."
"Obviously." Leet threw down the pokeballs he had pulled from his belt and in a flash of light a trio of creatures the looked like living cartoons appeared between him and Taylor. I recognized Charizard, but had no idea who the other two were. They looked something like salamanders that had crystals randomly attached to their bodies, so I'm guessing they were legendaries from one of the later games I never bothered with. There was another alarm sound and he quickly tossed the star aside. His body stopped flashing as the effect transferred to a patch of ground around the thrown piece of tinker tech. Said patch shortly began glowing a concerning color and emitting a column of smoke.
"Timing." The answer to this hit me like a flash.
Uber stiffened. "What?"
"It's all timing." I mixed two parts ash with a piece of iron and threw the reaction behind me. Black mist flew from the glowing mixture and formed dark clouds above the three hard light monsters. With a thunderous roar a trio of lightning bolts struck them. Their holograms flickered out, leaving fried emitters to fall to the ground. Khepri began to advance on an undefended Leet.
Uber's eyes darted over to his partner, then back to me. "You don't know what you're talking about."
I just grinned. "You haven't fixed the problem with any of your equipment. You just know when it will fail."
"So what?" He brought his wristbands together at his side, then thrust his hands forward with a cry of "Hadouken!"
The plasma ball rolled off my coat without meaningful effect. Clearly this was hitting a nerve and I meant to press it for all it was worth. "You're still the same screw-ups as before. You just have that new thinker propping you up."
In the corner of my eye Leet was messing with the latch of a case that had an octagon made out of red and white triangles on the cover. In his haste the lid flew open spilling small disks across the entire area. I shifted my focus back to Uber. The cape's wristbands were glowing as he slid forward into some kind of spinning uppercut. Luckily I was just able to dodge the strike.
Uber spun out of his failed punch and moved in for a grab, but I managed to counter his lunge with a slight motion of my blocking hand. My micromanipulators combined with the new dexterity from Unnatural Skilll were adding a level of precision to my blocks and punches I never would have imagined. I nearly turned the swing against him, but Uber was stronger than me and his power improved his fighting to near perfection once he had focused on a technique.
"The gear works. Doesn't matter if it's for a minute or an hour. It's just like managing battery life." He swung in with a rapid series of blows that I managed to deflect with minimal movements from a tight guard.
"You're ignoring the issue. Trading one problem for another. It's just going to blow up in your face again." Leet seemed to react to that, but I kept my focus on Uber. My combat training was carrying me through the fight by supplementing and mostly overriding my limited boxing experience. I did have to constantly remind myself not to activate my omni-tool's melee contingency. That thing could range from 'very lethal' to 'spectacularly lethal'.
"Gamers are used to working against the clock. It's a welcome challenge. We're going to show the world what Uber and Leet can do at the top of their game!"
He was gaining the upper hand. Uber was stronger, had more experience fighting capes, and was running a power that quickly brought his techniques to perfection. Despite my best efforts he managed to slip past my guard and land a grip on my shoulders.
For some reason the grip was stronger than it should have been, seemingly due to the effect of some kind of attractive force from his belt. And the red briefs he was wearing. The full implications didn't hit me until Uber had already flipped me upside down and launched into a spinning pile driver.
The ground lurched away as we rocketed into the air. I felt my stomach try to drop out of my throat and had to fight off intense dizziness as I stared at the spinning ground from a terrifying height. It was the kind of situation that made you quickly reevaluate your previously agreed level of restraint.
Closing distance to a tinker can seem like a good idea. Closing distance to a combat engineer is much less of a good idea. Closing distance to a combat engineer who is faced with a head first spinning body slam and thus no longer that concerned about lethal force is a down right terrible idea.
I triggered the melee contingency on my omni-tool and sent a burst of high energy plasma, fabricated from my energy and omni-gel reserves, directly at Uber. To my surprise it was accompanied by four more jets of plasma, because I can't turn my powers off and apparently Workaholic counts omni-tool fabrication as part of that power. I only had a fraction of a second to make sure it wasn't a single burst twenty five times the size. That would have reduced Uber to the consistency of an overcooked pork chop.
I doubt he was grateful for that consideration from the way he screamed and launched me away from him. As we were at the peak of a thirty foot jump I slammed down onto the edge of one of the storage units before dropping to the ground. It wasn't a pleasant sensation, but aside from being a bit jarring and disorienting I was fine.
The same couldn't be said for Uber who was nursing singed flesh and peeling off ruined pieces of equipment. The Celestial Forge missed a connection to the Time constellation as we squared off again.
"So that's it? All this madness for the sake of your egos? You're trying to convince people you haven't been churning out crap all these years?"
"Fuck you." The harshness of Leet's voice surprised me. Apparently that cut closer to the bone than I imagined. A quick glance showed things weren't going that well for Taylor. The disks Leet had scattered on the ground were some kind of fabricators, pulling in material from the broken concrete surface into animated constructs. It created the effect of a field of zombies clawing their way out of the earth. The sheer volume of them had put Taylor on the defensive. She'd finally brought my knife into play, but there were two zombies waiting for every one she dropped.
"Easy Leet." Uber placated. "Don't break character."
I wasn't about to let things stand at that. "No, let's hear it. If you're stepping up from petty theft to terrorism I want to know the reason."
"Petty!" Leet screeched. "I'll show you petty!" He fumbled with his backpack and produced a large gun with a thick glowing cylinder for a barrel and a series of claw like protrusions at the front.
Uber smirked at me. "I'd say not to let him bait you, but this is going to be good."
The barrel of the gun glowed orange as he adjusted something and a piece of debris jumped up to float in front of it. Leet angled the chunk of concrete with seemingly no effort and launched it towards me at an insane speed.
My reinforcement was more than enough to take the hit but there were Newtonian effects that I couldn't compensate for. More pieces of debris started flying towards me in a disorienting stream. It didn't help that Uber was launching into some kind of spinning lariat at the same time. Together it would have been an impressively coordinated attack if not for the fact that Leet immediately began choking on a cloud of insects and another of those watch alarms started to sound from Uber.
I was very grateful he decided to wear the wrestling briefs over his costume. You would think that was a given, but there were horror stories about some of their more spectacular failures.
Apparently Taylor had been able to coordinate the insects without the slightest pause in her zombie slicing. She moved through them like a maelstrom, the speed enhancement of the wind runes on full display. The knife seemed to be flying out of her hand as she fought. Even the seemingly endless supply of fabricated zombies was having a hard time keeping up with her.
If she wanted to distance herself from what happened to Aegis this was a crap way to do it. Leet was watching her nervously while checking some reading on the case that had held the zombie disks.
"Fuck it." He called over the melee while swatting away more bugs. "Uber, time to end this."
The burly cape grinned at me. "You don't know how long it's been since we've been able to use this."
"Think it'll have any more luck than your last nonsense?" They were frustrating, but I still didn't want them dead. An Overload burst from my omni-tool should put them down without any seriously lethal damage. I selected the blast while Uber took a guard position with his arms and raised his front knee.
"Don't underestimate us." There was a flash in front of him as he screamed "Shun Goku Satsu!"
The cape blurred as he surged forward. The burst of electricity from my omni-tool passed harmlessly through his shadowy form. Then he was upon me and everything went dark.
I can't explain the experience that followed without resorting to levels of profanity that would make a longshoreman faint. On a basic level I was suspended in a void as blows rained upon me, but that was not even scratching the surface of how bad the situation actually was. Each hit sent a tearing sensation right through the core of my being. My durability was still there, but did nothing for the pain and the damage still piled up. The pain was especially bad. It was like this was designed to be particularly torturous.
The blows weren't really blows, it was more like someone was reaching into my body and tearing things out of alignment. I tasted blood in my mouth and felt the splintering of bones. Muscles tore and agony rippled through my entire body.
When the world faded back I was lying on the ground and Uber was standing facing away from me with a large Asian character glowing on his back. To my even greater annoyance he launched into a grandiose speech.
"Raging Demon. Attacks the targets soul with the karmic weight of their sins."
"Fuck your soul" I choked out as I pulled myself to my feet. "That was a dressed up concentrated spatial disruption."
"I'm impressed you're still conscious." He played it off like a joke, but there was some real concern in his expression. "Few men can stand before that kind of power."
"It was certainly an inconvenience."
He frowned. "Those injuries..."
"Are nothing." I focused on my nanites and blue lines spread across my costume. I could feel the damage from the stupid attack vanish as they rebuilt my body. In the end the only sign of the attack was a series of tears across my costume.
Damn it, Garment was going to be furious with me.
Uber was gaping at me and Leet had stopped fiddling with a copy of Link's sword to join him. I turned to Taylor, who had been able to whittle the zombie hoard down to a pack defending the villain tinker.
"Khepri, how are you managing?"
She smashed a zombie's chest with her baton, causing it to collapse into a pile of the concrete it was formed from. Without looking she took the head of another with her blade. "Not enough bugs around here." She was playing things casual, but I could tell the constant combat was wearing on her endurance. I reached for one of my more obscure formulas.
"Oh, right. I meant to give this to you earlier. Either it'll solve that bug supply problem, or maim Uber and Leet within an inch of their lives."
"So win-win?"
I had no idea if this was going to work. If Taylor could interface with it then with her level of control it should let her protect herself for the rest of this nightmare. If not it was still one of my better attack formulas and would take Uber and Leet out of the fight barring anything short of additional invincibility gadgets.
Why did those have to be so common in videogames?
I mixed the two drams of water and one of vinegar. The reagents for my Sting formula. Because Evermore Alchemy was all over the place of course it had a way to conjure insects. I tossed down the mixture and it floated through the air before forming into a facsimile of a wasp's nest. Then the entire mass exploded into a swarm of insects that would put Japanese hornets to shame.
In normal circumstances they would blaze towards the target of the formula and tear into them, expending themselves after a single powerful sting. Instead the entire cloud held position before flowing over to Khepri. She seemed contemplative as she held them in a tight orbit around herself, then sent a single insect towards an approaching zombie.
It blasted through the creatures head like a gunshot before vanishing. Her posture shifted to an amused stance as the swarm dispersed, taking out the remaining zombies and tearing into Leet's equipment.
Uber moved to help him but this time didn't have his spatial nonsense defending him. My overload blast caught him and he collapsed into a flailing mess, various pieces of equipment sparking and twitching. I moved over and secured the barely conscious cape in a headlock.
"So I guess we can call this. Are you going to admit defeat or should the beating continue?"
Leet looked to me over the remains of his minions and twitching form of his teammate. A particular explosion from the direction of the courtyard seemed to catch his attention. He brought a finger to an earpiece and smirked at me.
"You think you've won? We just accomplished everything we set out to do."
I glanced down at my omni-tool and saw the reason for his smug demeanor.
"What's he talking about?" Taylor was drawing the ring of alchemical insects closer, causing Leet to tense, though the tinker didn't back down. Instead he turned to her and gloated.
"What I mean is that Bakuda has just..."
"She's taken out my drone. Rocket strike."
The tinker glared at me but continued. "That's right. Now that the cover's gone your robot will be next, then you'll have the whole of the ABB hunting you down."
I sighed. "I can't believe you were stalling us to take out my drone."
His smirk grew a cruel edge. "Didn't see that coming? What, didn't plan on loosing that in the field? All that wasted time and effort suddenly up in smoke. Thought you were the hot shot new tinker, huh? How does it feel to lose?"
The Vehicles constellation passed by without a connection. "You don't understand. I can't believe that was the point of all this. Just to take out a drone."
Leet was becoming agitated. "You can pretend it doesn't matter all you want, but your still down an asset. You've still lost all the time and effort it took to build it."
"What, this effort?"
I raised my omni-tool and began fabrication of a new drone. The capacitors had long since recovered from the last deployment. Oh, and with my Workaholic power insisting on affecting everything I did the single fabrication expanded to five drones. They appeared arranged in a pentagon formation behind me.
"Did you just make those? All of those?" His eyes were jumping between the rapidly spinning bugs and the array of glowing drones.
"What, you thought I was teleporting them in? Or using some kind of spatial pocket? Please."
"Leet…" Uber gurgled from beneath my hold. "Think it's time…" He struggled for breath against my arm. "For a reset."
The tinker nodded apprehensively. His hand dropped to a thick blue bracer. Suddenly his body vanished into a thin beam of light that launched into the sky. Beneath my grip Uber dissolved into a cloud of expanding spheres.
"The hell?" The insects she was controlling seemed to react more than Taylor did.
"Mega Man reference, I think. Covering some teleport effect." Given the rest of what had been displayed teleportation wasn't beyond the pale. I climbed to my feet as Taylor sheathed her blade.
Huh. That was the first time she had put it away since I had found her. It seemed like a positive thing.
I keyed some commands to Survey. My omni-tool wasn't really designed to command more than one drone, but between the A.I. coordination and the cheating nature of Workaholic it could be managed. Taylor watched as the cluster of glowing constructs rose into the sky and sped towards the courtyard.
Oh, they were going to ruin someone's day.
"Alright, let's get Tattletale before any other idiots show up."
Taylor nodded to me and we pushed past the aftermath of the fight towards the next member of the Undersiders, and hopefully, finally, some answers.
Jumpchain abilities this chapter:
Workaholic (Sonic The Hedgehog) 300:
Sometimes you wonder how some geniuses are able to build entire armadas within days or weeks of their last defeat. You become a walking factory of production. Building in masse is something that comes without issue to you. That one bot that took a week to build? Now that one bot is now 5. Or roughly 3x the size it was before. How do you even have the resources to build so much you say? The hell if I know.
Element Analysis (Bomberman 64: The Second Attack) 100:
With a little elbow grease, you can easily identify the elemental composition of ANY material and with the right resources, break it down to its base elements for further use.
Unnatural Skill:Smith (Percy Jackson) 200:
Whether from your heritage or just being that good you've got one particular mundane skill that your feats with border on supernatural. Whether you're a smith on the level of the Cyclopses, a near prescient tactician or a swordsman who is ny unstoppable with a blade your feats will be legendary. You are on a level within your skill such that only other beings of legend can hope to match you. This may be taken multiple times. You may not choose magic but you may choose a particular application of magic if you have it already (so curses, enchanting might work, more specific gets a bigger boost).
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Joe is approaching the point where the only correct answer to 'are you a tinker or a shaker?' is 'Yes."
Decadence isn't a permanent ability. The wording is "You have the skills" and "you can make" as opposed to Beauty in the Arts with "Regardless of what you create". Active abilities as opposed to passive ones.
The situation with Panacea is even worse. She's being detained on suspicion of master influence, officially filed and tested. That's not something that can be arbitrarily revoked regardless of circumstances. They can try to accelerate the process, but there's no easy way to get her into the field during a crisis. It'll be at least a couple of days where Brockton will have to deal with the aftermath like any city without a miracle healer would. Just how much she was propping up the current system is going to become very clear.
- Location
- Brazil
- Pronouns
- He
A question Lord
are you rolling for the powers or do you have a "tech tree" for powers that you will get ?
are you rolling for the powers or do you have a "tech tree" for powers that you will get ?
- Pronouns
- Dude, bro, etc...
Lord uses the Celestial Forge pastebin.com/35AJD9Lj, which has Constellations or Trees for groups of powers, he firsts rolls a tree and then rolls a power within the tree.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
oh ster is here
- Pronouns
- He
For what it's worth, Armsmaster considers himself the second greatest Tinker in the world, and from what we've seen, that's mostly true-ish for this time period. He seems to have the greatest actual understanding of what he builds compared to anyone else except Dragon - who cheats.
From his point of view, if he can't recognize it as Tinkertech, then it's not Tinkertech.
Bonus points because truthfully, alot of what the forge does ISNT Tinkertech. Its secondary Shaker or Thinker powers that make Mundane craftsmanship better or easier. So he isn't even really WRONG, he's just failing to see the whole picture because the Celestial Forge is an out of context problem for him.
It hasn't come up yet except as humorous teasing of the Undersiders, but the MC is legitimately the Glastig Ulaine of Tinkers. As soon as that becomes obvious to anyone but Coil (who himself is only kind of right) I imagine alot of larger organizations will be showing up in Brockton Bay. If the Empire doesn't get Gesselschaft orders to kidnap him for reeducation, then the Elite will show up, or Toybox, or the fallen. I mean 'An immaculate Tinker who always has an answer and seems to know what to do at all times' is pretty on brand for a Simurgh themed Tinker.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Armsmaster's tinker power is actually in the Celestial Forge, and wouldn't that be fucking something.
If Armsmaster sees how Joe uses the (for some reason much more superior Efficiency + Miniaturization) tinker power, Armsmaster's shard is going to go haywire and infect Armsmaster with even BETTER tinker abilities.
It's broken and would make Armsmaster even more of a threat than he already is (going off what Armsmaster made, pretty sure Joe would still be hard pressed to defeat Armsmaster in a 1v1 currently)
Would be neat to see Armsmaster's reaction, though.
Though, interesting take on the CF.
As always, we look forward to more.
If Armsmaster sees how Joe uses the (for some reason much more superior Efficiency + Miniaturization) tinker power, Armsmaster's shard is going to go haywire and infect Armsmaster with even BETTER tinker abilities.
It's broken and would make Armsmaster even more of a threat than he already is (going off what Armsmaster made, pretty sure Joe would still be hard pressed to defeat Armsmaster in a 1v1 currently)
Would be neat to see Armsmaster's reaction, though.
Though, interesting take on the CF.
As always, we look forward to more.
TrueGuardian32
Unfinished Writer
- Location
- Arkansas
You know, that actually might happen, like how Leets shard tried to kill him cause the shard didn't like him. But instead of killing the host, the shard would want to prove it was better than the other, cause Armsmaster shard makes him think that his creations are best, although he believes he is second best.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I don't think the Shard will infect Armsmaster like that.
More like suddenly, Armsmaster's shard starts thinking on new ways on to improve efficiency + miniaturization even more.
It'll be a drastic upgrade in Armsmaster's tinkering abilities, allowing him to put even MORE shit into his ALREADY POWERFUL FUCKING HALBERD LIKE HOLY SHIT WHAT THE FUCK
For reference, here is Armsmaster's CURRENT equipment
Such as bombs that can explode with a force of 1/5th an atom bomb.
More like suddenly, Armsmaster's shard starts thinking on new ways on to improve efficiency + miniaturization even more.
It'll be a drastic upgrade in Armsmaster's tinkering abilities, allowing him to put even MORE shit into his ALREADY POWERFUL FUCKING HALBERD LIKE HOLY SHIT WHAT THE FUCK
For reference, here is Armsmaster's CURRENT equipment
- Blade that rearranges into various other weapons (Halberd)[24]
- Blade that can cut through steel (Halberd blade, spear[28])
- Grappling hook (Halberd blade)[24][16]
- Welding device (Halberd blade) [29][16]
- Flail (Halberd blade)[24]
- Teleporting to his hand (Halberd)[30]
- Temporal stasis trigger (Halberd)
- EMP Projector/Electricity field (Halberd, spear)[31]
- Nano-thorn disintegration field (unique Halberd, spear, Defiant armour[32])
- Plasma blade (Halberd)[16]
- The ability to change its size (spear)[33]
- Spinning blades (spear)[34]
- Echolocation (Halberd, helmet)[24]
- Lie detector (helmet)[24]
- Combat predictor (helmet)[24]
- Psychic shielding (helmet)[35]
- Sealed biohazard capabilities (Defiant armor)[36]
- Enhanced strength (Armour)[37]
Such as bombs that can explode with a force of 1/5th an atom bomb.