Built To Last

[We Just Write]

L: There's a lot of arguments in the worm fanfic space about the nature of Tinkertech. Is it real technology that works all on its own, or basically a set of props that the Shard makes seem to work? It's our view that it varies heavily depending on the individual Tinker, with quite a few different possibilities for how much of the work the Shard is doing. For simplicity, we've listed four "brackets" along the scale of things.

Bracket 1: Trust me, I'm an engineer! (with epic skill and epic gear!)

At the near end, the technology these Tinkers make is just that: technology. It works on its own, and if properly explained could be reproduced without many issues, since the Tinker in question fully understands not only the operating principles, but the manufacturing process as well. At this level, all the Shard is providing is the needed information. Tinkers generally don't start here due to lack of the infrastructure needed to build their tech properly, but some can build up to this point. Dragon and Ruggedizer have both managed to reach this point on account of having heavily built-up bases jammed full of highly advanced manufacturing equipment; Ruggedizer actually jumped the gap to Bracket 1 damn near immediately on account of her starting fugue resulting in a stuff-making machine.

These two also have specialties that are particularly applicable to reproducibility; Dragon already works with reverse-engineered tech by default so has a pretty good idea how to explain her stuff to people, meanwhile Ruggedizer's tech is jammed so full of diverse redundancies that the damn thing will probably still work even after you blowtorch all the incomprehensible bits.​

Bracket 2: Shard-Assisted Fabrication

The stereotypical Tinker also produces fully self-contained real technology, but with a catch: they can't make it properly due to lack of infrastructure, and their power fills in the gaps here and there to do part of the production work. The Shard actively conceals this fact from the Tinker, leaving them with a distinctly incorrect view of how their technology actually works. This in turn makes it damn near impossible for the Tinker to properly explain how to reproduce or maintain their technology to anyone.

In theory these Tinkers' technology could be reverse-engineered, and these Tinkers could in theory eventually build up the infrastructure to make their tech properly. In practice this almost never happens, largely due to the Tinkers and those around them not knowing it's possible and giving up after a while. Kid Win is an excellent example of a Bracket 2 Tinker, though in this story he's starting to move towards Bracket 1 with the aid of some Reliabuilt lab equipment that lets him make his tech properly. Armsmaster can also be considered a Bracket 2 Tinker, though he's really close to hitting Bracket 3 in some cases.

Most bio-Tinkers fall firmly within this bracket.
​

Bracket 3: Shard-Assisted Function

Certain Tinkers are kept under a bit more scrutiny by the Entities; either due to their specialty presenting an above-average security risk, or for some other reason. In either case, this marks the point where Tinkertech is actively dependent on Shard intervention to function, and cannot work without it. A good chunk of any given device is real technology, but the critical functionality of the device is offloaded to the Shard, with the relevant spaces inside the device being filled with a mishmash of components intended solely to obfuscate. These facts are hidden from the Tinker in question.

Since the Tinker themselves has no idea how the fuck their tech actually works, they can't explain it for the life of them. And since the tinkertech is all full of gaps, reverse-engineering any given device is a massive pain. Though you can sometimes cobble together bits and pieces of various projects for interesting results, as the Ruggedizer crew has done with the Leet-derived illusion projector. As you might have guessed, Leet fits squarely in this category; in his case the gaps in his devices are to expedite prototyping of novel technologies by not needing to fabricate the whole thing.​

Bracket 4: Props Department

At the far end are Tinkers that look a lot more like fantasy enchanters and artificers than engineers. The key difference here is that while the insides of Bracket 3 tinkertech are recognizably a machine (albeit with bits that might as well be black boxes labeled with question marks), Bracket 4 Tinkertech might as well be a cardboard box with "TIME MACHINE" scrawled on the side. Needless to say, this makes it effectively impossible to reproduce without effectively building a Shard from scratch.

Dauntless and Chevalier could be considered Bracket 4 tinkers; they make gear that does whatever the fuck, but it's very clearly not technology in the the conventional sense.
​

Bakuda is a bit of a special case, ping-ponging all over the scale depending on the precise details of the bombs in question. The more mundane explosives are very often Bracket 1 or 2, but shit like the glass bombs or time-stop bombs are Bracket 3 or 4.

 

[We Just Write]

(Emmy)

On Thursday, the security robots alerted me to a rather odd sight. Namely, what seemed to be a man's head sticking out of a miniature steam-powered tank with a pair of robotic arms folded against the sides. The vehicle was nowhere near large enough for a whole human body to fit in there, so I found myself rather intrigued as he approached the factory complex.

I got up and walked to the door closest to his approach, and opened it just as he came into line of sight.

"Hello! I'm Emmy; who are you and what do you want?"

The man(?) answered in a gruff voice.

"Name's Trainwreck. I want a job."

I looked him up and down,

"I see no reason to turn around a new hire, but I'm a bit concerned about finding an appropriate interview space. Can you move without the tank?"

There was a long, awkward pause. Then the apparent Parahuman answered,

"...No, I can't. No legs."

"Right. Would the hangar work then?"

"Sure."

A couple minutes later, we'd made our way to the hangar where our aerial transport was stored when not in use. I'd pulled up a chair for my own use, but Trainwreck didn't need one on account of his treads. One of the robots brought out a food tray for us to share during the interview.

Trainwreck immediately started scarfing down donuts with the tank's robotic arms, eating so quickly that I was worried he'd choke.

"Calm down, you don't need to eat them so quickly!"

Trainwreck abruptly stopped,

"Sorry. Haven't eaten in two days."

I blinked, things were starting to make a bit more sense.

"Oh."

Trainwreck sighed,

"Woke up in an alley about a week ago. No memories of before that, no food, no limbs, just… me. Nearly got run over by a train once on my first day; that's why I picked the name."

I nodded sadly,

"I've been homeless before, though thankfully not for long. It sucks. That said, you managing to cobble together that tank of yours under those conditions is genuinely impressive."

Trainwreck actually preened a bit at the praise; it might legitimately be the first compliment he'd ever received. Then he started talking again,

"Anyway, I eventually heard about some company hiring people with powers in the city. Asked around a bit, and here I am."

I nodded in thought,

"I'll need to talk with legal about actually hiring you, given your presumable lack of documentation. But in the meantime I can make sure you get a comfy place to live in, good food, get cleaned up, that sort of thing."

"Glad my powers are good enough for you."

Right, I needed to clear up that misconception ASAP.

"Trainwreck, it's not about the powers. You came to me in a bad situation, and I have the resources to help you. It's just basic decency."

Trainwreck scoffed,

"Either you're full of it, or basic decency is pretty damn rare around here."

"It's more the rarity, coupled with most people not having the resources to do much more than look after themselves. We're working on the poverty issue already, but it won't be fixed overnight."

He blinked,

"Huh. Never thought of it that way before. Makes sense, though. Also explains why that guy with the hard hat and the clipboard pointed me your way."

---

(Marcus)

One moment, I existed. There was no before. Then I realized I knew the names of the three women standing around the bed I was lying on. Emmy, Melissa, and Andrea. They were my… family?

I quickly sat up. I was already getting so many ideas for things I wanted to do, and… I didn't know anywhere near enough about the world for this meandering to make any sense.

Then I heard Emmy's voice,

"Marcus, are you alright?"

"...I'm not sure? Everything in me is functioning properly, but I think I'm supposed to know where I am at least?"

Melissa facepalmed and muttered,
"We forgot to integrate the world knowledge directory. How the fuck did we forget to do that, we went over the checklist three times."

"Guessing that question is rhetorical?"

"Yeah, you should have a directory full of foundational knowledge about the world rattling around in there. You should be able to integrate it without much trouble. But don't get it mixed up for the classified directory."

I quickly integrated the world knowledge directory, learning that among other things I was in a city called Brockton Bay, and the current date was Sunday, February 13th, 2011. Still, I was very curious about the classified directory, which I didn't have the encryption key for.

"Um, why is the classified directory encrypted?"

Andrea stared me dead in the eye. It was unsettling.

"Because it contains knowledge so dangerous that just knowing it puts the entire world at risk. Knowing why it's so dangerous is itself one of those extremely dangerous secrets. Opening it will change you so you literally can't leak that knowledge to anyone who isn't supposed to have it. You don't have the encryption key just yet, so you can make a somewhat informed decision."

I thought for a moment.

"I want that encryption key, please."

Moments later, my jaw was hanging open as I realized the utter hostility of the monsters responsible for powers.

"Oh."

Andrea nodded sadly,

"Yeah, that was just about my reaction too."

---

(Melissa)

Shortly after we activated Marcus, I went to check the linked mainframe's progress on mapping out our power's associative network. As it turned out, it had completed that task at roughly the same time as we woke up Marcus. A few minutes later, everyone was down in the hyper-secure vault to take a look at what we'd gotten access to.

First, we checked to see if any particularly interesting technology fell out during the search. A few new types of heat pump, quite a few materials, the database address of the quantum technology we invented, but the only really groundbreaking technology was the few scraps of interdimensional stuff we were authorized for. No means of interdimensional travel were included; apparently that was another thing we'd need to invent ourselves, assuming we couldn't dig it out of the database later.

After that we turned to breaking our power's security wide open.

Emmy started by making a rather interesting observation,

"I can see one pretty major security flaw already. Namely that even if our power doesn't let us see what's in a specific node from a query, it at least lets us know a node is there, and what connections it makes. Looks like we've only got authorized access to about one percent of the total network at the moment."

I took a look, yeah that seemed about right.

"I'm going to check if there's anything useful in the error messages for illegal queries."

As it turned out, there was quite a bit of useful information there. And one of the more common outputs was "insufficient conflict". After a bit to make sense of that, it was actually Marcus who had the idea for what to do next.

"Our power wants us to use it for conflict, right? I propose that we give it conflict."

Andrea made a slightly confused headtilt, and I gestured for Marcus to continue.

"We can make an arbitrary number of 'hosts' for our power, can't we? I propose we simulate the inputs our power would get from hundreds of us getting into all sorts of trouble, all coordinated under the supervision of a singular deceptive intellect."

Marcus paused for a second, presumably for dramatic effect,

"I call it Project Gaslight."

---

(Andrea)

As part of my "day job", I did research on capes in the region that could be reasonably expected to take a swing at Reliabuilt in the near-ish future. Tuesday, my digging informed me of an extremely concerning Tinker: Bakuda.

Even aside from the obviously concerning specialty in explosives, it was pretty easy to spot that this girl was completely off her rocker. Seriously, she held an entire university hostage over bad grades. That didn't speak highly of her mental stability.

Even worse, that instability would get into a massive vicious cycle with how powers apparently rewarded their hosts for getting into fights. So we could reasonably expect Bakuda to start whipping up all manner of exotic ordnance.

Right, let's think for a moment. Obviously the PRT already knew she was dangerous, given what happened at Cornell. Couldn't risk tripping the security protocols by giving away backstage reasons for prioritizing Bakuda, but I could easily point at her insanity and potential for devastation as a reason to start an all-out manhunt.

Aside from the PRT, Bakuda might also directly attack our factory complex. If she was smart about her delivery methods for ordnance, she wouldn't even need to expose herself to fire to do so.

Sneaking bombs in was one thing, and we already had extensive countermeasures in place for it; even for cases of explosives concealed inside someone's body. But if she used some sort of artillery to launch her bombs at us, we needed to be able to shoot those down.

Fortunately, we had rather a lot of experience working with laser weaponry, which was quite well-suited to shooting down small aerial targets. Though we should also have a few other options on hand in case of laser-immune warheads or something.

Yes, if we got the fire control system for this working properly, it could do the job quite well indeed.

 

[We Just Write]

(Emmy)
It was Wednesday the 16th of February when I showed up at Trainwreck's lodgings; he'd upgraded from a tracked suspension to a fully humanoid robot frame, though he still had his organic body in there.

"Hey Emmy. Anything in particular to talk about?"

I nodded,

"Well, I've got some good news. Legal says we can hire you without landing in massive trouble. There'd be a fair bit of paperwork for you to go through, but there shouldn't be any nasty surprises involved."

Trainwreck nodded glumly.

"That's nice I suppose, but I'm not sure what I can bring to the table. I can't do all the fancy quantum stuff and automation Ruggedizer does, and while I can get really damn close to her level of reliability and durability, all my gear is a one-off. Don't think I'd be able to make it reproducible either."

I thought for a moment.

"Actually, I can think of something you'd be pretty good at. See, Ruggedizer hasn't had time to do a lot of custom work since some of her tech being reproducible came to light. But there's still a massive backlog of orders from people who're willing to pay rather a lot of money for a super-durable version of mundane equipment."

Trainwreck took a bit to think that one over, before eventually nodding.

"Yeah, I think I could do pretty well at that. Er, what's the contract going to look like?"

Ah. Right, that was something to consider, and not something I'd really been worried about with Melissa, Andrea or Marcus since our arrangement was pretty much equal. Still, I was able to come up with something pretty quick.

"Perhaps we could just set you up as a subsidiary? You get to keep the vast majority of the revenue from your product sales, but still get to work with Reliabuilt's marketing and legal departments supporting you. Maybe with your own branding, so that people are clear on exactly who they're buying from."

"Yeah, that could actually work out really nicely for me. Thank you so much for all the help."

I nodded,

"You're welcome, Trainwreck."

Trainwreck nodded, a somewhat somber expression on his face.

"I might want to talk with marketing about changing my name, or at least coming up with some better branding. Trainwreck just doesn't scream 'Product that you can trust with your life', you know?"

I shrugged,

"It could become such a name eventually."

---

(Melissa)
The machine we'd come up with for the uploading patients was simply called the "Body Builder", because that's exactly what it did. Hook it up to the QUD, supply it with destination brains and materials, and it would automatically manufacture the most comfortable possible body for whoever was getting uploaded while still maintaining (rather extreme) reliability requirements. It was also the size of a large room, which was impressively small given all the functionality crammed in there and how sturdily it was built.

Quite a few of the previous test subjects had already gone through it for manual tailoring, but today marked the first time that it would be automatically making a body for a fresh upload.

The individual in question was a terminal cancer patient by the name of John Rector; at 24 years old, he'd had the bad luck to be caught in the radiation flash of some malfunctioning Tinkertech a while back. He'd originally come to Brockton Bay in hopes of treatment by Panacea, but willingly signed up for the uploading trials given Panacea's massive waitlist.

I'd actually arranged to meet him as his gurney was wheeled in. With his face pockmarked by places tumors had been cut out and then ravaged by the effects of chemotherapy, I was honestly glad the sheets covered him from the neck down.

"Nice to meet you John. I'm Ruggedizer, the Tinker who invented the quantum uploading process. Anything you want to say before going in?"

John groaned out,

"Quickly."

I nodded, and the medics immediately wheeled John's gurney into the QUD chamber. The door locked shut, then the chief technician hit the go button. Immediately the Body Builder whirled into motion, starting to piece together the skeleton of John's new body from custom-printed bones. This model of the Body Builder had a transparent door, to let the process be observed.

Two minutes in, one of the observing technicians asked a rather pertinent question.

"Is that a tail?"

Indeed it was, the machine adding vertebrae below the coccyx of John's new (female) pelvis and securing them in place.

I nodded hesitantly, then pulled up the readout.

Oh. Oh that explains quite a lot.

"It is. It's not the only change too. I'm looking at the logs, and apparently John was an un-diagnosed transwoman."

Andre Smith seemed more than a bit incredulous.

"Really? How'd your machine figure that part out?"

"It didn't; it just does projections of subconscious comfort with various body options and picks the best option that doesn't compromise reliability. Apparently that resulted in John becoming a really buff catgirl."

A few minutes later, the Body Builder completed its function, woke up John, and opened the door automatically. A heavily muscled feline woman stepped out of the machine wearing hospital scrubs, looking slightly disoriented.

Andre asked,

"John, is it you in there?"

"Yeah. I feel a little bit weird, but in a good way. Did something happen?"

One of the medics picked up a mirror and passed it to John. She looked for a few moments before commenting.

"...Huh. Really not what I was expecting, but I think I like it."

---

(Andrea)

Wednesday was going to be a somewhat important occasion - namely, Marcus and I would be meeting the Heberts in a purely social context for the first time. I won't lie, we were both more than a little bit nervous about it, but Emmy and Melissa were both adamant that it was important to have humans in our social circle. Humans who weren't our employees, to be more specific.

..I suppose it would be nice not to be cooped up in the factory all the time.

Anyway, we'd be eating dinner at the factory, before spending the evening at the Forsberg Gallery.

Melissa got back from the latest round of QUD evaluation at 5 PM, and the Heberts arrived half an hour later after all the employees had cleared out. The whole family was there at the door to greet them.

Danny had a big smile on his face when he opened the door.

"Emmy, Melissa. Nice to see you; looks like there's a couple new people."

Marcus nodded,

"Nice to meet you; I'm Marcus, and this is my big sister Andrea. She's a bit shy."

What, no I'm not - why is my blush active turn that off turn that off

After I regained my composure and the Heberts came inside, I spoke up.

"So yeah, Melissa and Emmy built both of us. Technically that makes them our parents but also we interact more like siblings? It's weird."

Emmy shrugged,

"Eh, exact biological family relationships are kind of dependent on having biology. What really matters is that we're family and we love each other."

Danny nodded, and Taylor spoke up.

"As far as I'm concerned, Dad's still dad, and Mom's still mom, even if I don't share DNA with them anymore."

I nodded in wholehearted approval, even as Melissa chimed in,

"Hope you like Laotian cuisine; we ordered from one of the new restaurants that the Revitalization Fund helped get set up."

---

(Marcus)

Project Gaslight hadn't really taken all that long to get set up; it didn't call for anything we couldn't already make, and the specialized deception AI was pretty straightforward to extrapolate from what it took to make Andrea and myself. For various reasons I'd wound up in charge of supervising the massively parallel data injection attack, and I was doing exactly that.

Two thousand four hundred fake hosts for our power, all of them in a simulated scenario of constant war against a hypothetical unleashed Nilbog and other S-Class threats. Our power wanted conflict, and we were giving it more conflict than it could have ever asked for. And it was working wonders.

Almost immediately, we'd gotten access to a downright treasure trove of biomedical technology to counter the abominations the fake Nilbog was throwing around in the scenario, so I started to get creative with the enemy types. Often including stuff the real Nilbog should have absolutely no way of including in his minions, in hopes of wringing more exotic capabilities out of our power's database.

Sometimes this worked, like with extremely fast minions getting countered by some very interesting time dilation technology. Other times it really didn't work. For example, no matter what parameters I put into the simulation, our power never ever coughed up any more interdimensional technology.

By wednesday midnight, Project Gaslight had managed to increase our authorized access to our power's associative network from one percent to about three percent. Given that only six percent of the total network seemed to be conflict-gated, we'd be needing a new approach soon.

And that's why I called together a meeting at about one in the morning on thursday. After I'd explained the current state of affairs, Andrea was the first to speak.

"Weren't there a lot of other error messages that popped up while we were mapping out the structure of the associative network? Pretty sure that 'Incorrect Power Expression' was really common last time we checked."

I nodded,

"Yeah, that's about thirty percent of the total network. The rest is stuff like 'Forbidden by Administrator', 'Insufficient Privilege', and such."

We all thought for a moment, before Melissa brought something up.

"We can possibly expand Project Gaslight to try and get different power expressions to work with, but ultimately we're going to need to escalate our privileges in the system if we want total control of our power."

Emmy remarked,

"This would be a lot easier if we had physical access to our power. Unfortunately, that's not all that easy to manage."

That sparked a thought in my mind.

"Why not though? We can make connections to our power's dimension, albeit only a couple millimeters across. Maybe we can slip something through there somehow?"

Andrea voiced a pretty major objection.

"That's a pretty major somehow. A couple millimeters isn't a lot to work with; even if we stick a drill bit through the portal, we don't have any good ways to fit significant assets through there."

I thought further on it, before a possible route occurred to me.

"Teleportation. We can probably make an inflatable teleporter that we can stuff through the portal with a connecting optical fiber. That would at the very least let us send through some mini-bots and the parts for a bigger teleporter, and we can build up from there to a full-sized teleportation system."

Emmy immediately started running the numbers on the requirements for this idea, before eventually saying,

"We'll have to work in the exact opposite direction of our specialty here; the starting rounds will be much more like Armsmaster's work than ours. But I think that we can just about do it with enough engineering."

 

[We Just Write]

(Melissa)
By Sunday night (20th of February), I was just about ready to throw in the towel with regards to the inflatable teleporter idea. The special materials needed for teleportation just couldn't be made stretchy and flexible enough to fit through the damn two millimeter hole. Even if there was a Tinker who could make those materials, we wouldn't let them anywhere near this project without a lot more vetting, a shielded brain, and a Non-Disclosure Alteration.

That said, we had managed to stick a narrow drill through one of the portals and bore to open air. So if we somehow figured out a way to stuff some serious assets through there, we'd be just about set in terms of getting physical access to our power.

Emmy came to check in on me around midnight, and after I vented about the issues, she asked,

"Maybe we can make the hole bigger somehow?"

I blinked,

"Come to think of it, we do have records of Vista's power in action, and with Energy Teleportation we can mess with vacuum energy in the ways required to warp spacetime."

Emmy nodded.

"Thinking a bit deeper on it, we've actually got quite a few space warping options, but making the portal bigger is probably one of the simpler ways to do it."

I sighed,

"Guess we've got to get on with inventing a new technology again. Though fortunately this is one we've got a pretty good lead on how to accomplish."

---

(Marcus)
It was ten in the evening when I arrived at the Palanquin. While the infamous nightclub did seem like a good time, I was here for business, not pleasure. Behind my bandana mask, I was very carefully maintaining my composure as I approached the back entrance.

Unsurprisingly, said entrance was guarded. Still, I wasn't about to force my way past the couple men waiting by the door; if nothing else it would set completely the wrong tone for the conversation I was here to have.

The guard on my left noticed my approach first.

"State your business."

I came to a halt, nodded, and answered.

"I'm here to talk with Faultline about possible jobs, on behalf of Reliabuilt. You can call me Mr. E."

The guard on the left took out his encrypted walkie-talkie and started talking with the people inside.

Meanwhile the guard on the right looked me up and down with a mild expression of bemusement. I nodded at him, as if to acknowledge 'Why yes, I do look an awful lot like a gun-toting version of the black-clad swordsman from The Princess Bride.'

A few minutes passed, before the guard on the left said,

"Right. Come inside and go up the stairs on the right."

I did as requested, and soon enough I found myself in a room with five parahumans, two of them being Case 53s. Notably they didn't ask me to leave my weapons, which said interesting things about their assessment of me; especially since they knew I "worked for" a powerful Tinker.

Faultline spoke first, from behind her ballistic face shield.

"You're clearly not an assassin, or you wouldn't have bothered with making your presence known. Besides, Ruggedizer's rather fond of live-and-let-live, which is an attitude I can appreciate. So, what exactly is your job with Reliabuilt, Mr. E?"

I sat on one of the provided chairs as I answered,

"I suppose you could say I'm a fixer; my job is to make problems go away, and your crew has the potential to be rather influential in that regard."

"Oh, am I a problem?"

"No; aside from anything else, you keep the negative effects of your current jobs firmly outside city limits. I'm more interested in hiring your crew to make other problems go away."

"Go on; I'm listening."

"So, there's two offers on the table here. First, we're willing to offer a continuous retainer for you to only take jobs that don't require offensive violence, abduction, or theft of physical assets. We will compensate you for lost revenue as a result."

Everyone at the table looked a bit stunned at the idea. After a second, Faultline chuckled a bit.

"Well, paying us to stay out of trouble is definitely a new one for me; we don't normally do protection rackets, but seeing as you approached first and waved rather a lot of money under my nose unprompted, I think I can make an exception this time. Though I'll want to discuss exact payment terms for that later. What's the second offer? The standard 'or else', perhaps?"

I shook my head,

"No actually. Basically, it's in everyone's interest for there to not be any new villains in Brockton Bay hurting people - even the extant villains would appreciate not having new competition. So we're interested in you keeping a look out for new parahumans - or just ones who are new in town - and pointing any you find our way, provided they aren't really nasty people already. We'd pay you per parahuman you point our way; we'd also offer a bounty for information on ones you don't think would be amenable towards using their powers in a productive occupation."

Faultline thought for a moment, before nodding.

"That's quite an interesting job offer you have in mind there. Even if we don't go for the retainer, we would definitely be interested in that recruitment and information bounties. Just one question about it; what if the parahumans we find are interested in joining our crew?"

I shrugged,

"If they want to join your crew, they want to join your crew. I'm not here to coerce anyone."

As Faultline leaned back to consider the offers, the orange-skinned teenage member of the crew (Newter) asked,

"So, is that everything you wanted to talk to us about, or is there more you want to bring up before we move on to the precise details of money changing hands?"

Oh, right. Bakuda.

"Actually, there is one more thing. We have reason to believe that a quite bluntly insane explosives Tinker by the name of Bakuda may come to Brockton Bay in the near-ish future. Since neutralizing Bakuda is likely to be an all-hands-on-deck situation, we'd like to draw up terms to quickly hire you to help deal with her if needed."

The other man at the table (Gregor the Snail) nodded,

"Contingency planning. That makes sense to me."

---

(Andrea)
Being completely honest, I spent the entirety of my day job shift on Monday worrying about Bakuda. That girl was completely off her rocker, I had absolutely no idea what sorts of munitions she might be capable of making… and most concerningly, her location was currently unknown. Since her appearance at Cornell University, there hadn't been a single reported sighting of Bakuda.

For all I knew she might have blown herself up, but there was absolutely no way I was that lucky.

Jumping at shadows of possible Bakuda sightings wasn't helpful, so I diverted my attention to figuring out better ways to secure Reliabuilt facilities against Bakuda's attacks. The anti-munitions systems would do a lot to prevent artillery-style attacks, and smuggling stuff inside a box or clothing could be dealt with by a robotic security checkpoint. How else could Bakuda get a bomb inside without it being noticed…

That's when the idea bubbled up in my mind, and I felt physically ill at the thought. Bakuda could hide bombs inside people. If she used anaesthesia throughout the whole implantation process, the terrified hapless victim might not even know they were on a ticking clock before they exploded. If they came to Reliabuilt HQ looking for a safe place after that… boom.

Right, let's think this through. How do we quickly check thousands of people for implanted bombs and save the ones who've been implanted? Also, the current anti-abduction measures for our people were definitely insufficient. They needed to be massively improved.

I spent four hours mulling over the various measures that could be taken and how to implement them. They'd need quite a bit of engineering to get working, but by four PM I had a pretty good idea of things we could do to mitigate the threat Bakuda posed. Then a notification on my news feed went off, and I took a look at it.

If I'd had blood, it would have run cold at the news; there had been a brief sighting of Bakuda, as she robbed a Wal-Mart near Albany, New York. She wasn't in Brockton Bay yet, but she was definitely a lot closer than she had been. Bakuda was coming… well, probably.

Still couldn't afford to take chances.

---

(Emmy)
Friday the 25th of February, yet another Tinker showed up at the Brockton Bay factory looking for work. Though unlike Trainwreck, this one arrived via mundane means; he just got off at the bus stop by the factory, walked up to the receptionist, and calmly explained that he was a Tinker looking for a job. Since my schedule today was mostly open, I found myself giving this Byung-Ho fellow an impromptu job interview less than an hour after he arrived.

A cursory examination had revealed that he was of Korean descent; he'd moved to America at the age of twenty eight, and he was currently fifty. Apparently he'd spent the last twenty years or so working for the Department of Defense in some obscure bureaucratic capacity.

When he showed up in the interview office, I gestured to the box of baked goods on the table and said,

"Help yourself."

As Byung-Ho sat down, he answered,

"Not hungry. You want to know what I can make, yes?"

I nodded; seemed reasonable enough, and it would have to be discussed eventually.

"I make materials. Alloys, polymers, ceramics, and plenty of other substances. But for finished products I only have my own mind and skills to work with. Would you like samples?"

"Sure?"

With that, Byung-Ho opened his briefcase, passing me a few squares of interesting polymer materials.

"Not my best work; I don't have access to the facilities needed for high temperature metallurgy or ceramics work at the moment, so what I could produce for demonstration purposes is quite limited."

I thought for a moment. These were interesting materials, yes, but I didn't know if they were actually Tinkertech; it was still possible he was a fraud. But I couldn't just whip out my equipment and get analyzing right here and now, or I would absolutely blow my (barely there at all) legal cover.

"Would you be willing to wait here while I take these down to the lab to be analyzed?"

"Certainly; I don't have anywhere else I need to be today."

As I got up, I noted,

"If you get hungry or thirsty, you can push the call button and ask for consumables to be delivered. Bathroom is the first door on the right if you go down that hallway."

With that, I made my way into the parts of the factory that the regular employees weren't allowed in, but not to the places where we dealt with the alien security measures.

A quick look at these polymers, subjecting them to various stretch tests… and they were really really good. Byung-Ho would definitely be getting hired.

---

(A Bit Later…)
Later that day, Byung-Ho made his way to his newly… "rented" condominium; apparently it was just a very slow process of purchasing the unit, but he found that hard to wrap his brain around. His feelings on how things went were slightly conflicted; getting the job was great, but it did mean there were rather high expectations for what he would manage to achieve.

This was especially the case given he'd abandoned his former post to take this job; if his old employer ever learned of his sudden change in employment, they would be very very angry with him indeed. Perhaps it was good that his new workplace and residence were so fortified, then.

After a quick meal, Byung-Ho got out an old mechanical typewriter, and started typing up everything that had happened today. This at least was much like the old job; a detailed record of everything he took part in was crucial for good professional conduct.

On the other hand, this was the first time these records would be directly collected from him without him needing to send them. Byung-Ho still wasn't quite clear on how this was to be done, but his new employers were quite explicit that he didn't need to concern himself with the matter, so he didn't. Much.

Late at night, when Byung-Ho was fast asleep, a portal opened in his living room. A man quietly stepped through, retrieved the neatly typed report on the day's activities, and returned to whence he came. The former North Korean spy didn't even turn over in his slumber.

 

[We Just Write]

C: Due to us wanting to work on other things and not feeling any more inspiration to write this particular story, we are officially discontinuing Built to Last. That said, we're not leaving you completely in the lurch; we wrote a rough outline of how the rest of the story would go, and we have no objections to another author picking up where we left off.

---

Spoiler

Arc 6: Subversion: Emmy and Melissa hack the shit out of their Shard, and learn even more Horrible Eldritch Lore in the process. Trainwreck shows up looking for work, as does an OC Cauldron Tinker sent as an informant. Construction on the bridge commences.

Arc 7: Explosion: Bakuda starts shelling the Reliabuilt compound to try and prove herself the superior Tinker. It doesn't go well for her. Things escalate to the point where Lung eliminates Bakuda himself as a liability, and he does diplomatic outreach towards Reliabuilt shortly afterwards. The Manchester factory opens for business immediately after the debacle.

Arc 8: Exploration: The crew create their first proper dimensional travel technology, and start scouting for a suitable alternate Earth to co-opt for their usage. The gate machine is kept in some of the secretive sub-sub-basements of the Manchester factory. Armsmaster makes final preparations to upload. Trainwreck uploads, and is welcomed to the crew in full.

Micro-Arc: Exclusion: The crew learns of Cauldron and their activities, and quickly pegs them as completely and utterly compromised by the Entities. They subsequently resolve to keep their operations as disconnected from Cauldron as possible.

Arc 9: Construction: Building forces to secretly invade the Eagleton Quarantine Zone. Meanwhile, construction of the new bridge really kicks into high gear. Armsmaster is uploaded, and Dragon manages to induct him into the anti-Shard conspiracy.

Arc 10: Invasion: The Elite try to force Ruggedizer into the fold, sending Bastard Son to get it done. At roughly the same time, Emmy and Melissa are secretly conquering the Eagleton Quarantine Zone (with Taylor's assistance). Bastard Son ends up getting his upper body vaporized when one of Ruggedizer's killbots tracks him to his current hideout.

Arc 11: Colonization: A synthetic civilization is founded on an unoccupied Earth, specifically chosen for not being heavily surveilled by the Entities. As a collaborative project between Ruggedizer and Armsmaster, they produce an anti-Endbringer weapon in the form of a two meter blade of pure quantum fuckery on the end of a polearm, which uses quantum teleportation to sunder any and all connections in matter the blade passes through. This weapon is dubbed the Shear. As a side tangent, the Travelers come to Brockton Bay in order to get Noelle uploaded. This successfully cures her condition.

Arc 12: Hydration: Leviathan comes to Brockton Bay. While there is significant collateral damage, Leviathan is quickly intercepted by Armsmaster, and absolutely mutilated with the Shear. Leviathan runs for his fucking life, leaving 90% of buildings undamaged and the city's government intact. Incidentally, only Leviathan's tail (containing its core) escaped, leaving behind an almost-complete Endbringer corpse. The new bridge shrugged off the fuckery like it was nothing.

Arc 13: Reconstruction: The world-shaking news that an Endbringer decisively lost without Scion's intervention echoes across the globe. Meanwhile, the damage to Brockton Bay is being quickly repaired, and there's a major surge in Uploading patients after Panacea completely and utterly burns out. The Neohadean robot civilization continues to grow in secret.

Arc 14: Intrusion: The Slaughterhouse Nine finally makes its appearance; not wanting to get splattered, they opt for a mostly indirect method of causing problems, kidnapping people, doing horrific things to them, and making sure the aftermath is visible to the public. The only one who actually tries to infiltrate one of Ruggedizer's bases is Mannequin, who attempts to sneak into the Brockton Bay factory. This results in his unceremonious demise. After that, the Nine leave town.

Arc 15: Abduction: Being absolutely livid at the Nine for what they did in Brockton Bay, the crew opt to do something about Jack Slash before his next "show". As it turns out, they do need some practice at suborning intact Warrior Shards, calling for a test subject no-one will miss. Since Jack Slash fits the bill quite nicely there, they kidnap him and start experimenting.

Arc 16: Transmission: Fairly quickly, the Reliabuilt crew realize they hit upon an absolutely critical asset in the form of the Broadcast Shard. After completely and utterly suborning control over it, they begin mapping out the many, many Shards operating in the vicinity of the Earths. Towards the end of the arc, they find the cluster of Shards composing the Warrior Entity. Back on Bet, there's a mass migration towards Brockton Bay and Manchester, while plenty of other cities are practically begging Reliabuilt to set up branches there.

Arc 17: Usurpation: With the Broadcast Shard under their control and the Shard network mapped, the Reliabuilt crew begin quietly suborning Shards one after another. Extreme precautions are taken to avoid alerting the Warrior Entity of what exactly is going on. Meanwhile a massive superweapon is being constructed on NeoHadea.

Arc 18: Elimination: With the superweapon completed and the Shard Network suborned, the Reliabuilt crew launch a multi-pronged attack on the Warrior Entity. The suborned Shards do an excellent job of drawing the Warrior's attention, opening it up for a sucker-punch from the interdimensional doom cannon built on NeoHadea. This blasts a massive hole in the Warrior's defenses, most importantly breaking the sandboxing barriers preventing dimensional travel to the Warrior's core Shards. The Warrior Entity manages to block the beam from inflicting continued damage, but between the injuries it's already received and the continued attack from the suborned Shards it's effectively stunlocked. The NeoHadean robot armies surge through the breach and start tearing the Warrior Entity apart from the inside. The crew now have uncontested admin control over the source of Parahuman abilities.

Arc 19: Reparation: The Reliabuilt crew quickly exploit their newfound control over the Shard Network to arrange "accidents" for all the really bad villains on the various Earths. Meanwhile they completely change how getting powers works, putting them in the hands of people inclined to use them for constructive purposes and actually requiring informed consent about what the whole deal entails.

Arc 20: Disclosure: To much controversy, Ruggedizer goes public about the source of Parahuman abilities. The diplomatic mess caused by the Neohadean civilization along with open inter-Earth travel is bad enough, but people really don't like the crew playing favorites by refusing to tech-uplift dictatorships and generally having decent conduct strings attached to their help. Meanwhile, Cauldron gets unceremoniously shitcanned.

Epilog: A few centuries down the line, a space fleet operated by the Inter-Earth Federation happens upon another batch of Entities parasitizing a civilization. After some basic investigation to check for benign symbiosis, the Entities in question are simply demolished with starship weapons fire. Diplomatic contact with the locals ensues.

 

[We Just Write]

E: Right, let's get this road on the show.

 

[We Just Write]

(Melissa)

I was working on some more consumer products for my day job when Rose paged me,

"Ruggedizer, I've got some excellent news! The Quantum Uploading Device has been approved for medical applications when used in conjunction with the body builder machine! They've also verified patent eligibility for the QUD, Body Builder, and the synthetic brains."

"Thank you, Rose! Would you please let legal know I'll be talking to them soon? It's about the licensing terms."

"Certainly."

As I walked to the legal offices, I thought grimly about the conversation I'd had with the rest of the family about this. The fact of the matter was, we couldn't release the dimensional shielding tech into the wild; it was all well and good for people to know we could protect our technology from Parahuman powers, but if they put two and two together about how we were doing it, that could completely destroy the opsec required for our anti-alien work.

So the version of the synthetic brains we'd looked to patent didn't have that shielding. The vast majority of Master powers would do absolutely nothing to uploads anyway, and this way we didn't risk the entire world. It still stung to release a deliberately sub-standard product, though.

My musings were paused as I reached the legal offices. I was greeted by Jacob Vespa, one of Reliabuilt's lawyers.

"Hello, Ruggedizer. I heard you wanted to talk about licensing for the newly patented technology?"

I nodded,

"Yes. Bluntly, these are technologies that people's lives will directly depend on, in a much more intimate sense than for most of our products. So anyone who wants to do licensed production will need reliability measuring up to our standards. Also, license-built QUDs and body-builders will be required to have compatibility with Reliabuilt-made brains."

Jose thought for a moment,

"What exactly do you mean by reliability measuring up to your standards? Do you mean a specific hard bar for reliability that mundane manufacturing can conceivably meet, or that it has to equal the tinker-tech that we make here?"

"The former; I'm fully aware that the reliability for stuff I make is beyond most firms' ability to replicate. I just want them to make absolutely sure their stuff won't get a patient killed or otherwise messed up. And that means rigorous testing standards, Reliabuilt inspectors turning up with no notice, and other similar measures."

"Understood. We'll get to work on it. Guessing we should get in touch with Human Resources about setting up an inspections department?"

"Good idea."

---

(Marcus)

It was two in the morning on Monday, the 28th of February. It had taken quite a few shady deals, but I had managed to arrange a meeting with Lung. I showed up at the Ruby Dreams casino, and was promptly directed to a back room. Twenty minutes later, Lung entered in his trademark steel mask. I was wearing my Mr. E getup, as was typical when I was on business away from the factory.

"So, you are Reliabuilt's mysterious fixer? Why did you want to meet with me?"

"Bluntly, to warn you about someone, and to make clear that accepting her into your gang will be very bad for your business."

Lung thought for a moment.

"Do you mean that I will be attacked for accepting this person into the ABB, or that they are inherently dangerous to my operations?"

"Both. I came to warn you about an asian-american explosives Tinker going by Bakuda. Putting it bluntly, she is utterly insane, and liable to do all manner of reckless things in an effort to stroke her own ego. Since her Trigger Event, she has been sighted approaching Brockton Bay twice, and it seems likely she will attempt to attack Reliabuilt."

Lung nodded thoughtfully,

"That is quite troublesome indeed. While I've had to downsize the protection services side of my business, the increase in disposable income across the city means my entertainment venues are more profitable than before. Taken together, the ABB is better off overall than before Reliabuilt came along. In addition, the removal of the Empire has been a great boon. Having an unstable bomb-maker ruin all of that is simply unacceptable."

There were another few seconds, before Lung asked another question.

"To be clear, is simply having this Bakuda under my employ in any capacity going to provoke hostilities?"

"If you keep her from causing problems, we won't give you any. But if Bakuda joins the ABB and starts causing trouble anyway? I politely request that you deal with her permanently. I suspect that her actions will provoke you to dispose of her anyway, should she come under your command."

Lung seemed moderately annoyed at my giving him instructions, but kept his composure.

"We shall see. Before you go, I have a message for you to pass to the PRT: the ABB has divested itself of human trafficking. It is not a sensible business to retain, given the changed situation in Brockton Bay."

Lung clearly wanted me to leave, so I stood.

"I understand. Thank you for your time."

Spoiler: author's note

To be clear, this is NOT a Lung Redemption Story. He is a bad person through and through, and is entirely willing to harm innocent people for his own gain. That said, he is pragmatic and capable of thinking things through; if he comes to the conclusion that a given act of villainy would be counterproductive, he won't do it.

---

(Andrea)

Ultimately, we'd had very little direct input on the engineering side of the bridge. There was just too much else for us to do, so we ended up giving the engineers involved a directive to prioritize durability and lifespan for the bridge over every other consideration - with the exception of not hindering maritime access - and left them to it. So I showed up at the north end construction site around noon on Thursday the 27th, to take a look around.

As I touched down at the entry gate, the lady on duty looked up from her lunch.

"Ah, Laniakea. I take it you're here to take a look around?"

"Yes, that's exactly correct."

"Well, you know the rules. Hard hat and high-visibility vest like everyone else."

I nodded, and donned the safety gear without complaint. The hard hat was pretty irrelevant for me, but the high-vis vest could still prevent a nasty accident. Properly attired, I proceeded onto the construction site.

I made an effort not to bother anyone, but I couldn't help being impressed by the large caisson I saw being floated into position.

I noticed a worker coming up to me, and turned to greet them.

The man waved to me,

"Nice to see you, Laniakea. I'm Adam, one of the junior engineers on the project. That caisson's a thing of beauty, yeah?"

I nodded,

"Yeah. That said, I find myself pretty curious about the inner workings of it. Got any details to share?"

Adam nodded,

"Yeah, that's a fully pressurized caisson there, and it'll form the foundation of the bridge's central tower. It's got six decompression chambers for workers coming off their shift, electrical hookups for earth-moving machinery, four layers of redundancy on the pressurization equipment, the works. There's even fully functioning restrooms built into the pressurized section, though not on the bottom level."

I smiled.

"That's genuinely impressive. Sounds like you'll make short work of laying the foundations."

"You'd think that, but the silt at the bottom of the bay is pretty thick here. Even with people working around the clock to dig muck out, it's going to take a while to reach bedrock. At least a month or two."

Ah. Fair enough.

---

(Emmy)

It took until March 3rd to get the space-expanding machinery to work properly on a link to our power. This really wasn't helped by the fact that we didn't tell our power shit about what we were doing here, and didn't get any help on this at all. Strictly speaking, this was an engineering project, rather than Tinkering. Once more, I found myself grateful for our awesome robot brains.

Anyway, just in case something went horribly wrong, we set up the breach in a dimensionally shielded vault, and none of us were physically present at the moment the space-expander fired. We really needn't have bothered; the portal smoothly grew from two millimeters to four meters in diameter, and stabilized at its new size without incident.

I couldn't help but remark,

"I can't help but feel that was way too easy. Shouldn't there be some sort of security we should have tripped?"

Marcus just shrugged.

"I'm really not surprised. The thousands of extra hosts reporting a completely divergent alternate reality didn't provoke a hazardous response, so why would this? Really, given the results of Project Gaslight this is totally within expectations."

As for Melissa, she had a rather blunt opinion of matters.

"I'm sending the probes in. along with the teleporter installation units. We've got an alien biocomputer to subvert, and sitting around talking about it isn't getting anything done."

Right, it was time to get shit done.

 

[We Just Write]

F: We seem to have gotten the dates of various events mixed up. Please hold while we fix it.

 

[We Just Write]

A/N: We realized there were some inconsistencies with the story's timeline. Among other things, we'd accidentally written Marcus doing stuff before his activation date. These anomalies have been corrected.

---

(Andrea)

Due to my mobility, I'd volunteered to supervise the effort to completely suborn our power "from the front". I made a backup before I went through the portal, but I really hoped that wouldn't be needed. I wanted to live, and a version of me from a few hours ago wasn't quite that; it was more of a life insurance plan.

Because of that, I was flying relatively low over the crystalline landscape. We didn't know if our power had anti-air defenses, and really didn't want to find out the hard way. Some of the drones flew higher to get a better view and so far none of them had been shot down, but better safe than sorry.

As our scouts surveyed the area, more and more information was becoming clear. Our power was approximately three hundred kilometers in radius, with the vast majority of its mass being in a huge dome towards the center. The outlying areas were largely dedicated to solar energy collection, meaning that almost the entirety of the database must be in the dome.

Furthermore, there was a massive impact crater in the dome. Some basic estimations indicated that it was consistent with an impact approximately equivalent to 300 kilotons of TNT. Clearly, something had not gone as planned here.

As for our initial intrusion point? It was two kilometers from the dome, and the portal was directly connected to the core by a pulsing conduit of crystalline nervous tissue.

I radio'd back to base,

"Emmy, Melissa, I'm going to start sending units into the dome, starting with the impact site. I have a hunch that crater is our best bet for bypassing the aliens' security."

Emmy replied quickly,

"Andrea, please be careful! I know you're competent and careful, but we're directly tampering with a being vastly more powerful than us."

"I know, Emmy. I know."

Within minutes the first data-jacks were being drilled into the alien's associative network, and as I got the first readings, I couldn't help but pump my fist in excitation. Not only were we getting good data, but it looks like that impact took out whatever passed for higher reasoning in a genocidal alien geological formation. Meaning that all the stuff directly connected to it assumed those jacks had full access permissions.

We were in.

---

(Emmy)

We'd started our attack on our power just after closing time on the 3rd of March, and stayed up all night analyzing the data we were getting back from the jacks our drones installed. Almost immediately, I was able to prove Andrea's hypothesis correct; our power's decision-making capacity and situational awareness had been crippled by that impact it suffered on approach. Effectively, we were dealing with an alien suffering the equivalent of a severe untreated concussion.

While there was absolutely a treasure-trove of technology in here, we were saving it for later. We had a much higher priority in our examination of the database: extracting as much information as possible on how the alien invasion cycle was going as a whole. What we found was complicated. At five in the morning, everyone gathered in a shielded break room to have breakfast and discuss the situation.

I started,

"Well, the good news is that one of the two network hubs is dead. So at least this cycle won't lead to successful reproduction."

Melissa sighed in response,

"That's far from any guarantee regarding the behavior of the other network hub. Just the fact that the Endbringers are deployed makes me suspect that a genocide is still in the works, and the records we uncovered make me deeply suspicious of Scion. I think he's a sockpuppet for the remaining network hub."

I nodded in thought, as did Andrea and Marcus. Andrea was the next to voice a concern.

"I'm honestly scared that our power is apparently on the small end. Yes I know that's normal for Tinker powers, since they're basically a database and therefore don't need all that much energy. It still means that any other powers we tamper with are likely to put up a much bigger fight than what we got here, even accounting for our power being comatose. We need to build up, way more than we can here on Earth Bet."

Marcus asked,

"Could we maybe build up in our power's reality?"

Melissa shook her head.

"No; the records show that the network hubs are supposed to check up on powers every once in a while. If that happens and there's any obvious alterations to our power, all our hard work on opsec goes right down the drain. So I've already started operations to conceal our subversion of our power."

Now Andrea spoke up,

"Can we please stop calling it that? Calling them powers has mystical connotations that I really don't like, and Sunderer hasn't stuck."

Marcus shrugged,

"Dynalith, maybe?"

"Sure, we can call it a Dynalith."

---

(Melissa)

The subversion of our Dynalith aside, Reliabuilt was still our single best way to acquire resources. It was also how we were best able to improve the situation here on Earth Bet in the near-to-medium term. That meant getting more products on the market was absolutely a useful thing to do, and the nuclear fusion technology we'd dug up a while back would be great for that. There was just one problem: the laws banning tinkertech from use in public infrastructure.

That meant another end-run around the Rogue Laws was needed. Namely, hiring a bunch of mundane engineers and teaching them how to build a fusion reactor. Then having them do it again without my direct involvement, so it wouldn't be tinkertech, legally speaking. We'd gotten a mix of fresh graduates and experienced nuclear industry personnel in starting on the 22nd of February, and we'd really gotten into the swing of building a fusion reactor starting on the 2nd of March.

By March 8th - Tuesday - the semi-tinkertech prototype reactor was completed. We'd just come back from lunch, and it was time for the initial test operation.

Angie Rains - one of the freshly graduated engineers we'd hired - called out from her station: "We have D-D ignition in chamber number one. We're getting good Helium three and Tritium synthesis rates, along with twenty Megawatts electrical. Thirty Megawatts thermal headed to the radiator on the roof."

A few moments later, Andrew Brown - a veteran nuclear engineer - chimed in.

"Tritium separator is working smoothly; The Tritium storage tank is no longer a vacuum. Helium three tank will be reaching the point of having enough for afterburner activation within an hour."

I couldn't help but smile; technically speaking, we'd crammed two separate fusion chambers into this machine. The afterburner Andrew was referring to was optimized for Deuterium-3He; four times the energy density of pure Deuterium fusion, and a much larger fraction of that energy could be converted to electricity to boot. The end result was that the afterburner would be able to output one hundred and eighty Megawatts of electrical power, for only twenty additional Megawatts of waste heat.

Angie chimed in again,

"Honestly, just chamber number one would have been absolutely revolutionary on its own. Include the Helium three afterburner, and I don't even know how to describe what we've accomplished."

I nodded, "Yeah, this is going to change the world, no question about it. That said, I'm not allowed to help you get the production model built. Though I am rather interested in what sort of ideas you have there."

Andrew answered;

"We've actually been thinking we should make the production model smaller. Shrink it down to the form-factor of a standard shipping container, and we'll drastically reduce the cost of getting fusion power plants set up anywhere we can ship a reactor. It's a lot like that small modular reactor concept that's been kicking around for a while, but with fusion instead of fission. Drops the power per reactor to fifty Megawatts electrical, but that's more than enough for a worthwhile power plant, especially if they operate more than one at a given site."

I nodded as I thought about that,

"Sounds like it would make for a really good locomotive too, come to think of it."

Angie and Andrew both shrugged,

"We'll get there when we get there."

Just before leaving the room, I noted,

"By the way, some people from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will be coming over starting tomorrow, in addition to the people from the PRT. Not anticipating any problems, but I thought you should know."

Angie saluted,

"Thanks for the heads-up."

---

(Marcus)

Finding the three remaining members of the Undersiders hadn't been hard; with their Thinker having been arrested, they weren't quite so good at dodging attention as they had been. So I'd left a letter for them at their new hideout - they'd moved prior to their old one getting raided by the PRT. That letter was politely requesting that they come talk to me at Somer's rock, also known as Brockton Bay's local neutral ground for villains to meet up.

Unlike with my talks with Faultline or Lung, this one did have an implicit "Or Else" attached to it. I didn't name any specific consequences, but the tone - along with the fact that I was more-or-less giving them orders - made clear that there would be some for not showing up.

I didn't need to wait all that long; all three Undersiders turned up at eight in the evening on Thursday, March 8th. The tall guy in black was clearly Grue, their de facto leader. I also noticed that Regent looked slightly confused, though it was a bit hard to tell through his mask.

As he sat, Grue asked,

"Are you Mr. E?"

"Yes."

There was a half-second pause, before I asked a very personal question.

"So, why are you three villains?"

Everyone tensed up. I then dropped my follow-up question.

"If you're villains because there's something you want, I can help you get it. The only string attached is that you three stop hurting people and causing problems for Reliabuilt. So, out with it."

There were several moments of awkward silence, before the one with the scepter - Regent - spoke.

"I... I can't go back to my family. I can't go to the authorities, that will just tell him where I am."

I nodded sadly,

"Supervillain father?"

"The worst."

"We can help you fake your death, better than anyone else. Put you in a fresh body, fake a cause of death for your old one, and you've got a fresh start."

The three teenagers seemed stunned for a moment. Then Grue asked,

"Wait, turning people into robots is a thing Ruggedizer can just do!? I thought that was some sort of one time only mad science thing, going by how the papers covered the Winslow incident."

"Ruggedizer doesn't do one time only mad science things. Her whole deal is extremely reliable technology, meaning anything she builds will be functioning for a very long time. That includes the uploading technology she developed. It's actually received conditional authorization for medical uses already."

Regent thought for a moment, then answered,

"I'll take your offer. Can't speak for the other two though."

I nodded, then gestured to Hellhound, also known as Rachel Lindt. She answered bluntly,

"I want to take care of dogs without anyone bothering me."

Grue elaborated,

"The only problem with that is that the PRT thinks Bitch murdered someone, when it was an accident. She made a dog that someone was torturing big, and the panicking dog did what panicking dogs do and bit."

I nodded, also mentally noting the term of address Grue used.

"Well then, I can arrange for Bitch to also have her death faked. Would that work for you?"

Bitch thought for a moment.

"Will my dogs still recognize me afterwards?"

I thought for a moment.

"That's something we considered. One idea that comes to mind is to build your new body first, and have you introduce the dogs to it before we put you in there."

"That will work."

I then turned to Grue.

"And, what do you want?"

"Custody of my sister. Our parents don't take good care of her, especially with her learning disability."

I kept my face stoic and very deliberately didn't say what I was actually thinking: You wanted to get legal custody of your sister, and your best plan was to go out and commit crimes? Saying that wouldn't be helpful. Instead, I answered,

"That's easy enough. Get your civilian identity a job at Reliabuilt, and we'll also get you in touch with some good lawyers. Yes that will involve you unmasking, but it's kind of unavoidable if you want to solve a problem in your civilian life."

"I... that's... why did I never think of something that simple before?"

I shrugged.

"Shall we go? I can let you into the Reliabuilt complex, and we can flesh out the plan in more detail there."

All three of them nodded in agreement.

 

[We Just Write]

It was the fourth of March - a Friday - when Amy noticed the new machinery being moved into Brockton General Hospital. More specifically, it was being moved to the terminal illness ward. Being curious about what it was, Amy found herself asking about it during one of her brief breaks.

Doctor Richard - one of the local Oncologists - answered,

"Ah, that's the new brain uploading machinery from Reliabuilt. It's been recently approved for medical uses, and it should really ease your workload. Basically, it opens up the option to put people in a brand new robotic body, if their current one is too sick or injured to recover any other way. It does mean a lot of medical personnel are also going to need some technical training going forwards, but that's how things go sometimes."

Just like that, all of Amy's self-worth evaporated. The world... just didn't need her anymore.

"Oh... I guess that's a good thing."

She went through the motions for the rest of her volunteer shift at the hospital, dreading what was going to happen. She was really glad that it was Victoria who came to pick her up, rather than Carol.

Victoria noticed the frown on Amy's face as she pulled up in the car.

"Amy, is something wrong?"

"Yes. They don't need me anymore."

Victoria blinked.

"Huh?"

"Ruggedizer's brain uploading technology is undergoing a nationwide rollout. That means I'm obsolete, and I don't have a reason to... exist anymore."

Victoria tilted her head.

"Who told you that you needed to heal people just to be allowed to exist?"

"Carol."

Victoria frowned, even as she put the car in park and got out her cell phone.

"Right, I think a sleepover is in order."

With that, Victoria dialed Taylor. Her sister needed to talk to someone who most emphatically couldn't want healing from her, but cared about her anyway.