Brockton Bay, the world is coming to an end someday, and I got cheated out of either hell or some form of nothingness by some Giant with a Star Hammer.
Please, oh please let this be better than my eighteenth birthday! And Coffee, I need Coffee!
A Celestial Forge Story rewrite of my first fic.
No weight of quill, AU Elements, and perhaps some familiar faces.
Waking up in a dumpster after seeing that giant asshole wasn't exactly what I wanted on my damn bucket list.
Especially not when I looked around and saw that I was in a city that made Detroit look like Beverly Hills.
Graffiti of green and red were painted on almost every building that passed my eyes, and over in the corner, I saw some sketchy looking dudes that reminded me too much of worse days wearing the same.
One of them even had a tattoo of the number 88 on the side of his head, and another one was smoking something that didn't smell like tobacco or my dear friend pot.
They hadn't noticed me yet, so I just started to walk back, using the skills that had kept me alive on the streets from having any of them notice me.
Wherever the hell he had dropped me off wasn't any city that I had ever seen before. Even the worst shitholes that I had lived in had never been this damned bad, and I had to figure out where it was safe to lie low before I started to get some other… problems.
Had to make sure that I didn't get capped before I could worry about getting cash into my pockets.
I made it a few blocks away, the warehouse buildings giving way to rusted dockyards, and monuments of forgotten brown steel out in the bay. The smell of salt, garbage, and rust filled my nostrils, a foreign smell that one living in Texas didn't get.
Especially when said person didn't know how to swim.
Turning around, I start to walk back the way I came, when the sound of various steps, and words spoken in a language that I didn't understand reached my ears. The clinking of metal, and the rustle of something heavy and loaded, rang like thunderclaps.
Fuck that, I'm not dying here.
I knew not to run, not when they were so close. They weren't running after me, which probably meant they were hoping to sneak up behind me.
Well, two could play that game.
Grabbing a small rock, I chuck it against one of the walls in the alley, walking in the opposite direction as it banged against stone and metal.
When they ran, I snuck into a nearby alleyway, faster than a walk, but not a quite run, my heart pounding in my ears as words that were probably curses bounced on the dockyard.
I walked a few more feet down the alley, and only started running when the sound of their rushing footsteps were barely echoes in my ears.
Goddamn, I need to work out more, because my lungs were trying to make me upchuck the nothing that was in my stomach. Huh… guess what I'd eaten before I died didn't make the trip over with me.
Whatever, fuck it. Getting run over by Truck-kun and having a giant made of galaxies using a hammer of supernovas to make universes offer me a do-over sorta made me forget that I'd had runny eggs with Valentina sauce for breakfast. Now, I was basically his pet monkey.
Didn't say shit about what I had to do, just told me "Good luck fixing shit." Then boom, I'm waking up in a dumpster.
I was so caught up in not getting snatched and how to unfuck this situation, that I was non the wiser as I unceremoniously bumped into something as I was turning the corner.
"Mierda, what the-" I growl as I rubbed my forehead, glaring at the girl that was thrown on the floor.
She looked to be a few years younger than me, a teen instead of in her twenties, with pretty looks, blue eyes, dirty blond hair, wearing baggy clothing that looked like it had been through at least four thrift shops and a dumpster.
"Hey, watch where you-" I cut my little tirade off as I noticed the very large bump on her stomach, and the gauntness of her cheeks.
Oh. Well, now I feel like an asshole.
She didn't even look at me, waddling up to her feet and beginning to make a break down one of the alleys at the junction, when a hand grabbed her by the arm.
"Now, now, Judith, your parents are worried about you." A young voice timbered out from the large, shaved headed man who definitely looked like he ate his Wheaties. Green eyes looked down at me, and I immediately disliked the prick that sneered down at me. "Beat it wetback."
"...Da fuck you say?" I growled at the man that was at least an entire foot taller than me, standing up to my full five feet of height, glaring at him, searching my pockets for the knife that I carried with me. Damn, guess that I didn't bring that with me either.
I didn't even make it to my feet before he smacked me across the face, my world whirling away as my head banged against the wall, feeling something in my nose crack.
"John! What the hell!" The girl screamed at a high pitch, sounding so far away as I snorted blood out of my nose, blinking a few times as I tried to get my bearings.
"What? It's just a wet bitch. Now, don't worry, honey, I'll make sure that you're safe back home and we get that little parasite taken care of." He said the words so easily and with such gentleness that I knew if she went with him… she would be the furthest thing from safe.
I'd heard things like that too often in my homeless days, thankful that I hadn't gotten knocked up before I got the heck away from my parents.
I couldn't let them leave. I couldn't let whoever this guy was take her.
They had already made it a few blocks away, when I finally managed to get back up, the world spinning like one of those stupid teacups.
I grabbed bricks and some metal from the ground, charging at the prick.
He turned around just as I kicked the back of his knee, causing him to buckle down, before I smashed the brick in my hand against the side of his head. I ignored the crack, and the blood on the stone as he fell over screaming, the girl next to him staring at us with wide eyes.
I stretched out my hand towards her, watching the man on the floor as he tried and failed to get back up. "Come on!"
Thankfully, she did take my hand, running as fast as her legs could take her, huffing and puffing as she placed her free hand against her baby, tears in her defiant eyes as we made a run for it.
He tried following behind us, but we managed to lose him in the maze that were the docks warehouses.
I still didn't know where the hell I was at, and most of the signs around here were beyond faded away from time.
Eventually, the disrepair of the docks gives way to more urban buildings, though none of them were in any better condition compared to the abandoned district, most of them boarded up, or just barely holding on.
"There!" The girl managed to huff out, pointing at a two-story building with boards covering the windows, and the door looking like it was being held together by sheer spite.
We hobbled in, the girl only standing because she was using my shoulders to keep her upright.
I locked the door behind us, and was greeted to… well, it wasn't the first time that I'd hung out in crappy place, but whatever. A ratty couch was pushed against the corner, with pieces of cardboard laid out on the floor as a makeshift carpet that was easily the cleanest thing in the room.
The paint was dry and crumbling away, with the photo of a smiling old Hispanic lady hung on the corner, the string a simple snap away from falling off the stubborn nail that hung in there.
I helped the girl towards the coach, both of us falling onto the crappy old thing with sighs of pure exhaustion, the adrenaline having long since worn off.
The pain in my face was more than just an annoyance, and it sometimes hurt when I breathed through my nose. Damn, was this thing broken? Sure as shit felt like it. Gingerly touching my forehead, I grunt as I realize that I'm probably going to have a hell of a goose egg where I'd hit the wall earlier.
Hope I gave that prick a concussion at least. Ain't going to be sorry for what I did.
"Oh god." The girl whispered next to me, tears in her eyes, as she cradled her stomach and just began to sob.
Ah, who gave a crap about my face? I wasn't going to be winning any beauty competitions already, so who cared?
I sat up a bit, uncaring that the girl and I didn't really know each other, and placed my arm around her shoulders, holding her close to me.
I remembered all those nights where I was having the same exact reaction.
The first time that I'd manage to get away from some guy that wanted what I wasn't giving, or that other time when I'd been shot at by some prick who had been messing with one of the other homeless crowd. And all those feelings were only made worse because I had no one to help me through it.
Thankfully, she didn't push me away, or scream at me to let her go, she just sobbed there, letting me hold onto her as the feelings of our harrowing experience washed over here.
Eventually, she stopped, sniffling, her blue eyes red and puffy from crying as she tried to clear her throat.
"Thank you." She croaked out as I let her go, and leaned against the back of the couch.
"Don't worry about it. You didn't look like you wanted to go with that prick anyway." I muttered out, steepling my fingers into a little ball on my lap. "Want to talk about it?"
"No, not really." She said back with a hollow laugh. "Might as well though, today's sucked enough already, might as well just let it all out!"
She sounded a bit crazed, probably hysterical due to almost being kidnapped and taken to parents that she really didn't want to see again.
"My baby… isn't going to be like me." She said, staring at her arm like it was something dirty. "Enough that I knew my parents weren't going to let me keep him or… carry him."
A cold feeling crept up my spine. I was fine with people making their own choice, hell, its why I left home in the first place. But her parents trying to force her to get rid of her baby even though she obviously wanted to keep it?
At least my own parents weren't like that.
They were still pricks, but they weren't complete monsters.
"So, what, was that guy your… ex or something?" She gave an ugly laugh, a dark gleam in her blue eyes.
"He wishes! Mo-... my parents thought that he would 'take care' of me. They wanted me to get 'married to a good man', but didn't care to listen to what I had to say." She growled like an angry tiger. "And when they found out about Dwight… the babies father…" She choked again, but kept the tears at bay. "Someone set their house on fire at night. No one made it out. Not his mother, not little Rochelle. None of them. I ran after that. I'm not going back. I can't go back. They're going to have to kill me before I ever let them get their hooks into me again."
"Good, fuck those assholes." I firmly said, gripping her hand with my own, using her own hand to steady the angry shakes as I wanted nothing more than to break something.
Of course… now whoever these assholes were they were probably after me. God, were they in the KKK? Of course the first thing I do when I show up to a 'new world' was mess with white supremacists, it was my 17th birthday all over again.
"What the hell do your parents do that they can do… that to someone else? They in the mob or something?" I asked, and she refused to look at me, shame on her face as she bit her lip. Afraid to tell me, like she thought I was going to suddenly hate her for knowing. "Hey, I already beat up that asshole, doubt that they're going to invite me over for anything. Sides, look at me!" I gestured towards my light brown arm.
She didn't say anything for a minute, and neither did I, all too happy to be patient if she even wanted to tell me in the first place. Until, eventually, she burst. "One of my uncles is in the Empire!"
I blinked. "Empire? That a gang?"
Given the way she gaped at me like a landlocked fish, I knew that it was the wrong thing to say. "Yeah, they're a 'gang'. Kinda like how a killer is a 'criminal'." She said, spreading her arms out. "How the hell are you in Brockton Bay and not know who the Empire are!?"
Oh.
Oh.
Fuck.
Shit.
Fuckshitfuckfuckfuckmierdamierdaputaputamadre!
Oh, this was so much worse than being a bum on a different world. Litearlly, almost anything would be better than this!
Why, oh why am I stuck in Worm!
"Are you ok?" Blondie asked, one of her hands grabbing onto mine, and I realized that I was hyperventilating.
Oh.
I hand't had one of these in a while. Not since I managed to nail that first job interview before I got back on my feet.
A laugh that sounded like it came out of a crazy person came out of my mouth, and I knew that I probably looked like I needed to have a straight jacket strapped around my chest.
"Sorry… hah… just, didn't know that I was stuck in this hellhole." I finally managed to rasp out.
"What the hell does that mean? You were in the docks, and there's no way to get there through the sea anymore." Blondie said, her own woes forgotten as she worried for me. Sweet girl.
"I'm a… tourist. One that is now stuck in this cape induced nightmare!" I shouted as I stood up, stuffing my balled hands in my pockets, doing my best not to start throwing things around in a useless attempt at venting my frustrations.
That's when I felt it.
Something that hand't been in my pockets before.
A small key, golden and crowned at the center with what looked like a skull.
A… very familiar skull.
What the?
"That's one creepy ass looking key." The girl said, as I stared at the thing, and turned it over in the light.
Then I remembered that the Giant had mentioned something about leaving me some 'gifts' before I'd woken up in that dumpster.
Is this what he meant?
"Yeah." I mumbled out, looking around, and walking towards the nearest closet door. It was old enough that it had a lock, and I inserted the key into the hole.
It fit. No resistance, even though the lock looked so rusted, I was afraid I'd get tetanus just by proxy. I turned the key, and opened the door.
The inside… was something out of a nightmare.
The walls looked to be made of pure gold inside of the laboratory that greeted me. Panels and monitors glowed with light and life, golden skulls crafted out of the walls themselves, intricate wiring snaking throughout the room, dials, pipes and other fittings strewn through the room like the nerves of a human body.
Holograms appeared around me as I stepped towards the main monitor, a single skull, no, not a golden skull, an actual fucking skull, rising from an opened hole at the top of the bulky computer staring at me, one of its eyes replaced by a robotic red eye. It scanned me, opened its mouth twice in some fucked up greeting, then flew back down into its hole.
Welcome Progenitor.
Words flashed in front of my gaping mouth.
"What the fuck is this?" The girl asked, staring around her with the same amount of bewilderment that I was feeling right now.
I was about to make some kinda snarky comment, something funny and witty that would no doubt sound stupid later, instead letting out a scream of gut-wrenching pain.
The inside of my head felt like it was being torn apart from the inside out, hot nails of pain rearranging what should have been my head as knowledge and understanding flashed into my head.
Then, I was somewhere else, staring up into a dark and empty sky, helpless as five passing stars were caught into my skies orbit, each one shining brighter than any possibility I had been capable of in my previous life.
I don't know when I fell onto the floor, but the girl was kneeled over me, a look of worry on her face as she placed a hand onto the top of my head. Even then, I still couldn't stand, my head feeling woozy and groggy as it tried to parse out the knowledge that had been jammed in my head.
No doubt bad feedback, my nervous system adjusting to whatever changes had been done to my brain. It was just going to take a few more minutes before I was recovered enough to have proper control of my limbs again, the nerves back to functioning order.
Wait.
How'd I know that?
What were those stars shining in a sky that I somehow knew were mine?
Diosito, this wasn't what I was expecting.
There were too many ideas bouncing around in my head, none of them mine, not really, of experiences that I know I'd never experienced. Fixing up a motor with rusted parts, and some crappy super-glue that I'd gotten off a zombified construction worker, having to use a rusted pipe to get the damn thing back into place.
Or knowing enough about the human body to know the proper way to cut into a spinal cord and install an electrical port directly into the brain.
None of this shit made any sense. I shouldn't know any of it!
And yet… I did.
As if it was just another experience that I'd gone through years ago.
"I'm alright." I mumble to the teen girl, sitting up, helping her to her feet when I'd regained enough motor functions over my own body to properly move.
That's when I spotted a small band on the counter of the cogitator, because I recognized those damned skulls and parchment written in High Gothic.
"So… you're a cape? Did you just trigger or something?" She asked quietly, not inching away from me, but obviously not completely comfortable with me.
I couldn't blame her. There wasn't a single cape that wasn't a mess, inside and out. Even the more 'heroic' ones.
"Something like that. It's a long story. But, well, I think that we need introductions first, don't you?" I gave her a smile, it was a weak, weary one, as I grabbed the strange armband, attaching it to my arm, and grunting as the hermetic locks sealed in. It was a paltry nanoforge, one only capable of repairing broken or faulty equipment, but enough to get some things going.
Everything inside of me was screaming at me to get the hell out of dodge, but I knew that it would be useless. Golden Morning hadn't come yet, but I had to avoid that at all costs.
Either that or get the fuck out of this world. If I could show up in it, that meant that I could get out.
But… well, I was stuck with this girl now, wasn't I?
As she gave me a firm nod, and shook my hand, the first real smile on her face, I knew that I was.
I had saved her life, and I would do it again. And, oddly enough, I was probably all she had now. And she was all I had. The first and only connection that i had in this world.
It was more than I had for a good chunk of my life last time.
"Judith. Just… Judith." She said proudly.
Well, here's to another life, once more with feeling!
37.0240-Nano-Technician | Nanoforge 1200CP:Red Faction:Quality Size
Nano-Technician: 600CP:Red Faction: Quality Size: Is it me or does nanomachines not sound like a word anymore? You now have a considerable talent in the field of nanotech. With time and study, you could recreate the Nanoforge, with dedication you could even improve on it. Keep in mind nanotech in this setting is exceptionally hard to work with, but can do anything from fixing a bridge, to disintegrating a starship, to enhancing human abilities.
Nanoforge: 600CP:Red Faction:Quality Size:Typically worn around the wrist, this device is an engineer's wet dream. Using real-time scans provided by the onboard AI, the Nano-Forge emits nanites as either a proximity cloud or projectile globs that procedurally recreate objects nearby. This Nano-Forge is restricted to repair functionality, and it doesn't work on biological material, but it does have the precision to recreate delicate electronics and the like.
20.0210-Paved In Bones 300CP:The Matrix : Knowledge Future Tech:When one thinks about it, the human body is kind of like a Machine as well. It uses electricity, it requires fuel, it's complex, and it can break down. Why not study it and see what can be done? Whether you sifted through stolen data files or got hands-on with your work, you've figured out a great deal of things about the human body. Its mutations, its limits, its potential... how it all works is open to you, including how the Machines managed to grow their plugs inside the body. What you do with this knowledge is up to you.
7.0030-Laboratorium: 100CP:Light of Terra DLC 3 - A Grand Day Out: Facilities Mundane: Ancient cogitators, arrays of auspex systems, and volume upon volume of documentation supply an Adept with the tools and information necessary to capably analyse a recovered technological artefact.
* Extremely high tech lab for studying artefacts. From Warhammer 40k.
4.0150: Vehicular skills: 200CP:Generic Zombie Apocalypse: Vehicles: In addition to being a frankly amazing mechanic, you're also great behind the wheel you can avoid any avoidable accidents, you're quite apt at upgrading vehicle into mobile death machine
34.0650-Diamond Techniques | Promise of Steel: 1100CP: Summon Night Swordcraft Story: Quality Efficiency
Diamond Techniques :500CP:Summon Night Swordcraft Story: Quality Efficiency: Hoo baby, now you're cooking with gas! These are the same techniques used by Craftlord Rondeau, the Diamond Craftlord of Wystern! This means whatever you make is now in addition to being top of the line in performance, also top of the line in looks! If you have this perk as a Craftknight, you're likely to be a Craftlord yourself. If you're an Apprentice, you're likely to be considered the second coming of Craftlord Shintetsu just like Cleru or Pratty! This perk acts as a Capstone Booster for the Drop-In, Apprentice, and Craftknight Origins.
Promise of Steel: 600CP:Summon Night Swordcraft Story: Quality Efficiency: The promise of a Craftknight is stronger than steel." That's what is said about the dedication of Craftknights, and with this perk it isn't a metaphor. You now have the dedication and willpower to see through any promise sworn, either to yourself or another, although it's only in effect while you're working to make good on a sworn promise.
So...hi? Sorry?
I know that i said that I wanted to get away from Worm in the original thread, but I started to read back through some of my chapters, and then read through the various perks that Mia had, and I realized something.
I really wanted to redo this. Experience and time has made me so many things that I wish I could have done differently, specifically as far as character bloat goes, along with perk aqcuisition. I will not be doing any points in this.
What perks Mia gets are what she gets, with me vetoing any that would seriously break everything. And if there is anything that I've learned, its that expensive perks do not mean broken perks. What Mia has is neat, yes, but she lacks the tools and ability to properly use, or innovate with what she has.
I have Mia 5 perks off the bat, due to her being just thrown in here with nothing to show for it. This will at least give her a bedrock to build on, while she tries to scrape some things together while avioding the E88.
Consider this story to be an AU, as I am going to make some changes in an effort to fix the worldbuilding of Worm for my own sanities sake.
For now, Judith is the only concrete character that is going to show up, while any others from the original story might, or might not make appearances. Setting Bleed will probably still happen, though that all depends on what, and when.
Perks will come as I decide, with me rolling in advance and keeping a tighter leash on what's going to happen.
Will dial back Freebies for a little bit while Mia gets her bearings, same with any Assisstants that she rolls. They will be summoned sparingly, with some mechanics changed this time around.
I believe with me making some changes to the setting here and there, I should be able to keep updating this story without worrying about my mental health, plus I'm in a much better space now than I was a few years ago.
I hope that those of you that read this will enjoy, and thank you for giving this a shot.
I will someday go back to the original, of that I can assure you. Just hope my muse picks up that wagon again soon, if I have the time. Life is hard ya'll.
Behind enemy lines, out-gunned, out-manned, and definitely out of our depth. If it wasn't for the Soviets managing to break through, we probably would have died months ago. But since they tore through, we've had no choice but to fight alongside them.
Our little rebel force had been lucky to have been found by the Soviets, even luckier that they were far more interested in stacking enemy corpses than they were burying us.
Most of them are just like us, good men fighting for their homes, others though… well, at least they were killing Nazi's.
Yet none of us, not even the most hardened Soviet, or shell shocked soldier could stomach what we found when we reached Auschwitz.
Stacks, and stacks of bodies, piled up like old lumber logs waiting to be thrown into the fire, mountains of clothes whose owners were long since dead.
I even remember finding an entire room filled with nothing but children's toys, and children's clothes.
Yet… I never once saw a child.
All I found were clothes, ash, those 'showers' that were far more heinous than I could have ever thought.
My deepest regret, was that we hadn't arrived sooner.
How many could we have saved if we'd arrived just a few hours earlier? A week? A month? A year?
There is nothing like seeing grown men, easily three times your age weep and hold you as if you were their long-lost son, thin, bony fingers brushing against your clothes, as if they were making sure they weren't simply hallucinating.
My second-greatest regret, is that we didn't take more of those Nazi pricks down before we managed to get to them.
From the Journals of Marian Macuta
Polish Resistance Fighter, 1956
November 5th 2010
There was so much, way too much to unpack as I was suddenly a lot more knowledgeable than I was just a few seconds ago.
Smarter was debatable. I've met plenty of incredibly successful and educated people who made some of the dumbest decisions I'd ever seen.
But I sure as hell knew how to solder a big ass piece of steel onto a van to make sure that no fucking zombies could get their teeth through it. I also knew that the little gauntlet attached to my wrist was probably the most dangerous weapon in the entire city. Yes, this is even including a bunch of the batshit crazy tech that Leet probably hid away somewhere.
Right now, it was nothing more than a really, really good repair kit. Meant little for actually making stuff, but by far and away the best things that I received from those stars.
Glittering stars that now flew over my head in that space within my mind. What the hell did that Giant give me to 'even the odds'?
Well, whatever, for now, that was the least important thing on my priorities of 'things I had to do'.
Even if I was missing a bunch of medical tools, I ran a rudimentary exam on Judith, helping the girl out of bulky clothing, while I listened to her back as she breathed and took her pulse.
It… wasn't great, honestly.
"You're far too malnourished for how heavily pregnant that you are." I said off clinically, my own little effort to hide the seething rage that I was feeling in my heart that the girl had to run away from her own parents because the baby was going to be a few shades of melanin darker than they were. Them getting some bastards to burn Dwight's house down only made me want to show up at their house later with a bag full of rocks even more.
See how they feel about being racist pricks when I kneecapped them old school style.
"Well gee, let me just go and get some food with all that money that I got. Oh, wait!" She exclaimed as she shook her jacket and pants, the rattle of fabric lacking the clinging of coins or wrinkle of dollars.
I give her a half lidded stare, and have to restrain myself from bopping her on top of the head.
"Ever heard that some people talk to themselves?" I ask while I place a hand on her forehead, nodding in relief that her temperature felt fine.
"Yeah, and I heard most of them are kinda crazy, or maybe under Stranger influence." She retorted back, the fire in her blue eyes burning bright now that she knew she was safe.
Good, I much preferred prickly honesty, or polite fear.
"With what I have on hand, you're about as healthy as you can be. The most important thing right now is getting you enough nutrients, the sooner, the better. If we don't, you could lose the baby, or suffer complications that could endanger you or the baby." She just glared at the ground as I helped her up, looking around at the gaudy golden Laboratorium full of books, ancient technology, and a skull that was following us around, its skeletal grin feeling like it was trying to encourage us.
Yeah, this place was beyond creepy.
If I wasn't worried about them getting angry, I'd probably get some sheets to cover them up.
"What the hell, you some kinda doctor?" She asked, giving me a speculating stare. "Never heard of cape that knew about this sorta stuff before. Well, other than Bio-" She didn't even finish the last word, her face went a little pale, and she looked a tiny bit sick at the realization.
I raised a hand at that. "Listen, even I don't really understand my powers that much but…" Ah fuck it, she was on the run from her parents and the fucking nazis who wanted to 'clean' her.
And if I didn't have anyone to talk about this shit, I think that I'd lose my head eventually. Or turn into some kinda hermit that died trying to build a zombie truck or something.
"I'm not a parahuman." I tapped my head. "Pretty sure I don't have a corona pollentia, and I sure as hell didn't have a trauma trigger."
"What the hell do you mean by 'trauma trigger'? Don't most people just call it a 'trigger'?" She asked.
Ah. Right. That was something that the PRT, and even some villains didn't like to talk about right? To the point that the only ones that really know about it are the ones that tend to dig deeper into the cape scene than any other normal person.
"Triggers are more than just getting power. Triggers tend to happen due to truly brutal trauma. Second generation capes, and even further actually, tend to have it easier. They still go through some form of trauma, but it tends to be… milder than the previous generation. And no, I don't mean normal, regular trauma. I mean the kind that requires a lot of work to really get over. Why do you think that most indie capes tend to burn out rather quickly or get snatched up by the villains?" Judith actually shivered at my question, and got lost in thought.
"So, that means, what? That all the damned Empire capes have been traumatized somehow?" She asked.
I shrugged. "Most definitely. How, I'm not sure. Every person's experience in triggers is unique, just like how every person is. We all have different breaking points, and a lot of the time, to see what breaking point someone has, just look at how their power manifests. Most Masters for example are those that desperately want, or need to have control. Beyond merely wanting people to follow them, it's something much deeper. Maybe they lost all the control they once had over their lives, maybe they're just scarred because the people who were supposed to help them never did. Doesn't excuse what some assholes like Heartbreaker did though, he deserves a bullet to the head, but the moment that happens, all the people under his control are probably going to go berserk."
To say nothing of the kids that he'd had. One of them who was already out in this city, another who desperately needed a bullet to the head for the little monster that she was.
"So, what, you just have powers?" Judith asked, clearly not believe me.
"Yup." I answered easily. Couldn't exactly tell her that I'd died, woke up to a giant made of galaxies who fucked up and gave me stuff so that he could have some fun. She probably already thought that I was kinda crazy for helping her in the first place, telling her anymore would have only made that worse.
"Awesome, the first bitch that actually helps me is touched in the head." Judith mutters under her breath, not caring that I could definitely hear her, and leaned back in the chair that I'd brought in from the run-down house we were hiding in.
Hm, maybe I could bring some other stuff in here? Renovate the place a little bit? Now, hold on… what if? Definitely something that I could do later.
"Give me a second, I'll be right back." I tell her as I stepped out of the strange pocket dimension that was the Lab, and look around at remains of this once home.
There were more stains of something that I couldn't identify everywhere, windows cracked, chairs rickety and barely holding together, while the couch was damn near ripped to pieces.
No doubt the rest of the house was like this.
With that in mind… how about we fix some of that, why don't we?
A few presses of keys and the turning of a knob was all that was needed for the gauntlet on my wrist to come to life, the buzzing nanomachines on the inside coming to life in an instant as I released a cloud of them out into the room.
They were limited in their functionality, simply scanning and replicating damaged structures to rebuild them to what they used to be, instead of truly building something using materials.
It would take an enormous amount of work, and proper tools to get into the software of the Nano-Forge before I could truly use it to its greatest abilities, but for now, this would be more than enough.
Lord knows that I wasn't going to be able to properly work on the Nano-forge without proper software, let alone hardware.
The software was going to be far easier to program, most of the information was bouncing around in my head, the hardware part, however, was going to be a much bigger issue. The year is currently 2010, specifically November, and even Earth Bet was behind my world as far as tech goes. Early 21st century technology wasn't anywhere near what it had to be to properly handle what I was going to need for nanite research.
Wait… could I use the Laboratorium computers instead?
Was going to have to look into that later. For now, I just watched in satisfaction as the nanite swarm converged on the ratty ass couch, disassembling and reassembling the torn cloth and aged cotton into something new.
It wasn't truly matter generation, instead, deconstructing everything inside down to the cellular level before building it back up in a better state. While they weren't the same thing, it was damn close, and I smiled as I realized that the brown couch had in actuality been fucking white, with a nice little floral pattern of red along the edges of the couch.
Now… there was just one other problem.
Moving this bitch inside.
"Do you need a hand?" Judith asked as I huffed and puffed as I pulled the couch into the Lab, the servo skull popping out from inside of the ancient terminal, scanning the couch with a beam of light from its crimson glass eye, and clacking as it bobbed up and down like it was dancing. Little trumpet music played in the background as tiny little golden skull pins emerged from its mouth. A 'click' sound emanated from it, as it disconnected from the terminal and floated over to the couch, placing one pin on the top of the couch, another on my hand, before it zipped back inside the terminal.
"What the fuck was that?" Judith asked.
"I have no fucking clue." Was it happy that I brought in a fucking couch, of all things? What am I talking about, this is probably an old Mechanicus lab, of course it would. Those weirdos threw parties just because they got an old toaster.
God, I needed to work out more. Since I got a desk job instead of being on my feet all the time, what muscles I'd had were long gone.
Eh, I'd probably get them back after just a few weeks here in Earth Bet.
I'd already had to run the fuck away from two gangs, and probably had one gunning for me soon. Whatever flab I'd gotten was probably going to be gone by the end of the week
Finally, when I got the couch on the side, I just pushed it up against one of the nearest walls before I flopped down on top of it. Judith did the same on the other end, sighing in relief, as she bounced around a few times, as if testing the couch to make sure it wouldn't break underneath her.
"What the hell did you do to the couch? It's like it's good as new!?" She sighed out, relaxing deeper into the couch that if she went any farther, she'd probably fall into it, and I'd never see her again.
"Nanomachines mija." I said tiredly, entirely missing the chance to become Senator Armstrong. Too tired.
Needed to get some damn food soon.
Getting cash in general was going to be a fucking problem. No ID meant that getting a normal job wasn't going to be possible.
But… with the nanomachines I could probably run a repair service of some kind. I'd have to be careful, though. If I got too good at my job, maybe one of the gangs or the PRT would come sniffing around with ideas of Tinker activity.
Finding customers, or people willing to keep quiet was going to be the hard part though. No connections, no means of getting safe customers that wouldn't trade my ass out to the wolves.
Although… what about Pawn shops? I knew plenty back home that didn't bother asking for ID's, at least in rougher neighborhoods, and Brockton Bay was way worse than any other one I'd lived in.
"Why are you helping me? You don't have any real reason to do anything for me?" Judith eventually asked, her voice a bare whisper as she huddled against the couch.
I just give her a smile. "Because I know what it's like to be homeless. To be afraid, and not have any food in my belly, or know when I'm going to get my last meal. And I remember how lonely it was. Being so scared to let anyone get close to you, because you got to see the worst in people. I saw a lot of people just… disappear or waste away on the streets." And she wasn't the first pregnant teen that I'd encountered on the streets.
And I know that only one of them lived to see the next year.
I grabbed her hand and gave it a squeeze as I gave her a smile before letting go. "Now, I'm going to go around and raid the place. See if I can get us some blankets or something. Maybe some tools to see if I can get some manner of defense started."
"So, what are you going to be? A hero?" She asked just as I was stepping past the doorway.
I stopped, and turned back to her, but before I could respond, I felt something connect in my brain.
Another star, just as bright as the two others that comprised the Nano-Forge, and the Nanomachines, joined the sky, shining bright high in my growing sky. Then the information flooded into my head, old T-50's that had at one point been state of the art, howitzers, machine guns, artillery, and good old-fashioned rifles.
Everything and anything that could be found in the battlefield during World War 2 was now in my head, and more than that, I could feel an itch in my hands, a want, no, a need to use the knowledge that was now part of me.
I almost started to smile when-
Black smoke that hung in the air, a pungent smell that I couldn't describe. Rooms stocked full of shoes, that of men, women and children, yet not once did I ever see a child. The weakest left behind to rot, while others had been killed and left out in the open. Small barracks, far too cramped for the amount of people left behind, the smell of waste and disease clogging my nose, choking me from within.
Men at least twice my age weeping like babes as they embraced me, and I could do nothing but hold them in my arms, their thin, skeletal bodies pressing into my chest. Men I had never seen before, weeping and kissing the hem of my coat like I was some kind of myth made manifest, others kissing me on the check as they trembled from keeping themselves upright.
I had killed men before, buried my friends, and mourned those that I had lost. Yet, nothing could ever compare to this.
I had been screaming, on the floor. Deep, rasping, pitiful things that had never come out of my mouth before. Memories from two worlds, two different me's warred with each other. Memories of learning about the Holocaust in History Class and seeing photos of the aftermath clashing with seeing them in person, tasting the waste in my mouth as the stench overpowered everything else, the recoil of a gun in my hand as I shot one of the guards that we had managed to catch.
And I didn't regret it. Not one bit. Not even the me that was left as the knowledge and memories settled into the back of my mind.
Tears streaked down my face as Judith was close to my side, far enough away that I hadn't hit her when my limbs had thrashed around in pain and outrage.
I sat up, cool rage bubbling in my chest as I breathed and reminded myself that I wasn't Maurice in this world, I was Mia. I wasn't in Germany during 1945, I was in America in 2010.
An America that had fucking Nazi's running around. A world where Nazi's had managed to get a foothold back in Europe.
The icy block in my heart gave way to infernal cold hate. How dare those fucking monsters be around? How dare the world have just… stood by when they had risen to power.
How dare those wannabes in Brockton Bay burn an innocent young man and his entire family for 'daring' to have a child with a white girl?
Hate wasn't anywhere close to how I was feeling. It wasn't even in the same ballpark.
I would render unto them everything that they deserve. I would ensure that they would fear, and repent for the things that they have done. The people they have hurt, those who are no longer here with us, and all the people that died so long ago due to this warped and monstrous ideology.
I don't know if those memories were 'mine' or not. Does it even matter if they were or weren't? The emotion, the feeling, was enough for me, because I know what that was. I know that those atrocities happened.
And I was going to make sure that the Empire died, here and now. Rendered down to its very foundations.
And when it was gone, and only then, was I going to show the world who Max Anders really was underneath that fucking mask.
This, I swear.
I swear.
November 6th, 2010
Unfortunately, there wasn't even a good pair of welding tools in the entire place. I'd found some decent hammers and screwdrivers, so there was that at least.
Judith had spent the night sleeping on the couch, probably the first time that she's gotten a decent amount of sleep since she ran away, while I had taken a comfy chair that my nanites had rebuilt good as new and just conked out.
The rage was still there, but it was more of a simmering thing instead of a volcano ready to blow everything the fuck up.
There was so much to do. Mainly because I didn't want to fucking die, but I also didn't want to just let 'canon' happen. If that was ever reliable in the first place. This wasn't some crappy internet novel, this was a real place, with real people. Judith, after all, had never 'appeared' in that damn thing, and yet she was her own person.
A bit of a bratty teen with enough sass for me to be proud of, but she had her own wants and fears, that were more than just pixels on a screen. Chief among them, being able to give birth to her baby.
And while I wasn't a pediatrician, the information in my head at least helped, somewhat.
First things first, money for food. After that, I could start worrying about getting proper medical supplies and a clean room for whenever the birth happened. She was about six months in, which meant that we still had at most three left to go.
Most of that I could probably get just fine. I've taken a few dumpster dives before, I was just going to have to be mindful for any biowaste that might be in those bins. Hard part was going to be getting my hands on the anesthetics and perhaps antibiotics if we had need of them.
Oh god, we were going to need clothes, a rocking chair, and an actual home too.
While this place was nice, it was also not really 100% safe.
Every instinct in me was that we had to get the fuck out of the city, but we had to be real fucking careful if we went that route. I didn't want to leave this place, not with work left unfinished, but safety was the most important thing, and I just wasn't strong enough to keep us safe, let alone go to war.
Whatever this power was, I didn't know when I would get a new 'star' or even what I would get. For now, it seemed like the timing was random, instead of something with a hard time limit. The entire time I slept was peaceful and uneventful, same with the morning while I went about fixing whatever I could find around the house. The TV upstairs was old, and had been missing some parts, but nothing that the nanomachines could fix by cannibalizing some other materials around the house.
The house was full of other broken and left behind furniture. An antique chair that had been splintered into pieces, bed frame missing a few boards and the mattress ripped to pieces, a sewing kit in the corner, on and on the list went.
"Why didn't people steal any of this?" I asked, to which Judith just shrugged.
"Because what pawn shop is going to buy anything from a homeless person? If someone who looks like me walks in with all this new stuff, do you really think that they would sell it to us? More likely to get a night in the slammer than get any cash out of it." Yeah, that makes sense here in Brockton. Back home, there were plenty of skeevy pawn shops that were more than happy to buy off this crap without caring who brought it.
Here though?
You'd think that it would be the other way around, but messing with criminal stuff meant running the risk of getting involved with one of the gangs. And your choices were the Nazi's, the ABB, and the Merchants.
Yeah, I wouldn't buy anything off of some homeless person either if it meant having Lung or Hookwolf coming after me.
Me though… I had a chance.
"Think that I heard about this one place that was protected over close to the docks. In Dockworker territory instead of ABB territory." Wait. What?
"What do you mean 'Dockworker' territory." Judith frowned and blinked at me.
"Uh, I mean that the part where the Dockworkers keep protected? They aren't really a gang, but they got plenty of people that will defend the area. They aren't anywhere near as strong as Lung, or the ABB, but at least the Merchants leave them alone. It's not even official or anything, more of an 'underground' thing that most people don't know about. Think there's some shops over there still owned by some former Dockworker employees, though I'm not really sure."
That… sure as hell wasn't anything that I'd heard before.
Which meant… what else was different than I expected?
35.0761 Panzerkampf: 300CP: Sabaton: Quality Resources: When it comes to building war machines, yours are top-notch! A gun made by your own hand will never jam, and a tank built by you will never bog down in mud or take damage from an IED. If they want to destroy what you've built, they'd best bring their A-game.
So, here are some of the first bigger changes that I'm doing for the fic. Chief among them the AU elements which will show up on when they need to. Second biggest things are the memories and emotions, but primarily from those lives that had important or resonant memories that just click with Mia.
I know that this is not that much of a popular aspect of my previous fic, but it is one that I'm going to stick with regardless of what is said.
Most of the talking points I've gotten is that it feels 'cheap' or 'unearned' and my response to that is… so? The entire point of the Forge is basically unearned knowledge and information given to the forger out of nowhere. Sometimes stuff needs to happen, or enough time has to have passed, but they still didn't learn that knowledge on their own, they still didn't toil away for receiving what they have. This is the price Mia is going to pay.
Gaining more than just power and information, but the life that came with earning said information.
November 6th, 2010
Getting a proper interface for the nanomachines couldn't come soon enough.
Ever since this morning, my hands have been itching for that familiar weight that I had grown used to carrying.
Goddamnit, not me, Marian. Some poor Polish dude who'd watched his neighbors and friends get taken away by those damned Nazis, and then to see his father's business get burned to the ground because he refused to sell out one of their friends.
I… he'd had to go on the run after that, and managed to find some resistance fighters that let him join them on their fight. When someone had nothing left to live for, when their life and livelihood was burned away in flames, fighting was truly the only answer.
I probably would have done the same. At least, I'd like to think so.
Most heroic thing I've ever done in my life before becoming roadkill was running away from my parents, and occasionally sharing my meals with some of the other homeless.
Couldn't exactly build a gun without a blowtorch or saw, and those things cost a lot of money. Maybe if I go dumpster diving, I'll be able to find enough broken tools to get a decent toolkit.
While the Nanites doing all the work for me sounded nice, it was going to take far more time to get it ready. Hours of going over their code, fixing said code, and modifying everything was going to be the last step in this conga line of work.
And just because I knew everything that I needed to get those Nanites to do the work, how to properly program them to actual build something instead of simply reconstituting it, I didn't know how to make something new.
Sure, I could build guns, old World War 2 era tech, that ranged from tanks all the way down to one of those Lugers that the Germans had used during the war.
Schematics, blueprints, and just overall learning was definitely going to be a priority if I wanted to make something more than just simple machinery and the like. At least my- Marian's memories from the War gave me enough engineering knowhow to get started instead of being completely lost like I was earlier.
Any engineering tech that I did know thanks to Nanotech was far too out of my reach with the tech that was available, and I knew that Tinkertech wasn't going to be any fucking help since it was all just reality warping bull crap held together by Shard hax.
The growing scientist in me, small as it was, had nothing but indifference and hatred for the little parasites. At least the Thinker bitch had died, that just left the Warrior running around being depressed for a little while.
And that's where I cut off that line of thinking because I knew that there was a winged cunt up in the sky, constantly watching most of humanity's every move.
Part of me wanted nothing more than to just huddle away in a closet or somewhere and have a full-blown panic attack, but I had a newfound compartmentalizing mentality. Hooray for having the memories of a veteran.
The old bag that looked practically brand new over my shoulder was heavy as I passed by a small group of white boys, most of them ignored me, but there was one with a shaved head that gave me a side long gaze, and I had to restrain myself from using my bag as a bludgeon to paint the sidewalk red.
Calm down Mia, he just might be an asshole instead of Nazi.
I had to make most of the trek on foot, though partway through I managed to find an old broken down bike. It was missing a wheel, the main chain, along with the seat being ripped to all hell, but taking it into an alley without any cameras and throwing a mist of nanobots quickly solved that little problem.
In no time, I was riding through the city on my bike, being careful in any street corner that had green and red tags, while making sure to keep an eye out for any sign of blue.
I'd already dealt with one of the gangs, didn't need to deal with the third one if I didn't have to.
I could tell when I'd left ABB territory pretty easily, the walls clean of graffiti, instead replaced by a neatly painted ship wheel with the letters DWU in yellow underneath it.
Holy shit.
That was a lot bolder than what I had been expecting.
Streets were cleaner in this area than the rest, though plenty of buildings were in disrepair like the rest of the city, but most cars at least looked like they were still driveable.
Damn, could we move here instead of that run down house? Sure, it was in a better state now after I threw some nanites at it, but this place seemed a hell of a lot safer compared to everything else.
Finding the shop wasn't too hard. It was a smaller place, the plaque "Rinar Pawn Shop" was painted with bright yellow letters on a white background over a red door.
The inside was a more organized and clean mess than I was expecting. Oh, sure, the place still looked like most pawn shops I'd visited in my life, like a small hurricane had come swinging through. Only, this one looked like it had the decency to at least sorta have things deposited where they would sorta make sense. Sure, having a toaster next to rickety old chair was weird, but at least said chair was by a table that you could see serving as a dining set.
It was definitely bigger than a normal pawn shop, as I realized that the walls on either side had probably been torn down to make the space bigger.
They even had a decent book section towards the back where I spotted some actual textbooks, and technical manuals.
Definitely was going to buy those if I managed to get my hands on enough cash. Food and supplies for Judith and the baby came first before anything else.
"Hello, welcome to Rynar's, anythin' I can help ya with?" A man with a southern drawl, not Texan, maybe Louisiana, said.
He was at least a foot taller than I was, with a nice fluffy red beard that he absolutely worked on, especially compared to the almost shaved head he had beneath his baseball cap. His hands were weathered and calloused, with the tell-tale signs of someone that knew how to handle a rifle, and his bearing matched that as well.
I smiled at him, and walked towards him, shuffling the bag over my shoulder, as I carried my load towards him.
Maybe it was the way I had examined him, hell, maybe it was just the fucking way that I walked now, but nodded at me with respect in a way that said he recognized another soldier.
Goddammit, Marian, just how deep were your memories going to gouge their way into me?
"I was wondering what you could get me for these." I said as I dropped the bag on the counter and started to pick the objects out.
Nothing too fancy, there wasn't much in the house that I could reliably restore that was just complete garbage. An old toaster, alarm clock, an old jewelry stand, a hand mirror, a cheese grater, and other random knick-knacks that were no doubt only going to get me a pittance.
I knew that he suspected that something was off when his frown only grew deeper as he inspected each item, and the screaming paranoia in my head only got worse with each passing second.
Stupid me only realized too late what my biggest blunder had been. I was in such a rush to get some cash in our pocket, that I didn't take into account that my nanites had repaired these objects good as new.
And that was the problem.
Good as new. There wasn't a single scratch, or evidence of wear and tear on any of the little appliances and decoration that I had brought. No, they looked like they were coming straight from the shop.
No, it was worse than that.
They looked even better than if you bought them from a shop. I was so lost in my thoughts, my new bevy of ideas and checklist of fucking everything, that I didn't stop to think that maybe selling these things like this was going to land me in hot water.
Maybe if I ran right now, I could make it to the bike before he pressed a panic button. Not all of these places had one, but I knew that some of them back home did.
Only, instead of getting aggressive, or leaning down for his phone, or worse, a gun, he instead leaned forward, and looked out the window with shifty eyes. "Listen, kid, thought that we made it clear that we only do these 'buy ins' on Sundays! Less eyes on us when most people are too busy goin' to church."
…wut?
I didn't quite manage to get the surprise off my face when he said that, but I had to think quick on my feet. I had an out that didn't involve me running from the cops, and I was going to take it!
Tapping into my old lookout days, I hissed at him. "Well, no one told me that shit! All I got told was to come and sell this crap here and try to make it look as casual as possible!"
He just rolls his eyes, and rubs his beard with both hands in a very exasperated manner. "Damn idiots, I thought we made sure to let all the rats know about that. Eh, fine. Just… I can't buy all of this stuff, even if it would make the greasers all the more happy to get their hands on it. Most I can do for half of this is three hundred."
I had to fight to keep my poker face so that I wouldn't get lost in the barrage of information that he was throwing my way, but I managed to smack my lips together, shrug like I was getting hoed in a deal. "Fine then. But I want what's left here to get bought out the next time I come by."
He only nodded. "Long as its on Sunday, and you make sure to bring more of this mechanical stuff, though keep the electronic crap, we got enough of that in the last pass."
I took the money with steady hands, my anxiety, and blood pressure through the roof at the tense situation, but managing to keep control of myself as I left the shop with a far emptier bag, and three hundred dollars richer. Which was already more than I thought I was going to make in this one little trip.
Mama's going grocery shopping!
Though, I should probably go dumpster diving first, shouldn't I?
I may or may not have splurged on a bigger bag, but I needed it for all the crap I was carrying. I had to stuff all the groceries in the bag I'd been using for the trinkets that I was selling, and then tie it to the front of the bike.
The bag I'd bought at the store was now stuffed with said trinkets, along some rusty tools and cutlery that had been thrown away or forgotten in the floor.
By the time I'd gotten back home, it was getting close to sundown. I got in through the back, covering the bike with some old trash bags.
"It's me!" I called out to the seemingly silent home.
"Oh, thank god! I thought you got popped on the way here!" Judith's voice called back as I started to lay out my bounty for the day.
I dropped the bag of trinkets on the clean kitchen floor, while I placed the bag of food onto the kitchen counter.
I made sure to get the utilities out first, soap, shampoo, conditioner, tampons, etc etc, before I took out one of the first things I'd managed to find in my trash search.
A portable stove top.
It was an old, clunky thing, but there were enough pieces together that I was hopeful as I summoned a small cloud of nanites that swarmed over the corroded cooking appliance. Hope grew as I watched them wonderfully bring the stove back to its prime, no, better than it had been off the store. Was that the work of one of the stars that had joined my sky? Because the nanites were only meant to recreate and restructure, not improve the condition beyond that.
But I wasn't going to complain about, not one bit.
While I had that going, I focused on preparing the meal that I had bought.
Sure, I had gotten enough instant ramen for a few days for me, but Judith was going to need a balanced diet with that baby coming soon.
We didn't have a fridge to store food, and certainly no power to supply one if we did manage to get our hands on a broken down fridge that I could repair, so stocking up on food to last us a week wasn't going to happen any time soon.
Judith had managed to make it down the stairs by the time that I had sicked the nanites on a pan I'd found in the trash, knowing that they would take care of any bacteria, or cellular organisms that might hop along down to the atomic level.
She stared at the chaotic mess as I cleaned the carrots and onions with some water I'd bought in the nanite repaired sink, eyes focusing on the little portable stove, and the little junk pile of tools and materials that were next on the nanite repair line.
"I thought that Tinkers didn't need actual tools for most of their stuff to work?" Her stomach growled then, and she turned a few shades of red, but I just gave her a soft smile as I began to chop everything down while I threw some cuts of meat into a tupperware container with salt, pepper, and just a few pinches of sage. I restrained myself from throwing in some peppers in there, knowing that while it would make the dish delicious, it would probably also come back to haunt Judith due to her pregnancy.
Meaning that spicy food was probably off the menu until that baby came out.
Should probably go to a library soon to catch up my brain on medical knowledge.
Just because I knew how to install a data and electrical interface into someone's skull that would grow with them as they aged, didn't mean that I knew how to deliver a baby.
"I'm not like other Tinkers. My tech isn't going to run on fairy dust and bullshit, it's actual technology. Meaning that I need real tools, and actually making what I need." Hm, I was going to have to make a furnace or something in the basement, wasn't I? If only so that I could actually smelt down metal into something that I could shape.
She looked like she wanted to snort, but then she looked at the cloud of nanites that was slowly making its way through the line of tools and components on the floor, and then looked at the door that I had designated as the one for the Laboratorium. Judith just rolled her eyes and took a seat on one of the chairs that I had left in the living room, sighing as she relaxed while she stared up at the ceiling.
"So, what's the plan? Just waiting around here while you build up your brand of tech?" She asked.
"Basically. I'm in no place to get into trouble with the Empire, ABB, or Merchants." Especially because, unlike Marian, I wasn't almost six foot with enough muscle to shred cheese.
"Could have fooled me with the way that you smashed John over the head yesterday." Judith scoffed out, and I couldn't help but let out a giggle.
"Hey, he was an asshole, and I wasn't going to let something like that happen in front of me." Not again. I knew how that was going to end, and I wasn't just going to stand there and let it happen like a coward.
"Then who's to say that something like that isn't going to happen again? Just from knowing you for a day, I know that you're the type to start a bar fight because some prick started to get too pushy with someone else." I purse my lips, but don't bother trying to deny it, knowing that she was very right.
I wasn't going to go out looking for a fight… but I sure as shit wasn't going to do nothing if there was anything that I could do.
Which meant that I needed to get to work on making an actual weapon.
For now, I was limited to guns… but that was just fine.
There's plenty of people here that are going to need a bullet in the head.
When I served our lunch/dinner onto paper plates, I smiled as Judith devoured the entire thing down in one gulp, the rice, the sides of veggies, the slices of meat, most of it was gone in under a minute and I had to remind her that she needed to slow down. I had already given her a smaller portion, because feeding her too much in one go could be bad for her.
I wasn't a nutritionist, but I remember that when I'd gotten my first meal after almost days of going without any food, I threw it all back up in less than an hour.
When we finished our meal, I finally popped the question that I wanted to ask.
"How do you feel about moving?" I asked.
She stared at me, blinking a few times, as if she couldn't properly process the question. "What the hell do you mean? Move where? Isn't this area good enough?"
"For now it's fine, but we're in a highly populated area, and sooner or later, someone is going to start wondering who we are, and start asking questions. And while I can probably set up some booby traps, none of them are going to be good enough if the E88 get wind of us. More than that, I don't have enough space for actually building crap. Sure, I could build some stuff in the basement, but the smell is going to attract people here at some point."
"Damn, those are good points." She begrudgingly accepted. "Thing is, there aren't exactly that many places where we can just hole up without catching much attention."
"What about the Docks? I know that the ABB have some territory there, but it looks like the DWU has some too." Judith waved her hand back and forth, an uneasy look in her eye.
"Kinda. See, the ABB do have most of the docks under their thumbs, with the DWU having some territory closest to the Boardwalk and the ferry. Thing is, most people think that it's under the PRT and not the DWU. At least, that's what people say. Everyone knows that the PRT just sticks to the Boardwalk and doesn't go into the DWU area. Not after a few years ago when they tried to 'coerce' a cape that triggered publicly to join the PRT."
That… did not sound good. At all.
"There's plenty of abandoned places to hole up, enough, that there are rumors going around that maybe some tinkers like Leet, or Puppeteer are hiding around." She quickly clamped her mouth, and looked away, like she had said something that she shouldn't have. I could push, but, well, I remember being in that kind of life before. Hard to trust, even when someone was going out of their way to help you.
If anything, it was even harder to see the helping hand offered, when you were convinced that someone had a dagger in the other one.
"I can go ahead and take a look around tomorrow. I need to get some sand anyway." I said as I grabbed the plates, and rinsed them off, already beginning to consider the first weapons in my arsenal.
Ha, we had some leftovers for later, nice. Could save those for Judith, while I just had an instant ramen cup.
Just as I was about to go downstairs into the basement with my haul of supplies, I felt something new arrive. A little star, almost dim compared to the rest of my growing constellations, and I frowned when I didn't feel any different. No sudden change, no real new arrival that I could feel like with the rest of the abilities that I had gathered.
"My, my, I was not expecting the afterlife to look quite like this." A very male voice said from right behind me. Acting on pure instincts, I grabbed the formerly broken pocket knife from my jeans, unsheathe the blade, and thrust it towards the man's throat as I tackle him to the ground. He releases a shout of surprise, as I hold him down.
He stared up at me in surprise and fear, freezing in place when I held the cold steel knife right up against his throat, giving me a very good look at his electric blue eyes, and neatly shaved brown beard that framed a handsome face with high cheekbones, little laugh lines next to his mouth.
The strange red hat he'd been wearing fell onto the floor, allowing his long thick wavy brown locks splayed around his head.
Judith hadn't made a sound, but I saw her reaching over to grab a vase and raise it over her head, ready to come crashing down if he managed to get me off, which he very well could have. He was a good bit taller than me, and while I might be on the curvier side, he could still probably toss me like a bag of groceries.
Thankfully, he just has his open palms facing me from the ground next to his head, panic evident in his eyes, even as he tries to give me one of the smoothest smiles that I've ever seen.
I'd be lying if I said that it wasn't a very nice smile.
"Scusi señora, for I know that I am the one trespassing wherever this is, but I promise you that I am of no danger to you. Oh, or to you young señora! Forgive me, but I did not see you there." His voice is pleasant and calm, far calmer for someone who had a knife to his throat to act.
Then we both blinked as I felt… a connection to him. And that's when I realized it. He had been the 'star' that I felt.
Only, he wasn't a 'part of my sky' like the rest of the glowing balls of power had been. Instead, he was a sky all on his own. One connected to me, but separate as well.
And we, because I saw the confusion on his face as he felt it approach, felt the coming of another star. A bigger one, one burning with power comparable to some others in my sky that I didn't have the means to properly use.
I stowed the knife away, patted his shoulder. "Might wanna brace yourself for this, buddy."
"What do you-" Was as far as he managed to get before the pain hit him.
He didn't scream or shout, but he did ball both of his hands into white knuckled grips, eyes scrunched together into twin cracks of agony as he gritted his teeth and moaned in pain.
"Fuck me, is he like you too?" Judith asked as she lowered her vase and flopped back into the chair as the handsome young man in front of us writhed in agony as his body rewired itself for whatever power he had received.
"Apparently!" I all but shouted, spreading my hands over my head as I stared up at the sky. I know I probably looked like I was losing my goddamn head, but most people would think about me anyway, so gives a fuck?
He might be hungry, so I took one of the ramen cups and boiled some water while he calmed down from the pain, slowly uncurling himself as he finally sighed in relief
"Dio mio, what was that?" He whispered out as I left the water boiling over and helped pull him up to his feet before I lead him to one of the other chairs. Figured he'd need some more time to get his bearings that way.
"For specifics, that's more for you to find out. Overall, though, basically you're connected to me. I get powers sometimes from this giant asshole who loves to make crap in the 'place in between', crapping out new galaxies and universes. I died, and he gave me 'something useful' before he tossed me this way because he was bored out of his mind and needed some 'entertainment.'"
He obviously didn't believe me, staring at me with those big blue eyes like I was some kinda crazy woman. Sighing, I got up and poured the boiling water into the cup of ramen, waited a few minutes that he stayed in silence, before the noodles had cooked enough.
I waited another minute for it too cool down before I tossed in a fork and brought him the cup of noodles.
His nose twitched as he accepted the cheap meal, and he sniffed at it in curiosity. "What is this?"
"Uh, a cup of ramen noodles?" Judith said, confused at the man being unfamiliar with them. I looked down at his clothes, the rich black fabric with fine golden embroidery accompanied by white along the poofy ruffles of his arms. A leather satchel hung from his waist, with various tools and devices hanging from straps attached to his waist.
He shoveled some noodles into his mouth, and he blinked once in surprise before he started to shovel more and more of the cup into his mouth like a rabid animal.
"Signora, please, you must tell me the recipe for this delicious dish! It is a wonderful meal, and did you just make it using nothing but water!?" He started going on and on, asking questions about what kind of process went into kneading the noodles, how much spice and salt was used, vegetable quantity, on and on, before I clapped my hands, and he stopped in place.
But I was smiling at him instead, the curiosity and wonder that had been brimming in his eyes more infectious than I had been expecting. He looked around, as if searching for something, while he fumbled a bit of parchment from inside of his satchel. Because that wasn't normal paper, no, that was way too thick to be normal paper, that was definitely old-timey parchment.
He opened it, about to flip through the pages, when he stopped at the first blank page.
"My notes. They are gone." All the wonder and amazement that had been coursing through him was now gone, replaced by a cold pit that I had heard in my own voice just yesterday. "I died. I remember it. Vividly."
"I don't know how you are still alive." I said honestly, placing one hand on his shoulder, while I tried my best to give him an 'It's going to be ok' smile. "But you are, and that's what matters."
He just looked at me, lost for a few moments, recognizing something in me, before he finally managed to give a slow nod. He wiped some unshed tears from his eyes, and he let out a quiet laugh. "Look at me, an old man being comforted by a young lady such as yourself. Though, I am sure that we are no longer in France, and this certainly doesn't look like Firenze or Roma either."
… Did he just say Florence or Rome? Like he was from there? I stared at his face, at his clothes, and the small callouses on his hands, one that spoke of constant use and meticulous work.
"What's your name?" I asked, and he blinked like a drowning fish at me.
"Bah, Leonardo, you fool! Forgive me, young signoras, my name is Leonardo da Vinci! A humble inventor and painter at your service!" He gave me a regal bow, one that would be common in palaces and castles, while Judith and I just stared at him with great bug eyes.
"My name is Mia Itzel, her name is Judith, and you are in the year 2011 on a hell world version of Earth in the New World." Was it diplomatic? Hell no. But better to get this shit over with instead of dancing around the topic. I never really liked pussy-footing around a topic that needed to be talked about.
You could practically hear the mice running around in the walls with how quiet it got, the literal Renaissance Man just staring at me with big wide eyes, while Judith smacked me on the arm while glaring at me with a look that said, "Don't you think that we should have eased him into it?"
I just shrugged at her, trying my best to convey, "Eh, what else do you expect?"
"I trust that you understand if I do not believe you from the beginning signora?" He said.
I nodded, while I walked over to a window and opened one of the curtains, letting him get a good look at the street outside.
He walked over, and stared at the cracked concrete streets, at the ramshackled cars that barely work on the street, the streetlights that blinked every couple of seconds. He stared all around at the street for a few more moments, and he flopped in the chair, rubbing his temples.
"I have never seen any of those machines. Yet, I know exactly what they are, I know how they work, and I understand the fundamental basics of the forces that make them work. Many of which were just simple theories that I had sometimes written in my notes." He continued to rub at his temples as he stared up at the ceiling. "Almost five hundred years after my death, on a continent that I had never heard of. Everyone I know is… gone."
His words are empty, and hollow, in a way that resonates with me as I remember Marian's friends and troops. Of Yuri and his troops, who I- he had fought with. Of the countless families of his comrades that had would never see their family come back through their front door. Of the countless Jews that I knew for a fact were also now gone, only those few remaining that had lived to the age of 80s or 90s.
I just patted his shoulder, and we all sat there in silence. Judith not knowing what to say, her eyes occasionally moving towards me, away from the melancholic Italian man. I just nodded at her, and gestured towards the stairs, to which she walked up them with slow steps as she placed a hand on her baby.
When she left, I finally spoke up. "You know, people still remember you." I told him.
He flinched at those words, as if I had just hit him. "What do you mean by that?"
"I mean, that just about the whole Western world has learned the name Leonardo da Vinci. About your paintings, man of which still survive to this day, of the inventions that you created and wrote in your journal in your spare time, your diagrams and studies into what the church would find heretical." At that, he did flinch away in fear, his eyes frenzied and panic as if he were waiting for someone to come bursting in to take him away to some dungeon. "No one is going to come in and take you. The church doesn't hold as much power as it did back in the day, and most people have given up on some of those superstitions. Studying human corpses for actual medical study is now a normal profession after someone has died before they are released for burial, or cremation, or however the deceased or family wished to inter their remains."
He laughed at that. "As if a Bastard would ever be someone that History would remember." He sounded bitter, and angry, very much like the old man that he was on the inside.
"And yet, I'm right. I remember learning about you in school. About the Renaissance of science, art and history that bloomed from Italy. Tomorrow, we can go to the public library and I can show you just how much history remembers you. For now though… I need to get some rest. I died today too." I give his hand a squeeze as I turn around and walk up the stairs, knowing that he wouldn't try anything on the both of us, and the Italian man just sat there, in the darkening room, staring out the window at a world that might as well have been a different planet from the one that he knew.
Authors Note: Before anyone says anything, no I did not plan for Leo to show up this early, I rolled the bastard pretty quickly. Some of you saw that when I was rolling a few weeks back. Apologies for being gone for so long, I had intended to update far sooner, but life became hectic to say the least. Tornado passed through, no power for about five days, and no internet for about a week, followed by me being sick enough that I couldn't focus on much writing.
Now, one of the biggest changes that you will have all noticed is that Mia isn't going to be the only one limited to the perks from the Forge. She is going to be the 'main' forger, but her companions, which I only have maybe two or three planned for the moment, are going to receive perks of their own.
And of course one of the first perks that Leo rolled was bullcrap, but that's just fine with me.
It has been a pleasure to write him again, and I'm going to do my best to focus more on him and fewer companions this time around, compared to how I went beyond overboard last time.
1.0120
Leonardo Da Vinci
200CP
Assistants
Europa Universalis
You stand in the presence of one of the greatest inventors of this age, jumper. He is well known for his efforts to build a helicopter and a solar powered beam weapon, even in renaissance times. While he lacked the technology to bring his visions into reality and thus, died scorned, you will certainly be able to bring him the tools and the tech he needs to become the best inventor in the multiverse
20.0650
Inventor
600CP
Futurama
Knowledge Future Tech
You are a brilliant(if eccentric)Inventor. You can(within reason)create nearly anything you can imagine if you put in the time. You have a cabinet full of doomsday devices and would be more than capable of slapping together Reverse Scuba Suits for fish or Death Clocks.
Freebie:
Mathematics
Futurama
Free for Inventor
You are an incredibly talented mathematician, capable of blazingly quick mental maths as well as more complicated theoretical work.
A part of me thought that perhaps bringing Judith with us might have been a bad idea, after all, we were in a very public place, and there was a chance that someone could find us here.
But the other part of me also realized that we couldn't just leave her alone again for an entire day and hope that nothing happened. Not only for her own protection, but also for her own mental health.
Being as isolated as she has been for the past few months hasn't been good for her, especially not when she has recently lost the small group of people that had been giving her a hand. Casualties in a cape fight that she didn't want to talk about, so I just left it at that.
So, sure bringing her with us had its own dangers, but those were dangers that we could face together instead of her being all alone.
On the other hand, it also meant that we could move somewhere else as well, instead of remaining inside that house for too long. It was far too close to Empire territory, and there were too many chances of someone stumbling into it since it was well known.
Perhaps someday it could be a future safe house, maybe whenever this damn 'Forge' gave me something that I could better work with, but for now, it was better to move somewhere farther away. The one good thing about the Laboratorium, is that we found out that while neither me nor Leo could close the door, Judith could.
So, we didn't have to worry about her being found out on our journey through the city, having used one of the closets to open the gateway into the Lab to let her out. The lab being used to store our supplies, food, and any furniture that we wanted was another nice little bonus while we moved.
Judith actually still had her library card to log into the computers here, and to reserve a private room for the three of us. That did mean that we were stealing books. Because I wasn't going to be staying her much longer now that we left a trail that we were here. She was wearing a clean hoodie, and I had… uh, snuck into a gym so that we could get a shower in.
Leo had been fascinated, and I almost had to go into the men's restroom to drag his out when he became obsessed with examining the plumbing. I was more thankful that his power had helped explain, or, speed up his measure of understanding certain things that he had never seen before.
Leonardo had already been a brilliant man, an Inventor who had taken his already brilliant mind into the stratosphere, and he was absorbing information like a sponge.
Entire piles of books were stacked on top of each other, most of them already having been read in one group, his eyes roving over pages in mere seconds before moving onto the next one.
I'll admit, I was beyond jealous. Sure, I got some bullshit in my own powers, but it felt like he had gotten the real bounty compared to some of my crap. At least the nanoforge was still there for me.
I was stealing medical textbooks and journals, reading through some of them to patch up what didn't come with Paved in Bones. Specifically, reading everything that I could about labor, and complications that could come with childbirth.
The ironic part is that I could definitely install cybernetic implants to better help the newborn in… a variety of ways. Neural integration technology, implants to help deal with viruses, and any other abnormalities that could crop up, along with ways to ensure that the baby could grow to be as healthy as it could be.
Most of these methods though were going to stay in my brain, as they were far too invasive for my own liking, let alone Judith's.
Thing is, that was all going to require more medical supplies than I could get my hands on. Medical grade morphine, ultrasounds, heart monitors.
Maybe I could check for any that are broken in hospitals?
God, this was going to be a pain in the ass, and I only had a few months to get my hands on them.
The less I thought about what came after the birth, the better.
That reminded me, I had to… do something about what was to come in January. Was I potentially risking everything? Yeah.
But I couldn't do nothing about it. Not when there was something that I could do about it. I don't think that I would be able to live with myself if I let those parasites claim another victim for them to do with as they wanted to.
While reading through the dangers and contingencies of a C-Section, I noticed that the frenzied rush of Leonardo had come to stop.
The old man in a twenty-year-old body was now fitted inside a gaudy green shirt, and baggy pants that I had managed to find in a dumpster and reconstructed through my nanomachines. He was still wearing his old boots, but thankfully most people didn't bother looking at his shoes when the majority would pay attention to his handsome face and piercing blue eyes.
Eyes that were currently focused on a history book, specifically a Wikipedia page on him. On him, and those works of his that survived. He stared almost dispassionately at the page in front of him, a portrait of him staring right back at him, as though he were staring at something particularly uninteresting.
"You weren't lying." He said, for the first time, his words lacking any passion or curiosity like he had throughout the rest of the day.
"I wasn't." I realized that he had unshed tears in his eyes as he scrolled down through the screen, focused completely on information that was written down on the page.
"It… is humbling to know that I am remembered. That, in the grand scheme of things, a bastard like me is remembered, even if that bastardo Michelangelo is remembered as well. Even with the knowledge that I was wrong in much of my previous observations, the fact that I have been a stepping stone for others is more than I thought I would ever achieve." His voice was quiet as he kept reading, Judith remaining silent, staring at Leonardo with that same look she had yesterday. Not knowing what the fuck to do in a situation like this.
Honestly, I didn't either. So I just went with my gut. I grabbed one of his hands and squeezed, and he squeezed back as we remained in silence.
"It is a small comfort, in knowing that everyone that I cared for is long dead. Many of whom, I think, should have been remembered as much as I have. Yet, it seems that the pages of time are fickle, and far more judgmental than we truly deserve." He suddenly looked very small at that, eyes moving towards his hands, lost in whatever grief he was feeling.
I… don't know how to help him. I died, but I at least knew that the people I had known were still alive back home. And now he knew that every one he had known was long dead and buried.
Memories of a small village, of the smell of peat, smoke, ashes and disease wafted through my nose, before I shoved those memories back into the box that they had come from.
The creaking of a chair caught both Leonardo and I's attention, Judith freezing in place as she stared back at us with panicked and embarrassed eyes. None of us say anything, the awkward moment stretching on for longer than it really should.
"I was feeling awkward just being here, like I was intrudin' or something, so I was thinking about giving you guys some space." She lamely said, eyes shifting along the ground, refusing to look at either of us.
I lost it in a fit of giggles, now the two of them staring at me in confusion. "It's alright. That's kinda sweet. And don't you worry about a thing, you aren't intruding. If you were, I don't think that we would have talked about it if you weren't in the room."
Leonardo himself gives a little laugh, the sadness still tinging his eyes, but it was buried right now by his appreciation. "As signora Mia says, you have nothing to apologize to this old man about." He clicks out of the page, and stretches his arms over his head, sighing in relief. "It is such a relief to be able to stretch without any pain. Now, it is close to noon, is it not? I believe that we have much work to do today, no?"
I give him a nod, standing up, placing the key into the door, opening it towards the Lab before going in and throwing all the books that we were stealing inside. "Leo has a point. We need to actually find a warehouse before we can really get to work. Ready to go?" I ask Judith, offering my hand to her, which she takes with a small smile.
Brockton Bay Docks, Dockworker Territory
Turns out there were a lot more abandoned warehouses in the Docks, both on the Dockworkers and ABB side.
Which meant that I could be a bit picky about what to look for in a potential base.
One that had a basement was probably the first thing to look for, and there were a few of those to pick from. So, I ended up going with one closer to the water, aka, closer to the Bay full of ships that were just… out there in the water, left to waste.
The amount of money left out there to rust was enough to make me want to walk into City Hall and shoot someone.
Apparently, the city had started the process of getting a company to come out to the bay to tow all the ships left away to be scrapped.
But 'mysteriously' something always kept happening to the crews being sent to fix it. Freak storms popping up and wrecking the ships, or knocking their course off. Forms being lost with the orders sent, companies going out of business right before the deal could be sealed, hell, there was even this one salvage that went out on a dingy boat that got killed in a gang fight.
Eventually, problem after problem had been enough for people to think that either the Endbringers were doing shit to mess it up, or that it was just straight up cursed.
I think that they were half right. I could practically smell the stench of a fedora on this crap, and I had just gotten here.
The inside was… well, it was a rusted, torn apart mess.
Whatever had once been stored here was long stolen, most of the boxes and crates long gone, a mess of garbage and other debris left here to rot. The roof had some holes in it, windows were broken, and there were plenty of wires and torn apart forklifts and other equipment just left here.
So… how about we fix that then?
With a slasher smile on my face, I messed with the Nanoforge on my arm, going to max settings and unleashing a swarm of Nanites into the Warehouse while I closed the door and waited. Right before I tossed the Nanoforge over to Leo who was making little grabby motions at it with a wide smile on his face.
He had become quite interested when I had mentioned what the Nanoforge could do, and had all but demanded that I let him examine it. Maybe later, when we weren't stacked with work, I could try to teach him some basics on a Nanoforge.
When the sound of clinking and reconstruction finished, we walked back into the room, and I smiled at the newly repaired Warehouse.
Wooden, and steel boxes were repaired good as new on the reconstructed shelves that had been nothing more than wooden panels and wrecked iron. The windows were fixed, broken stone and frayed wires were stored back into the ceiling.
There was no power, unsurprising of course, but even the plumbing for what water there was here was fixed. Whatever company used to work here even had a few restrooms with showers here and there.
Getting water was going to be a completely different battle, one that I was going to have to either steal from the city, or make actual payments.
How… I didn't know.
Unlike 'normal' Tinkers, I needed actual time and work to make stuff instead of just pulling reality warping tech out of my ass.
I let Judith out of the Lab and let her explore while I got into the forklift and started to move the supplies and benches around the inside of the warehouse. Whatever used to be stored in here, they had enough room to fit like four or five homes in here. The basement was at least half of that space in the basement, and I was definitely going to turn that place into my own little workshop.
The majority of the benches and boxes were moved towards the loading dock doors and any entrances that I wanted sealed off. Having too many of those was a major security issue, and I wasn't going to let us get swarmed and ambushed from all sides if we ever got found out.
Honestly, most of the night was spent just moving crap around, along with trying to turn the warehouse into an actual home. It was already a freezing hole when we got here, but by nightfall, it had turned into an almost unbearable ice cube. We couldn't exactly start a fire here without chancing someone coming over to investigate this place, and I sure as shit wasn't good enough to jury-rig power to the Warehouse either.
So, we were stuck putting on a bunch of layers as we went to sleep. I made Leo take the couch while Judith slept in the Lab where I had left the bed, and I decided to take one of the chairs, sleep taking me the second that I closed my eyes.
I dreamt of gaunt figures, burning fields, and the wails of the lost.
November 11th 2010 Thursday
Honestly, the past few days had been fairly boring.
Sure, things weren't that comfortable due to living on a tight budget, I only had about a third of the cash that I had gotten the other day left on me, but Leo and I had been beyond busy.
I had told the Italian that he didn't have to keep living with us, that he could probably go to the PRT, and they would provide him with a home if he just gave them a few diagrams. Sure, it wasn't 'actually' Tinkertech, but they probably would have jumped on top of him after an actual Tinker took one look at his designs.
In only a single day, he was able to understand just about everything that I put in front of him, even being able to figure out how to program new software after having read a few books on programming. But he had decided to stick around.
Just like Judith was my only connection to this world, I was his only connection here as well. That and properly giving Hospitality without asking for anything else in return was more than enough for him to hang around. Well, that and one other little detail.
While he could figure out how something worked, making it was an entirely different problem.
He could handle wood and was very much an artist and amateur craftsman at heart. But he wasn't a smith, or a welder, or any form of engineer. His brain could understand the diagrams and work, but his hands were beyond unfamiliar with just about everything.
Which is where my hands came in.
Anything I made, even if I shouldn't know how to make it, came out fucking perfect.
We'd figured it out when I had somehow managed to make multiple cups of ramen taste, and look, like they had been prepared by a chef. How? I have no fucking idea, but there they were. The food we were eating was probably the only reason why these past few days without any power had been bearable.
But that was going to change now.
It had taken a lot of fucking work, but Leonardo had managed to figure out how to wire a bunch of worn out car batteries into a working generator. Finding them had been the biggest problem, specifically sneaking into a Junkyard and stealing it.
Nothing, a hole in a fence made with some pliers in the middle of the night didn't help.
After that, throwing the nanomachines into the pile and having them reconstituted good as new ensured that they had juice. A wonder what nanomachines that work on the cellular level can do for something.
It's why we were now in the basement, messing with the wiring, into our mega-battery that was almost as tall as I was. I had followed his instructions to the letter, and instead of a block of messy wiring and plastic and half hammered metal, it was instead a single block of stainless steel covered with plastic.
Best part was that this thing was beyond sturdy, and I had a feeling that I wasn't going to have to worry about it bursting into flames. Which was probably a good thing because piling that many batteries into one giant one was definitely a fire hazard.
I was covered in dirt, grease, and a lot of drywall, but I smiled when I installed the battery into the power lines.
"Alright, let's see what happens here, why don't we?" I whispered to myself, Leonardo and Judith both outside of the room, peeking in through a crack in the door. When I had told them that if it wasn't for my power, then the battery would probably explode instead, they had decided to be better safe than sorry.
I couldn't say that wasn't the right choice, but this wasn't the first time I handled something that could probably blow my face off. I still remember that one time an unpinned grenade had landed at my feet.
No, dammit, not my feet, fucking Marian's feet.
It felt like every passing day just made it harder to differentiate what was mine and what was his. Keeping a proper hold on who 'I' was sometimes felt like a futile effort, but I tried, all the same. Because it's all that I really had left of Mia Itzel.
I remember plugging the giant battery pack into the cords, and next thing I knew, I was waking up on the couch in what was serving as our living room.
I blinked my eyes a few times, coughing and trying to ignore the pain in my chest and arms as I failed to get back up.
What the hell?
"Leo! The bitch woke up!" I think that I heard Judith yell out, but it sounded fuzzy to my ears, and I might be hearing in dubstep instead of normal stereo.
"What happened?" I croaked out, my chest and hands feeling like someone had dipped them in shocking fire.
Oh.
That's because they were burnt. Then I realized that there was a lot more light than that tiny lantern we had salvaged. With bleary eyes, I looked past the blond teen who was fussing over me while she tried out those cuss words in Spanish and Italian that Leo and I had taught her, and stared at the shining lights that glowed down on top of us.
"Oh, good, it worked then." I croaked out, falling back onto my back as Leo came back with the first aid kit that he had brought with him.
"When you plugged the mega battery into the wall, it caused a large spark to jump out at you. Honestly, if you weren't wearing those gloves, I think that you would have been far more dead than we were expecting. Merda, I knew that I should have gotten some better insulated material to pad it out instead of just letting you slap it together." Leonardo said in a rapid fire of words before he devolved to beating himself up in Italian. At least, I think that's what he was saying. Italian and Spanish, while very similar, were still their own languages, so I could understand some of his words, but the entirety of the message was lost on me.
Same went with Portuguese, but I understood that language a hell of a lot more than Italian.
"Well, hey, I'll be fine. Just some burns, that's it." Both Leonardo and Judith glared at me like I had just said something monumentally stupid.
"Mia, I just watched you get blasted back onto the floor with your arms and chest smoking. And you were twitching on the floor. It's more than just 'some burns'. I thought you were having a heart attack at first." Judith bluntly said, her tone dry, but her eyes worried.
Aw, she did care. Typical teenagers trying to hide their emotions.
I couldn't help but laugh, before my chest protested by sending burning signals into my brain. "Judith, even if I did want to go to a hospital, you know we can't. Places like that ask questions about, well, everything. I don't have any ID, let alone cash to actually pay for a doc to even take a look at me. If we show up, there's a chance that we could get the cops coming after us." Which was definitely not going to end well if they did.
"Yes, I believe even with the advancement of technology in this new world, healers would still be a pricey necessity, instead of a mere bread maker price." Leonardo chimed in as he was taking my pulse like I had taught him the day before. We hadn't had much time for me to teach him more than that, but he had picked up on what I could teach him fairly quickly.
Judith stared at the both of us like we were crazy, before she smacked herself on the face. "I'm an idiot, of course you don't know about her, you both literally just got here not even a week ago."
I frowned at that, wondering who the hell she could be talking about, before I remembered about the only cape in the city that could do something about my wounds. Well, the only one that wouldn't try to shoot me or extort me for any healing. I had to keep myself from screaming as I felt like someone had just walked over my grave.
"I doubt that Panacea is going to have time to see either of us. Or the patience." I muttered out the last sentence under my breath so that Judith wouldn't hear. I don't know how… known Amy Dallon's prickly personality was, but I sure as shit didn't want to get any attention for knowing about that.
Then, she gave me an even more bewildered look. Like, I had said that the world was going to end in a few years. A particular truth that I very much wanted to keep to myself for now.
The winged cunt in the sky was always watching, and the less that I thought about… all of that, the better.
"...She hasn't gone by that name in at least a year." Judith said, and I felt like the floor beneath me had just been swept off my feet.
Cause, what the hell else could I say to that?
Amy Dallon wasn't Panacea anymore, and I had no idea what the fuck that meant. Death seemed to pace around on my grave, as I stared at Judith with big eyes, and probably pale as a ghost.
She wanted to ask how I knew about it. I know that she did.
But something in the way that I was staring at her made her stop. Maybe it was because all the blood had fled from my face, or the way that my hands twitched as I realized that there was more that I didn't know about in this different version of the world.
"People don't really know what happened, but… well, New Wave basically imploded last year. It's been real hush-hush, and even the Villains know better than to try and get into whatever happened. All that we know is that Amy Dallon changed her cape name from Panacea to Nostrum, and now she's got her own clinic on the Boardwalk. Consultation with her is like, ten bucks, though she can be picky about who she sees or not. Some patients prefer going to her instead of the Hospital, because 'she doesn't care enough to lie to you'." She said the last part with little quotation signs with her hands, rolling her eyes as she giggled to herself for some reason.
I just… stared at her again.
"Mi scusi, but who is this 'Nostrum'? One of these Parahumans that you have mentioned before." Leo asked. I hadn't had a chance to tell him about… everything that was to come, because I didn't want him to have a mental breakdown like I was fighting off right now. Especially not when Judith was in such a precarious situation with her baby and the like. No point in having her go into a panic attack about the shitshow that was the next few years, while she was already stressed enough about the Nazi's chasing her around.
Deciding that staying silent was probably the best choice at the moment, I glanced at Judith for an explanation, only to fight back a cringe when she stared back in my direction. Damn, she wasn't going to let it go at any point, was she?
But I couldn't tell her everything. Not yet. Not until I had made sure that we were safer than we were, and that I could have the power to at least defend ourselves if… me telling her everything that I knew came to bite us back in the ass. There were far too many people interested in keeping what I knew silent, or secret.
A lot of people had already died for knowing far less than I did.
When I wouldn't open my mouth, she shot me a glare, and turned towards Leo. "Amy Dallon was originally a part of a hero team called New Wave that were trying to be heroes while having their identities public. It looked like they were actually making a difference, until one of their members, Fluer, was killed in her own home by an Empire goon. Since then, the team was slowly just… disappearing. They weren't really out there fighting any of the gangs after Marquis got taken down, and sometimes would even get into arguments with the Dockworkers, but it never got the indie capes involved. Their kids joined, and then they started to make a difference again, but then Panacea, the healer of the group just… left one day. Got full emancipation, and left her home. "
"What do you mean by a 'healer'? Is she a- ah, how did you say it- a 'Tinker' like us? Or is it something far more mystical than that?" Leonardo asked, his blue eyes becoming piercing while his brain worked a mile a minute, probably trying to figure out how he could replicate it himself. I shivered as I realized that he probably could with enough time given how his one power worked.
Judith waves her hand in the air a few times. "Eh, kinda? No one calls her a biotinker because of what happened at Ellisburg, even if the place is barely anything more than a smoking crater now. Everyone knows that slapping someone with a Biotinker label is basically saying that it's open season for them. She mainly used her power to manipulate biology to heal most people. She used to work at the hospital for publicity with New Wave… but it got out of hand." She clamped up after that, ignoring more of Leo's questions.
I… think I could probably guess as to why. Besides the PRT, New Wave were the only other hero group in the Bay. So… whenever the group fractured, it probably caused its own turmoil in the city. Enough that people probably don't want to talk about it, much the same way that no one wants to talk about the dirty secrets going on in their own families.
Goddammit, what the hell did I get myself into?
I must have zoned out, because both of my friends were staring at me.
"What?" I asked.
Judith sighed at me, while Leonardo just laughed. "I said, are you ready to move, or do you need Leo to help carry you?" She asked.
"Move where?" Did we say were going anywhere? Couldn't exactly move right now.
Judith let out a groan, and looked at me like I was the slower kid that didn't pay attention during class. "To Nostrum's clinic, Mia." She said the words slowly, like I had some sort of brain damage, and that made me want to cuff the girl upside the head a bit. But no, she was a minor and pregnant, you can't do that, Mia. "You got zapped with enough electricity to kill you, and we don't have anything to deal with an infection if you get unlucky. Now, get your dumbass up, or me and Leo are going to carry your ass over there. It's just a few streets down here in the DWU territory, so come on."
Before I could try to argue, Leo grabs one of my arms, and Judith grabs the other one, dragging me out the door.
Trying to resist was an effort in pain and cussing, everything in my chest protesting any time that I tried to push them off.
Before I knew it, my two friends had dragged me through the streets when the pain had finally sanded down my defenses, and I could barely keep my head high enough to stare at the large three-story building that had a green cross with a red slash over it over the doorway.
There were men outside the building, most of them armed with at least a handgun, but I could spot some of the ones that were sitting down were probably hiding larger weaponry in the bags next to them.
There were plenty of people waiting inside, most of them were injured or sick, par for the course with a clinic like this. Gunshot wounds, giant cuts and bruises, probably a few broken bones as too.
Some though looked relatively healthy, an older couple a few seats down, a child wearing a ratty hat and hoodie with baggy pants that looked like they barely fit.
I kinda stopped paying attention to the people around me when the droopiness in my eyes took me away to la la land, blearily opening my eyes when I felt someone jostle my shoulder.
I blink at Judith wondering why she was waking me up from the bliss that is sleep, when she and Leo drag me again through the door and sit me down in a seat in front of a grouchy freckled girl with mousy brown hair. She was chewing a big ass wad of gum, looking more like she was moving around a jawbreaker instead.
"Ten bucks." She blankly said in between chews, green eyes drifting over us like we weren't really there as she held up her cupped hand to us.
What the-
Judith reached into her pocket, bringing out the wad of cash out, counting out a twenty from the hundreds that she had taken out of my jacket at some point.
"Ten for her, ten for me." Judith said simply, sitting down next to me, while Leo just watched with curiosity.
Amy glanced at him, narrowing her eyes at him for a second, before dismissing him, and taking the twenty dollars from Judith's hands.
"Alright then, give me your hand then." Judith grabbed my hand before I could register and dropped it in Pana- Nostrums hand.
Shitshitshitshitshitshitshitshit.
The only sign that she could see my panicking through her biology sense was a single-raised eyebrow, but she didn't say a word as she chewed her jawbreaker sized gum.
"Hm, a couple of heavy burns and some minor nerve damage, though I also notice that you have some minor liver damage, and heavy lung damage. Try to keep away from the alcohol and smokes. Going to use some of the fat in your body, so try to get something to eat after this." Before I could say anything, the stinging pain in my chest disappeared like it had never existed in the first place.
Holy shit, that was faster than I thought it was going to be.
And I felt… better than I had in years.
"Try eating a high calorie meal later, probably a lot of protein and maybe some potassium." Amy drolly said, about to drop my hand.
When I felt something else in my sky connect.
Fuck.
Not right now.
But it was too late, I felt a larger star, one accompanied by a smaller dim one, fly into my sky, sucking in a breath as something foreign rushed through my veins.
No, not my veins. It was my soul.
A real soul, not just something that was founded on belief, but an actual real thing that I now knew existed inside of me.
There were three layers to mine now, the core, the part of me that was 'me', the middle layer that contained the 'what', and the outer layer that served as the 'shell', the part of my soul that adapted to change and grew stronger to protect the inner two layers.
And therefore, through that change, I could now feel the world around me in a way that I never thought that I could anymore.
My sight changes, and I stare at Amy and my two friends, seeing beyond the mere physical world, glimpsing at the souls that they all had. At least, my friends had their souls, Amy… had more.
Where my friends had wisps of white smoky like energy flowing out of them, there was far more flowing out of Amy. A veritable smokestack of soul energy that flowed out from her, as if there were more than just her soul housed inside of her head. I knew what it was. That damned shard, the thing that had uncountable hosts before her, and therefore, the memories of who those people used to be.
Surrounding us, however, there were… little wisps of energy floating around. They were faint, practically ash compared to the smoke that flowed out from my friends, yet, they were also holding… memories.
Memories and echos of whoever they used to belong to manifested as smoke. Only, they weren't really smoke, they were gleanings, bits of souls that came from living beings, the discarded parts that were left behind by all living things.
I almost reached out for them, wanting to take them into my soul and manifest them in the outer layer, only to remember that Amy was holding my hand, and damn near gripping it like it was the only thing keeping her from falling off a cliff.
I met the young girl's eyes, panic spreading through my heart as its beat echoed in my ears. For once, she was actually looking at me with concentration instead of barely contained apathy.
And I felt true fear take over my heart as I remembered that she could have once become the Red Queen.
She dropped my hand, chewed her gum a few times, taking Judith's hand who was glancing at the two of us with concern, while Leo was taking notes in his notebook that he had brought out at some point.
"I don't mess with kids." Amy told Judith, eyes finally moving away from me, focusing on the younger teen with a frown on her face.
Judith nodded. "I know. I just wanted to know if… there were any problems."
"Hm." Amy hummed, eyes glazing over as she inspected Judith's biology. "Seems to be developing just fine. No problems in the baby for now, though you should probably increase your calorie intake." Then she frowned further, as she tilted her head towards Judith's shoulder and arm. "I'll fix the bruising in your arms, and there's some on your back too." She didn't ask the question, but it went unsaid as she glanced at Leo.
Judith rapidly shook her head. "He wasn't the one that did it. The one who did probably has a big lump on his head right now."
"Good." Was all that Amy said as she let the girl's hand go. "Alright, that should be it. Whenever the baby's born… bring him over. Free of charge." She spit out her gum into the trash before she dug into her pockets and grabbed four more sticks, throwing them into her mouth and began to chew rapidly as we started to turn around. "You might want to borrow some clothes that I keep in the back, though. Huh?
Before I could ask what she meant, I realized that… my stomach felt a bit breezy. Like my shirt didn't fit, and my stomach was exposed. I felt my ear twitch as I looked down… and gaped as I realized my clothes didn't really fit anymore.
Fuck, my feet hurt in these tiny ass shoes.
I stood up, and realized with horror that my head was a hell of a lot closer to the ceiling than it should have been.
How long had Judith and Leo been staring at me?
I run into the restroom connected to the little office, and I stare in open-mouthed horror at my reflection in the mirror. My face wasn't really my face anymore.
My eyes were slanted and angular, larger than they had been before, the previously brown pupils changed to orbs of verdant green. My skin tone hadn't changed, same with most of the scars that I had accumulated in my life, but the pointed ears that were almost half the size of my new hands sure as shit were new.
Even though my features were sharper, far more angular than before, I was still… me.
I could see the 'imperfections' that elves would see… Jesus fuck, I was a half elf.
I turn and see that Leo was looking at me when he was writing like a madman in his journal. Was he making a fucking portrait of me?
Judith just stood there, staring at me with worried eyes, as Amy turned to look at us. "Hey, if you're not going to get anything from the back, can you get out? I got other people that are waiting to see me."
25.0040-Anima
200CP
Ravenwood
Skills Magic
The power of your own soul. Wisps of spiritual energy bound to yourself, able to be shaped into quasi-physical garb or used to reinforce that which you already possess. Each shaped bit or aspect of yourself acts as a receptacle for the wisps you possess, and filling them increases the strength provided, but limits the amount you can put elsewhere. However, it only takes a few moments, vital in any battle, to shift these wisps around and change the boons they provide.
Humans: The most plentiful of the material world races, humans have three things going for them, they learn quickly, they have a strong will to live, and they proliferate quickly and with exceptional vigor, making their children with other races more potent.
Elves: The elves are a long lived race, able to live for hundreds of years, possess a natural grace that comes from an innate sense of balance, enhanced senses of hearing and sight, with their sense of smell being slightly enhanced as well, and an aptitude for thaumaturgy.
Hybrid Races (50cp): When two races come together, they often produce a hybrid, this is the case for these races. Hybrid races are often more resilient than their parent races and can possess unique abilities. Such hybrids are often sterile, but you are one of the lucky ones that is fertile.
Half-Humans: Any of the basic races can interbreed with humans, this often results in a hardy hybrid that has some of the enhanced learning and will of the human with the normal traits of the non-human parent. They are also resistant to diseases and generally have a shorter lifespan than their non-human parent, the exception being the half-orc which live a bit longer.
Force of Personality (100cp, Free Anima): Your core personality is reinforced and you gain an awareness of any influence on your mind beyond completely natural methods, making it difficult for anything to change you from who you are without your consent or desire. This also provides an awareness that gives you insights into others.
37.0240-Nano-Technician | Nanoforge 1200CP:Red Faction:Quality Size
Nano-Technician: 600CP:Red Faction: Quality Size: Is it me or does nanomachines not sound like a word anymore? You now have a considerable talent in the field of nanotech. With time and study, you could recreate the Nanoforge, with dedication you could even improve on it. Keep in mind nanotech in this setting is exceptionally hard to work with, but can do anything from fixing a bridge, to disintegrating a starship, to enhancing human abilities.
Nanoforge: 600CP:Red Faction:Quality Size:Typically worn around the wrist, this device is an engineer's wet dream. Using real-time scans provided by the onboard AI, the Nano-Forge emits nanites as either a proximity cloud or projectile globs that procedurally recreate objects nearby. This Nano-Forge is restricted to repair functionality, and it doesn't work on biological material, but it does have the precision to recreate delicate electronics and the like.
20.0210-Paved In Bones 300CP:The Matrix : Knowledge Future Tech:When one thinks about it, the human body is kind of like a Machine as well. It uses electricity, it requires fuel, it's complex, and it can break down. Why not study it and see what can be done? Whether you sifted through stolen data files or got hands-on with your work, you've figured out a great deal of things about the human body. Its mutations, its limits, its potential... how it all works is open to you, including how the Machines managed to grow their plugs inside the body. What you do with this knowledge is up to you.
7.0030-Laboratorium: 100CP:Light of Terra DLC 3 - A Grand Day Out: Facilities Mundane: Ancient cogitators, arrays of auspex systems, and volume upon volume of documentation supply an Adept with the tools and information necessary to capably analyse a recovered technological artefact.
* Extremely high tech lab for studying artefacts. From Warhammer 40k.
4.0150: Vehicular skills: 200CP:Generic Zombie Apocalypse: Vehicles: In addition to being a frankly amazing mechanic, you're also great behind the wheel you can avoid any avoidable accidents, you're quite apt at upgrading vehicle into mobile death machine
34.0650-Diamond Techniques | Promise of Steel: 1100CP: Summon Night Swordcraft Story: Quality Efficiency
Diamond Techniques :500CP:Summon Night Swordcraft Story: Quality Efficiency: Hoo baby, now you're cooking with gas! These are the same techniques used by Craftlord Rondeau, the Diamond Craftlord of Wystern! This means whatever you make is now in addition to being top of the line in performance, also top of the line in looks! If you have this perk as a Craftknight, you're likely to be a Craftlord yourself. If you're an Apprentice, you're likely to be considered the second coming of Craftlord Shintetsu just like Cleru or Pratty! This perk acts as a Capstone Booster for the Drop-In, Apprentice, and Craftknight Origins.
Promise of Steel: 600CP:Summon Night Swordcraft Story: Quality Efficiency: The promise of a Craftknight is stronger than steel." That's what is said about the dedication of Craftknights, and with this perk it isn't a metaphor. You now have the dedication and willpower to see through any promise sworn, either to yourself or another, although it's only in effect while you're working to make good on a sworn promise.
35.0761 Panzerkampf: 300CP: Sabaton: Quality Resources: When it comes to building war machines, yours are top-notch! A gun made by your own hand will never jam, and a tank built by you will never bog down in mud or take damage from an IED. If they want to destroy what you've built, they'd best bring their A-game.
25.0040-Anima
200CP
Ravenwood
Skills Magic
The power of your own soul. Wisps of spiritual energy bound to yourself, able to be shaped into quasi-physical garb or used to reinforce that which you already possess. Each shaped bit or aspect of yourself acts as a receptacle for the wisps you possess, and filling them increases the strength provided, but limits the amount you can put elsewhere. However, it only takes a few moments, vital in any battle, to shift these wisps around and change the boons they provide.
Humans: The most plentiful of the material world races, humans have three things going for them, they learn quickly, they have a strong will to live, and they proliferate quickly and with exceptional vigor, making their children with other races more potent.
Elves: The elves are a long lived race, able to live for hundreds of years, possess a natural grace that comes from an innate sense of balance, enhanced senses of hearing and sight, with their sense of smell being slightly enhanced as well, and an aptitude for thaumaturgy.
Hybrid Races (50cp): When two races come together, they often produce a hybrid, this is the case for these races. Hybrid races are often more resilient than their parent races and can possess unique abilities. Such hybrids are often sterile, but you are one of the lucky ones that is fertile.
Half-Humans: Any of the basic races can interbreed with humans, this often results in a hardy hybrid that has some of the enhanced learning and will of the human with the normal traits of the non-human parent. They are also resistant to diseases and generally have a shorter lifespan than their non-human parent, the exception being the half-orc which live a bit longer.
Force of Personality (100cp, Free Anima): Your core personality is reinforced and you gain an awareness of any influence on your mind beyond completely natural methods, making it difficult for anything to change you from who you are without your consent or desire. This also provides an awareness that gives you insights into others.
Leo
20.0650
Inventor
600CP
Futurama
Knowledge Future Tech
You are a brilliant(if eccentric)Inventor. You can(within reason)create nearly anything you can imagine if you put in the time. You have a cabinet full of doomsday devices and would be more than capable of slapping together Reverse Scuba Suits for fish or Death Clocks.
Freebie:
Mathematics
Futurama
Free for Inventor
You are an incredibly talented mathematician, capable of blazingly quick mental maths as well as more complicated theoretical work.
The change of clothes was easy, honestly. The hard part was finding a pair of damn beanies and hats to hide the fucking pointed ears.
I was already getting a lot more stares than I was comfortable with on the way back, even with wearing the old hat that Leo had arrived with to cover the top of my head, but people could still tell that there was something 'off' with me. They just couldn't put their finger on it, which I guess is good since I'm not getting blackbagged as an alien.
Hooray for small mercies. It just cost me a new face and body that I didn't ask for.
Guess that there was plenty of shit in this 'Forge' that I was gonna have to deal with. Hopefully, this would be the worst of the 'side effects' that came with this crap.
Yeah, yeah, I realized my blunder the moment the thought finished, shut up.
"How much longer are you going to just sit there moping?" Judith, the brat, snidely said as she poked her head into the part of the warehouse that I had made my personal cave. I chucked a screw at her, though I aimed it above her head so that it would miss.
The brat didn't even bother to move out of the way. Damn, was I already that predictable?
"If you must know, I was meditating!" I growl out, almost fumbling with my own feet because I'm still not used to the way that the long twigs felt where my stumps used to be.
Going from barely five feet to damn near six foot four was a pain in the ass.
"Uh-huh, sure." The blue eyed creep rolled said eyes at me, obviously not believing the lie.
Clicking my tongue, I can't help but look above her, and around her. At the little gleaning wisps that seemed to permeate this whole damn city.
She noticed the way that my eyes seemed to lock around her, and she fixed me with a look. "Seeing more of those 'gleanings' around?"
"Hard not to. Feels like the whole city is full of them, lot more than it should be."
"And how do you know what a city 'should' have?" She asked as she shuffled over to the couch that I had brought into my cave.
Huh. How did I know that? "I honestly have no idea. Probably some more of that memory bullshit." It had been happening more and more lately. Little thoughts, or memories of things that I shouldn't know.
Much like the way that Anima just made me a damn near expert in how to take in gleanings into my soul, it also brought in other stuff connected to it.
"Might have to do with all the death in this damn city." I mused out as I controlled my breathing and began to take in the wisps of memories that floated in the air.
Traces of wind, the sound of wings on the beat, and the taste of blood and lead flowed through me as the nascent wisps gathered into my soul, gently laying on the layers and layers that made 'me' me.
They weren't complete gleanings. More like, fragments of what had been eroded after years of simply hanging around in the material world. After all, the more time after one's death, the less and less of the 'original' was left behind. How many people have died in this city? Not even taking into account the cape related deaths, or those committed by the idiot 9?
Too many to count, honestly.
Letting out a sigh as the last gleaning settled into my soul, the remnants of a rat that had died a few days ago when Leo and I had found the little fucker, I let out a sigh of relief that I hadn't known I'd been holding.
"AH!" I screamed as I stared into the eyes of Judith who was a bare few inches away from my face, my hand cocking back out of sheer instinct that I managed to stop at the last moment. She let out a snort at that.
"You sure that's meditation? Looks more like napping. You didn't budge an inch when I got close to you." Must not hit the pregnant teen.
Bad Mia.
"Look chiquita, it's a bad idea getting that close to me when I'm out of it! I was about to smash your head in." And given that I was definitely a lot stronger now than I used to be, that would not have ended well. Good thing I didn't have my pistol with me.
"Alright fine! Jeez, take a chill pill." She said with her iconic eyeroll, leaning back in the seat that she stole from me, hand on her belly which was already bigger now than it had been when we'd first met. "So, we got plenty of crap now. The place has power now, which is good. So, what's the next thing that you're going to work on?"
Now that was the question, wasn't it? What was I going to do now.
Leo and I had managed to make a damn good few sets of guns, though he was repulsed by them and damn near threw them away when he figured out how they worked.
The soldier in me snorted, but I understood. Not everyone was comfortable with taking a life, and honestly, that was more than fine in my opinion. The world would be a better place if certain people shared the same sentiment.
Regardless, if I wanted this nano forge to do more than just repair things, I was going to need a computer that could actually interface with this thing, and for that, I needed certain parts. Gold for computer parts, an actual cooling system when I managed to turn the thing on, wires, silicone, etc.
Couldn't go to the junkyards, those places were watched like hawks. That left the Trainyard, which was contested territory between the ABB and Empire, and the Boat Graveyard which would definitely have the parts that I need.
Problem would be getting to the parts, and getting them out.
Vehicles. I needed a car, and a boat maybe for certain parts.
I could just go berserk and start throwing as many nanite globules as I damn well please, but that wouldn't matter when most of the boats and ships are now underwater.
But… maybe… maybe I could get lucky.
Sighing. I stood up and stretched, grabbing my belt and holster off the rack, and tying it on my waist as I inspected my pistol and holstered it.
"Where are you going?" Judith asked as I threw a coat over my shoulders and strode toward the door.
"To get some more materials. I threw over my shoulder as I left our little home.
Was going into contested territory a good idea?
Probably not, but then again, I wasn't known for my bright ideas in my last life, and the same went in my life during WWII. Something had to be wrong with you to throw yourself into war without a second thought for your own safety, even with unyielding rage.
Yet, here I was, walking around until I spotted a building with an Empire logo stamped proudly on the wall.
A cocktail would serve to really brighten that particular building up. Certainly would add some spice to the decor and people that it desperately needed.
I don't enter, instead stepping into the shadow and standing very still as my vision shifts into the realm beneath our own, straight into the gleanings of the world around us.
And I felt my throat catch when I see the gleanings that were hovering around the house. At least a dozen of them, each one a tangled web of human souls, far more whole and stable than any I had ever seen before in this life. Meaning that all of those were people that were now dead. And recently because of how close they were to the house.
Gleanings, the remnants or 'residue' of the soul, tended to wander away when someone died, their 'wholeness' deteriorating as time passed, the edges of the person or being slowly being undone by time and life's influence. Yet these were gathered here, slowly, oh so slowly, beginning to drift away from the home.
I saw red as the realization hit me, and I began to grip my pistol. Before I tore my way into the house, blasting each one of my shots with the fury of a berserker, I managed to calm myself down.
I couldn't just go in guns shooting, not unless I wanted both the Empire and PRT coming after my ass. No, I needed something else to get in there. I needed more methods of taking people down that didn't rely on simply gunning people down. Not only did the thought make my stomach uneasy, but it would also bring more heat than I really needed.
Which meant that it was time to begin gathering those gleanings and seeing just what I could forge from them.
I sat down on the floor, covering my body with my jacket as I covered my eyes with the beanie as I slipped into a meditative stance. I could steal everything that those pricks had later.
For now, I simply began to empty my head and reached out towards the gleanings of the dead.
Each one that entered me was a window into a life that was now gone.
Ronny, an elementary school teacher that had been grabbed when he had been on his way to his car by one of his student's parents that wanted someone 'pure' to teach their son.
Rodrigo who had just gotten a job with the dockworkers a few days ago, before his sister's boyfriend had shown his true colors and taken the whole family captive one night when he had come to 'visit'.
Wendy, who had to watch in horror as her father and brothers were killed one by one, helpless as the gun was placed to her temple before the flash took her life from her.
More and more people, most of them having passed not even a few days ago, others mere wisps that hadn't quite moved away yet from here after their deaths, settled into my soul and I accepted them with open arms. None of them were perfect.
Jonathan was a cheating bastard, but he genuinely loved his children, Samantha used to shoplift for the thrill of it, but she also gave away any of her stolen goods to the homeless that hung around her neighborhood. Rodrigo had been hoping to cut a deal with the elusive Merchants in the hopes of getting some of their off shoring action before he had been taken, and Wendy had been something of a bully back at work, constantly putting people down out of some insecurity that she would never be enough to please her parents.
And now they were dead, the only thing left of them the wisps of their gleanings that entered my soul, as I shoved away those that had belonged to Empire members.
I couldn't help the tears that slipped down my face, my hands shaking, as I took in each of their lives. Their flaws, their strengths, their hopes, dreams, and those last moments of fear as they were killed for new members 'initiation'. The sad reality that they had been some of the lucky ones because at least their deaths had been fast instead of something more torturous and slow did little to comfort me. Then the last one entered, and I had to stop myself from choking at the sheer power of one gleaning.
Wanda Lopez had lived in Brockton Bay practically her whole life, and had enough features that she could be mistaken for white instead of half Latina. A fact that she was grateful for, because that meant that there was less of a chance that she would get dragged into the Empire's little hate crime ring. Only, her luck ran out when her high school basketball team had won a tournament and her name and photo had been plastered on the paper.
Not even a few weeks later she had been snatched off the street and taken into an Empire basement.
The things that happened to her… it made me sick to my stomach. Her experiences had been enough for her to give into her despair and trigger, a scar that would never leave her, and she gained the power to create weapons out of pure darkness.
She managed to fight her way out of the basement, screaming, crying, and killing every single Empire goon that she could get her hands on. Until Hookwolf had arrived.
Damned bloodthirsty dog.
Her sorrow, her terror, despair, and rage were enough to finally make me throw up the breakfast that I had eaten this morning. I could probably ignore the emotions, the pain and raging loss that remained in the gleaning. But, no. I'm not going to. This… this was the last echoes of her. The purest form of whom she had been in life.
And I had to see it. Had to feel it. Because, if I didn't, then no one else would know the depths of these people.
Rage. Hate. Loss. Despair.
All of these emotions were bottled up inside of me, begging to be let out, to be released, and I would. Just not yet.
With a groan, I stood up, forcing myself to stand still as the rush of… everything went to my head, the dizziness of it all making it feel like I had just got done taking about ten shots of tequila before I managed to find my legs and force them to take one foot in front of the other.
"HEY! Junkie!" A voice yelled from the house, and I didn't have to turn around to know that one of the skinheads was probably staring right at me.
Nah, fuck this.
Before he could get another word in, I booked it out of there, the sound of his footsteps eventually fading away after I ducked into a back alley and began my trek back home.
November 13th Saturday 2010
I had to isolate myself inside of one of the farther rooms in the warehouse.
It wasn't even that Leo or Judith were being loud, they had actually been giving me space since I got back home yesterday.
They already knew that something had happened when I'd left yesterday, and they wanted me to calm down before they tried dragging it out of me. Probably a smart move. I wasn't ready to talk about… everything that I had seen and felt yesterday.
And before I could properly tear that damn place down, along with stealing everything that they had, I needed to get my hands on a car.
I know that there were smarter ways to get my hands on cash and a car. I know that.
But, quite honestly, I don't care. As long as that place was up, that meant that there would be more 'initiations' there.
And I wasn't blind or stupid. Taking that place out was only a slight delay. I knew that there were going to be plenty of other places for those damned fascists to hold their little 'rituals' to see if new members would actually do what they wanted.
It was going to get a lot uglier before it got any better, I knew that.
Meaning that I needed to be prepared for this. To build my arsenal, and weave these gleanings into proper artefacts.
I wasn't going to be able to use all of them, of course. I was definitely going to need to use parts of them for the greater whole, but using the entirety of them was counterintuitive. After all, while Jonathan had been very good at lying, he had also been beyond slow. So, trying to use everything from his one gleaning, into say, a pair of boots that made me faster, was only going to end in disaster.
But, if I used the speed of, say a hummingbird, or a pigeon, then that would change things, now, wouldn't it?
So, with a sigh, I closed my eyes and began the long process of looking through my gleamings and breaking them down to their most basic principles, searching for what I needed for what I had in mind.
The core of this, of course, would be Wanda. Her power, the ability to weave pure darkness into just about anything, was going to be the foundation of this artefact.
As far as weapons go, I was more than fine. No, I needed protection, something to make sure that I was able to survive.
I… did not have nearly enough gleanings to make a full set of armor.
But, the only saving grace in this shitstorm of a sky, was that I already had something that could side step that.
Wanda's power, the damn thing that her shard had 'given' her when she had 'broken', was the ability to gather darkness and form it into whatever shape she wished. She hadn't had much time to train with it beyond knowing the simplest usage, but she had stabbed or clubbed enough Empire gang members on her way out.
There had been a lot of blood, hard not to when she stabbed her main captor a good 10 or 15 times with a dagger made of pure darkness, but there had also been a… chill around the wounds. As if someone had flash froze it.
So, the darkness was doing more than just cutting or crushing things, it was absorbing the heat and producing a chill.
Evening out my breathing, distancing myself from the emotions of the gleanings flowing through my soul, I began to focus on Wanda's.
She had been a mess during her death. Days of hellish captivity had torn apart the confidence and hope that had once shown through her life. For years, she'd dreamed of getting a scholarship out of town, getting her family out of Brockton and actually living with some form of relief when she could finally get her mother's papers underway for citizenship. There had even been tentative offers and scouts that had contacted her family.
Offers that would never be taken.
Yet, there was a determination there in this girl. A will that, while broken, would never bow down to anyone again. And, while Hookwolf had definitely killed her, she at least made sure that he wouldn't forget her when she managed to cut into him with one of her swords of surging darkness.
I focus the gleamings on the image in my mind, a necklace around my neck, focusing her determination into the weave of gleamings that slowly worked their way into a new layer of my soul. Next, I added in Jonathan's ability to lie his way out of anything, deception and sheer skullduggery. Every little lie that the various people said, every scam that Nick the petty thief pulled woven together into the tapestry that I was slowly building. Well, slowly at first.
As time went on, and I began to understand the complexity of weaving a new part of my soul, I began to speed up, the process becoming more and more ingrained into who I was.
By the time I was done with the basis of the weaving, the sun had set, and I had to crawl out of my little cave to the perplexed looks of my friends. I gave them both a big smile, patting Judith on the head, which she growled at me for, and giving Leo a hug and kiss on the cheek as he did the same to me before we dug into dinner.
After sleeping, I dove back into my little cave, smiling as the new weave of my soul had settled nicely into its outer layer, before I began to weave back into it again.
Next, came strength. Jonathan's tenacity of staying up late long nights, the sturdiness of his body that hadn't gotten sick in years, Lee, Wendy's father, who had busted his butt for decades in hard conditions, all for the effort to make sure that his children would live a better life than he ever did.
The agility of a cat that had died a few blocks away, the sheer speed of mosquitoes, each one barely enough for a single thread of the weave, but in concert with the swarm that died on a daily basis, they were more than enough.
On, and on I went through the day, each new weave a brand-new possibility, a strengthening of one aspect or other.
I skipped eating on Saturday, would have skipped going to the restroom too if nature didn't call, when I finally stopped.
It had taken quite a few gleanings, but it was done.
With a smile on my face, I felt the new tapestry that dotted my soul begin to settle and went to bed again.
First thing I did in the morning, after answering the waterfalls call, was stare into the mirror, ignoring my bedhead, and manifesting my brand-new artefact.
It looked like crystallized darkness, a ring with ringed runes carved into the jewel, as a single white stone seemed to glow in the center of the jewelry.
And I felt it. The shadow. The darkness around the room.
With but a thought, I imbued the shadows around my arm, pure darkness coating them with what seemed like gauntlets of steel scales, the tips clawed, yet moving without a sound.
The smile on my face wasn't one that Mia Itzel would have worn, not even one that Marian Macuta would have worn. No, a demon wore that bloodthirsty smile.
And I was going to quench its thirst with what little retribution I could bring to bear.
And here we all are. I wrote this a lot faster than I thought I was going to. Guess Mia was screaming in my head louder than I thought she was going to be. Now, I doubt most of you have noticed, but the title of all my chapters have been after song names that I listen to while writing these, specifically songs that I feel resonate to the chapter that I am writing.
And, with this one 200CP perk Mia is now capable of a lot more shit than she could before. This is because, while 600CP perks tend to be the ticket items to large scale stuff, most jumps have the 100-400CP perks be the actual means of making them.
Best example is between Leo and Mia. Leo is absolutely capable of making some of the most world changing technology with his Inventor perk, but he lacks the actual means of making any of them without time, training, and materials, which is why he needs Mia to be the hands. Now, I hope that you all enjoyed.
