A Rusty Will 2.3
CalumTraveler
Age Raveler
- Location
- Corner of No and Where.
Finally got this section written out. Getting the right information out in the right way was pretty difficult on this for some reason.
A Rusty Will. 2.3
--
Protectorate New York Headquarters. 1996.
"HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ARMSMASTER!" Poppers went off, streamers and confetti flew, and someone had one of those stupid paper-tube-noise makers.
What even were those things called?
Armsmaster honestly did not care. At the moment, his emotions were torn between, "What the hell did you do to my lab, MP!?" and "Is that a CAR?"
He settled with the latter.
"Is that a..?"
"Pontiac Trans-Am!" Mouse Protector beamed at him. "I figured you could use a hobby outside of tinkering field stuff, so I got you a fixer-upper to tinker with at home! Well, I say 'I' but mainly I just signed the paperwork and teleported it in here!" The other Wards, the newer members and the recently graduated, all smiled at him from behind their masks. "Everyone pitched in the money for it, but Velocity was the one who finally found it!" Said cape gave a small salute upon hearing his name.
He couldn't help but to stare at the the black painted car- and it had clearly been painted very recently. He could still smell the paint on it. It was from that TV show that Mouse had suggested he watch for inspiration at one point.
Naturally, he'd written off almost all of the ideas in it were implausible. There was no way he could ever figure out a way to do half the things that the car did in the show- except for maybe an ejector seat. But who would use one of those in real life? And while he could maybe, one day, figure out the "molecular shell", it and the tinkertech A.I. meant to go inside the car were just the most implausible of them all, having nothing at all to do with his efficiency specialty.
At least, that was what he'd said. Still, he liked the show on a conceptual level. The idea of a Tinker making such a perfectly efficient piece of technology appealed to him on some level. Mouse Protector had caught him watching the show on break on more than a few occasions. Evidently, enough times to give her this idea for his Wards Graduation present.
Finally, after what felt like minutes but was more than likely seconds, he said, "Thanks, everyone."
"Green Light," Miss Militia suddenly said out of turn.
"What?"
--
"I said- it's a Green Light!" Dragon repeated, shaking me out of that memory.
"Right, right," and I pull through the intersection. Damn it, I haven't had a flashback like that in years.
"Are you alright? You zoned out when I asked you why the engine sounded weird." Dragon asked while we accelerated back to the speed limit. The engine made the same roaring sound all my motorcycles did. Thankfully, there weren't too many people out on the road today, mainly because most people still had their cars in the shop after their Coil powered Auto-Safety drivers crashed in the black out.
Truly, it was the Auto Industry who benefited greatly from this most recent catastrophe.
"Ah, well, I was just trying to figure out how to describe how it worked without confusing you," it was a lie.
"Just tell me then," Dragon insisted. "If you lose me, I'll ask for clarification."
"Okay," I steel myself as we slow to another red light. What was with the timers today? There wasn't even anyone in any of the other directions! "First, tell me what it sounds like on start up."
"Um," Dragon paused, replayed her memories of the engine starting up, then said, "Like a High Pitched squeal being run through a cheese grater." ...What? That was the first time I'd ever heard it described like that. "It doesn't sound like a regular Coil Engine everyone else uses- those are almost silent. And it doesn't sound like a gasoline engine either, those are loud, but not AS loud as yours."
That, I could work with.
"That's because it's my own design," I answer. "Old gas engines are really inefficient at fuel consumption. And Coil engines..." I trail off on that tangent.
"You don't use them," Dragon finished for me. I just nod in response. Finally, the light turns green again, and we proceed on wards.
"What I use is similar in size to the Coil powered engines- I can't help that when it comes to being efficient, unfortunately," I explain. "The same engine can fit in all my bikes and even this car."
"Wow," Dragon sounds surprised at that. "That is pretty small."
"Fast, though," I go on to explain the technical details of how. The tempered metals designed to pull in air from the surrounding environment and use the raw oxygen as fuel while filtering out all the pollutants and other various chemicals from that air, and refining that into a secondary byproduct that can be used as an accelerant to give extra speed.
What surprises me, however, is how Dragon actually seems to understand some of the more convoluted parts of Tinkertech- the parts that everyone in the Cape community had come to call "Black Boxed"- and then even suggested an improvement for the booster refinement, one that could make it act as back-up battery source.
"I'd rather just use a regular car battery for that kind of thing," I decline. "As a fuel source that gets burned, people are fine with it, but pushing that into electricity generation veers a little too close to the Coils for Protectorate Energy's liking."
"Huh?" She blinks.
"Did you ever wonder why Protectorate Energy hates the Illegal Coils so much as to offer a permanent bounty of any and all Illegal Coils brought to them?" I ask.
"It's because they're unrestricted and therefore unstable, correct?" Dragon guesses.
"Partly that, yes," I pause to make a right turn. "Mostly, though, it's because they hate being in the dark about what power sources people are using."
"Oh, right," She nods, somewhat glumly at that, "the report mechanism."
The Report Mechanism- a hidden feature in Legal Coils that the general population is unaware of. It's a feature that, when something strange happens to a Legal Coil, it writes up a report on the incident and broadcasts that file straight to the nearest P.R. Tower. Usually, this sort of thing only happened if someone tampered with a Legal Coil, or used an Illegal Coil in front of a Legal Coil... or even if someone placed a Legal Coil inside illegal technology like an explosive device.
"Most Collectors in the business find it a distasteful, if a somewhat useful tool to track down criminals." I tell her. "Personally, I just saw it as another reason to not use the damned things."
We sit in silence for a moment, then she asks, "So what does that have to do with you not turning your engines into batteries?"
I restrain that twitch of annoyance down to the barest flexing of my left thumb.
"What it has to do with it is that they don't like Tinkers making tech that's a direct competitor with their Coils," I clarify. "As long as I'm using that tech as a motor engine, I'm fine. But if I bump it up to electricity generation, I run into trouble. That's why my place is run on an old gasoline generator. It's the best I've got to stay off the grid, and even then, they don't want most people using Gasoline to do that. Which is why they've taxed it so high anymore. They want people using Coils and Coils alone. Not Pre-Cape tech, most certainly not Tinker-tech. Just Coils." It's disgusting, really, how Orwellian it's all become.
"They're that strict about it?" Dragon asks.
"They've sent me out on retrieval missions for some criminal Tinkers who made stuff like that," I tell her. "The worst time was that kid who just wanted to make a hover board. He didn't even know just how strong that power core of his even was." At her incredulous look, I add, "Even the Rangers are walking on a tight rope. It can't be proven what power source they use, so the Protectorate can't hire the Collection House out to take their power source away."
"That's even worse than I'd though," Dragon frowned. "I suppose that explains why..." she trails off.
"Why?" I ask as we pull to yet another red light.
"Why Father made a jamming device in the first place," she finally continues. "The Coil that cause the blackout was first made to power the machine to keep us hidden from 'prying eyes.'"
Another moment of silence passes. Come on Red Light. Turn already.
"Why did it explode like it did?" I finally ask when the light stubbornly remains red.
"It was unstable," Dragon explains, "always sparking and needing to be re-calibrated while in use just to prevent it from melting down." She sniffs. "Father got sick from repairing it so many times in just the first year alone. I... That's why I was out trying to get those Illegal Coils the other night." She turns to look at me. "So we could power the jammer safely and we could shut that damned menace down to properly fix it."
"But you were too late." It wasn't much of a guess at this point.
"I don't think it did what Father expected it to," she admits. "He was always afraid of a Dimensional Manifestation, like what happened at Newfoundland." I barely manage to restrain a twitch to just my entire left arm that time... She notices. "You were there," It's barely a whisper, and it's clear to tell she's surprised. "I'm sorry."
"There's no need to be."
Neither of us say anything after that as we continue to wait. And when the light finally turns green again, we continue on in silence until we reach our destination.
--
The March is a place I'd never consider bringing a robot to under any normal circumstances.
These were anything but ordinary circumstances.
We pass by the robot fighting ring on our way in, Dragon looking nervous and paranoid that she'll be seen with a car battery attached to her chest. Nobody pays us any mind, however. They're all focused on the current battle on stage.
Grievous Error is battling against a small humanoid robot- once upon a time it had likely been your average house-maid robot, but had now been modified to have limbs that glowed with a neon yellow glow. It also had a scorpion like tail on the back.
The tiny David versus the towering Goliath- it was no wonder everyone was enthralled by the fight. Everyone loved rooting for the underdogs.
We pause as the crowd gives a roar as the tiny scorpion-tail girl-like bot manages to get on Grievous Error's back and delivers a startling execution by impaling its stinger tail into the base of the head, where the fragile neck connections are.
-"WOOOAAAH!"- The announcer cries out, -"LEET'S ZESK-BOT JUST BRUTALLY DECAPITATED RUNE'S GRIEVOUS ERROR!"-
"AAAAH! GRIEVOUS!! You're gonna PAY FOR THAT, LEET!" The owner of Grievous Error roars out in her shrill, teenaged voice.
"HAHAA!" a guy's voice, a few years older going by the sound, laughs in return. "You'll never beat the awesome speed of my Zesk-Bot!"
"W...What is this place?" Dragon asks as we resume walking towards the stairwell.
"The front for the Collection House," I explain as we climb up the stairs. "You'll never find a more wretched hive of people who have way too much spare time on their hands."
There's a strangled roar from Grievous' broken voice box, sounding much more like a retching cough, followed by a loud thud, and Leet screaming, "ZESK-CHAN! NOOO!"
"I TOLD YOU!" Rune shouted back in glee. "I TOLD YOU ABOUT THE PAYBACK, LEET!"
That poor guy just never learned.
--
Amelia was waiting for us once more, however, this time, whatever snarky remark she had prepared for me evaporated at the sight of Dragon hooked up to a Car battery.
Instead, she reached out and touched Dragon by the arm... then she jerked back with a startled: "W-What the hell is this?! Some kind of Cyborg?!"
"This is the girl I was telling your father about," I say. "Is the lab ready?" Amelia just mutely nods and points towards her father's office. "Thank you." I say, and we head off.
"L-Lab?" Dragon stuttered in surprise. "What Lab!?"
"Just because I can't use exotic power sources for my house, doesn't mean I can't make them," is all I say before pausing in front of the locked door, this time with a double red light overhead. "Really, Marquis?" Locked *AND* sound muted. I wonder who he was talking to in there.
"What... What did that girl do when she touched me?" Dragon asked.
"Amelia?" I chuckle. "She's a Biokinetic like her father, aimed more towards a generic bio-manipulation rather than a dedicated bone specialty. It lets her see the whole layout of a human body, and make subtle improvements. Nothing major, but if it were any stronger than general buffs, she could be the best Doctor there ever was."
"Why did she act like that, then?" Dragon asked. "I'm a robot, she shouldn't have seen anything, in that case."
"Who knows. Maybe you're close enough to organic that her power let her see something," I shrug. We wait there for a few more moments before the two lights on the door finally turn off, and we enter to the sound of:
"Freaking Aleph Bureaucrats," Marquis was grumbling from his desk.
"Something the matter?" I ask.
"Oh, no, just that same guy from a couple days ago," Marquis shakes his head.
"The one who sent the robot proxy?" I ask.
"Yeah, that cheap-skate." Marquis changes subjects though, upon seeing Dragon. "Oh... so this is the wonder girl who made you change your payment request?"
"Her name is Dragon," I introduce. "Like I told you, she's wanting to become a Collector."
"And the... ah, unusual power source?" Marquis asks, regarding the car battery. "Artificial heart, right?" He makes it clear by the tone of his voice that he knows it's not an artificial heart.
"That's right," I say. "I'm not going to work with someone who could drop dead just because of a Coil-directed EMP."
"And it has nothing to do with your dislike of the Coils?" Marquis smirks. That bastard.
"No, but the blackout reaffirmed to me that Coils are unreliable." I say, "It was only a matter of time before someone figured out how to knock the things out of commission on a wide scale. If not Lung and his giant unknown bomb, then someone else."
"Fair enough," Marquis nods, then presses a few switches to set up the light warnings. "Oh!" he says once he's done, "Miss Washington came by yesterday looking for you. Said she couldn't get through on your phone?"
"My landline still works," I shrug. "But if she was trying to get through to my cell she's out of luck until I get it fixed. That got fried in the blackout too."
"Really now?" Marquis stands up from his desk and moves over towards a certain corner of the room. "And you're going to recreate that power source...?" He starts pulling the rug up, leaving off the implication of whom that power source would go to.
"No," I shake my head. "That was something I'd built a long time ago with resources I don't have access to anymore... and it was always too close to a Coil for my liking anyways." I look to Dragon and try to give her a reassuring smile. From the way she flinches, I assume I failed at that. "No, I'm going to make something better."
"Well well," Marquis finishes pulling up the rug to reveal a large section of floor that was replaced by bone. A flash of his power re-shapes it into a staircase descending downwards into the building. "I love that you've finally decided to give yourself over to the Dark Side, Wallis, but what's brought this on so suddenly?" He looks at me even as I head towards that newly formed staircase. I don't say anything. "Ah... Colin?" He tries again as I begin to descend.
I still say nothing.
After all, if I'm going to be breaking the "law," I might as well do it in style.
--
A.N.: This has always been part of the plan for this arc, just been a pain to get written. Awkward car scenes are awkward, and I ended up struggling on that part the most.
A Rusty Will. 2.3
--
Protectorate New York Headquarters. 1996.
"HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ARMSMASTER!" Poppers went off, streamers and confetti flew, and someone had one of those stupid paper-tube-noise makers.
What even were those things called?
Armsmaster honestly did not care. At the moment, his emotions were torn between, "What the hell did you do to my lab, MP!?" and "Is that a CAR?"
He settled with the latter.
"Is that a..?"
"Pontiac Trans-Am!" Mouse Protector beamed at him. "I figured you could use a hobby outside of tinkering field stuff, so I got you a fixer-upper to tinker with at home! Well, I say 'I' but mainly I just signed the paperwork and teleported it in here!" The other Wards, the newer members and the recently graduated, all smiled at him from behind their masks. "Everyone pitched in the money for it, but Velocity was the one who finally found it!" Said cape gave a small salute upon hearing his name.
He couldn't help but to stare at the the black painted car- and it had clearly been painted very recently. He could still smell the paint on it. It was from that TV show that Mouse had suggested he watch for inspiration at one point.
Naturally, he'd written off almost all of the ideas in it were implausible. There was no way he could ever figure out a way to do half the things that the car did in the show- except for maybe an ejector seat. But who would use one of those in real life? And while he could maybe, one day, figure out the "molecular shell", it and the tinkertech A.I. meant to go inside the car were just the most implausible of them all, having nothing at all to do with his efficiency specialty.
At least, that was what he'd said. Still, he liked the show on a conceptual level. The idea of a Tinker making such a perfectly efficient piece of technology appealed to him on some level. Mouse Protector had caught him watching the show on break on more than a few occasions. Evidently, enough times to give her this idea for his Wards Graduation present.
Finally, after what felt like minutes but was more than likely seconds, he said, "Thanks, everyone."
"Green Light," Miss Militia suddenly said out of turn.
"What?"
--
"I said- it's a Green Light!" Dragon repeated, shaking me out of that memory.
"Right, right," and I pull through the intersection. Damn it, I haven't had a flashback like that in years.
"Are you alright? You zoned out when I asked you why the engine sounded weird." Dragon asked while we accelerated back to the speed limit. The engine made the same roaring sound all my motorcycles did. Thankfully, there weren't too many people out on the road today, mainly because most people still had their cars in the shop after their Coil powered Auto-Safety drivers crashed in the black out.
Truly, it was the Auto Industry who benefited greatly from this most recent catastrophe.
"Ah, well, I was just trying to figure out how to describe how it worked without confusing you," it was a lie.
"Just tell me then," Dragon insisted. "If you lose me, I'll ask for clarification."
"Okay," I steel myself as we slow to another red light. What was with the timers today? There wasn't even anyone in any of the other directions! "First, tell me what it sounds like on start up."
"Um," Dragon paused, replayed her memories of the engine starting up, then said, "Like a High Pitched squeal being run through a cheese grater." ...What? That was the first time I'd ever heard it described like that. "It doesn't sound like a regular Coil Engine everyone else uses- those are almost silent. And it doesn't sound like a gasoline engine either, those are loud, but not AS loud as yours."
That, I could work with.
"That's because it's my own design," I answer. "Old gas engines are really inefficient at fuel consumption. And Coil engines..." I trail off on that tangent.
"You don't use them," Dragon finished for me. I just nod in response. Finally, the light turns green again, and we proceed on wards.
"What I use is similar in size to the Coil powered engines- I can't help that when it comes to being efficient, unfortunately," I explain. "The same engine can fit in all my bikes and even this car."
"Wow," Dragon sounds surprised at that. "That is pretty small."
"Fast, though," I go on to explain the technical details of how. The tempered metals designed to pull in air from the surrounding environment and use the raw oxygen as fuel while filtering out all the pollutants and other various chemicals from that air, and refining that into a secondary byproduct that can be used as an accelerant to give extra speed.
What surprises me, however, is how Dragon actually seems to understand some of the more convoluted parts of Tinkertech- the parts that everyone in the Cape community had come to call "Black Boxed"- and then even suggested an improvement for the booster refinement, one that could make it act as back-up battery source.
"I'd rather just use a regular car battery for that kind of thing," I decline. "As a fuel source that gets burned, people are fine with it, but pushing that into electricity generation veers a little too close to the Coils for Protectorate Energy's liking."
"Huh?" She blinks.
"Did you ever wonder why Protectorate Energy hates the Illegal Coils so much as to offer a permanent bounty of any and all Illegal Coils brought to them?" I ask.
"It's because they're unrestricted and therefore unstable, correct?" Dragon guesses.
"Partly that, yes," I pause to make a right turn. "Mostly, though, it's because they hate being in the dark about what power sources people are using."
"Oh, right," She nods, somewhat glumly at that, "the report mechanism."
The Report Mechanism- a hidden feature in Legal Coils that the general population is unaware of. It's a feature that, when something strange happens to a Legal Coil, it writes up a report on the incident and broadcasts that file straight to the nearest P.R. Tower. Usually, this sort of thing only happened if someone tampered with a Legal Coil, or used an Illegal Coil in front of a Legal Coil... or even if someone placed a Legal Coil inside illegal technology like an explosive device.
"Most Collectors in the business find it a distasteful, if a somewhat useful tool to track down criminals." I tell her. "Personally, I just saw it as another reason to not use the damned things."
We sit in silence for a moment, then she asks, "So what does that have to do with you not turning your engines into batteries?"
I restrain that twitch of annoyance down to the barest flexing of my left thumb.
"What it has to do with it is that they don't like Tinkers making tech that's a direct competitor with their Coils," I clarify. "As long as I'm using that tech as a motor engine, I'm fine. But if I bump it up to electricity generation, I run into trouble. That's why my place is run on an old gasoline generator. It's the best I've got to stay off the grid, and even then, they don't want most people using Gasoline to do that. Which is why they've taxed it so high anymore. They want people using Coils and Coils alone. Not Pre-Cape tech, most certainly not Tinker-tech. Just Coils." It's disgusting, really, how Orwellian it's all become.
"They're that strict about it?" Dragon asks.
"They've sent me out on retrieval missions for some criminal Tinkers who made stuff like that," I tell her. "The worst time was that kid who just wanted to make a hover board. He didn't even know just how strong that power core of his even was." At her incredulous look, I add, "Even the Rangers are walking on a tight rope. It can't be proven what power source they use, so the Protectorate can't hire the Collection House out to take their power source away."
"That's even worse than I'd though," Dragon frowned. "I suppose that explains why..." she trails off.
"Why?" I ask as we pull to yet another red light.
"Why Father made a jamming device in the first place," she finally continues. "The Coil that cause the blackout was first made to power the machine to keep us hidden from 'prying eyes.'"
Another moment of silence passes. Come on Red Light. Turn already.
"Why did it explode like it did?" I finally ask when the light stubbornly remains red.
"It was unstable," Dragon explains, "always sparking and needing to be re-calibrated while in use just to prevent it from melting down." She sniffs. "Father got sick from repairing it so many times in just the first year alone. I... That's why I was out trying to get those Illegal Coils the other night." She turns to look at me. "So we could power the jammer safely and we could shut that damned menace down to properly fix it."
"But you were too late." It wasn't much of a guess at this point.
"I don't think it did what Father expected it to," she admits. "He was always afraid of a Dimensional Manifestation, like what happened at Newfoundland." I barely manage to restrain a twitch to just my entire left arm that time... She notices. "You were there," It's barely a whisper, and it's clear to tell she's surprised. "I'm sorry."
"There's no need to be."
Neither of us say anything after that as we continue to wait. And when the light finally turns green again, we continue on in silence until we reach our destination.
--
The March is a place I'd never consider bringing a robot to under any normal circumstances.
These were anything but ordinary circumstances.
We pass by the robot fighting ring on our way in, Dragon looking nervous and paranoid that she'll be seen with a car battery attached to her chest. Nobody pays us any mind, however. They're all focused on the current battle on stage.
Grievous Error is battling against a small humanoid robot- once upon a time it had likely been your average house-maid robot, but had now been modified to have limbs that glowed with a neon yellow glow. It also had a scorpion like tail on the back.
The tiny David versus the towering Goliath- it was no wonder everyone was enthralled by the fight. Everyone loved rooting for the underdogs.
We pause as the crowd gives a roar as the tiny scorpion-tail girl-like bot manages to get on Grievous Error's back and delivers a startling execution by impaling its stinger tail into the base of the head, where the fragile neck connections are.
-"WOOOAAAH!"- The announcer cries out, -"LEET'S ZESK-BOT JUST BRUTALLY DECAPITATED RUNE'S GRIEVOUS ERROR!"-
"AAAAH! GRIEVOUS!! You're gonna PAY FOR THAT, LEET!" The owner of Grievous Error roars out in her shrill, teenaged voice.
"HAHAA!" a guy's voice, a few years older going by the sound, laughs in return. "You'll never beat the awesome speed of my Zesk-Bot!"
"W...What is this place?" Dragon asks as we resume walking towards the stairwell.
"The front for the Collection House," I explain as we climb up the stairs. "You'll never find a more wretched hive of people who have way too much spare time on their hands."
There's a strangled roar from Grievous' broken voice box, sounding much more like a retching cough, followed by a loud thud, and Leet screaming, "ZESK-CHAN! NOOO!"
"I TOLD YOU!" Rune shouted back in glee. "I TOLD YOU ABOUT THE PAYBACK, LEET!"
That poor guy just never learned.
--
Amelia was waiting for us once more, however, this time, whatever snarky remark she had prepared for me evaporated at the sight of Dragon hooked up to a Car battery.
Instead, she reached out and touched Dragon by the arm... then she jerked back with a startled: "W-What the hell is this?! Some kind of Cyborg?!"
"This is the girl I was telling your father about," I say. "Is the lab ready?" Amelia just mutely nods and points towards her father's office. "Thank you." I say, and we head off.
"L-Lab?" Dragon stuttered in surprise. "What Lab!?"
"Just because I can't use exotic power sources for my house, doesn't mean I can't make them," is all I say before pausing in front of the locked door, this time with a double red light overhead. "Really, Marquis?" Locked *AND* sound muted. I wonder who he was talking to in there.
"What... What did that girl do when she touched me?" Dragon asked.
"Amelia?" I chuckle. "She's a Biokinetic like her father, aimed more towards a generic bio-manipulation rather than a dedicated bone specialty. It lets her see the whole layout of a human body, and make subtle improvements. Nothing major, but if it were any stronger than general buffs, she could be the best Doctor there ever was."
"Why did she act like that, then?" Dragon asked. "I'm a robot, she shouldn't have seen anything, in that case."
"Who knows. Maybe you're close enough to organic that her power let her see something," I shrug. We wait there for a few more moments before the two lights on the door finally turn off, and we enter to the sound of:
"Freaking Aleph Bureaucrats," Marquis was grumbling from his desk.
"Something the matter?" I ask.
"Oh, no, just that same guy from a couple days ago," Marquis shakes his head.
"The one who sent the robot proxy?" I ask.
"Yeah, that cheap-skate." Marquis changes subjects though, upon seeing Dragon. "Oh... so this is the wonder girl who made you change your payment request?"
"Her name is Dragon," I introduce. "Like I told you, she's wanting to become a Collector."
"And the... ah, unusual power source?" Marquis asks, regarding the car battery. "Artificial heart, right?" He makes it clear by the tone of his voice that he knows it's not an artificial heart.
"That's right," I say. "I'm not going to work with someone who could drop dead just because of a Coil-directed EMP."
"And it has nothing to do with your dislike of the Coils?" Marquis smirks. That bastard.
"No, but the blackout reaffirmed to me that Coils are unreliable." I say, "It was only a matter of time before someone figured out how to knock the things out of commission on a wide scale. If not Lung and his giant unknown bomb, then someone else."
"Fair enough," Marquis nods, then presses a few switches to set up the light warnings. "Oh!" he says once he's done, "Miss Washington came by yesterday looking for you. Said she couldn't get through on your phone?"
"My landline still works," I shrug. "But if she was trying to get through to my cell she's out of luck until I get it fixed. That got fried in the blackout too."
"Really now?" Marquis stands up from his desk and moves over towards a certain corner of the room. "And you're going to recreate that power source...?" He starts pulling the rug up, leaving off the implication of whom that power source would go to.
"No," I shake my head. "That was something I'd built a long time ago with resources I don't have access to anymore... and it was always too close to a Coil for my liking anyways." I look to Dragon and try to give her a reassuring smile. From the way she flinches, I assume I failed at that. "No, I'm going to make something better."
"Well well," Marquis finishes pulling up the rug to reveal a large section of floor that was replaced by bone. A flash of his power re-shapes it into a staircase descending downwards into the building. "I love that you've finally decided to give yourself over to the Dark Side, Wallis, but what's brought this on so suddenly?" He looks at me even as I head towards that newly formed staircase. I don't say anything. "Ah... Colin?" He tries again as I begin to descend.
I still say nothing.
After all, if I'm going to be breaking the "law," I might as well do it in style.
--
A.N.: This has always been part of the plan for this arc, just been a pain to get written. Awkward car scenes are awkward, and I ended up struggling on that part the most.
