Nice to see you back. Hope you keep with it. It is a very interesting MC with a unique perspective of the world. Just what he has to deal with that I myself take for granted in the physical sense while his mind is still sharp (mostly) really shows how he has to act and think differently from even a moderately unfit person just to survive each day. While the readers know there is hope for a cure, if he can hold on long enough.
Hope to read more.
A/N: Post 2/2, so go read the last chapter if you haven't already!
5: A Tentative Future
I frowned at yet another failed connection to a large star, a frustratingly common occurrence at this point.
It had triggered mere moments after I'd been left alone in a comfortable break room, having requested some time to recover after both the testing and the subsequent meeting with the lawyer and signing.
At least I had some time to relax and process the insanity of my day. I'd gained a handful of things today, all of them at least interesting, if not immediately useful. However, easily the best part of the day was that medication I'd made with neoalchemy.
Man…
I couldn't even begin to describe it, the feeling of my mind simply working. I'd fought through years and years of frustration and pain, pushed myself into a horrendous migraine more times than I could count, hit that unforgiving mental wall and had no choice but to give up lest I bring myself more pain… just to do something as simple as read.
It was confining, constricting and soul destroying in all the worst ways. Wading through thick, putrid water, hoping beyond hope that the water would soon run clear, for it to only get worse.
And so, here I lay, tired and exhausted from the day's ordeals, despite the other activities I had ahead of me. Normally my mind would feel thick, as though filled with mud, but instead I could simply lay still and dream.
Like birds through a clear sky, my thoughts streaked across my mind unimpeded, effortlessly and without hesitation. Internally I chided myself, knowing that while I'd managed to remove the cloying fog from my mind, it did not make using it any less energy intensive.
However, I simply apologised to my future self. I could think. I'd gladly face the consequences later, and I had no doubts that it'd still be worth it.
I felt a tug from my power, pulling me into my mind with much less ferocity than it had previously. Instead of a grown man, it felt more like a child pulling with all their might. Still strong, but potentially more ignorable than before—an interesting side-benefit, I supposed.
My power extended itself out into the sea of stars, quickly connecting to one of the smaller specimens and dragged it back and into my mind.
'Psions?' I thought dumbly as the information flowed into me in an overwhelming but more manageable stream than prior cases.
It was a 'hardtech' sensor, specifically for the use case of detecting Psions within a five-metre radius. 'Psion' seemed to both refer a person capable of wielding supernatural powers of some sort, as well as the sub-quantum particles they were named from.
Simply put, it was a bizarre piece of technology. And that is what it was, an entirely technological piece of equipment, without reliance on any bio technological or nigh-magical elements that would've made the thing all but conventional tinker tech in its reproducibility. It was also bogglingly advanced.
I'm not sure it beat out the Cornucopia Machine in sheer complexity, but this 'Psi-Detector' was capable of sensing fluctuations in the concentration of a sub-quantum particle within a five-metre radius and within the formfactor of a generously sized book.
Immediately my mind went to Armsmaster who seemed to have a thing for high-power, high-resolution sensors. He'd tried his best to get his sensors to pick up my Life Energy, and had failed to do every time, despite feeling a physical effect when I'd all but forcefully pushed the energy into his body.
Wait, does anyone's powers even make use of psions at all? All I knew was that theoretically it'd be an explanation for some power expressions, but the only way to definitively answer that question would be to build the thing, which… yeah, not happening for a bit. It was just too complicated and ultra-precise to be able to cobble together without significant infrastructure.
It did rely on sensing sub-quantum particles, after all.
In the end, I let my mind wander to other things, noting the sensor system down as something that'd be interesting to explore at a later date in lieu of more immediately practical things.
That was interesting. I actually had time now, maybe even a future, if you squinted a little. I still couldn't quite ease that roiling scepticism in my stomach, despite the fervent assurances of my supplied lawyer. No matter how cut and dry it all seemed, how clearly beneficial the deal I'd made was, the instinctive distrust made everything shine in the most unflattering ways it could.
But I had to take what I could at face value, or at least as it was stated in the contract, and so I had signed my name upon the dotted line. As soon as that paperwork was processed, I was officially a part of the Protectorate—an unassigned member for the moment.
That was part of the reason I'd been fine with signing the thing without first meeting the East-North-East branch's team. There was a distinction between being a Protectorate member and being a part of any particular branch. I imagine the paperwork would be a little cumbersome if you wanted to transition to another branch and, essentially, lost and then regained Protectorate member status for no real reason each time.
I mean, I was obligated to stay in the branch that managed my induction for a year, but if anything went catastrophically wrong, I could move just about anywhere I wanted, and I'd probably be given the okay with a reasonable case for it—as long as the local branch would take me or otherwise trade for me and the higher-ups have the go-ahead. The lawyer had actually explained how that all worked, and it'd seemed odd to me, almost like they were trading around players in a professional league sport or something.
Wasn't like it mattered to me, either way. I was staying in Brockton. Call it stubbornness, foolishness, or whatever you wanted, it was my home. A shitty, dangerous hellhole, but my shitty, dangerous hellhole.
A knock on the door of the break room broke me from my thoughts, and with a quick check of the clock on the wall, I realised it'd been almost an hour and a half since I finished up with the lawyers. Seems my rest time had come to an end.
"Come on in." I called, propping my upper back up on the armrest of the couch I'd been laying on, ignoring my weakly complaining muscles.
The doorknob turned, and in walked a man in a slightly darker than hot-rod red costume with racing stripes following the contours of his body along the skin-tight material, taking a detour to meet in a 'V' shape in the centre of his chest. He was wearing a helmet in the same colour too, reminiscent of a cycling helmet you might see in an Olympic cycling event, his eyes hidden beneath a visor much like Armsmaster's own helm.
"Hey there! James, is it?" He asked, a warm smile on visible part of his face, impeded a little by the slight discomfort in his tone.
After a moment's thought, I realised it was that I'd given a name, not a codename. Something I hadn't thought too much of, but apparently was weird enough that the hero in front of me was uncertain about using it.
"That's me," I said, scouring my mind for the hero's name, "Velocity, right?"
"Got it in one," he confirmed, lips twisting in amusement at the difficulty I had remembering him, but passing over it without comment, "I just heard that your lawyer submitted your papers. Glad to have you in the Protectorate."
"So sure it's gonna go through?" I asked jokingly, sitting up further and getting ready to leave the comforts of the couch behind for yet more walking.
"Almost certain." He replied as he moved into the room further, standing before me and extending a hand which I took, "Only cases I've ever seen get turned down were parahumans with rough histories and, even then, they usually end up in a rehabilitation programme instead. So I'd say it's a safe bet."
I chuckled lightly as I used the man's grip to pully myself to my feet, ending it with a firm handshake and a smile beneath my pathetic domino mask, "Well then, glad to be here. What do we have on the menu?"
"Well, since you signed right away instead of taking the tour first, we'll go straight for the interview with the head of the PRT and Protectorate leader, which is mostly a formality at the best of times. After that, we can do a tour of the PRT Headquarters if you feel up for it, or we could just head straight to the Protectorate Headquarters out in the bay." He said, shrugging his leanly muscled shoulders.
"I–"
My power pulled me in without warning at that very moment, extending toward and connecting with a small star, and as it flowed into me… I was filled with a strange sense of certainty.
Confidence, maybe.
"James?" Velocity called, his warm tone pulling me back solidly into the present, "Was that your power?"
"Ah, yeah…" I murmured, unable to break my firmly furrowed brow at the odd sensation that now filled me, "I got something new."
"Just like that?" Velocity asked, being pulled into my confusion, "What was it, some new tech?"
"No, I…" I frowned deeply as I tried to parse this new capability, "I think I can figure out what people want me to make them, regardless of what they say they want?"
Velocity stopped dead still, almost unnaturally so, "How?" He asked, and it wasn't incredulousness that coloured his tone, but instead seriousness.
"I have no idea." I responded, a little dazed, "I can't read minds, but I just… know. Supposedly experience?" I gave the hero a wan smile, frail in my confusion.
Eventually, after a protracted silence, Velocity broke it with a heavy sigh, rubbing his gloved fingers against his clean-shaven jaw, "Y'know I'm not sure I quite understood what having a Tinker Trump around was going to be like. We were spoiled with Dauntless, I swear."
"You don't have to tell me." I concurred, trying to understand what the hell I was going to even use that… sense on. It'll probably come in handy, but for now it just felt weird.
"Anyway, let's get a move on, the Director and Protectorate Leader are waiting on us, and neither tend to be the waiting type." He urged with a wry chuckle, and I nodded before following the man out the door to begin the journey, idly wondering if he too had an earpiece that his higher-ups could hear our conversation through.
I was giving myself a conniption with the incredibly random new abilities, which was only mildly soothed in knowing that the effect seemed to be universal at this point. I could only hope that the Protectorate didn't start to rethink their position on virtue of the unpredictability of my powers, or at least until I was already a proper member. At that point I'm not a problem, I'm their problem, and there was something to be said for the difference between those distinctions, minute as they were.
On another note, I was extremely glad I'd had the chance to make the mental clarity medicine earlier, because I had no doubt that right now, I'd be lying limp-bodied in the middle of the corridor. Letting myself get lost in my thoughts to ignore the whole-body exhaustion I was contending with was all I could do for the moment, but I internally groaned when I realised I'd need to ask them for a wheelchair to get me back out of the place.
What a pain in the ass.
It was only minutes later that we reached the door of the Director's office, having braved elevators and a short flight of stairs or two to get there. I felt absolutely trash, and I was very quickly reaching the point where I wouldn't be able to pep myself back up anymore, and the waxen guise of functionality would melt like Icarus' wings.
Velocity, bless the man's heart, gave me all the time I needed to collect myself, not even giving an odd look when I crouched to sit on my haunches and recover my breath and ease the dizziness threatening my balance. After a few more moments, I pushed myself to my feet with more effort than I'd have liked, then took the doorhandle in hand and turned.
Walking into the prim and proper room, I immediately took note of the familiar Protectorate Leader, quickly offering the man a nod and receiving one back, and then the short and uncomfortably overweight woman that I'd seen on TV in passing—Emily Piggot, her door and desk had read.
"James, thank you for coming, I am Director Emily Piggot." She greeted with a dry smile that held no good humour or just about any friendliness at all, just purely professional courtesy it seemed.
"Thank you for having me." I replied, as if following a script.
"It's great to hear that you've already signed the Protectorate contract," she continued peering at me with steel-grey eyes, piercing in a way that was fairly uncomfortable, "Many need to be convinced quite thoroughly before they sign, or give as much as their first names."
"The prospective wards especially," Velocity interjected gently, closing the door behind me as I sat in a thankfully comfortable chair across the desk from the harsh woman, "they typically insist on meeting the other wards and figuring out the social dynamics. We just made it standard practice at some point."
"Prospective full members usually wait until this very meeting before making their own choices." Armsmaster supplied before returning the floor to Director Piggot once again.
"This leaves me a little curious," she paused, giving me enough time to note her distinct lack of curiosity, "why are you so eager to join? We're used to a quite a lot of resistance, so it's a rarity that someone might make our jobs easier."
An answer flashed into my mind, bee-lining straight for my mouth, but I held back and practiced a little caution. This might not be a straight test, but the woman clearly wasn't kind, and was absolutely intimidating, as bizarre as that sounded with her description. She seemed no-nonsense, but I'm pretty sure that got bundled with having zero capacity for humour or gentleness. She was just about as severe as they get, and I pitied the poor fool that pissed her off.
"Safety, security, stability." I responded finally. "As I am now, I'm not able to defend myself in the slightest, the apartment I live in could be broken into with a good kick at the front door, and my health doesn't allow me to earn money to pay rent."
"Admirable." Director Piggot remarked, though her tone gave nothing away, reminding me of an interrogation more than a job interview, "However, if those were your goals, then why not the Empire, the Merchants, perhaps Faultline's Crew? They all offer a version of what you have come here for, especially a tinker."
I raised an eyebrow. She was playing devil's advocate for the gangs? I mean, she wasn't wrong, not entirely…
"No they don't. They offer indentured servitude at best, slavery at worst. Barring maybe Faultline, I don't honestly know all that much about them other than they're mercenaries, I think. They'll give me the safety I desire at the cost of my agency and my morals. I've had my power for a day, and I can already tell how bad an idea it'd be for me to go to a gang—for me and everyone else." I said with a wry chuckle, finding myself just as humourless as the woman across from me.
"Your magic items?" Director Piggot asked, a clear prompt.
"Those, and others." I stated, leaving the handful of other truly worrying things in a nebulous limbo, acknowledging their existence but withholding exacting specifics, "Imagine the Empire with but with a pocket watch capable of slowing time to a near standstill while still being able to act—albeit with limited interaction, but plenty of time for Hookwolf to go from man to living blender."
"You said you were incapable of making your magical items?" The Director questioned, looking not in the least bit disturbed, but her eyes flicking subtly to the man standing behind me for some reason.
"Currently, yes. But I seriously doubt it'll stay that way, I can see some paths forwards already beginning to appear. As soon as the gang with my leash realises the way my power works, I'm being confined to a basement and I don't think there's any amount of morality that'll stop me from breaking under torture, or just a master controlling me somehow. I'm pretty sure I'd rather die." I stated finally, locking eyes with the woman across from me who was coming close enough to accusing me of blatant stupidity that it was starting to actually ruffle my feathers.
Piggot held my gaze for quite some time, shifting ever so slightly to assess my disgruntled expression, then finally relaxing back into her chair which creaked quietly under her weight, her expression easing into something less impassive and more merely professional and weary.
"Good, you have a decent head on your shoulders, at least." She grumbled, followed by a sigh, "It isn't all that rare for a potentially valuable tinker to have… 'shopped around' before meeting with the Protectorate, and end up running from them. They also tend to need to have this information coaxed from them."
"No, I haven't met with any groups or gangs other than yourselves." I stated, my tone a little peeved at the insinuation, before pausing, "Unless you count Panacea as meeting New Wave."
Director Piggot merely snorted, but merely moved on with a wave of her meaty hand, "Your 'magic items', are they as powerful as you're implying, or are there more checks and balances than you've let on?"
"Honestly?" I began, hesitating and glancing between the Director and Armsmaster before answering, "I have my suspicions they might be more powerful than I properly understand. I have schematics for them all in my head, the exhaustive list of materials, specifications, and other crucial information, but it's pretty difficult to infer how each of them operate practically. Especially the time watch—I have no idea just how limited physical interaction is with time slowed down, and that is the make or break for how dangerous it is."
She gave a single, placid blink, and nodded, "Regardless, the time watch will be an interest point Protectorate wide, as there are vanishingly few parahuman powers that interact with time, or even go so far as to pretend at doing so. As such, I will pre-empt my colleagues and ask you whether you believe that the watch could be used to disarm a Gray Boy field."
I sighed, rubbing at my eyes and trying to pull up what I knew about Gray Boy. Ex-Slaughterhouse, hopefully very dead, and with that horrible time loop power that had people stuck in the same place for… God knows how many damn years at this point. Far as I could recall, no-one can enter the fields, but is that an effect of the time distortion, or an actual physical barrier of some sort?
"I could potentially slow time enough to halt the loop, and if I can bring another person with me into dilated time, they might be able to not die in the loop or alter their actions—if they have control of them—and leave the loop on their own. I don't know what stops someone from entering the loop in the first place. As of now, I'd only give a tentative maybe, but I imagine it'd take engineering a solution." I gave the woman an apologetic shrug.
Now that she'd made me aware of the loops, I could feel the topic making itself at home in the back of my mind, all but solidifying itself as a project I'd have to put effort towards in future. There was just something so beyond fucked about groups of people stuck in an unavoidable, unending maelstrom of senseless torture that compelled a small part of me to hope that the next thing my power grants me with be a perfect solution.
"I see, if anything on that front changes, let me know immediately. The Protectorate is very interested in putting a stop to those abominations, and not many expenses will be spared for a reasonable shot at doing so." She insisted, tone laden with heavy emotion that I couldn't help but find intriguing.
"Of cour–"
And I was thrust into my mind, watching as a connection was made with a sizeable star, and felt as real true proficiency filled me.
I'd never particularly cared for cars especially since I'd been a little preoccupied with my inability to sit up straight for greater than thirty minutes at a time and all—but now I understood. There was something positively electric about taking that old scrapheap that'd been sitting under a tarp in the garage and figuring out just how you were going to turn it into a supercar for a lark. The juxtaposition of a decades old car that'd been obsolete on arrival winning out against some supped up beast of a modern machine was just too funny to pass up.
I wasn't sure if that was even conventionally possible, but I sure as hell could do it now.
I broke myself from my thoughts only to realise that I was laughing, covering my face with a hand, as if to hide myself from the absurdity.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry." I apologised with a tired sigh, "That was my power kicking in again."
"We figured." Piggot responded, her voice as dry as a damn desert, "Mind sharing with the class?"
I snorted involuntarily, waving my hand emphatically in front of my face, trying to ward away the hilarity and failing miserably.
"I can put together and tear down cars extremely well now. Like, impossibly well. Tinker tech well." I stated, fighting to keep my face straight before just giving up and let the laughter begin anew, "But I don't even know how to drive!"
===
Director Emily Piggot found herself unsure of what to make of her newest recruit.
He'd signed the document needed for him to be specifically enlisted with the Protectorate ENE with essentially no fuss, particularly because it mainly just referenced the general Protectorate contract anyway. He'd spent some time following the interview waiting in her office while Velocity went to grab a wheelchair for the man, leaving them some time to talk in a less strictly professional context.
She didn't often get the chance to do so, her life mostly absorbed by her work and managing the general idiocy of her employees and colleagues. Besides, she was hardly a pleasant person to be around—she'd never quite gave a shit if people thought she was nice, and instead took advantage of her reputation to the contrary.
James—as he had actually given his real name on first contact—was a gaunt stick of a thing. She had found herself vaguely amused by the pair they made, both incredibly unhealthy in their own ways. She could see echoes of her own persistent exhaustion in the man's eyes, and it almost made something loosen in her chest.
The issue she'd found herself facing when she'd ended up as the PRT ENE's Director was that she had to work with parahumans, day in, day out. She wasn't shy about her dislike for the average parahuman, call her a bigot all you liked, but she got all the stats, she personally managed all the disasters—PR and otherwise. Parahumans were, as a rule, incredibly volatile, unpredictable, and had enormous potential for destruction.
For every hundred parahumans, there was one with a power that made them all but a living, breathing nuke. She worked with some of them, and many of them were barely even children.
James wasn't quite the same. He wasn't a picture of stability, just the same as Emily herself wasn't, and he absolutely carried an air of despondency around with him, all things that counted as marks against his theoretical stability in any psych personality profile that might be written up. But she couldn't help but notice an underlying confidence that she hadn't expected.
With parahumans, especially younger ones, they tended to be either arrogant or entirely void of confidence whatsoever. With the whispers she'd been hearing from what may or may not have happened at the hospital the day before, she'd expected to see a man broken, in his most especially vulnerable state.
So she did what she did best. Push buttons.
Parahumans react spectacularly to this sort of inquisition. Even the more stable examples she works with clam up or go on an indignant offensive as soon as you start prodding at their tender points. She'd even thought it was working on the new tinker, seeing his face twist into a half scowl, but when he fired back with what would've essentially been her own argument instead of some inflammatory response, she even found herself minutely surprised.
It was a small thing, really, but she could all but hear his underlying question; 'Do you really think I'm that stupid?'
For once, her answer had been a hesitant, 'No.'
But, with the man came the power. It didn't matter that she thought he might have a few extra brain cells to rub together when his power was so bizarre and concerning that it might as well nullify the benefit.
She wasn't fucking blind, after all. Armsmaster, true to the contract he'd signed, gave no particulars as to his power demonstrations, but she had enough confidence in his judgement that she'd tentatively extended it to the rest of what James claimed.
A watch that can stop time?
Medicines with recipes that'd make doctors of past centuries blush?
Control of 'Magic energy'?
It made no sense, and yet more still came, if the man was to be believed. She'd found herself stunned by the sudden burst of laughter, genuine and disbelieving, sparing a glance to her colleagues in the room with her, finding them sharing in her surprise.
Then he added cars to the list of things he could work with. Armsmaster had begun a line of questioning, trying to delineate particular limitations of this new aspect to James' power, but instead what was just cars soon expanded to basically any vehicle, even non-motorised ones. Which was about the end of what she could understand quickly devolved into a conversation that could only occur between tinkers
That was when Emily Pigott felt as though someone had increased gravity on her alone, the sheer weight of her realisation pressing on her in a way she didn't appreciate, not even a little. All that were privy to the man's interview with Miss Militia had made the same initial observation, a spectacularly easy one to make, if a little surface level.
'So a tinker Eidolon, huh?' She remembers Velocity saying when she'd read him in on the situation, including a general read on the danger he posed—which was effectively none as of right now, though they tended towards caution.
Emily couldn't tell when 'tinker Eidolon' stopped being a vague comparison, and became a very real descriptor, but she found herself increasingly uncomfortable with just how true they might find it to be.
===
I'd been taken to the 'PHQ' out in the bay in an armoured car, this time noticeably Protectorate branded, rather than the mock taxi that'd brought me to the PRT Headquarters. I was already hating that they had two separate buildings, even if it made enough sense, but I decided I'd put up with it when I got to experience the light show firsthand.
Brockton was a bit of a tourist spot, which is absolutely the duct tape that keeps the city from a complete death spiral, and one of the main attractions is the Protectorate Headquarters. It was a bit of a spectacle on its own, but when they put up the bridge, a shining example of the implementation of tinker tech, it really looked the part.
Being driven over it was awesome, if not a little freaky. The semi-transparent energy field that served as the road the car drove on gave a clear view of the waves below and looking down too long started to give me the heebie-jeebies.
Instead I opted to occupy my mind with the car I was in. It was a pretty cool machine, really. Clearly built to withstand even something as damaging as an RPG, and maybe still be able to keep driving after. Just from the mere vibrations of the car's engine, ideas started to pop into my head on how I might improve it. Most of them had to do with reshaping the body of the car to get better placement of the heavy armouring for both the protection it affords and the performance of the car itself.
Or I could just juice the thing with a whole Nitrous-Oxide System. The fabled NOS.
It was funny, really. My newfound knowledge and expertise with cars told me pretty definitively that NOS wasn't all that great an idea, outside of short races or trying to trick the shit out of some engine to get really big horsepower numbers. Injecting nitrous-oxide into an engine had a tendency to make it explode if you're too gung-ho about it, and on most engines that aren't made to handle much more than what they're already pulling, it's all just a fancy way to burn money.
Then my new knowledge and expertise says, "Fuck that!" and proceeds to break the laws of physics as I was told them by the very same source. Outfitting a regular car with a full NOS kit, cranking it to full tilt and then more, all while using an absolute fraction of the expensive liquid and resulting in practically no damage to the engine.
Armsmaster labelled it as the true tinker tech portion of the new power, alongside 'tweaks' that would drastically change how a vehicle performed, which I could only usually explain with a shrug and a mumbled, "I just feel like it'd work."
It all just felt like genuine expertise, like I'd spent untold thousands of hours messing around with the make of every conceivable vehicle and just knew what worked and what didn't, regardless of my theoretical mechanical knowledge.
And it really did extend to just about every type of vehicle, too. The further it strayed from cars specifically the spottier things became, with planes and anything other than maybe a speedboat being the vehicles I found most difficult to actively conceptualise. But if it had wheels and travelled on the ground, I was an expert, apparently.
Made me start thinking of some really dope skateboards and bikes. Yes, the non-motorised ones. Yes, I can put NOS on them for some reason, I'm not even all that sure how that works.
Thankfully the car pulled up and halted my constant thinking on cars, which was managing to bore the part of me that had been entirely uninterested in cars barely more than an hour ago. We'd stopped in what seemed like a security gate, beneath a big metal arch that I could only assume was packed full of sensors. A PRT trooper in a security box, behind thick bulletproof glass, spoke into a microphone and the faint murmuring told me it was being relayed through the radio in the driver's separated cabin.
A few moments later, a final mumble was sent through before the trooper in the security box turned away and the car began to ease forwards.
Soon enough, the car was parked in a fairly normal parking space, filled with other non-descript cars, almost all of which were armoured in some way. Not that it was obvious, mind, but this new car power was very comprehensive—enough that I could tell that many of the cars had switch-out panelling, so they could change from non-descript to a faux taxi at a moment's notice, which was probably how they got people to and from places around the city without arousing too much suspicion.
I waited for the PRT trooper to leave the car before I started to get ready to get out myself. I felt him open the sizeable boot of the car, pulling out the wheelchair he'd stowed away, before opening my door with the collapsible wheelchair waiting and ready.
"Thanks mate." I said, and though I garnered no response, I could tell the guy appreciated it well enough. I hauled myself out of the car, standing a little shakily before plonking down in the rigid seat and awkwardly flipping out the little footrests as the trooper closed up the boot and my door, wheeling me away to my destination.
It felt positively bizarre, and was subsequently interrupted as I felt myself being pulled into my mind for the umpteenth time that day. This time I managed to fight against the pull quite well, even staying vaguely aware of my surroundings as I felt my power reaching out for a large star weakly, seemingly bankrupt of all it's energy from the day's acquisitions.
'Me too, little guy. Me too.' I thought, chuckling as it gave up and went dormant once more.
As the trooper continued to push me towards what looked like the main building of the base, giving no indication of if he noticed me zoning out or not, I gave myself a bit of a pat on the back for making some progress in resisting the incredibly obnoxious interruption that my power had been enforcing for the last thirty or so hours. I was both getting better at it, and it was clearly to do with how much processing power my brain had to go around, which just went to show how much of a deficit I was really working under before.
With the self-congratulation out of the way, I turned an eye to my surroundings, and finding myself more intruigued by the architecture of the PHQ than I would've thought…
'Ah,' I mused, coming to a realisation, 'that power to tell what people want came with architectural knowledge. A hell of a lot of it, in fact.'
Frankly, from up close, the Protectorate Headquarters was a marvel of architectural design, done in what likely be best described as a contemporary style—as nebulous as the term might be. An array of buildings, all built to both be accessible and be pleasing to the eye were placed around an outdoor area that had barely enough space to house a small patch of grass between the footpaths surrounding the strip of road that broke into a multitude of offshoots to assumably different carparks. The carpark that the trooper had parked in seemed to be either a general one, for storage of the non-descript cars and potentially visitors or transients, or perhaps the other roads led to loading bays and private parking for Armsmaster's motorbike, for example.
The buildings themselves were clearly built with specific function in mind, the centremost building clearly serving as the main offices, whereas the others weren't so clear from the outside alone, though I suspected that the building on the far right was the living quarters.
The ground itself was also styled, the pavement and road using hex tiles, maintained immaculately, and with cut edges that flowed more organically than the rigid shape would otherwise allow—contrasted by the hard square shape of the 'plate' the entire headquarters rested on.
Large arches wrapped around the buildings, as though they were drawing the mostly independent buildings together and sheltering them, the keystone—or perhaps pinnacle—of the arches came close to touching the fascinating force field that had become integral to the identity of Brockton Bay nationally, as though the fine arches were propping up the field. It made me wonder if they had what maintained the force field hidden in those arches, but they absolutely did have massive spotlights, slightly tinted with a warm yellow.
It was like a miniature city inside a snow globe from the outside looking in, but when you were actually inside of it, you couldn't quite help but marvel at the sheer scale of it all. It was a pretty exceptional structure, and I was certain that I'd never personally seen anything that could remotely compare.
I vaguely remember being told that it was Uppercrust that'd worked on the PHQ, using a defunct oil rig that'd been just another eyesore, a painful memory of the days when Brockton had a hopeful economic future before the advent of Leviathan and whatever fuck-knuckle sank that container ship in the early nineties.
Didn't quite agree with Uppercrust's whole deal—the Elite were just the rebranded mafia, let's be real—but I had to respect his work. He knew how to build stuff, and I couldn't find anything glaringly wrong with the defensibility of the place, were the field to go down and an intruder to get in. Of course, if that intruder happened to be the Siberian, you were fucked no matter what, defences be damned.
The surprisingly pleasant stroll through the carpark, across the footpath and between two of the buildings, travelling right beneath a corridor between the two buildings supported by a high arch, finally came to a close as we reached the back entrance and into a room with a private elevator that opened immediately as we approached.
Turning me backwards so I'd face the door once inside, the trooper stepped out from behind me and left the elevator.
"Someone will be waiting for you above, sir." He stated gruffly, and I felt something inside of me die a painful, screeching death at his manner of address. As though I held literally any authority whatsoever.
"Just James, or whatever name I end up with, I hardly rate a 'sir'," I groaned with a pained expression, "I'm a glorified intern, sir."
The trooper remained entirely impassive, but relented with a sharp nod, "Noted."
I sighed, rubbing at my face as the doors finally closed with hardly a sound and began to ascend up the multi-storey building without hesitation. Do the PRT troopers have to address the Protectorate capes like that or something? I sure hope not, because if so, that's just fucking embarrassing.
Discarding the thought, I prepared myself as the elevator came to a gentle stop, the doors opening to reveal a spacious corridor filled with sizeable lockers and various drawers and storage area, two doors right next to which that were marked with a male and female pictogram, a changing room I'd guess.
But what actually caught my attention was the gaggle of Protectorate Heroes standing just past the open door into something that looked like a comfortable living area, one of which turned to me as I hesitantly wheeled myself out of the elevator.
"Oh hey, the new kid finally made it!" The Hero in red said as he approached, a darker shade than the more racing-inspired colour of Velocity's costume, and was all around fairly plain in design, broken up by the cheeky grin he wore, "Most of the team's waiting on you, man!"
I squinted my eyes at the man—Assault, easily one of the more recognisable members of the local Protectorate, what with how he kills it in most every interview he does—and flicked my gaze down to the wheelchair I was currently sitting in, "What, not fast enough for you, Red Ranger?"
I watched him freeze up in an impressive rendition of a living statue, and I could almost hear him rethinking his life choices from here. Sprouting a sudden grin, I pushed against the rims of the wheelchair and bumped my knuckles against his flank, meeting with the sturdy body armour underneath.
"Don't tempt me to stick an engine on this thing, mate." I called back as I heard the man dramatically doubling over in 'pain' behind me. Ignoring his antics and just rolling into the room of amused Protectorate heroes, of which Battery in particular looked almost wolfish at the other hero's brief moment of mortification.
"James," the warm, slightly accented voice of Miss Militia spoke up, stepping forward from the small crowd of Heroes, her eyes crinkling at their edges in a smile, "sorry about him, Assault has a terminal case of Foot-in-Mouth Syndrome."
"Oh I'm sure," I reply with a toothy grin, "it's the greatest weakness of those with quick wit—it takes most of their brain to find something to say that they leave nothing behind to check if they should say it at all."
That prompted a loud, guffaw from a muscled man dressed in a pretty impressive lion themed costume—somehow managing to stay just short of tacky—he moved past me and into the corridor to give Assault a teasing slap on the back.
"I see you've got him figured out already." Miss Militia said pleasantly, though I could detect a hidden bit of good-natured snarkiness in her voice beneath her professional amiability, "Onto more important matters, we've just got back word from Armsmaster and the Director that your paperwork has been given the all-clear."
I moved to respond but was interrupted by Miss Militia reaching back behind her head and, with a small click, pulling loose her bandana to reveal a, frankly, quite beautiful and kindly-looking woman wearing an infectious smile.
"I'm Hannah, it's nice to properly meet you, James." She said, extending her hand which I took and shook with the strength I had left in me, "Welcome, officially, to the Protectorate ENE's Hero Team."
==== Perks Gained this Chapter ====
-HardTech Psi-Detector (Trinity) (200CP)
You have acquired a Nippon-made device, one of the very few non-biotech devices capable of reliably detecting nearby Psions and psionic powers in use. Most are massive, power-hungry, and have a range of only about five meters. This one has the same range, but is far more efficient and only the size of a large book. Though pretty much useless to a Psion in the field, the device can be connected to mundane security and sensor systems, and you have the blueprints to make more.
-Heart's Desire (Warhammer Fantasy - Tomb Kings) (100CP)
All Necrotects are skilled architects and designers. They wouldn't have the job if they weren't and you're no different. You're gifted with any sort of architecture, trap making or monument designing. What makes you special is that you have a sense for what your customers really want. You can picture in your mind the exact ideal of the thing they're hiring you to build and create it. Closer than any instructions could communicate to you, you understand their wish and you know what it should look like, though the construction of such a thing may yet be beyond your means. Still, if you can carry it out, they'll love you for it, even if it differs from the instructions you were given.
-Most Holy Order of the Socket Wrench (Fast and Furious) (400CP)
You are a master mechanic. Repair and upkeep is nice, but you can go beyond the impossible and improve any vehicle. Take a van and make it beat a supercar? Put NOS injectors on a bicycle (and make it work)? And anything you can build up you can tear down, too. You're a one-man chop shop and wiring a car to explode takes but a few moments and some chicken wire.
A/N: 50 odd days since I last posted; time flies. Lets get to the commentary on the chapter first, shall we?
This chapter was pretty significant for the progression of James' power, namely with aquiring [Most Holy Order of the Socket Wrench], which is essentially the first practical thing he's gotten his hands on that also doesn't have things locked behind finding a way to get his hands on specific magical base materials. It also allows him to delve into using his [Magitech Mastery], which will be real interesting when fused, where he is essentially an extreme expert in both vehicles and the implementation of magic into machinery. Easy to explain to the PRT too!
Heart's Desire and HardTech Psi-Detector aren't as useful quite yet, the latter being more or less dead for at least a while. Heart's Desire is actually a really powerful perk, with James having inherited the general architectural, design, and project management skills of a Necrotect which, with just a glance at the Warhammer Fantasy wiki, is pretty damn impressive. It'll absolutely get use as time goes on, but for the moment it's kinda just the 'weird funny power that lets me tell what people want and know things about architecture'. Does give him a nice reason to look closely at the architecture of places, which has always been a weakpoint in my writing, so there we go.
Anyways, thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed yourself. These chapters are quite a bit smaller than the prior behemoths, and that's just because I think this is slightly more reasonable for me to write up with any consistency. Coming up next: Why I've Been Gone, the musical!
The TLDR of why I didn't continue posting comes down to poor health. Surprise suprise. The extended version is more complicated and I'll spoiler it for brevity.
The first few chapters of this story were written in, like, a week or so. I was fighting my new found symptoms, namely headaches, and I began to find it harder and harder to write. Before long, I couldn't even write a few hundred words. That's been the case for the majority of my time away, and I'm only barely managing better. As I write this my brain is numb after writing half of this chapter today (the other I finished over multiple seperate sessions yonks ago) and I'd class that as a spectacular outcome.
So with that, and attempting some physical therapy stuff, I didn't have much to go around, really.
Another factor was the criticism. This isn't specific to any particular platform I'm posting this story on, really, but as it was already exceptionally hard for me to write anything at all, it wasn't hard to feel like it just wasn't worth the hassle to create this thing, only to recieve the same criticism that has already been levied my way. Whether it be about the variant CF rules or some other thing, I was in enough pain and I didn't need more to pile on.
You might think that's silly, and you're pretty much right. It should really be something that's more frustrating or annoying than painful, seems a bit melodramatic, really. Unfortunately, I don't have control of what my body does, so those small emotions trigger adrenalin, which compounds, which triggers more adrenalin, which compounds futher, and so on and so forth.
It's stupid, I hate it, I can't control it.
So, this is just a request that, before posting a critique, take a peek at the posts others have left, and if there has already been a post mentioning your issue with the story, I'd appreciate it if you left well enough alone. This absolutely counts for the variant CF rules; in which case, if you do not like the rules, or feel that it 'ruins' CF or the story, then I can't help you, there are other stories out there.
This story is, frankly, a recovery tool for me. I want to write again, I want to build my ability to write and managing my headaches in concert. If that means this story feels meandering or aimless, that's fine by me, because I'm writing something. But that also means that as soon as it starts hurting more than it's helping, I must choose to stop regardless.
In the end, I can't even pretend to promise that I'll stick around, because if random two cent critiques start making me lose sleep, it just doesn't makes sense.
I hope that gives some insight into the real life struggles I'm facing, and how frustrating it can be when your body decides an internet comment is enough reason to lose sleep over and end up in actual physical pain. I appreciate it if you took the time, it's a bit of a read, and I hope that I might see you all again soon.
Love the story and character.
Also great to see the Celestial Forge in the PRT gangs potential hand.
Piggots thaugts were very her.
Hope you have a good day.
Gray Bubble option is pretty interesting and I didn't think about this. After all, the truth is, he has the potential to create a device that manipulates the passage of time in one form or another. It is logical that it is worth trying this to end one gray nightmare. Of course, this will attract the attention of the Slaughterhouse and there may be unpredictable side effects to destroying the gray bubbles, but it's better than leaving people inside and surely will have a good effect on the mood in society and on the reputation of the Protectorate.
If the device can change the flow of time within a certain radius, then it will be interesting to see how the gray bubble will react when it is partially in the distorted time zone. And at the same time check whether the impenetrability is a property of the loop itself or some additional force field. Although it seems like an event of pretty distant future. Because the device still needs to be built, checked how it function, experiment on a bubble should be organized and respond to success/failure in terms of PR should foreseen.
Gray Bubble option is pretty interesting and I didn't think about this. After all, the truth is, he has the potential to create a device that manipulates the passage of time in one form or another. It is logical that it is worth trying this to end one gray nightmare. Of course, this will attract the attention of the Slaughterhouse and there may be unpredictable side effects to destroying the gray bubbles, but it's better than leaving people inside and surely will have a good effect on the mood in society and on the reputation of the Protectorate.
If the device can change the flow of time within a certain radius, then it will be interesting to see how the gray bubble will react when it is partially in the distorted time zone. And at the same time check whether the impenetrability is a property of the loop itself or some additional force field. Although it seems like an event of pretty distant future. Because the device still needs to be built, checked how it function, experiment on a bubble should be organized and respond to success/failure in terms of PR should foreseen.
Yeah, the Gray Boy loops are weird. They haven't really been explained, and it's left semi-ambiguous as to whether it is actually time manipulation, or maybe something more akin to reality looping back to a savestate over and over, basically apeing time manipulation. Gray Boy states that people inside are able to understand the passage of time and are aware, but Wildbow has also confirmed information to the contrary of what he says, making Gray Boy an unreliable narrator at best, and completely nonsensically insane at worst.
I'll have to really flesh out the way that the loops function, like why nobody can interact with it, or what is actually happening in those loops beyond what is being outwardly displayed. I think, however, that given Gray Boy's is confirmed to be functionally immortal since he's essentially in his own permanent loop that creates odd artifacting (like seeing ghosted versions of him look two ways at once overlapped over the more 'real' him) I'd say it is genuinely time manipulation--which doesn't really explain why it wouldn't be possible to move into the loop unless the loop really was so 'fragile' to change that any outside actor could send the loop off course and throw things into dissaray if they could. So it very well might be walled off in some way disconnected from the loop function itself.
It'll be an interesting challenge, and it's fairly likely that James will end up with a proper solution to it. He'll just have to find out how the loops are keeping everything out...
Maybe this is a property of this type of closed timelike curves. Something like an event horizon, but for a different type of phenomena. Given that we are able to see what is happening inside, then the light somehow reaches us or there is some kind of holographic effect on the very surface of the bubble. Maybe this can explain the monochrome effect? Color is how our eyes perceive different lengths of electromagnetic waves. So maybe something weird happening with this. I'm not sure if the Gray Boy is to be trusted, but he's in a bubble in a way. At least power uses a similar phenomenon to provide protection for his body. However, maintaining the linearity of his mind can be handled manually by the shard
At least this is how I feel about it. A local temporal loop, with a kind of event horizon and a side effect in the form of preserving the linearity of perception due to some unknown small scale properties of such complex systems as a brain and discoloration due to some interesting interaction with light. Incredibly stable and insulated for mundane penetration methods, but instantly crumble to dust if something more exotic or similar in nature trying to get in. One just need to find something that can violate the integrity of the "event horizon".
There are many possible explanations for this. I think you will find something that makes sense to you and I hope my words have inspired some ideas of your own.
P.S. Also, weird that Clockblocked objects still have a colour. And not becoming a perfect mirror, because the light is not being absorbed by the time-frozen object. If he freezes a completely black body, will it remain black? Will it then continue to heat up due to the absorbed radiation? I feel there are some dimensional tricks in this.
Gray Bubble option is pretty interesting and I didn't think about this. After all, the truth is, he has the potential to create a device that manipulates the passage of time in one form or another. It is logical that it is worth trying this to end one gray nightmare. Of course, this will attract the attention of the Slaughterhouse and there may be unpredictable side effects to destroying the gray bubbles, but it's better than leaving people inside and surely will have a good effect on the mood in society and on the reputation of the Protectorate.
If the device can change the flow of time within a certain radius, then it will be interesting to see how the gray bubble will react when it is partially in the distorted time zone. And at the same time check whether the impenetrability is a property of the loop itself or some additional force field. Although it seems like an event of pretty distant future. Because the device still needs to be built, checked how it function, experiment on a bubble should be organized and respond to success/failure in terms of PR should foreseen.
I came up with a way to stop grey boy bubbles when talking about the celestial menagerie and the concept of time elements
for context time elementals in DnD have the ability to Time Jaunt sending people a few seconds into the future and past
theoretically, the time bubble only exists for a few seconds, the same few seconds over and over, so if you bring the entire thing 1 minute into the past or future it can very much stop existing
bringing the bubble back would also erase the memories of the people and send them to 1 minute before being trapped
to be clear time jaunt is not very powerful, but it could stop the bubbles
there is also the question if the loop is centered around a person or a specific area
wildbow has stated that citrine and trickster both could take people out of the loop
Would the fanfiction story that's the source of the time clock thing have access to regular HP Time Turners, whatever the weird variant is in Cursed Child, or potentially other alterations of such?
I could see a custom rig set up to mimic Alabaster to brute force the loop pre-existence a la Prussian's proposed solution above, if you wanted to have Bakuda be the winner, or using that as an inspiration for fic-James (hope we get a cape name soon!)'s own stuff.
This is a fantastic story. The only problem is that I'm done reading all the chapters and want more.
Your OC is interesting and unique. I don't recall many stories with a protagonist that can empathize with Piggot and her health struggles. I hope it comes up again at some point, perhaps when James can heal his own illness.
Wholly worth the wait, I assure you. Forgive me if I'm repeating something I forgot I said 50 days ago, but I honestly think this is one of the better CF stories out there. Being willing to hold back on perks by making everything knowledge that isn't necessarily instantly usable as opposed to handing out free items and pocket dimensions, having a protagonist actually join up with the PRT as a reasonable course of action instead of justifying the possibility away out of fanonical distaste or being totally unwilling to allow the protagonist any loss of personal agency, having a sick protagonist whom Piggot can actually relate to on a certain level (as another poster mentioned); there's a bunch of stuff like that that other CF stories just don't ever seem to want to touch and it all works really well together here.
Very much looking forward to more. I hope you continue to enjoy writing this as much as I look forward to reading it :^)
Yeah, the Gray Boy loops are weird. They haven't really been explained, and it's left semi-ambiguous as to whether it is actually time manipulation, or maybe something more akin to reality looping back to a savestate over and over, basically apeing time manipulation.
Honestly I'm loving it so far! And the holy order has me wondering if he's going to create a super up wheelchair or something. I vaguely remember something like that from Kim possible and thinking it was cool
Just found this story today, and I'm pretty excited about the variant forge rules. The infinite resources and premade items have always felt a little bit disappointing, since people tend to rely on them rather than making up new stuff.
I wonder if we'll be seeing any more of Joy and that doctor in the future.
Yeah, the Gray Boy loops are weird. They haven't really been explained, and it's left semi-ambiguous as to whether it is actually time manipulation, or maybe something more akin to reality looping back to a savestate over and over, basically apeing time manipulation. Gray Boy states that people inside are able to understand the passage of time and are aware, but Wildbow has also confirmed information to the contrary of what he says, making Gray Boy an unreliable narrator at best, and completely nonsensically insane at worst.
I'll have to really flesh out the way that the loops function, like why nobody can interact with it, or what is actually happening in those loops beyond what is being outwardly displayed. I think, however, that given Gray Boy's is confirmed to be functionally immortal since he's essentially in his own permanent loop that creates odd artifacting (like seeing ghosted versions of him look two ways at once overlapped over the more 'real' him) I'd say it is genuinely time manipulation--which doesn't really explain why it wouldn't be possible to move into the loop unless the loop really was so 'fragile' to change that any outside actor could send the loop off course and throw things into dissaray if they could. So it very well might be walled off in some way disconnected from the loop function itself.
It'll be an interesting challenge, and it's fairly likely that James will end up with a proper solution to it. He'll just have to find out how the loops are keeping everything out...
In one of the Zion Interludes it's stated that it's some sort of "temporal sink-hole" unless I'm misremembering. He might actually be able to remove them by pumping Life Magic into the fabric of space-time in the area.
Would the fanfiction story that's the source of the time clock thing have access to regular HP Time Turners, whatever the weird variant is in Cursed Child, or potentially other alterations of such?
I could see a custom rig set up to mimic Alabaster to brute force the loop pre-existence a la Prussian's proposed solution above, if you wanted to have Bakuda be the winner, or using that as an inspiration for fic-James (hope we get a cape name soon!)'s own stuff.
It specifically only really gives the schematics for those specific items. I think a time turner was used as reference to build the time watch, but I don't think it was necessarily used as part of the actual creation of it in that fanfic. I'm not all too keen with bringing that sort of time manipulation into this story--I vetoed the very first roll of the story because it was a literal save/load button--but James will absolutely be able to mess around with the watch and, since he has detailed schematics on how it and the laws it relies upon function, he can learn a lot from it as the basis of temporal fuckery.
Wholly worth the wait, I assure you. Forgive me if I'm repeating something I forgot I said 50 days ago, but I honestly think this is one of the better CF stories out there. Being willing to hold back on perks by making everything knowledge that isn't necessarily instantly usable as opposed to handing out free items and pocket dimensions, having a protagonist actually join up with the PRT as a reasonable course of action instead of justifying the possibility away out of fanonical distaste or being totally unwilling to allow the protagonist any loss of personal agency, having a sick protagonist whom Piggot can actually relate to on a certain level (as another poster mentioned); there's a bunch of stuff like that that other CF stories just don't ever seem to want to touch and it all works really well together here.
Very much looking forward to more. I hope you continue to enjoy writing this as much as I look forward to reading it :^)
Glad to hear it! Piggot is a character I find pretty damn interesting, and I think had a lot of room for real complexity that I hope I might be able to play around with. Fanfiction has a way of 'stupidifying' everyone in the world since, from a meta perspective, it's easy to poke holes in character actions. I don't really like that, and find that sorta grating, so I assessed the options as though they were my own--fittingly--and chose to go to the PRT. It makes sense, even if it sucks donkey dick that it's the only real option. He'll have some growing pains with them for sure though, and drama is sure to go down, but that'd be the case in any choice. SI/Celestial Forge characters always feel like they end up hermits, and that's boring to me at this point. We'll see how it goes!
Honestly I'm loving it so far! And the holy order has me wondering if he's going to create a super up wheelchair or something. I vaguely remember something like that from Kim possible and thinking it was cool
He might do, honestly. Wheelchairs fucking suck, especially if you don't have the physical strength/stamina/etc to properly take advantage of non-motorised chairs. With Holy Order of the Socket Wrench, any wheelchair he built would absolutely murder any other wheelchair in existence, and that's kinda funny.
In one of the Zion Interludes it's stated that it's some sort of "temporal sink-hole" unless I'm misremembering. He might actually be able to remove them by pumping Life Magic into the fabric of space-time in the area.
Hmmmm. The Life magic would absolutely be able to repair it to a stable state, but it's probably not feasible without some seriously massive increases to his magical capacity. As it is now, he's got a bucket full of water and that 'temporal sink-hole' would be a massive canyon. Life magic will be helpful nonetheless, as it always is!
This has been a fantastic story, and extremely interesting from the point of view of powers not initially fixing all your problem but helping some. A lot of characters in worm fanfiction say screw the protectorate for vague reasons or reason that don't progress the character's development. The fact that your mc sat down and said "no matter what I'm not in a place to strike out on my own, the government should be the best choice and most stable." was amazingly real. I really like how you present the perks, making them powerful but still require effort to leverage. The dynamic between the mc's condition and need to overcome the limitations it places on him is an inspiring story.
hope that what ever you are dealing with @Sarius resolves or gets better. I also hope that no matter how enjoyable the story is on this end it brings you as much enjoyment. Seriously don't turn writing into self-flagellation it just makes everyone suffer. Take the time you need to write and post when you want or can, your not getting payed for this after all.
He might do, honestly. Wheelchairs fucking suck, especially if you don't have the physical strength/stamina/etc to properly take advantage of non-motorised chairs. With Holy Order of the Socket Wrench, any wheelchair he built would absolutely murder any other wheelchair in existence, and that's kinda funny.
Hmmmm. The Life magic would absolutely be able to repair it to a stable state, but it's probably not feasible without some seriously massive increases to his magical capacity. As it is now, he's got a bucket full of water and that 'temporal sink-hole' would be a massive canyon. Life magic will be helpful nonetheless, as it always is!
Given that space can be warped reasonably easily and that Zion chose to move his Avatar out of it rather then to make a new one I have to assume that the effect isn't quite that potent. Especially given his current set of magics capacity to warp time and space reasonably well. I have to imagine that it would mostly be a matter of leverage.
The pounding headache woke me up, which was impressive given just how utterly exhausted I felt from yesterday's events. It was probably the most I'd done in a single day in… years? Honestly, my sense of time was so shot at this point and distinguishing between months, a year, and multiple years was almost futile.
I cracked an eye open, and was relieved that there wasn't any light in the room to make the process of forcibly rousing my brain any more difficult. Ice-picks through the eye socket tended to be the effect light had on me when I was sporting a migraine like this one.
For a while, as my brain worked sluggishly to catch back up, I was confused by my surroundings. A bare room, clean and fresh smelling, spacious enough for a person or two. It definitely wasn't my home, and it took a good few seconds for me to recall the day before.
I was in my assigned room at the PHQ, technically my living quarters. My mind was foggy on the details, but after the small impromptu meet and greet with the majority of the local Protectorate team—or just the team, since I was actually on it now—I'd taken the chance to ask where I could rest and recuperate. Seems that'd turned into me crashing and burning wholesale.
'Knew lying down was a bad idea.' I mused as I did my best to prop myself up against the thin pillows that'd come as standard. Trust them to build this masterwork of architectural design and cheap out on the damn pillows. Honestly.
I spent maybe thirty minutes sitting there, trying to get to the point where my eyes would stay open against even the near complete darkness of my room, and actually found that messing around with Life energy helped with the process.
Once I could keep my eyes open, I decided that I might as well continue with pushing my manipulation of Life energy, like I'd done the morning before, and found myself feeling just a little more refreshed by the time I was hit by the sharp, warning pain I'd run into last time.
Opening my eyes fully, this time taking in the room properly, I noticed the few items on my side table.
A phone, my dinky flip phone, and a ziplock bag.
"Oh thank god." I murmured as I grabbed the ziplock bag and reached inside for a firmly set jelly square of the medicine I'd cooked up the day before. Placing it into my mouth and chewing, then swallowing a second later. I was right, it was way easier to take once it'd set.
It didn't take long for the medication to kick in, and while it did nothing for the migraine, the effects were just as significant as the day before. Some of the weight of exhaustion eased back from behind my eyes, and gave me just enough wiggle room to notice the tugging on my mind to grow stronger.
It was a force of effort to not let my power pull me fully into my mind like I had the day before, but I managed to achieve the same semi-present state I had done before and held it until a connection with a much too large star failed and my power receded.
I sighed after the moment of exertion, but I found myself pleased with the results. With this progress, I was hoping that I'd be able to register whatever my power was doing without interruptions to whatever I was supposed to be doing. No matter what anyone said, it was a glaring weakness, and it would absolutely be exploited if push came to shove.
Which was weird to think about; push coming to shove, I mean. I was a decently violence-averse person, and a childhood in Brockton Bay had done nothing to endear me to it, so now that I was a member of the Protectorate, it was a little hard to come to grips with the fact that conflict was inevitable.
As much as I wanted to remain the guy working behind the team, supplying and maintaining gear and systems, offering support here and there when I could—the kind of guy that got credited every now and then as the 'one that makes everything you see happen'—I knew that wasn't going to happen.
When shit went down, you were where the PRT and Protectorate thought they needed you. I might get a pass for now, but if things keep going the way they have been, I'll not remain incapable of being put into play for too long.
Clicking my tongue at myself, I diverted myself back towards the other two items on my side table. This time I flicked on the lamp as well, grabbing the two phones and inspecting the new one.
A touchscreen device, huh? Well I guess this is where the pillow budget went. It was a rugged thing, the case being fairly non-descript but vaguely military in its design, which I could only guess was a godsend for the capes that were getting into melees a couple times a week.
Pressing the button on the side, the phone's large screen lit up with a flashbang of white, forcing me to squint to read the small black text.
"Welcome to the PRT/Protectorate, this is your officially issued mobile device, built to be used in your duties for the maximum protection and security of yourself and the organisation as a whole." I read, then tapping the 'get started' button at the bottom of the page.
After ten minutes of setup, I had myself a brand-new phone, even it if was only for use in work-related matters, to access the secure internal network, or to contact family and loved ones in emergency situations.
So it wasn't a completely 'do as you wish' device, but it was a neat piece of kit. Far as I could tell, the operating system was custom, and it came pre-packaged with a lot of general information about the organisation and different resources you could access—one of which being a wiki. The websites were a bit of a mess, but that's government web design for you.
In the end, I confirmed that I could actually use my own devices while at the PHQ, I just needed to make sure I was connected in through their own Wi-Fi and cellular, which I checked and had already happened automatically. Neat.
Using my own phone, already missing the much superior phone's interface, I started checking through my usual haunts for new notifications or missed messages. There were a few, but only one really important one.
Sve1te: heeeeyy srry i poofed yesterday. my comp broke on me!
Svelte replied to my message around twelve hours after I'd sent mine, but she didn't end there. An hour later she'd sent another message.
Sve1te: im rlly srry that they cant help u… r u ok?
I grimaced, scrolling down further and seeing a final message, sent three hours after the last.
Sve1te: I'm so, so sorry.
Something about the trio of messages made ice go down my spine. The first one was too cheery, almost fake, which was something Svelte almost never was. The second was more what I might've expected, and sounded more like her, but still felt constrained. The last… I hated the last one.
Gone was the goofy contractions and wilful disregard for grammar or punctuation, instead it just felt cold and painful instead.
Svelte had always been one to take blame on herself, and maybe it was because she'd known how much I was riding on that chance at health with Panacea's powers that the result on her was so significant.
It didn't help that when she said that her computer had broken… I didn't believe her. Her computer, her internet, her power, none had ever gone down, not once. Maybe it was silly to think that someone was immune to a common occurrence like their machine shitting itself, but it just didn't fit in my head.
I rubbed viciously at my face, wishing I'd just taken a minute to check up on her yesterday, if only to stop her from spiralling like she had, but put it aside to finally get back to her.
Tired: Hey, that's alright, it happens. No need to beat yourself up over it alright? I was lucky and ended up getting a helping hand from one of the doctors there. Never heard of a doctor driving a patient home from the hospital after work, but I guess I can claim to be the first, huh?
I sent the message, giving myself a break to think of what else I wanted to say, and getting back to it before she could show up and cut in between.
Tired: Honestly, she was a bit of a godsend, her and Panacea both. Panacea gave me a phone number, said it was an opportunity that might help me out, so I gave it a call yesterday and that's why I was busy. Looks like I got it, so I'm actually doing okay. Real tired, but okay.
I sent the message, looking over it and hoping that I got everything in there to calm the girl on the other end a little bit. I tried not to make it all seem so suspicious, or sound like I was hiding things, but I knew it was a bust on that front as soon as I re-read it.
A name appeared in the active users bar.
Sve1te: oh! thts good to hear doctors can be good sometimes.
Sve1te: wht did panpan give u? was it like a job or like one of those jesus camps?
I snorted at the mental image of Panacea handing out numbers to a Christian camp after failing to treat someone. Grimly amusing as it might be, it was still amusing. As was the idea of equating the Protectorate to a Christian camp.
Tired: Haha, no not quite. She doesn't really seem the type, and I'd bet if someone tried to make her do it, all hell would break loose. She's a bit of a force of nature, that girl.
I hit send, and through I could see her still viewing the private messages, she didn't respond like she normally might. I sighed; no getting around it, then.
Tired: It's more a job. I really can't say anything else, just know it's all above board. I think it's only of my only ways forward, so I'm going to take it, even if I'm not really a fan.
Sve1te: cant or wont?
I paused, mulling over the question.
Tired: Wont. Technically I can tell friends and family members at my discretion, but I don't think that means over the internet. Not exactly the most secure places to talk it.
I watched the little 'Sve1te is typing…' indicator pop up, persisting for some time until it stopped cold. I felt an eyebrow quirk as a waited for it to reappear, and only after about thirty seconds did a message appear.
Sve1te: oh
I stared at the two letters on the cramped screen of my flip phone, wondering just what the hell that was supposed to mean. Ambiguity abound, I decided to get up and try and get my body into motion, checking back on the flip phone for any updates while I did.
Sve1te: soooo
Sve1te: r u a spy or smthn now?
Svel1te: pls say u r
Now that managed to get a laugh out of me.
===
She hadn't known what to say.
Did she tell him?
Was it even what she thought, or was she overthinking it?
Her mouth and throat were painfully dry, like it'd been stuffed full of sand. She had to be careful, now. She couldn't afford to break another computer, they'd take away the privilege "for her own safety and wellbeing."
She took deep breaths, warding away the quiet fear.
He… surely he… did he? After that, and then the job? It had to have been, right?
Should she tell him?
She felt them beginning to roil, twitch and reach out to grasp at her surroundings and, with a force of will, she shut the thought down with all her might.
No, not yet. She couldn't yet. She wasn't sure.
With great care she typed her response, a small smile coming to her lips at her own joke.
She had to be sure.
She didn't want him to think she was a monster, right?
===
Eventually I'd left my room in search of food. The little unit had a joining bathroom that I used, complete with a shower too, so even though I had to sit on the floor I was glad to feel somewhat clean. Thankfully the issued phone had a map on it that was easy enough to follow, so I managed to get to a cafeteria area to find it still open and functioning—though there wasn't much of a crowd with it being mid-morning.
Passing through with a plate I was able to grab a decent, if slightly unhealthy meal and a hot chocolate to boot. It wasn't all that hot, but I'd take it over nothing.
Looking around, the vast majority of the personnel were PRT troopers or just administration folk. I'm not exactly certain what the distinction would be between working at the PHQ and the PRTHQ in the city proper, but I wasn't left enough time to ponder the answer as I saw Miss Militia—Hannah, as she'd introduced herself the day before—walking over to me at a brisk pace.
"James, good to see you up." She greeted, helping herself to a seat across from me. You would think that I'd be concerned about this making me stand out too much, but the earlier look around the cafeteria told me that, between the troopers in something akin to army fatigues and the admin types in suit and tie, I stuck out like a sore thumb regardless.
"Better wake up than I'd expected, so I'll take it." I offered tiredly as I munched on some slightly cold toast with peanut butter on it.
"Good to hear." She said, pleasantly professional about it all, "However, you realise you are not wearing your mask, yes?"
I stopped, realised she was right, then shrugged.
"Have now." I answered with a dramatic bite into my toast and a long drink of the hot chocolate, only choosing to expand at her unimpressed stare, "I'm using my own name and, seriously, does anyone actually think domino masks do a good job of hiding their identities?"
"No, it's why most of the whole team cover significant portions of their face, usually with a visor." She answered amusedly, "It's mostly politeness if I'm being honest, since most worry they weren't supposed to see your face. It isn't often that one of the others will walk around outside of costume, let alone without a mask."
"That sounds–" I paused for a moment, feeling the pull of my power kicking into gear and I held out against it until it failed to connect with anything, then attempting to return to the conversation like nothing had happened, "like a bit of a hassle? To get into costume every single time you leave your room, I mean."
She gave me a raised brow at the significant pause, but she seemed to take the hint, "The upstairs living area is all Protectorate members, so it isn't as necessary. The floor down from us is the Wards quarters, by the way, so be aware of that. They cannot wander around our quarters on a whim, however." She explained, and I found myself nodding along.
"And there's that shared kitchen up there too, right?" I remembered belatedly, "Well, I wouldn't've cooked myself anything anyway. Too much of a pain." Literally.
"That's fair enough." She said, bringing that to a close, "As a warning, James, the coming days tend to be a little hectic for new recruits. Things will be a little different for you, in accommodating for your physical limitations, but there are a few things you'll likely have to attend to and accommodate for going foward."
"Hit me." I said from behind my cup, figuring I'd just let her get right down to it.
"There are a few classes you'll need to start taking, something that will be persistent through your year of probation. These are essential to earning the certifications necessary to act as law enforcement with use of a parahuman power. They aren't negotiable and were included in your contract." She began, her tone barely shifting as she spoke, sounding much like she had on the phone the day before.
"Secondly, you'll need to attend team meetings whenever you are able. It really is important that you learn what position the Protectorate is in strategically, and how that differs from the public's perception of things. Meetings are generally three or so times a week, though meetings with different parts of the team run nearly every day, so just keep an eye on your work phone." She said seriously, laying down the law on expectations.
"Thirdly, you will need to meet with the public relations department about your cape persona and future debut." I opened my mouth to voice my hesitance, but she simply raised a hand to shush me, "I understand that you will not be making an appearance on patrols or, likely, at very many Protectorate functions, but you are a tinker and Director Piggot and Armsmaster think this to be a reasonable explanation for your absence from the field."
She took one look at my disbelieving expression and sighed, "Another thing to consider is that this will actually let you fly under the radar far better than leaving you as an unannounced member of the Protectorate, in the public eye at least. Think; if the team starts going on patrol with new gear that's significantly different than Armsmaster or Kid Win's general style, then the public will immediately start hyping up the potential new Tinker. Especially if the tech is at all impressive."
I chewed on that for a few seconds. "Point." I acquiesced with a grunt.
"Thank you." She graciously accepted alongside a laugh, "Finally, for now, you'll need to undergo at least some further power testing. Things tend to be looser around Trumps that generate minor powers, but we still need to get a good idea of what your capabilities are. If not so we can strategize around them, then at least to map how they evolve and change along the way. I'll note that Armsmaster is quite keen to work with you personally, and Director Piggot may be inclined to waive some of the standard testing if you do so. That's your choice, however."
She had clearly finished up her mandatory spiel, looking to me with a gentle query in her eyes, but I was just stuck dumbly chewing on the last piece of toast, leaning back in my chair with my arms crossed.
That was a hell of a lot to process, but after a few minutes of being locked up I managed to boil it all down to the important bits.
"Alright, so; being a cop 101, dealing with the gangs 101, picking out my leotard, and making cool stuff with the boss man himself?" I crudely summarised, receiving a huff of laughter for my troubles.
"Close enough, Assault the Second." She jabbed back.
I took the counterblow with the utmost grace, slurping noisily from my cup, emptying it, before placing it back down on the table and rising slowly to my feet.
"So where to first?"
===
I leant my head back against the cool surface of the wall behind my chair, my legs propped up on another one nearby. I'd taken the primer 'lesson' for the law enforcement class first at Miss Militia's direction, and I was glad to have gotten it out of the way. Really, the primer lesson was a collection of short videos that were more introductory than anything, subsequent practical lessons would be taken in the various training facilities the PHQ and PRTHQ housed, and theory classes were mostly video classes.
At least it'd been quick and to the point, not slowing down or going on any real tangents like a regular class might. There were instructors on site that you could go to with any questions, so tangents would be relegated to those meetings, I'd assume.
I let my mind wander away from the pseudo-orientation, instead finding myself thinking about the evening prior. Had it been evening? It'd felt like it, but it might've been more in the afternoon than anything.
The small meeting had been surprisingly heartening. Most of the Protectorate heroes had turned out for it, sans Armsmaster and Dauntless as both had been busy or taking their day off. None had gone so far as to follow Miss Militia's example by revealing their complete identity to me, but I wasn't all that concerned about it. After all, I could feel the difference in the demeanours of the capes, juxtaposed with the way they acted in the media and in press meetings.
Besides Miss Militia, who I tentatively placed as my favourite of the group, Assault had been the most enthusiastically friendly towards me. He seemed to revel in the fact that I was willing to trade quips and barbs with him, and most of the team just seemed relieved the man had someone to focus on for the time being. He was also the only one to give me his real name, even if he hadn't taken off his visor. It was 'Ethan', which struck me as oddly fitting, for whatever reason.
Triumph, the newest member aside from me and past Wards team leader, also seemed like a genuinely good guy and easy enough to get along with. A bit more uptight, which made me think he might've had a bit of a strict upbringing or something.
Battery, the only other woman of the team, seemed nice enough, though she kept it very professional in comparison to the rest of the team. I had almost pinned her as a Director Piggot or Armsmaster type, but then I noticed that Assault hung around her like an overexcited dog and her playing the stoically unimpressed cat. There were rumours that they were related, I think, but with the looks they were giving each other outside of the eye of the cameras?
I'd eat my fucking hat if they were siblings. Unless they were straight out of Alabama, that is.
Velocity had also turned up, and we'd talked about his love for languages for a while. He was pretty passionate about the subject, even recommended learning some of an Asian language, with the ABB being so prevalent, since the gang members and the civilians were much more confident talking to you if you had at least a few words learned. Fair enough.
It'd been a pleasant greeting, even it'd been brief, with Triumph and Assault and Battery leaving after twenty some minutes, then Miss Militia and Velocity ten minutes later, showing me my room and leaving me to rest.
Maybe it'd just been happenstance that had allowed so much of the team to be there, but that they at least seemed professional about my inclusion on the team or in its periphery was a relief, along with not getting the sense that any of them were assholes. A good first encounter was never a bad thing.
A knock against the door of the little office space I'd been put in interrupted my rest, but through the largely frosted windows I could see the distinct blue figure as clear as day. Leaning over, I pulled the door open and looked up at the armoured man with an amused smile.
"Good afternoon, James. I'd come to ask if you had the leeway to spend some time with me in the workshop?" He asked, his tone flat and straight to the point, only barely offering a greeting.
I stopped myself from immediately saying yes—truthfully, I was bursting at the seams for the chance to mess around with some of the new stuff I'd acquired, but I couldn't throw care completely out the window. I was already cutting it straight to the razor's edge, and I was pretty astonished I wasn't a smoking wreck at this point.
"And how far away is the workshop?" I asked, tentatively.
"Quite far." Armsmaster admitted freely, but continued before I could respond in the negative, "However, anticipating this, I brought a collapsible wheelchair. It is, however, not necessary that you come along, this is just your first day–"
I cut the deadpan man off with a wave of my hand, "Okay, okay, I'll come along. Thank you for grabbing the wheelchair though, it's a pain in the ass to haul around when I can walk fine, but sucks when I need it and don't have it around."
"Understandable," he noted as he opened up the wheelchair that he'd leaned against the wall besides the door and I made to sit in it, "I may be able to work on making the wheelchair more compact in its collapsed form, or reduce its weight, but I'd be concerned it may harm its integrity or useability."
I turned to look at the man through his dark tinted visor as he pushed me through the corridors at a swift pace, "You're thinking about making a tinker tech wheelchair?"
He adjusted his shoulder posture in a way that could have been a very muted shrug, "I think of a great many projects that I could build with my power's assistance, especially if one of its requirements is to be collapsible to some degree. A fascination of mine, and part of my specialisation."
"Huh." I murmured, taking the man's word for it. I'd started to feel myself thinking more and more of possibilities when observing the technology around me—primarily with vehicles, but I could feel the knowledge of magitech slowly come to the fore, wanting to test how modern machinery might interact with my current reserves of Life magics.
Again, without any obvious prompting, the internal pulling began, resulting in a struggle for me to keep my mind in the present while my power reached out into the field of stars.
It seems that it was time a connection was due, and as the sizeable star was hauled in by my power, I was filled with a sense of ease. All around me I began to see little things that, if there was no longer use for them, I could take apart and put to good work as part of a motor, or maybe the interior.
Even eyeing the dusty computers in some of the rooms we passed by gave me thoughts of putting together a proper powerful ECU for a car or two, even having decent computers built into the thing for the sake of A.I. assisted driving and remote control.
Wait, do I know how to do that? Remote control would be easy enough, honestly, especially if I just build it into the thing when putting it all together in the first place, but the A.I. might be outside my purview. Hmmm, I wonder—
"Hey Armsmaster?" I asked, consideration heavy in my tone.
"Yes James?" He responded blandly as he pushed me into an elevator, waving a hand over a scanner and entering a key code into the number pad.
"What's your experience like with A.I.?" I said as the elevator began to descend smoothly.
"Fairly extensive, though they are intentionally specific and limited. I am also usually assisted with the aid of a tinker who has much greater expertise with software than myself. Is this question brought on due to your power's most recent activity?"
"Still that obvious?" I sighed, "Partly, yes. The new addition was a good eye for reusing broken, old, or discarded things in my process. Really it extends to anything, but I'd probably be able to go down to a junkyard and give that Merchant tinker a run for her money in the ugly car competition."
"Useful, but not entirely relevant to the subject of A.I." Armsmaster commented, and I confirmed with a nod.
"Instead that comes more from my new vehicle-based power. I can build the technology to allow a car to automatically operate itself, but that knowledge doesn't extend to the actual creation of the A.I., training it, or anything along those lines. It'd be a boon if I could, though." I said as the elevator came to a stop, and opened into a wide open area filled to the brim with tools, benches, materials, and more. It was a little awe inspiring, and it seemed that Armsmaster used the room to work on his motorcycle, though I didn't see any evidence of work on his suit, so he may have a private workshop.
"I should be able to help you there. My own vehicle has an internal A.I. system that should be general enough that it could adapt to another vehicle, though it will be open to the creator of its source software for the sake of tinker tech maintenance." He explained as he wheeled me further into the room and placing me near to a large car lift, currently empty but surrounded entirely by various parts, standard tools and equipment, and basically the toolbox featured in every mechanic's wet dreams.
"Well." I forced out, "This is impressive."
"I should hope so." Armsmaster said, clear amusement in his voice, "I happen to be the Protectorate's leading tinker, so our workshop was guaranteed a sizeable budget. I generally use this for larger projects, which is currently relegated to my motorcycle for the moment."
"You don't really go for big tech, so that makes sense." I said, earning a unsatisfied grunt from the man.
"I would invest in larger projects, but I tend to densely pack technology into even the smallest of my devices, and the idea of building anything larger than my bike seems exceptionally time consuming." He clarified.
I eyed all the varied parts surrounding the car lift, quickly realising that there wasn't a whole vehicle lying in pieces, I moved my attention to the premiere tinker's motorcycle with a critical eye.
It was a very sporty looking machine, sleek and clearly optimised for airflow and drag resistance. It looked like it'd probably be on the heavier side, especially with the tech density that Armsmaster had just been talking about, but it was outwardly reasonable, if somewhat uninspired and by the books.
"You mind if I take a look?" I said, pointing towards the bike.
The Protectorate Leader looked momentarily conflicted before nodding in the affirmative, pushing me to the side of the bay where it was currently sitting slightly elevated, and standing aside, arms crossed as though he were a bouncer.
Man must really love his motorcycle.
I hopped out of the chair, albeit carefully, and starter to check out the bike as best I could without touching it or taking apart the engine case. The more I looked at the thing, however, the more and more bizarre it got.
It was streamlined, but not too streamlined. It was built for speed, but not too much speed. It had lots of traction, but not too much traction. Every individual part seemed as though it'd been pulled directly from some simulation between every modern part of the same type was averaged and only 'positives' aspects were included.
It was like a math equation built the 'perfect' motorcycle, with almost no concessions to its intended use case—merely some abstracted art piece made for showroom floors or for a concept car fluff piece.
'I mean… it'd work?' I thought to myself, puzzling over the thing's design, 'But why?'
If the man wanted a bike that was serviceable in every conceivable situation—and this bike can only barely be considered that—then I could probably go buy a bike and tinker with it for an hour and he'd be good. This was a technically 'better' solution, but it just seemed like–
I flinched back as Armsmaster appeared right next to me like a ninja, looking even more like a bouncer than before.
"God damn, you scared the shit out of me!" I groaned, placing a hand over my violently thumping heart.
"Apologies." He said, taking a step back, "You looked as though you were entering a tinker fugue and I was concerned you may begin attempting to use my motorcycle as parts."
Oh, that would explain it. He isn't just crazy about his bike, he was worried I was going to scrap his work to tinker with it.
"No, no. I'm just finding your bike to be sort of bizarre." I quickly reassured, "I'm assuming that all the parts were built through tinker tech means, or is tinker tech in some way itself?"
"You would be correct." He answered succinctly, "The precision required would be very difficult for a human to match, and most precision equipment might only just cut it."
"Right," I murmured, confirming part of my theory, "do you mind if I take a peek at the engine properly? Won't touch it, tinker's honour!"
Armsmaster actually snorted at that, "Lies, we have no honour when it comes to our tech."
Despite his words, he lifted a small latch that pulled up the seat and allowed the rest of the fairing to open up as well—the most obviously tinker tech portion of the vehicle with its lack of significant holes for exhaust and thermal transfer with the air.
Inside I found the most monstrous motorcycle engine I had ever witnessed. Granted, I hadn't ever looked at a motorcycle engine in my life, but still.
It was the same as the rest of the bike but somehow worse.
Everything was seemingly balanced on a knife's edge for no reason! It wasn't as if it wasn't a clearly powerful engine, as non-standard as the design might be, but it was absolutely packed with conflicting optimisations, each of which added more and more complexity and precision to the machine until it was more like an equation cosplaying as a Rube Goldberg machine.
This wasn't helped by me noticing the faint seams on the fairing of the bike and figuring out each was a different technology of some sort, and god knows what the hell they were meant to do.
"Boss man, quick question." I said as I took a step back from the machine to consider it in its totality, glancing at the man searchingly, "How long does this thing take you to maintain?"
This gave him pause, pursing his lips as he looked to his machine and considered my question carefully.
"Five hours per week, likely another three every month depending on usage." He answered finally, leaving me with my eyebrows reaching up towards my hairline, "Minimum."
"Jesus." I sighed out, "And I bet that's not considering if anything actually breaks, right?"
"Correct." He confirmed, lips set into an uncertain grimace.
"That's just not worth it, man. This whole bike is fighting itself. There's no design coherency, it's absolutely filled with 'optimisations' that are stopping it from being good at anything at all. It'll absolutely chew through road, but it's just not built to be good at anything, only barely mediocre, as far as super-powered bikes go." I ranted emphatically, only stopping myself as I registered the look on his face.
"You can recognise how it functions?" He asked, a slight hint of astonishment colouring his tone, "That engine is nearly entirely tinker tech."
I blinked, turning back to the engine with consternation, before pointing out a part of the engine that everything else surrounded but that I couldn't identify, "I'm assuming that's the heart of it all, right? The main piece of tinker tech?"
"It is, in essence, meant to function as a perpetual energy machine—though it is not actually that efficient and has a limited scale—this being its limit. With this engine design, I was able to use the lost energy of each process to feed the energy conservation unit so as to maintain it's steady output. This should allow the motorcycle to function on very little fuel for far, far longer than it otherwise should." He stated as a manner of fact, but I could sense the pride in the piece of tinker tech.
I looked more closely at the almost donut shaped enclosed metal container, trying to see if there were vents or anything that I could peer through to get a better idea of how it functioned, but I gave up trying to understand it and rather just decided to take it as a given.
"Alright, so you have an engine that can subsist on extremely low amounts of fuel. At current, how long could you last on a conventional full tank on, say, a freeway?" I asked, curious how significant it really was.
"Approximately thirty-seven hours."
"Thirty-seven?" I almost yelled, incredulous, "When the hell do you ever drive that much? Why bother make such a massive trade-off for the efficiency of the bike if you weren't going to reallocate it somewhere else?"
"How do you mean? My bike is built to be as functional as possible and remain efficient in fuel usage to mitigate potential downtime." He inquired, slightly guarded.
"Your bike can do everything the same way that a store-bought bike can do everything—it can't." I asserted, trying to keep it as non-inflammatory as possible all the while, "All-rounders are great, but not for specialised use cases like the ones you have. You're using your bike for patrols and chases inside of a cramped city with poorly maintained infrastructure. How many times have you needed to slow down and weave through potholes so you don't absolutely trash your bike?"
Armsmaster looked back to his bike, the muscles in his jaw working, though I couldn't quite get a read on what it meant, "Quite often."
"Right!" I exclaimed, then pointed to the racing formfactor, at odds with the more conventional but still racing leaning tires, "This isn't servicing your actual needs here. It looks sexy as hell, absolutely, but it's a severely compromised racing bike at best here. It doesn't need to be a dirt bike or anything, though, it just needs to be able to take the punishment the roads around here will deal out, and so–"
My jaw clamped up as I instinctively fought against the pulling sensation, managing to keep myself more cognizant than I ever have before, able to even hold up a hand to request a moment while a connection was being attempted. It then passed with nothing to show for it.
"Fucking power." I grumbled under my breath, though I saw a slight sympathetic look on Armsmaster's face, "Anyway, my point is…"
My frown quickly turned into a grin, mind already whirring with the promise of a real challenge.
"Maybe it's time for a redesign, hey?"
==== Perks Gained this Chapter ====
-Scrapyard Skills (Swat Kats) (300CP)
Where others see junk, you see treasure just waiting to be utilized. You can make far more use out of scrap metal and tossed out electronics, repurposing them for many different tasks. That washing machine might have the parts needed to help spin an engine turbine, or that piston tube might be JUST the right size to refashion into a grappling hook launcher... it's all in how you use it and how you repurpose things.
A/N: Lots of bits and pieces in this chapter, partially for the sake of establishing a direction, and also to keep some other plot threads relevant. I 'skipped over' the welcome James got mostly because it wouldn't have been all that important in contrast to future interactions with the Protectorate Heroes he'll have that'll expand their characters, but also that it would've taken way too many words for me to orchestrate it all haha.
Been wiffing on a lot of perks lately, just always rolling toward the middle or top of a catagory and essentially never picking anything up. The new perk, Scrapyard Skills, is generic but definitely useful. Especially since it'll apply to more advanced forms of technology, which allow him to mix and match between tech from different settings better; though it still relies on his skills with technology for it to be applicable in the first place, so we'll have to wait for that.
Next chapter will likely start with a small POV segment from Armsmaster's perspective once again. This chapter may have made the man and his motorbike look stupid—that he couldn't have seen the obvious flaws in his own tech—but I believe I have a fairly compelling reason why Armsmaster was blind to it. You've all likely put two and two together, it's pretty obvious, but it'll be good to actualise it in the story either way!
Finally, this chapter broke through the 50K mark, which is kinda funny.
