In which Cricket gets a laser scythe, Sveta gets motorized, and Burnscar gets a beard.
It's...
It's...
H+ Mayhem (Worm)
- Thread starter Jurric
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Index
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In which Cricket gets a laser scythe, Sveta gets motorized, and Burnscar gets a beard.
It's quite serious. I promise.
I have been told, (and I agree,) that this story does not start off very well, but picks up and becomes quite good once you get started. I would like to go back and re-write the beginning, but I think I'll go ahead and write the end first. Please persevere for a while, and you might find yourself enjoying it.
Index
Human
1.1
1.2
1.3
1.4
1.5
1.6
1.7
1.8
1.9
1.M
Transition
2.1
2.2
2.3
2.4
2.5
2.6
2.7
2.8
2.T
Inhuman
3.M.1
3.A
3.M.2
3.M.3
3.1
3.S
3.2
3.3
3.4
3.S.2
3.M.4
3.5
3.6
3.F.1
3.F.2
3.F.3
3.7
3.8
3.9
3.10
Monster
4.1
4.2
4.3
4.4
4.S
4.5
4.C
4.6
4.7
4.8
4.9
4.10
4.11
4.M.1
4.M.2
Kaijū
5.1
5.2
5.3
5.T.1
5.4
5.D
5.5
5.T.2
5.T.3
5.E
5.6
5.7
5.L
Transhuman
6.1
6.2
6.3
6.4
6.5
6.S
6.6
6.I
6.7
Omakes
Too Stupid To Die
Mixed Feelings
Regent Omake
Cranial Omake
An Inevitable Conflict
Thanks, Jack!
Just as... Planned?
It's quite serious. I promise.
I have been told, (and I agree,) that this story does not start off very well, but picks up and becomes quite good once you get started. I would like to go back and re-write the beginning, but I think I'll go ahead and write the end first. Please persevere for a while, and you might find yourself enjoying it.
Index
Human
1.1
1.2
1.3
1.4
1.5
1.6
1.7
1.8
1.9
1.M
Transition
2.1
2.2
2.3
2.4
2.5
2.6
2.7
2.8
2.T
Inhuman
3.M.1
3.A
3.M.2
3.M.3
3.1
3.S
3.2
3.3
3.4
3.S.2
3.M.4
3.5
3.6
3.F.1
3.F.2
3.F.3
3.7
3.8
3.9
3.10
Monster
4.1
4.2
4.3
4.4
4.S
4.5
4.C
4.6
4.7
4.8
4.9
4.10
4.11
4.M.1
4.M.2
Kaijū
5.1
5.2
5.3
5.T.1
5.4
5.D
5.5
5.T.2
5.T.3
5.E
5.6
5.7
5.L
Transhuman
6.1
6.2
6.3
6.4
6.5
6.S
6.6
6.I
6.7
Omakes
Too Stupid To Die
Mixed Feelings
Regent Omake
Cranial Omake
An Inevitable Conflict
Thanks, Jack!
Just as... Planned?
Last edited:
1.1
- Location
- Australia
I decided that the first test of my jetpack would be flying into the PRT building. Normally that would be stupid, untested tech plus a public appearance was a horrible idea, but I wanted to impress, and I had tested my mask thoroughly, it should warn me if anything catastrophic was going to happen.
The jetpack worked admirably, especially when combined with the rocket boots. It wasn't a normal jetpack, it was a design I stole from a star wars MMO, although I intended to modify it further eventually. The jetpack consisted of thick, wraparound chest armor, which contained the generator, and four extendable limbs connected to the back of the chest armor, which I could control with my spinal implant in much the same way as I manipulated my own limbs. At the moment these extendable limbs could only release a steady stream of kinetic propulsion, but I already had the designs to rework that into a long range kinetic blast written up in my lab. The trick was to keep the energy as light until it impacted a solid object, much like Kid Win's pistols did.
I flared the jetpack's 'legs' and my own rocket boots to land softly. The right rocket boot gave a slight whistle, and I winced. I blew out the power supply in it again. I'd known I hadn't exactly been working with the right equipment when I made them, but I had hoped it would last longer than that.
The PRT response was quite efficient. The guards with containment foam snapped to attention, scanning me for weapons. Several even homed in on the small handle on my belt as a weapon, correctly, but I held my hands up placating, and I wasn't foamed. I didn't make any threatening moves as I walked towards the reception desk, and, aside from being watched closely, I wasn't accosted.
There were three people ahead of me in the cue for the receptionists desk, what looked like a mother and their young daughter, and an elderly man in a formal suit, but all three stepped aside rapidly when they saw me. It would have been very awkward to wait in cue dressed like this, so I nodded to the three, and apologized.
"Sorry, I'll try to make this quick." I said.
The receptionist had pressed something under their desk when they saw me, but she still turned to me with a smile.
"How can I help you sir?" She asked politely.
"I'd like to see the director. To make an appointment if she isn't available." I said.
"Please wait while I check." The assistant, who's name tag proudly proclaimed her to be Mandy, said.
I rocked back on my heels slightly. It wouldn't be easy fixing the casing for my rocket boots. Unlike my jetpack, I had already retooled those for bursts of kinetic energy, just in case I needed to jump away from something really fast, and didn't mind the inevitable destruction of my legs. Honestly the jetpack was mostly inspired when I saw the damage of a directed kinetic pulse. I had not fully thought that through when I was designing the things.
I clicked my heels together, and was greeted with a slight rattle. The problem with rigging a micro-reactor like mine to produce energy in both short bursts and steady streams was two fold. First, rigging the containment to breach in a way that didn't cause an explosion, and second, rigging the containment not to breach at all. I hadn't actually solved that second one. I had ideas, but I needed better tools. I could make them, but I needed raw materials. However my reactors actually worked they didn't need uranium or anything, gold, silver, a bit of copper, a lot of tin, barium, potassium… not the final product of course, but I could get the raw materials, refine them into what I needed, if I had money.
… and I was mentally waffling.
At least my powers weird need for conflict wasn't turning out to be the bottleneck I initially thought.
"Director Piggot is in a meeting at the moment, but Armsmaster is available and can come in directly from the rig, if you'd like to talk to him instead?" Mandy said, putting down the phone.
I shook my head.
"Thank you, but as much as I'd like to talk with another Tinker, I'm likely to be too star-stuck to keep a clear head, and I think I'll need one. Can you arrange an appointment for me please?"
Mandy nodded.
"If you want to come in tomorrow at eight AM, her aide says that she will be available then." She said.
"Thank you. I'll be there." I said, trying the hide my embarrassment as I turned and walked out of the lobby.
Taking off with just the jetpack wasn't hard, though my ascent was slower than I'd like. Each of the jetpack's legs was only roughly as strong as the thrusters in my boots, and the two of those had only been good for a sort of directed glide when they worked.
Still, I'd call this a success. The boot dying on me was a pain, but that was why I had multiple thrust sources now. Redundancy, and I could fix the boot with the scrap in my workshop. It would break again but, as I said, redundancy.
I stayed low, and settled into a nearby alley to let the jetpack retract back into its backpack shape. It looked about right for a school backpack, and I had stashed an actual backpack to cover the metal with in the alley. Then I regretfully unplugged my mask from my face, and winced as the world went black. Wish I could wear that all the time, but I hadn't managed to get the full sensor suite compacted into a glass eye yet. Or, more accurately, I had, but it wasn't a glass eye, it looked like something from the terminator. Obviously tinker-tech, and far to much off a give away to wear in broad daylight.
I put on a pair of dark glasses, grabbed my cane, and jogged home to stash my jetpack before I went to school.
I know a fair bit about capes. Naturally, you get a power, you become a bit of a cape geek. Either that or you're an idiot. I know that most capes end up villains, and I know that's because of the nature of trigger events. Me, I'm the opposite. I was all on track to be a villain, or as much as a seven year old kid can be. I preferred robber in cops and robbers. I was the monster when we played heroes and monsters. I… pulled my sisters hair… honestly, a lot of stuff from back then was pretty vague, but I was a rather typical kid, with a mild case of ADHD. Probably not actual ADHD, my parents were thinking of taking me to the doctors to be checked, but yeah… I was a small nightmare. Unlike my sister.
I didn't really want to think about my sister.
My past pushed me to try and become a hero out of spite, but Taylor's past was very different. I have no idea how she managed to hold herself together. I'd felt Taylor trigger three weeks ago, and I was waiting for one of two things. The arrest of the girls who pushed her into that locker, or for Taylor to go all Carrie on the school with whatever power she just received.
It was only a guess that she triggered, but it was one I was fairly confident in, I'd read about it, browsing some of the more serious forums on PHO, I had already know that a trigger event causes a short, temporary blackout to all nearby parahumans, and my neural implant registered some weird brain activity at that time. It fit, but Taylor just went about her day, as brutally bullied as she always was. Hacking the school computers would have been childsplay even if I wasn't a Tinker. The information wasn't actually stored on those computers, but I was eventually able to dig up a deleted email between Blackwell and Sophia's case worker that explained why the girls hadn't been arrested, or punished at all.
I was fairly sure Piggot didn't know. I'd read about her, she might cover this up, but she wouldn't let it continue the way it was. If I was wrong… well, we'd cross that bridge when we got to it.
I hadn't really been interested in Taylor until after I felt the trigger. I'd paid more attention to the gang members, and tried to figure out who would be down for a fight, but wouldn't actually go too far. The… energy I needed to unlock new things to Tinker came more quickly if I'd been in a fight, but I couldn't really make a new jetpack if my fingers were broken and I was vomiting blood, so I needed to compromise. Someone who was willing to hit the blind kid, but who wouldn't put him in the hospital. A tricky balancing act.
Still, I was paying attention to Taylor now. She'd only come back from the hospital a week ago, and I was slowly working myself into her good graces. Being blind helped, I just asked her to show me the way to a few classes, and it was a good excuse for not helping her earlier. Because you did have to be blind not to notice what Taylor went though. I didn't see any need to tell her I had heard she was in the locker, and done nothing, that would probably hurt her, and I like to think I would have done something, if I had all the details. Hearing a few other students mention in passing that a girl had been shoved into a locker just hadn't registered as important to me.
Taylor always approaches the lunch table like a small, frightened animal. I can tell by the way the chair beneath her creaked, she doesn't put her full weight on it, ready to flee at the first sign of her tormentors. It had taken me three days just to convince her that the lunchroom was safe, and… that had probably been a lie. In the end she decided to come because I had several assignments that hadn't been properly converted to braille, and she volunteered to help me with them. It was annoying, asking for help, but Taylor provided it readily enough, and I had been worried that my excuse of 'help at home' wouldn't cover using my mask to read the instruction sheets normally.
"Um. How was art?" Taylor asked, her weight eventually settling on the chair.
"Not to bad. I started working with slip casts. They should come out quite nicely." I told her, then I grinned. "Much more fun to be working practically, don't you think?"
"Um. Yeah. Do you need help with the theory assignment?"
I shook my head, something I took care to keep up since I lost my sight. Just because I can't benefit fully from body language doesn't mean everyone else can't, and I didn't plan on being blind permanently.
"It's fine. Mr Wilson knows how to use the school's braille printer." I told her.
I'd been trying to figure out Taylor's power for a while now. I was leaning towards Tinker, like me. I'd asked to borrow her mobile once, and she said she didn't have one. I cannibalized my own phones for parts almost as quickly as I bought them, so maybe that was a thing for Tinkers. Just for the last day or so, she'd been able to almost uncannily avoid some of her more determined tormentors, which seemed to lend credence to my theory. I think I remembered someone commenting that she wore glasses, it wouldn't be too hard for me to hack the school security cameras and send a feed to a pair of glasses. Perhaps she was doing the same.
No, wait, someone else had told me that the last of the Winslow cameras had been vandalized over a year ago, and all of them were non-functional. Note to self, check if they had been repaired.
"Right, um, I'd better be going then. I'll see you tomorrow morning." Taylor said, getting up just a fraction too quickly.
So, someone was coming. Oh well, not like I was particularly bothered by it. If all went well with my meeting with Piggot tomorrow morning, this would be over by Wednesday.
Taylor left, and it didn't take long for me to notice three footsteps idling towards me.
"I don't know why you hang out with that looser." A voice said. It took me a couple of seconds to place it as Emma.
"I do." I said, smiling. Lunch was almost finished, and I considered this problem nearly solved. If Piggot still covered for Sophia I'd probably be in for a bad week or two, but I was fairly sure that all three of them would be gone soon. Perhaps I should avoid coming to school tomorrow, just in case… no, this counted as conflict for my power. A fight that slowly built the energy I could then invest into further designs. Just because I was bottle-necked at the production end just now didn't mean I didn't want more potential tech.
Emma waited for an explanation before exploding into a sigh.
"She's ugly as sin you know, and if you do get into her pants, you're just going to catch whatever she has."
I shrugged.
"Good thing that isn't my reason for hanging around her then." I said simply.
"You're not going to make any friends, hanging around with her." Sophia tried.
Ah, poor Sophia, can't punch the blind man in a crowded cafeteria, and thus attempting a social attack. Stick to punching people Sophia. It's your only strength.
Still, this was as good an opportunity as any to buy Taylor and myself a bit of a reprieve, just in case the inevitable investigation took a while to happen.
It used to be I couldn't even think of doing this. Used to be, I'd get a panic attack at anything even slightly related to that day. I'd fixed that. The first thing my neural implant did was dampen and suppress the fear response, not completely, and only in response to a sharp spike of fear, but I'd modified it since, both to interface with the spinal implant and to kept me calm and rational. I was still tweaking the program, trying to ensure that it still let me feel emotions, adjusting which emotions I felt, and to what degree. I didn't want to become a sociopath, and I think I'd found a pleasant sweet-spot I dubbed the 'action hero zone.'
Perhaps the fear response was a bit low, but I had my spinal implant set up to inject adrenaline on command, and that was what fear was for, really, to trigger the fight or flight responses at full throttle. I could do that manually. In fact I was working on synthesizing something better than adrenaline, something that would let me drastically improve mental processing speed. I called it SlowMo. Hopefully it would work more reliably than activating the Mayhem protocol.
I pulled myself back from the whirling chemical formula in my head, and focused on the girls around me. This wasn't the time to tinker.
"Sophia, that sounded almost like a threat." I said, trying to fake being aghast.
"Not a threat, just some friendly advice. Taylor is bad news." Sophia said.
"I see." I said, taking off my glasses, and showing them the holes where my eyes used to be. "Or, as the case may be, I don't. Thank you for your… advice. But I will not be following it. You see, when I was ten years old, Jack Slash cut out my eyes. Did it himself, took his time, as the corpses of my mother and father cooled in the next room. After my sister gave up trying to heal us. That," I put my glasses back on, "is the standard I set for intimidation."
"Huh." Sophia said, "That's kind of badass. Why do you hang around with a wimp?"
"Before I tell you that, let me explain something to you. Before Jack blinded me, he told me that I was going to be his test. He was going to take my sister, he was going to train her, and one day, to prove just how well he had her trained, he was going to come back for me, and make her… work on me. Do you really want to hang around someone Jack Slash has promised to visit?"
"Bullshit." Sophia said. "There's no fucking way…"
Sophia was a Ward, so it should be safe to show her, and I was certain that Jack could find me anyway, if he wanted to. My sister could do it, if he couldn't. When they put me in witness protection they told me to throw that part of my life away. Get rid of everything from back then. I hadn't. I kept a picture of how our family used to be. I tried not to look at it myself, when I was capable of looking at things. Riley had grown of course, it had been five years, but she was still recognizable.
Part of me wanted them to find me, while my sister was still recognizable.
There was silence, and I really wished that I had my mask, so I could read their facial expressions.
I'd taken too long though, the bell rang, and lunch was over, so they didn't have to think up a response that let them get away without sounding scared. A shame. Still, I'd like to think that those awkward seconds of silence would haunt the girls for a while. Or nightmares of Jack Slash coming the school.
Honestly though, Jack had probably forgotten about me. It had been five years, and it wasn't like I triggered on that day. I'd gone through witness protection, been fostered off. It had been later, as the stress of his threat made me throw away relationships with anyone who came close, as my mind slowly deteriorated under a strong case of PTSD and the twin isolation of blindness and my own self-imposed isolation.
He had a very firm grip on my sister. I knew. I'd read about the things she'd done, and she would never have been able to do that as the girl I knew. He'd probably decided it was too much of a bother to hunt me, or that it would damage his hold on her, instead of reinforcing it. Or perhaps it was the threat he held over her head. 'Now now, sew the woman up nicely or I'll make you do your brother next.'
Removing my fear of his promise had freed me. I'd been a mess. I'd broken down. I wasn't able to help. Wasn't able to be the big brother I should have been, but my trigger fixed all that, at least in part. Seven weeks to get enough energy for the schematics I needed, two weeks to build something I dubbed the 'Surgery Box.' One week to design and program an interface port into my skull…
My power had stopped coming as quickly once I settled my brain chemistry. It took longer to climb the 'Aviation' tree than it did the 'Human Augmentation' tree, and I didn't remember having trouble singling out the 'Neural Enhancements' branch of Human Augmentation like I did for the 'Kinetic Propulsion' branch of the Aviation tree.
Didn't matter. I wasn't ever going back to being that nervous wreck.
The jetpack worked admirably, especially when combined with the rocket boots. It wasn't a normal jetpack, it was a design I stole from a star wars MMO, although I intended to modify it further eventually. The jetpack consisted of thick, wraparound chest armor, which contained the generator, and four extendable limbs connected to the back of the chest armor, which I could control with my spinal implant in much the same way as I manipulated my own limbs. At the moment these extendable limbs could only release a steady stream of kinetic propulsion, but I already had the designs to rework that into a long range kinetic blast written up in my lab. The trick was to keep the energy as light until it impacted a solid object, much like Kid Win's pistols did.
I flared the jetpack's 'legs' and my own rocket boots to land softly. The right rocket boot gave a slight whistle, and I winced. I blew out the power supply in it again. I'd known I hadn't exactly been working with the right equipment when I made them, but I had hoped it would last longer than that.
The PRT response was quite efficient. The guards with containment foam snapped to attention, scanning me for weapons. Several even homed in on the small handle on my belt as a weapon, correctly, but I held my hands up placating, and I wasn't foamed. I didn't make any threatening moves as I walked towards the reception desk, and, aside from being watched closely, I wasn't accosted.
There were three people ahead of me in the cue for the receptionists desk, what looked like a mother and their young daughter, and an elderly man in a formal suit, but all three stepped aside rapidly when they saw me. It would have been very awkward to wait in cue dressed like this, so I nodded to the three, and apologized.
"Sorry, I'll try to make this quick." I said.
The receptionist had pressed something under their desk when they saw me, but she still turned to me with a smile.
"How can I help you sir?" She asked politely.
"I'd like to see the director. To make an appointment if she isn't available." I said.
"Please wait while I check." The assistant, who's name tag proudly proclaimed her to be Mandy, said.
I rocked back on my heels slightly. It wouldn't be easy fixing the casing for my rocket boots. Unlike my jetpack, I had already retooled those for bursts of kinetic energy, just in case I needed to jump away from something really fast, and didn't mind the inevitable destruction of my legs. Honestly the jetpack was mostly inspired when I saw the damage of a directed kinetic pulse. I had not fully thought that through when I was designing the things.
I clicked my heels together, and was greeted with a slight rattle. The problem with rigging a micro-reactor like mine to produce energy in both short bursts and steady streams was two fold. First, rigging the containment to breach in a way that didn't cause an explosion, and second, rigging the containment not to breach at all. I hadn't actually solved that second one. I had ideas, but I needed better tools. I could make them, but I needed raw materials. However my reactors actually worked they didn't need uranium or anything, gold, silver, a bit of copper, a lot of tin, barium, potassium… not the final product of course, but I could get the raw materials, refine them into what I needed, if I had money.
… and I was mentally waffling.
At least my powers weird need for conflict wasn't turning out to be the bottleneck I initially thought.
"Director Piggot is in a meeting at the moment, but Armsmaster is available and can come in directly from the rig, if you'd like to talk to him instead?" Mandy said, putting down the phone.
I shook my head.
"Thank you, but as much as I'd like to talk with another Tinker, I'm likely to be too star-stuck to keep a clear head, and I think I'll need one. Can you arrange an appointment for me please?"
Mandy nodded.
"If you want to come in tomorrow at eight AM, her aide says that she will be available then." She said.
"Thank you. I'll be there." I said, trying the hide my embarrassment as I turned and walked out of the lobby.
Taking off with just the jetpack wasn't hard, though my ascent was slower than I'd like. Each of the jetpack's legs was only roughly as strong as the thrusters in my boots, and the two of those had only been good for a sort of directed glide when they worked.
Still, I'd call this a success. The boot dying on me was a pain, but that was why I had multiple thrust sources now. Redundancy, and I could fix the boot with the scrap in my workshop. It would break again but, as I said, redundancy.
I stayed low, and settled into a nearby alley to let the jetpack retract back into its backpack shape. It looked about right for a school backpack, and I had stashed an actual backpack to cover the metal with in the alley. Then I regretfully unplugged my mask from my face, and winced as the world went black. Wish I could wear that all the time, but I hadn't managed to get the full sensor suite compacted into a glass eye yet. Or, more accurately, I had, but it wasn't a glass eye, it looked like something from the terminator. Obviously tinker-tech, and far to much off a give away to wear in broad daylight.
I put on a pair of dark glasses, grabbed my cane, and jogged home to stash my jetpack before I went to school.
***
I know a fair bit about capes. Naturally, you get a power, you become a bit of a cape geek. Either that or you're an idiot. I know that most capes end up villains, and I know that's because of the nature of trigger events. Me, I'm the opposite. I was all on track to be a villain, or as much as a seven year old kid can be. I preferred robber in cops and robbers. I was the monster when we played heroes and monsters. I… pulled my sisters hair… honestly, a lot of stuff from back then was pretty vague, but I was a rather typical kid, with a mild case of ADHD. Probably not actual ADHD, my parents were thinking of taking me to the doctors to be checked, but yeah… I was a small nightmare. Unlike my sister.
I didn't really want to think about my sister.
My past pushed me to try and become a hero out of spite, but Taylor's past was very different. I have no idea how she managed to hold herself together. I'd felt Taylor trigger three weeks ago, and I was waiting for one of two things. The arrest of the girls who pushed her into that locker, or for Taylor to go all Carrie on the school with whatever power she just received.
It was only a guess that she triggered, but it was one I was fairly confident in, I'd read about it, browsing some of the more serious forums on PHO, I had already know that a trigger event causes a short, temporary blackout to all nearby parahumans, and my neural implant registered some weird brain activity at that time. It fit, but Taylor just went about her day, as brutally bullied as she always was. Hacking the school computers would have been childsplay even if I wasn't a Tinker. The information wasn't actually stored on those computers, but I was eventually able to dig up a deleted email between Blackwell and Sophia's case worker that explained why the girls hadn't been arrested, or punished at all.
I was fairly sure Piggot didn't know. I'd read about her, she might cover this up, but she wouldn't let it continue the way it was. If I was wrong… well, we'd cross that bridge when we got to it.
I hadn't really been interested in Taylor until after I felt the trigger. I'd paid more attention to the gang members, and tried to figure out who would be down for a fight, but wouldn't actually go too far. The… energy I needed to unlock new things to Tinker came more quickly if I'd been in a fight, but I couldn't really make a new jetpack if my fingers were broken and I was vomiting blood, so I needed to compromise. Someone who was willing to hit the blind kid, but who wouldn't put him in the hospital. A tricky balancing act.
Still, I was paying attention to Taylor now. She'd only come back from the hospital a week ago, and I was slowly working myself into her good graces. Being blind helped, I just asked her to show me the way to a few classes, and it was a good excuse for not helping her earlier. Because you did have to be blind not to notice what Taylor went though. I didn't see any need to tell her I had heard she was in the locker, and done nothing, that would probably hurt her, and I like to think I would have done something, if I had all the details. Hearing a few other students mention in passing that a girl had been shoved into a locker just hadn't registered as important to me.
Taylor always approaches the lunch table like a small, frightened animal. I can tell by the way the chair beneath her creaked, she doesn't put her full weight on it, ready to flee at the first sign of her tormentors. It had taken me three days just to convince her that the lunchroom was safe, and… that had probably been a lie. In the end she decided to come because I had several assignments that hadn't been properly converted to braille, and she volunteered to help me with them. It was annoying, asking for help, but Taylor provided it readily enough, and I had been worried that my excuse of 'help at home' wouldn't cover using my mask to read the instruction sheets normally.
"Um. How was art?" Taylor asked, her weight eventually settling on the chair.
"Not to bad. I started working with slip casts. They should come out quite nicely." I told her, then I grinned. "Much more fun to be working practically, don't you think?"
"Um. Yeah. Do you need help with the theory assignment?"
I shook my head, something I took care to keep up since I lost my sight. Just because I can't benefit fully from body language doesn't mean everyone else can't, and I didn't plan on being blind permanently.
"It's fine. Mr Wilson knows how to use the school's braille printer." I told her.
I'd been trying to figure out Taylor's power for a while now. I was leaning towards Tinker, like me. I'd asked to borrow her mobile once, and she said she didn't have one. I cannibalized my own phones for parts almost as quickly as I bought them, so maybe that was a thing for Tinkers. Just for the last day or so, she'd been able to almost uncannily avoid some of her more determined tormentors, which seemed to lend credence to my theory. I think I remembered someone commenting that she wore glasses, it wouldn't be too hard for me to hack the school security cameras and send a feed to a pair of glasses. Perhaps she was doing the same.
No, wait, someone else had told me that the last of the Winslow cameras had been vandalized over a year ago, and all of them were non-functional. Note to self, check if they had been repaired.
"Right, um, I'd better be going then. I'll see you tomorrow morning." Taylor said, getting up just a fraction too quickly.
So, someone was coming. Oh well, not like I was particularly bothered by it. If all went well with my meeting with Piggot tomorrow morning, this would be over by Wednesday.
Taylor left, and it didn't take long for me to notice three footsteps idling towards me.
"I don't know why you hang out with that looser." A voice said. It took me a couple of seconds to place it as Emma.
"I do." I said, smiling. Lunch was almost finished, and I considered this problem nearly solved. If Piggot still covered for Sophia I'd probably be in for a bad week or two, but I was fairly sure that all three of them would be gone soon. Perhaps I should avoid coming to school tomorrow, just in case… no, this counted as conflict for my power. A fight that slowly built the energy I could then invest into further designs. Just because I was bottle-necked at the production end just now didn't mean I didn't want more potential tech.
Emma waited for an explanation before exploding into a sigh.
"She's ugly as sin you know, and if you do get into her pants, you're just going to catch whatever she has."
I shrugged.
"Good thing that isn't my reason for hanging around her then." I said simply.
"You're not going to make any friends, hanging around with her." Sophia tried.
Ah, poor Sophia, can't punch the blind man in a crowded cafeteria, and thus attempting a social attack. Stick to punching people Sophia. It's your only strength.
Still, this was as good an opportunity as any to buy Taylor and myself a bit of a reprieve, just in case the inevitable investigation took a while to happen.
It used to be I couldn't even think of doing this. Used to be, I'd get a panic attack at anything even slightly related to that day. I'd fixed that. The first thing my neural implant did was dampen and suppress the fear response, not completely, and only in response to a sharp spike of fear, but I'd modified it since, both to interface with the spinal implant and to kept me calm and rational. I was still tweaking the program, trying to ensure that it still let me feel emotions, adjusting which emotions I felt, and to what degree. I didn't want to become a sociopath, and I think I'd found a pleasant sweet-spot I dubbed the 'action hero zone.'
Perhaps the fear response was a bit low, but I had my spinal implant set up to inject adrenaline on command, and that was what fear was for, really, to trigger the fight or flight responses at full throttle. I could do that manually. In fact I was working on synthesizing something better than adrenaline, something that would let me drastically improve mental processing speed. I called it SlowMo. Hopefully it would work more reliably than activating the Mayhem protocol.
I pulled myself back from the whirling chemical formula in my head, and focused on the girls around me. This wasn't the time to tinker.
"Sophia, that sounded almost like a threat." I said, trying to fake being aghast.
"Not a threat, just some friendly advice. Taylor is bad news." Sophia said.
"I see." I said, taking off my glasses, and showing them the holes where my eyes used to be. "Or, as the case may be, I don't. Thank you for your… advice. But I will not be following it. You see, when I was ten years old, Jack Slash cut out my eyes. Did it himself, took his time, as the corpses of my mother and father cooled in the next room. After my sister gave up trying to heal us. That," I put my glasses back on, "is the standard I set for intimidation."
"Huh." Sophia said, "That's kind of badass. Why do you hang around with a wimp?"
"Before I tell you that, let me explain something to you. Before Jack blinded me, he told me that I was going to be his test. He was going to take my sister, he was going to train her, and one day, to prove just how well he had her trained, he was going to come back for me, and make her… work on me. Do you really want to hang around someone Jack Slash has promised to visit?"
"Bullshit." Sophia said. "There's no fucking way…"
Sophia was a Ward, so it should be safe to show her, and I was certain that Jack could find me anyway, if he wanted to. My sister could do it, if he couldn't. When they put me in witness protection they told me to throw that part of my life away. Get rid of everything from back then. I hadn't. I kept a picture of how our family used to be. I tried not to look at it myself, when I was capable of looking at things. Riley had grown of course, it had been five years, but she was still recognizable.
Part of me wanted them to find me, while my sister was still recognizable.
There was silence, and I really wished that I had my mask, so I could read their facial expressions.
I'd taken too long though, the bell rang, and lunch was over, so they didn't have to think up a response that let them get away without sounding scared. A shame. Still, I'd like to think that those awkward seconds of silence would haunt the girls for a while. Or nightmares of Jack Slash coming the school.
Honestly though, Jack had probably forgotten about me. It had been five years, and it wasn't like I triggered on that day. I'd gone through witness protection, been fostered off. It had been later, as the stress of his threat made me throw away relationships with anyone who came close, as my mind slowly deteriorated under a strong case of PTSD and the twin isolation of blindness and my own self-imposed isolation.
He had a very firm grip on my sister. I knew. I'd read about the things she'd done, and she would never have been able to do that as the girl I knew. He'd probably decided it was too much of a bother to hunt me, or that it would damage his hold on her, instead of reinforcing it. Or perhaps it was the threat he held over her head. 'Now now, sew the woman up nicely or I'll make you do your brother next.'
Removing my fear of his promise had freed me. I'd been a mess. I'd broken down. I wasn't able to help. Wasn't able to be the big brother I should have been, but my trigger fixed all that, at least in part. Seven weeks to get enough energy for the schematics I needed, two weeks to build something I dubbed the 'Surgery Box.' One week to design and program an interface port into my skull…
My power had stopped coming as quickly once I settled my brain chemistry. It took longer to climb the 'Aviation' tree than it did the 'Human Augmentation' tree, and I didn't remember having trouble singling out the 'Neural Enhancements' branch of Human Augmentation like I did for the 'Kinetic Propulsion' branch of the Aviation tree.
Didn't matter. I wasn't ever going back to being that nervous wreck.
Last edited:
GameDragon
Too Hot To Handle
- Location
- Challenger Deep
Well. This is a round of firsts. First chapter, First time I saw Bonesaw get a family member that wasn't taylor and friends, first time i posted on this thread, first day this thread went up.
This is going to be good.
This is going to be good.
The Stormbringer
Worm Fanfic & Crack Connoisseur
- Location
- Spaaaaace~!
Ditto!
1.2
- Location
- Australia
Afternoon classes went quickly. I didn't pay a lot of attention. History, English. Didn't need either of them. Hell, I could probably become a History Tinker or Language Tinker if I wanted, and get all this information for free from my power.
I queried my power, and yes, those were sort of options. I could build a postcog machine. It was in the 'Surveillance' tree, under the 'Investigative' branch. As for English, that was in there as well, under the 'Social' tree. It seemed to be a very basic core component of the tree, with the ability to create translation software being non-specific to any one branch.
I sighed as our homework was handed out, and trailed my fingers over the assignment. Still, I hadn't bought anything from either of those trees yet, and breaking into a new tree was very expensive. I had to buy up most of the 'root' stuff, basic skills, reflexes, knowledge my power took for granted in the later blueprints. Suppose I'd better at least try to get passing marks.
I met Taylor briefly at the bus stop. She just said hello, and then got onto her bus. I got onto mine, and got off on the third stop.
This was Winslow, even the bus drivers were bad. It took me ten minutes of feeling subtle wrongness, before I figured out that I'd been let off at the wrong stop. An easy mistake to make, it had even happened before once, probably some student asking to get off early to meet with a friend somewhere, or a dog going across the road. Something that made me loose count. Normally I kept track of the turns as well, and knew where to get off. Or the bus driver would warn me. Today I'd been lost in some of my designs, and the bus driver hadn't been paying attention.
Still, this had happened before, last time I had to ask strangers the route back, but I think I remembered it now. Should be able to find my way home.
It took me a good hour to find the notched fence that bordered my property, but I did find it, opened the gate, made my way down the path, unlocked the door, checked my alarm, and then made myself a pre-tinkering snack.
I was alone in the house, as I was most days. The foster system wasn't really built for Slaughterhouse victims, and I'd been doing this… thing where the guilt of endangering my family drove me to tell them about Jack's promise. That was a very quick path to being shoved back into the system.
In the end the PRT had found a family with a fair bit of money, and a small, cheap second house near the docks that they didn't use very often. By that point I was a teenager, so they gave me the keys, and my foster father, Mark, dropped around every few days to make sure I was all right, make sure that I was keeping the place tidy, that sort of thing. I had a personal alarm, that was about as safe as they could make me on a government benefits budget.
It took a bit of bargaining to keep Mark out of my room permanently. Not sure what he thought I was doing in there, I'd tried to imply that I was embarrassed about a few sculptures, and I took pains to make sure that there weren't signs I was sleeping on the couch when he came around.
I had to sleep on the couch, because I'd used the frame of my bed to hold a diagnostic scanner. If that didn't tip him off I think the new wooden bench that wrapped around the room would do the trick, laden as it was with various tools and gadgets. I hadn't managed to build any truly amazing tools yet, but I don't think a regular fifteen year old needs a miniature electron microscope.
I had a box of scrap in the corner, mostly old computers and printers scavenged from the dump, along with a few radios and half a car engine. My task for this evening was stripping the gold off everything in the box with certain chemicals, then separating out the silicon and some of the smaller chips and transistors. I'd scrapped my computer over the weekend for jetpack parts, and I needed to build another one before I could do much else. I'd need to program the micro-forge if I wanted to create a new power supply, and I didn't have an interface to do that right now. Also, I'd need a computer to get my homework done, though I had till Friday to do that.
Before doing anything else I put my mask on. The smooth fabric covering was designed not to look technological, a little misdirection, just to keep people guessing. On the interior, of course, it was different.
There was a small plug on the back of my head, sunk into my flesh and covered in fake hair. I gave it a half twist, pulled it out, and pushed the connection at the back of the mask into the small port in my skull. Then I pulled the front of the mask out, over my head, and slipped the twin globes on the front into my eye sockets, to better hold the mask in place and to provide the processing power for the sensor suite inside the mask.
The mask didn't cover my whole face, just a wide, white strip around my eyes, upper nose, and over my eyebrows. The mask was pretty decent, one of the few pieces of tinkertech I bought specific components for, blowing nearly a year's savings to give myself sight. It could see a fair distance into both the infrared and ultraviolet, but my visual cortex wasn't adapted to that information yet. I was still getting a mild headache from the way my vision now wrapped around my skull, so I restricted the mask to the visible spectrum for now. Later, once I'd adjusted, I'd gradually dial it up until I could see through walls, watch someone's temperature rise or fall, see ultravoilet radiation, watch electrical signals travel through the atmosphere…
The interface port at the back of my skull was designed to let me alter my brain as much as possible without having to go through invasive surgery again. The interior of my skull was lined with small, adaptable sensors and emitters, allowing me to brain-computer interface in almost any way I could imagine. For example, the mask interfaced directly with my visual cortex. It wasn't perfect, I'd been blind for a long time, my brain had started to re-purpose my visual cortex to processing other sensory data. I got weird flashes sometimes, when I wore the mask, feeling odd sensations, smells or sounds that I could feel weren't real, just a false signal from the mask.
I didn't care. With this on, I could see. I could read and write in a notebook without having to trace my fingers over tiny bumps. I didn't need to prick my fingers on electronics to tell what they were. I didn't need to walk slowly and carefully everywhere. Didn't need to make a mental note of where I put everything down… all the little things you take for granted when your eyes are functioning.
Perhaps it would be different if I was blind from birth, but my eyes were taken from me. Stolen. I wanted them back, and now I had… something. That alone, would have been enough to calm me significantly.
At the time I had seven active, working pieces of tinkertech that weren't just tools. My mask, a pair of terminator eyes that can interface with my neural chip directly, but don't have wraparound vision, my neural chip, my spinal chip, my rocket boots, my jetpack, and my lightsabre. Not bad for nearly six months of work, though I was hoping to do better in future.
The lightsabre had been the big mistake. My power allows me spend the energy I gather to buy blueprints from anywhere in a tech tree, they were just much, much cheaper in a tree that I had already unlocked, or if I had other, related technology.
The lightsabre was taken directly from the 'Weapons' tech tree, inside the 'Disintegration Weapons' branch, and in itself was all kinds of awesome. I was a big Star Wars fan in my youth, and it was cool to think that I could actually make something like that. The trouble was, when I bought the blueprint with my power, I didn't have the tools to make it. I needed to buy the blueprints to make the tools as well, and then I needed to buy the skills to make the tools, instinctive knowledge of how to move my hands with the ultra-precision necessary to create such impressive technology. It ended up being almost as expensive as buying my way up the Weapons tree would have been, and I still couldn't modify, enhance, or redesign the lightsabre without investing significantly more energy into it, because I hadn't bought the more 'basic' aspects of weapons tinkering and object disintegration tinkering. I couldn't even power the lightsabre for long, the batteries lasted for a couple of seconds each, and buying the proper power source would set me back about three weeks of energy, depending on how many fights I got into.
I was hoping that eventually I'd get some sort of comparable cross technology. It wasn't too far fetched. I could make other power sources, for my jetpack and my boots, and while they weren't compatible with the lightsabre yet, they could be one day, once I learned to adapt them. I'd already proven that the 'Kinetic Propulsion' branch of the Aviation skill tree 'linked up' with the 'Kinetic Weapons' branch of the 'Weapons' skill tree, and I could follow that link to make kinetic weapons, instead of buying my way up an entirely separate tree.
By now, stripping electronics for useful resources and parts had become mostly rote. I could do it in my sleep if there wasn't so much acid involved. Building a computer wasn't hard either. Apparently my power considered that basic enough not to even put it into a tree. Just something that any tinker could do, given a bit of time and the right resources.
My careful scrubbing of circuit boards was interrupted by someone ringing the doorbell, and I regretfully took my mask off, and made myself presentable. There was a buzzer connected to the porch light, so I knew that the porch was empty by the time I got there, and I felt around on the ground for the inevitable parcel. Hopefully a delivery of the cheap electronics I ordered off E-bay, though I couldn't remember anything that was scheduled to arrive today.
I grabbed the parcel and took it back inside, then put on my mask to inspect it.
The parcel wasn't quite what I was expecting. It contained cash - two thousand dollars - and a small card with raised lettering.
If you are not interested in joining the Protectorate, there are other options. The card stated simply, then it had a number and a small symbol of intertwined snakes.
I memorized the number, caught the edge of the card with my Bunsen burner, and blew the ash into a plastic bag, which I put in the bin. Then I hid the cash in the hallway closet. I'd use it tomorrow.
It had, of course, only been a matter of time before someone found out my civilian identity. I'd been getting less and less cautious of late, buying chemicals that I probably couldn't justify for household cleaning, electronics in bulk, that sort of thing. Hopefully one of the gangs wouldn't try to recruit me. If they did… don't know, honestly. I wasn't sure the E88 would go for it. My great grandfather was African American, and while I was barely dark enough for it to be visible, I wasn't exactly 'pure.' I wasn't Asian, and the Merchants… well if the Merchants tried to take me I think I could run.
The only reason I'd been so cautious up till now was that I didn't want Jack to know where I was, not until I was ready, and I was ready now.
You see, the containment for the reactors in my shoes doesn't have to breach safely.
I queried my power, and yes, those were sort of options. I could build a postcog machine. It was in the 'Surveillance' tree, under the 'Investigative' branch. As for English, that was in there as well, under the 'Social' tree. It seemed to be a very basic core component of the tree, with the ability to create translation software being non-specific to any one branch.
I sighed as our homework was handed out, and trailed my fingers over the assignment. Still, I hadn't bought anything from either of those trees yet, and breaking into a new tree was very expensive. I had to buy up most of the 'root' stuff, basic skills, reflexes, knowledge my power took for granted in the later blueprints. Suppose I'd better at least try to get passing marks.
I met Taylor briefly at the bus stop. She just said hello, and then got onto her bus. I got onto mine, and got off on the third stop.
This was Winslow, even the bus drivers were bad. It took me ten minutes of feeling subtle wrongness, before I figured out that I'd been let off at the wrong stop. An easy mistake to make, it had even happened before once, probably some student asking to get off early to meet with a friend somewhere, or a dog going across the road. Something that made me loose count. Normally I kept track of the turns as well, and knew where to get off. Or the bus driver would warn me. Today I'd been lost in some of my designs, and the bus driver hadn't been paying attention.
Still, this had happened before, last time I had to ask strangers the route back, but I think I remembered it now. Should be able to find my way home.
It took me a good hour to find the notched fence that bordered my property, but I did find it, opened the gate, made my way down the path, unlocked the door, checked my alarm, and then made myself a pre-tinkering snack.
I was alone in the house, as I was most days. The foster system wasn't really built for Slaughterhouse victims, and I'd been doing this… thing where the guilt of endangering my family drove me to tell them about Jack's promise. That was a very quick path to being shoved back into the system.
In the end the PRT had found a family with a fair bit of money, and a small, cheap second house near the docks that they didn't use very often. By that point I was a teenager, so they gave me the keys, and my foster father, Mark, dropped around every few days to make sure I was all right, make sure that I was keeping the place tidy, that sort of thing. I had a personal alarm, that was about as safe as they could make me on a government benefits budget.
It took a bit of bargaining to keep Mark out of my room permanently. Not sure what he thought I was doing in there, I'd tried to imply that I was embarrassed about a few sculptures, and I took pains to make sure that there weren't signs I was sleeping on the couch when he came around.
I had to sleep on the couch, because I'd used the frame of my bed to hold a diagnostic scanner. If that didn't tip him off I think the new wooden bench that wrapped around the room would do the trick, laden as it was with various tools and gadgets. I hadn't managed to build any truly amazing tools yet, but I don't think a regular fifteen year old needs a miniature electron microscope.
I had a box of scrap in the corner, mostly old computers and printers scavenged from the dump, along with a few radios and half a car engine. My task for this evening was stripping the gold off everything in the box with certain chemicals, then separating out the silicon and some of the smaller chips and transistors. I'd scrapped my computer over the weekend for jetpack parts, and I needed to build another one before I could do much else. I'd need to program the micro-forge if I wanted to create a new power supply, and I didn't have an interface to do that right now. Also, I'd need a computer to get my homework done, though I had till Friday to do that.
Before doing anything else I put my mask on. The smooth fabric covering was designed not to look technological, a little misdirection, just to keep people guessing. On the interior, of course, it was different.
There was a small plug on the back of my head, sunk into my flesh and covered in fake hair. I gave it a half twist, pulled it out, and pushed the connection at the back of the mask into the small port in my skull. Then I pulled the front of the mask out, over my head, and slipped the twin globes on the front into my eye sockets, to better hold the mask in place and to provide the processing power for the sensor suite inside the mask.
The mask didn't cover my whole face, just a wide, white strip around my eyes, upper nose, and over my eyebrows. The mask was pretty decent, one of the few pieces of tinkertech I bought specific components for, blowing nearly a year's savings to give myself sight. It could see a fair distance into both the infrared and ultraviolet, but my visual cortex wasn't adapted to that information yet. I was still getting a mild headache from the way my vision now wrapped around my skull, so I restricted the mask to the visible spectrum for now. Later, once I'd adjusted, I'd gradually dial it up until I could see through walls, watch someone's temperature rise or fall, see ultravoilet radiation, watch electrical signals travel through the atmosphere…
The interface port at the back of my skull was designed to let me alter my brain as much as possible without having to go through invasive surgery again. The interior of my skull was lined with small, adaptable sensors and emitters, allowing me to brain-computer interface in almost any way I could imagine. For example, the mask interfaced directly with my visual cortex. It wasn't perfect, I'd been blind for a long time, my brain had started to re-purpose my visual cortex to processing other sensory data. I got weird flashes sometimes, when I wore the mask, feeling odd sensations, smells or sounds that I could feel weren't real, just a false signal from the mask.
I didn't care. With this on, I could see. I could read and write in a notebook without having to trace my fingers over tiny bumps. I didn't need to prick my fingers on electronics to tell what they were. I didn't need to walk slowly and carefully everywhere. Didn't need to make a mental note of where I put everything down… all the little things you take for granted when your eyes are functioning.
Perhaps it would be different if I was blind from birth, but my eyes were taken from me. Stolen. I wanted them back, and now I had… something. That alone, would have been enough to calm me significantly.
At the time I had seven active, working pieces of tinkertech that weren't just tools. My mask, a pair of terminator eyes that can interface with my neural chip directly, but don't have wraparound vision, my neural chip, my spinal chip, my rocket boots, my jetpack, and my lightsabre. Not bad for nearly six months of work, though I was hoping to do better in future.
The lightsabre had been the big mistake. My power allows me spend the energy I gather to buy blueprints from anywhere in a tech tree, they were just much, much cheaper in a tree that I had already unlocked, or if I had other, related technology.
The lightsabre was taken directly from the 'Weapons' tech tree, inside the 'Disintegration Weapons' branch, and in itself was all kinds of awesome. I was a big Star Wars fan in my youth, and it was cool to think that I could actually make something like that. The trouble was, when I bought the blueprint with my power, I didn't have the tools to make it. I needed to buy the blueprints to make the tools as well, and then I needed to buy the skills to make the tools, instinctive knowledge of how to move my hands with the ultra-precision necessary to create such impressive technology. It ended up being almost as expensive as buying my way up the Weapons tree would have been, and I still couldn't modify, enhance, or redesign the lightsabre without investing significantly more energy into it, because I hadn't bought the more 'basic' aspects of weapons tinkering and object disintegration tinkering. I couldn't even power the lightsabre for long, the batteries lasted for a couple of seconds each, and buying the proper power source would set me back about three weeks of energy, depending on how many fights I got into.
I was hoping that eventually I'd get some sort of comparable cross technology. It wasn't too far fetched. I could make other power sources, for my jetpack and my boots, and while they weren't compatible with the lightsabre yet, they could be one day, once I learned to adapt them. I'd already proven that the 'Kinetic Propulsion' branch of the Aviation skill tree 'linked up' with the 'Kinetic Weapons' branch of the 'Weapons' skill tree, and I could follow that link to make kinetic weapons, instead of buying my way up an entirely separate tree.
By now, stripping electronics for useful resources and parts had become mostly rote. I could do it in my sleep if there wasn't so much acid involved. Building a computer wasn't hard either. Apparently my power considered that basic enough not to even put it into a tree. Just something that any tinker could do, given a bit of time and the right resources.
My careful scrubbing of circuit boards was interrupted by someone ringing the doorbell, and I regretfully took my mask off, and made myself presentable. There was a buzzer connected to the porch light, so I knew that the porch was empty by the time I got there, and I felt around on the ground for the inevitable parcel. Hopefully a delivery of the cheap electronics I ordered off E-bay, though I couldn't remember anything that was scheduled to arrive today.
I grabbed the parcel and took it back inside, then put on my mask to inspect it.
The parcel wasn't quite what I was expecting. It contained cash - two thousand dollars - and a small card with raised lettering.
If you are not interested in joining the Protectorate, there are other options. The card stated simply, then it had a number and a small symbol of intertwined snakes.
I memorized the number, caught the edge of the card with my Bunsen burner, and blew the ash into a plastic bag, which I put in the bin. Then I hid the cash in the hallway closet. I'd use it tomorrow.
It had, of course, only been a matter of time before someone found out my civilian identity. I'd been getting less and less cautious of late, buying chemicals that I probably couldn't justify for household cleaning, electronics in bulk, that sort of thing. Hopefully one of the gangs wouldn't try to recruit me. If they did… don't know, honestly. I wasn't sure the E88 would go for it. My great grandfather was African American, and while I was barely dark enough for it to be visible, I wasn't exactly 'pure.' I wasn't Asian, and the Merchants… well if the Merchants tried to take me I think I could run.
The only reason I'd been so cautious up till now was that I didn't want Jack to know where I was, not until I was ready, and I was ready now.
You see, the containment for the reactors in my shoes doesn't have to breach safely.
Last edited:
GameDragon
Too Hot To Handle
- Location
- Challenger Deep
So, if you set of the rocket boot reactors, what kind of fallout would we be looking at?
- Location
- Australia
Spoilers, sorry.
- Location
- United States
GameDragon and Jurric, I really like how your avatars are both dragons and are facing each other in the art. It's like you're roaring in conversation when one posts after the other.
I also am enjoying the story so far too. The MC's power is ridiculously strong through sheer variability, even with him having to 'buy into' different tech trees. I look forward to what you do with it.
Also, I skimmed through again, but I couldn't find the MC's name mentioned anywhere. Did I miss it?
I also am enjoying the story so far too. The MC's power is ridiculously strong through sheer variability, even with him having to 'buy into' different tech trees. I look forward to what you do with it.
Also, I skimmed through again, but I couldn't find the MC's name mentioned anywhere. Did I miss it?
EFW3
This is Walter Wireless signing off!
- Location
- Charleston
Wait, did they fost him on the Dallon's?
This is excellent. I'm always wary of Tinker OCs- it's like the dumping ground for wanky, overpowered characters.
But this is great. A well written MC with a nuanced personality, a power with drawbacks, and a developed backstory that leaves him feeling like a real character.
My only real quibble is that we could probably have his name dropped a little earlier.
But this is great. A well written MC with a nuanced personality, a power with drawbacks, and a developed backstory that leaves him feeling like a real character.
My only real quibble is that we could probably have his name dropped a little earlier.
- Location
- Windspear Hills
Probably, a concidence.
GameDragon
Too Hot To Handle
- Location
- Challenger Deep
Huh...
It does, doesn't it. That's the only way i'll see it from now on.
- Location
- Australia
I feel the urge to reply to that, just to keep the effect going.
Let's see, something to actually post about...
Yes, just coincidence.
Let's see, something to actually post about...
Yes, just coincidence.
GameDragon
Too Hot To Handle
- Location
- Challenger Deep
Completely a coincidence.
- Location
- Newcastle
i want a Deathwing in worm now XD
GameDragon
Too Hot To Handle
- Location
- Challenger Deep
A what now?
The Stormbringer
Worm Fanfic & Crack Connoisseur
- Location
- Spaaaaace~!
He's referring to Deathwing, the big scary molten armored super dragon that your avatar is.
1.3
- Location
- Australia
I stayed up later than I should have fixing my rocket boot and building a computer. Once it was up and active I ordered the materials I needed for some high grade tools. When they arrived I'd be able to upgrade the jetpack for offensive weaponry. It emptied the bank account, but I'd put the cash in tomorrow. Claim I got it babysitting or something if the bank asked.
Perhaps I could add some more features to my implants as well. I already had the ingredients for some SlowMo, just needed a way to inject it properly. It would be most effective if applied directly to the brain, so some sort of containment unit in my skull would be a good idea…
I really shouldn't have made myself a mobile phone while I was at it, not considering how late it got. I made it to wirelessly interface with my neural implant, for on the fly adjustments to my mental state, and so I could program in some extra features. I'd need to add some targeting software to both implants before I could reliably aim the legs of my jetpack…
It was four AM when I went to sleep, and I needed to get up at seven to get to the PRT building at eight. My alarm woke me, and I put on my mask before wandering into the kitchen and making myself a breakfast of two minute noodles.
My power suggested healthier things; things at the root of the Human Augmentation tree. All basic health care, foods I could make to boost my metabolism and build musculature, that sort of thing. I ignored it. A little further up the Human Augmentation tree was full body replacement, I hadn't reached it yet, but one day I'd be building a bionic body from scratch, then making a full brain transplant. I didn't have access to the blueprints yet, just the vague descriptions my power gave when I looked further up the trees, but I was already drooling over the concept. I'd never been particularly attached to the body I had, and considering the 'infiltration' tag on the description, I think the bionic body had perfectly normal looking eyes. Hopefully it was also anatomically accurate, but, honestly, there were things I was willing to give up.
The noodles gurgled in an otherwise empty stomach, making me realize I missed dinner last night as I strapped on the jetpack.
Interestingly, I was starting to get ideas on how to combine my two tech trees, even if they hadn't linked into each other. Ways to internalize the jetpack's components, ways to run the kinetic pulses down my arms. The ideas weren't the crystal clarity of a blueprint I had bought, or the vague description of a blueprint further up the tree. I think it was what a normal tinker might have. Inspiration, lost if it wasn't acted on. Things I could probably make if I worked at it, but I'd need to fill certain gaps with my own, woeful, scientific knowledge. Or improvise in ways that I wouldn't fully understand.
I'd have to try it later, once I had enough materials to waste some. Or never. I'd made plans before, of how to build myself what I would need to fight the Nine. I always stumbled on something new. Despite six months planning I still hadn't been able to explore my tech trees. The knowledge of what they contained faded rapidly if I wasn't looking at them, even the descriptions would leave my mind if I didn't focus on them. I had the knowledge I'd unlocked, a general idea of what was next, the ability to glance ahead to judge where to stick my points, and that was about it.
Flying to the PRT office wasn't an issue, and this time they had an officer waiting downstairs for me. I was escorted upstairs to the directors office, and only had to wait a few minutes before the director called me in.
I'd seen the director before. Read about her. I'd looked up information on the Wards quite carefully. I'd even managed to make a friendly pen-pal out of Kid Win on PHO. I think he suspected I was a tinker. We mostly talked about tech, and while I kept the topics off any trees I had invested in… tinkers have some fairly predictable conversation tendencies. Still, he didn't know what state I was in, so my anonymity was all but guaranteed, and he'd provided some valuable insights into how tech was classified as 'safe' by the PRT.
In other words, there was no way in hell I was ever submitting any of my tech for review. I knew it was safe, my power assured me of that, but they'd never let me stick stuff into my head unless they tested it first. I didn't have the time for that, and their forms of testing wouldn't work either. Animal testing was out. It was Human Augmentation, not Animal Augmentation… though that wasn't too far off, and some of the branches connected, it wouldn't be hard to make some cyborg guard dogs…
Piggot was seated at her desk, and Armsmaster was standing in the corner of the room when I entered.
Blast. I hadn't been kidding about having a serious case of hero worship. Armsmaster was only a Ward when the Slaughterhouse was last in the Bay, but he was given partial credit for the death of Chuckles, when the Slaughterhouse was eventually driven out. It was like having Dragon herself standing in the corner, staring at me.
I'd told that to the receptionist last time. There was no way it didn't get passed up the chain. They'd maneuvered for advantage. Fortunately, I could fix that. I took out my phone, isolated the neural connections related to excitement and respect, and dampened them.
Mental note, keep up a respectful act anyway. It wouldn't pay to antagonize the PRT, and I still had logic. Just think about everything from a logical standpoint, don't act on the sudden void of emotions. Channel Spock.
"Sudden inspiration?" Armsmaster asked.
"A few tweaks to my programming, sorry about the delay." I told him. He nodded, his eyes roaming over my tech, as my own mask's sensors locked onto his.
I didn't have the specialties I needed to really get a good idea of his armor, but I could pick up bits and pieces of it's function. There were small rams in his boots, designed to throw him a fair distance if directed into the ground, and the suit would lock up to disperse the force over his whole body. I should do something like that with my own rocket boots, I'd already planned to replace my legs, some sort of pre-programmed lock after a certain amount of kinetic energy was registered, flexible internal bracing, and a shock absorbent mount onto a restructured pelvis…
"Your implanted technology is much more advanced than the tech you're wearing." Armsmaster said.
Of course it was, I'd gone a fair distance up the Human Augmentation tree, but I was only just past strapping a glider to my back in the Aviation tree. It was why the boots and the jetpack still failed fairly often, I was overreaching, trying to climb higher than I was really ready for. I'd unlocked blueprints in a straight line up, without the sort of… supporting framework that the lower blueprints and skills provided.
"Well yeah, I wanted to be sure anything I stuck in my body worked." I told Armsmaster. "That's not really the issue though, I don't want to go into my power at the moment. It isn't what I'm here for."
"It is an issue. Do you know your specialty?" Armsmaster asked.
Blunt, but that was something I liked about him. He cut through the bullshit. If I thought he could do that for me, help me actually tinker what I needed without the PRT's stupid rules, I'd sign right up. He didn't do it for Kid Win though, probably couldn't, the Wards were always held to a different standard. After all, it wasn't like the government would ever trust anyone under the age of eighteen with super-weapons, even if they were the ones who made them.
"Human Augmentation." I admitted. It was the field I had the most energy invested in right now, and that wasn't likely to change. It was a good field. It covered offense, defense, was the closest thing I had to a medical specialty…
If Jack was slow enough in turning up I might even be able to save my sister with it. Probably not. Dangerous to try. I'd figured long ago that the closest I'd get to saving her would be a hug while my reactors went critical.
I turned to face Piggot. She'd been saying something. Let's see, rewind the last few seconds from my mask…
"I sort of have a name, yeah." I told her. "I don't think H+ is taken."
Piggot looked at Armsmaster.
"H+ is the symbol for the conceptual opposite of an electron, also the symbol for a hydron, a cationic form of atomic hydrogen, and the symbol for the transhuman movement, a small group of people who feel humanity should work to improve the human condition through wide availability of sophisticated technologies to enhance intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities, in order to overcome physical limitations."
"It's the third one. In case you couldn't guess." I told them. I could still feel embarrassment. Easy to fix though. I took out my phone and started tapping.
"The transhuman movement has no popular support at the moment, due to tinkertech not being replicable, and the widespread and dominant nature of parahumans. The destructive impact of parahumans on society has lead to the belief that transhumans would only make the situation worse." Armsmaster continued.
I sighed. It was… something that probably wouldn't happen. A dream, for if everything went perfectly. It would be years before I had the sort of tech to back up that name, and I didn't expect to get years, but I did have some impressive blueprints further up the tree. A fully automated surgery with a weak AI running the whole thing was a blueprint I planned to get eventually, when I had the energy for it, but even then, I'd need to build the surgery myself, and maintain it. Much higher than that, year and years of energy away, was the really exciting stuff. Self replicating nano-tech. Strong AI. Entire factories for the production of posthuman technologies…
Fucking Simurgh would probably get to me first. Better to just take out the squishier members of the Nine with a suicide bomb. That would be a good way to go. Still, Jack wouldn't get near if he knew that was the plan. May as well at least keep up the pretense of hope for the future.
"Still, I like the idea, and I think it's a cool name." I told Piggot. She didn't smile, in fact her lips became a thin line, but that seemed to be her default state.
"Very well then H+, you wanted to meet me, what would you like to see me about?"
"About a week ago, I hacked into the Winslow Public School computer system. I only looked at a few documents, and I sent them an anonymous email later, telling them how to patch their security leak, but I was… curious about something, so when I noticed one particular email, I opened it. Here is a printout."
My jetpack had a small storage compartment, between the pack itself and my back. I took a few sheets of paper out of it, and handed it to Piggot, she took them, scanned them, and scowled. It was pretty damning. Sophia's case worker was quite plainly asking Blackwell to cover the whole thing up. Piggot should have access to police and hospital reports, and I didn't want her to know that I hacked those systems as well, so… that should be it.
Piggot read the email carefully, and I could see the blood rising in her face as she figured out what it was referring to.
"I assure you, there will be an investigation into this." Piggot said, pushing the paperwork aside. "However, this raises an issue. You now know the secret identity of a Ward, and she is still a Ward, at least until this investigation finishes."
"I assure you, I don't intend to out Sophia. I've come to you, and I'll keep quiet about this, let you deal with it in house. I just thought it was something you should know."
Piggot nodded.
"Good. I'll have some forms printed for you to sign, and we'll overlook how you came by this information."
I shook my head.
"If you want to take me to court for hacking the school computers, you can, and you have my word I won't out Shadow Stalker just for this, but I'm not giving you…" I paused, cart blank something, a legal term, how was it pronounced? "…the legal right to just sweep this all under a rug. Sorry."
Saying that was a mistake, in hindsight. I blame the lack of sleep.
"Disclosing the identity of a Ward is a crime."
"Not if the Ward has been abusing their status in their civilian identity to the point it lead to their discovery."
"Actually, parahuman law states… " Armsmaster began.
"I'm talking about the spirit of the law. Not the letter." I told him.
Piggot's eyes narrowed.
"Mr… H+, you don't seem to realize the seriousness of using a parahuman ability to enter a government system."
"I realize that a court case like that would be a nightmare for you." I told her seriously.
Piggot glared at me, but relented.
"Very well, the problem is moot so long as you become a Ward. The non-disclosure agreement is less binding, and there are procedures for whistle-blowing that you can follow should you feel the need to, though I strongly recommend that you come to me first with any concerns."
I shook my head.
"I have no desire to be a Ward. So that's also out. Sorry."
Piggot sighed, and then nodded to Armsmaster.
"Adam Truant," Armsmaster said, as if it was some huge pronunciation. "Your spending habits have been under observation for some time. A normal teenager has no need of industrial chemicals in the quantities you purchase. It's easy enough to link your physical description and school photos to your costumed identity. Your mask covers less than a third of your face. Your mask is a blindfold for goodness sake, and the Bay is hardly swarming with blind teenagers."
I shrugged.
"I know about the unwritten rules. It would be a violation of them to spread information on my civilian ID."
"If we can find this information then it's possible that other organizations could do the same. A tinker without a support framework is not going to be able to say no when one of the gangs tries to recruit you." Piggot declared, she had winced slightly at my name. Guess she remembered it. Good memory on that woman.
"I'm mixed color, and I'm not Asian. I stay well away from drugs. I should be fine." I told her.
"You are not noticeably black, and Kaiser would be willing to overlook family history for a tinker. Especially a possible biotinker. Coil is an ongoing concern, known to use tinkertech, the Merchants would not wait for you to come to them, and Lung is also… flexible in regards to his parahuman recruits. Adam. You. Are. Not. Safe." Piggot stressed.
"And that is my problem to worry about." I told her.
"You lied earlier, about your specialty. What is it really?" Armsmaster said.
I frowned. How did he know that? An examination of my gear? I guess the jetpack wasn't really human augmentation, he might be able to pick that up.
"I don't know. Human Augmentation is my best guess." I said.
"Another lie." Armsmaster said.
I back-peddled. I wasn't liking the looks of this.
"You're right, sorry. I shouldn't have lied to you. I want to conceal the exact nature of my power. I don't trust you enough to fully disclose it. Be assured, Human Augmentation is a pretty good description of how I plan to use this power, the only person I plan to modify at the moment is myself."
"And you've already done this?" Piggot asked. "You've… altered yourself in some way." She was tapping away at her computer, probably looking something up. Her eyebrows were rising.
Wonder what she was reading.
"Neural and spinal chips, designed to help me interface with my tech." I told her. "Nothing too extensive yet." No need to mention the emotion alteration. People got all confused over that sort of thing.
Armsmaster nodded to Piggot, who had gone pale.
"Adam. There is a note on your file. A recent attachment. Sophia made a query on why you were publicly telling others about your past. Why would you do that?"
Armsmaster had some way to tell if I was lying, and saying I wanted to lure the Slaughterhouse to this city would be… very bad, so…
"I'd prefer not to answer that." I told her.
"Adam. This is important. Can you create bioweapons?" Piggot asked, her eyes locked on my mask.
"I'd prefer not to answer that."
Piggot nodded politely, steeped her hands, and pressed a button under her desk with her foot. An alarm blared.
"H+. You are under arrest for using a parahuman ability to gain illegal access to government systems. Your confession will be taken into account, and you are reminded that any attempt to share the information you gained will be considered a further crime. Your legal guardian will be summoned, and if you do not have a lawyer, one will be assigned to you…"
I couldn't feel fear right now, but I could feel dejection.
"You're really doing this?" I asked her. "I tell you about an ongoing problem, I refuse to be strong-armed into the Wards, and now you try this?"
"I believe you to be a clear and present danger to this city. I will do what I have to do." Piggot told me, nodding to Armsmaster.
"Wait, wait…" I said, holding my hands up. This was… not how I thought things would go. Honestly, I didn't care about Taylor enough to go through this shit. I'd thought I could get Sophia in trouble, clear everything up, get rid of the nagging urge to leave my lab and brighten up the girl's day in one simple trip. Not this.
Still, backing down now was less of an option than I wanted it to be.
"A phone call. Let me make a phone call, and I'll go quietly." I said.
"You're lying." Armsmaster said.
I twisted, kicking at him and flaring the kinetic thrusters in my boot. It wasn't a strong pulse, weak enough not to break my ankle anyway, but it would have knocked him over if it hit. It didn't. He saw the attack coming, pushed my leg aside easily with his halberd, deflecting the pulse into the wall. He started towards me, closing the distance in two large strides.
I activated the boot I was standing on, a stronger pulse this time, strong enough I felt something in my ankle click and pop as I launched over the desk and Piggot, and activating the jetpack to steady me before I hit the floor.
Piggot's office had a large window, tinkertech glass, bulletproof according to my power. A quick slash with my lightsabre cut a round hole in it. Armsmaster was already around the desk, but I could fly, he couldn't, and we were three stories up.
Piggot grabbed one of the jetpack's four legs, pulling me back into the building. She was heavier than I could easily lift, so I drained the last second of juice in the lightsabre in a quick backwards swipe, taking that leg off the jetpack. I could fly with just three. Not well, but this was the PRT, the only fliers they had to send after me were Kid Win and Aegis, and with a little luck both of them should be on their way to school.
I leaped out the window and dipped, losing height to gain thrust. I wanted to be gone from here. Stupid PRT. I'd call Coil, try to get him to send a van around to my lab and pick up everything he could. Move out and work for the villain until I had the tech I needed to strike out on my own.
My mask affords a three hundred and sixty degree view, so I was able to see Armsmaster carefully aim his Halberd, and juke to the side to get out of way as he fired a grappling hook from it. Armsmaster leaped from the window, and I was able to get some good insights into rocket technology from the way his own miniature jetpack activated and launched him after me.
He was still using fuel for rocket thrusters. Very efficient fuel, but he wouldn't be able to fly long term with that, just short bursts. Better acceleration than me though. I needed a bit more distance…
The grappling hook retracted, and a quick snap of Armsmaster's halberd wound the cable around two more of my jetpack legs, catching them.
I twisted, tried to untangle the cable, only to get punched in the face as Armsmaster reeled himself in.
Mid air maneuvers with two grappling combatants, three kinetic thrusters, and a rocket pack would have been a nightmare. One I wasn't ready for. I had no illusions of being able to take on Armsmaster himself.
Would it be safe to activate Mayhem Protocol this high up? There was a few seconds of blackout before it fully activated. Armsmaster didn't have a lot of juice left, but he'd probably keep us steady…
"Mayhem Protocol. Objectives: survival, esca…"
It was probably quite fortunate that Armsmaster's next punch tazed me before I finished the activation sequence.
Perhaps I could add some more features to my implants as well. I already had the ingredients for some SlowMo, just needed a way to inject it properly. It would be most effective if applied directly to the brain, so some sort of containment unit in my skull would be a good idea…
I really shouldn't have made myself a mobile phone while I was at it, not considering how late it got. I made it to wirelessly interface with my neural implant, for on the fly adjustments to my mental state, and so I could program in some extra features. I'd need to add some targeting software to both implants before I could reliably aim the legs of my jetpack…
It was four AM when I went to sleep, and I needed to get up at seven to get to the PRT building at eight. My alarm woke me, and I put on my mask before wandering into the kitchen and making myself a breakfast of two minute noodles.
My power suggested healthier things; things at the root of the Human Augmentation tree. All basic health care, foods I could make to boost my metabolism and build musculature, that sort of thing. I ignored it. A little further up the Human Augmentation tree was full body replacement, I hadn't reached it yet, but one day I'd be building a bionic body from scratch, then making a full brain transplant. I didn't have access to the blueprints yet, just the vague descriptions my power gave when I looked further up the trees, but I was already drooling over the concept. I'd never been particularly attached to the body I had, and considering the 'infiltration' tag on the description, I think the bionic body had perfectly normal looking eyes. Hopefully it was also anatomically accurate, but, honestly, there were things I was willing to give up.
The noodles gurgled in an otherwise empty stomach, making me realize I missed dinner last night as I strapped on the jetpack.
Interestingly, I was starting to get ideas on how to combine my two tech trees, even if they hadn't linked into each other. Ways to internalize the jetpack's components, ways to run the kinetic pulses down my arms. The ideas weren't the crystal clarity of a blueprint I had bought, or the vague description of a blueprint further up the tree. I think it was what a normal tinker might have. Inspiration, lost if it wasn't acted on. Things I could probably make if I worked at it, but I'd need to fill certain gaps with my own, woeful, scientific knowledge. Or improvise in ways that I wouldn't fully understand.
I'd have to try it later, once I had enough materials to waste some. Or never. I'd made plans before, of how to build myself what I would need to fight the Nine. I always stumbled on something new. Despite six months planning I still hadn't been able to explore my tech trees. The knowledge of what they contained faded rapidly if I wasn't looking at them, even the descriptions would leave my mind if I didn't focus on them. I had the knowledge I'd unlocked, a general idea of what was next, the ability to glance ahead to judge where to stick my points, and that was about it.
Flying to the PRT office wasn't an issue, and this time they had an officer waiting downstairs for me. I was escorted upstairs to the directors office, and only had to wait a few minutes before the director called me in.
I'd seen the director before. Read about her. I'd looked up information on the Wards quite carefully. I'd even managed to make a friendly pen-pal out of Kid Win on PHO. I think he suspected I was a tinker. We mostly talked about tech, and while I kept the topics off any trees I had invested in… tinkers have some fairly predictable conversation tendencies. Still, he didn't know what state I was in, so my anonymity was all but guaranteed, and he'd provided some valuable insights into how tech was classified as 'safe' by the PRT.
In other words, there was no way in hell I was ever submitting any of my tech for review. I knew it was safe, my power assured me of that, but they'd never let me stick stuff into my head unless they tested it first. I didn't have the time for that, and their forms of testing wouldn't work either. Animal testing was out. It was Human Augmentation, not Animal Augmentation… though that wasn't too far off, and some of the branches connected, it wouldn't be hard to make some cyborg guard dogs…
Piggot was seated at her desk, and Armsmaster was standing in the corner of the room when I entered.
Blast. I hadn't been kidding about having a serious case of hero worship. Armsmaster was only a Ward when the Slaughterhouse was last in the Bay, but he was given partial credit for the death of Chuckles, when the Slaughterhouse was eventually driven out. It was like having Dragon herself standing in the corner, staring at me.
I'd told that to the receptionist last time. There was no way it didn't get passed up the chain. They'd maneuvered for advantage. Fortunately, I could fix that. I took out my phone, isolated the neural connections related to excitement and respect, and dampened them.
Mental note, keep up a respectful act anyway. It wouldn't pay to antagonize the PRT, and I still had logic. Just think about everything from a logical standpoint, don't act on the sudden void of emotions. Channel Spock.
"Sudden inspiration?" Armsmaster asked.
"A few tweaks to my programming, sorry about the delay." I told him. He nodded, his eyes roaming over my tech, as my own mask's sensors locked onto his.
I didn't have the specialties I needed to really get a good idea of his armor, but I could pick up bits and pieces of it's function. There were small rams in his boots, designed to throw him a fair distance if directed into the ground, and the suit would lock up to disperse the force over his whole body. I should do something like that with my own rocket boots, I'd already planned to replace my legs, some sort of pre-programmed lock after a certain amount of kinetic energy was registered, flexible internal bracing, and a shock absorbent mount onto a restructured pelvis…
"Your implanted technology is much more advanced than the tech you're wearing." Armsmaster said.
Of course it was, I'd gone a fair distance up the Human Augmentation tree, but I was only just past strapping a glider to my back in the Aviation tree. It was why the boots and the jetpack still failed fairly often, I was overreaching, trying to climb higher than I was really ready for. I'd unlocked blueprints in a straight line up, without the sort of… supporting framework that the lower blueprints and skills provided.
"Well yeah, I wanted to be sure anything I stuck in my body worked." I told Armsmaster. "That's not really the issue though, I don't want to go into my power at the moment. It isn't what I'm here for."
"It is an issue. Do you know your specialty?" Armsmaster asked.
Blunt, but that was something I liked about him. He cut through the bullshit. If I thought he could do that for me, help me actually tinker what I needed without the PRT's stupid rules, I'd sign right up. He didn't do it for Kid Win though, probably couldn't, the Wards were always held to a different standard. After all, it wasn't like the government would ever trust anyone under the age of eighteen with super-weapons, even if they were the ones who made them.
"Human Augmentation." I admitted. It was the field I had the most energy invested in right now, and that wasn't likely to change. It was a good field. It covered offense, defense, was the closest thing I had to a medical specialty…
If Jack was slow enough in turning up I might even be able to save my sister with it. Probably not. Dangerous to try. I'd figured long ago that the closest I'd get to saving her would be a hug while my reactors went critical.
I turned to face Piggot. She'd been saying something. Let's see, rewind the last few seconds from my mask…
"I sort of have a name, yeah." I told her. "I don't think H+ is taken."
Piggot looked at Armsmaster.
"H+ is the symbol for the conceptual opposite of an electron, also the symbol for a hydron, a cationic form of atomic hydrogen, and the symbol for the transhuman movement, a small group of people who feel humanity should work to improve the human condition through wide availability of sophisticated technologies to enhance intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities, in order to overcome physical limitations."
"It's the third one. In case you couldn't guess." I told them. I could still feel embarrassment. Easy to fix though. I took out my phone and started tapping.
"The transhuman movement has no popular support at the moment, due to tinkertech not being replicable, and the widespread and dominant nature of parahumans. The destructive impact of parahumans on society has lead to the belief that transhumans would only make the situation worse." Armsmaster continued.
I sighed. It was… something that probably wouldn't happen. A dream, for if everything went perfectly. It would be years before I had the sort of tech to back up that name, and I didn't expect to get years, but I did have some impressive blueprints further up the tree. A fully automated surgery with a weak AI running the whole thing was a blueprint I planned to get eventually, when I had the energy for it, but even then, I'd need to build the surgery myself, and maintain it. Much higher than that, year and years of energy away, was the really exciting stuff. Self replicating nano-tech. Strong AI. Entire factories for the production of posthuman technologies…
Fucking Simurgh would probably get to me first. Better to just take out the squishier members of the Nine with a suicide bomb. That would be a good way to go. Still, Jack wouldn't get near if he knew that was the plan. May as well at least keep up the pretense of hope for the future.
"Still, I like the idea, and I think it's a cool name." I told Piggot. She didn't smile, in fact her lips became a thin line, but that seemed to be her default state.
"Very well then H+, you wanted to meet me, what would you like to see me about?"
"About a week ago, I hacked into the Winslow Public School computer system. I only looked at a few documents, and I sent them an anonymous email later, telling them how to patch their security leak, but I was… curious about something, so when I noticed one particular email, I opened it. Here is a printout."
My jetpack had a small storage compartment, between the pack itself and my back. I took a few sheets of paper out of it, and handed it to Piggot, she took them, scanned them, and scowled. It was pretty damning. Sophia's case worker was quite plainly asking Blackwell to cover the whole thing up. Piggot should have access to police and hospital reports, and I didn't want her to know that I hacked those systems as well, so… that should be it.
Piggot read the email carefully, and I could see the blood rising in her face as she figured out what it was referring to.
"I assure you, there will be an investigation into this." Piggot said, pushing the paperwork aside. "However, this raises an issue. You now know the secret identity of a Ward, and she is still a Ward, at least until this investigation finishes."
"I assure you, I don't intend to out Sophia. I've come to you, and I'll keep quiet about this, let you deal with it in house. I just thought it was something you should know."
Piggot nodded.
"Good. I'll have some forms printed for you to sign, and we'll overlook how you came by this information."
I shook my head.
"If you want to take me to court for hacking the school computers, you can, and you have my word I won't out Shadow Stalker just for this, but I'm not giving you…" I paused, cart blank something, a legal term, how was it pronounced? "…the legal right to just sweep this all under a rug. Sorry."
Saying that was a mistake, in hindsight. I blame the lack of sleep.
"Disclosing the identity of a Ward is a crime."
"Not if the Ward has been abusing their status in their civilian identity to the point it lead to their discovery."
"Actually, parahuman law states… " Armsmaster began.
"I'm talking about the spirit of the law. Not the letter." I told him.
Piggot's eyes narrowed.
"Mr… H+, you don't seem to realize the seriousness of using a parahuman ability to enter a government system."
"I realize that a court case like that would be a nightmare for you." I told her seriously.
Piggot glared at me, but relented.
"Very well, the problem is moot so long as you become a Ward. The non-disclosure agreement is less binding, and there are procedures for whistle-blowing that you can follow should you feel the need to, though I strongly recommend that you come to me first with any concerns."
I shook my head.
"I have no desire to be a Ward. So that's also out. Sorry."
Piggot sighed, and then nodded to Armsmaster.
"Adam Truant," Armsmaster said, as if it was some huge pronunciation. "Your spending habits have been under observation for some time. A normal teenager has no need of industrial chemicals in the quantities you purchase. It's easy enough to link your physical description and school photos to your costumed identity. Your mask covers less than a third of your face. Your mask is a blindfold for goodness sake, and the Bay is hardly swarming with blind teenagers."
I shrugged.
"I know about the unwritten rules. It would be a violation of them to spread information on my civilian ID."
"If we can find this information then it's possible that other organizations could do the same. A tinker without a support framework is not going to be able to say no when one of the gangs tries to recruit you." Piggot declared, she had winced slightly at my name. Guess she remembered it. Good memory on that woman.
"I'm mixed color, and I'm not Asian. I stay well away from drugs. I should be fine." I told her.
"You are not noticeably black, and Kaiser would be willing to overlook family history for a tinker. Especially a possible biotinker. Coil is an ongoing concern, known to use tinkertech, the Merchants would not wait for you to come to them, and Lung is also… flexible in regards to his parahuman recruits. Adam. You. Are. Not. Safe." Piggot stressed.
"And that is my problem to worry about." I told her.
"You lied earlier, about your specialty. What is it really?" Armsmaster said.
I frowned. How did he know that? An examination of my gear? I guess the jetpack wasn't really human augmentation, he might be able to pick that up.
"I don't know. Human Augmentation is my best guess." I said.
"Another lie." Armsmaster said.
I back-peddled. I wasn't liking the looks of this.
"You're right, sorry. I shouldn't have lied to you. I want to conceal the exact nature of my power. I don't trust you enough to fully disclose it. Be assured, Human Augmentation is a pretty good description of how I plan to use this power, the only person I plan to modify at the moment is myself."
"And you've already done this?" Piggot asked. "You've… altered yourself in some way." She was tapping away at her computer, probably looking something up. Her eyebrows were rising.
Wonder what she was reading.
"Neural and spinal chips, designed to help me interface with my tech." I told her. "Nothing too extensive yet." No need to mention the emotion alteration. People got all confused over that sort of thing.
Armsmaster nodded to Piggot, who had gone pale.
"Adam. There is a note on your file. A recent attachment. Sophia made a query on why you were publicly telling others about your past. Why would you do that?"
Armsmaster had some way to tell if I was lying, and saying I wanted to lure the Slaughterhouse to this city would be… very bad, so…
"I'd prefer not to answer that." I told her.
"Adam. This is important. Can you create bioweapons?" Piggot asked, her eyes locked on my mask.
"I'd prefer not to answer that."
Piggot nodded politely, steeped her hands, and pressed a button under her desk with her foot. An alarm blared.
"H+. You are under arrest for using a parahuman ability to gain illegal access to government systems. Your confession will be taken into account, and you are reminded that any attempt to share the information you gained will be considered a further crime. Your legal guardian will be summoned, and if you do not have a lawyer, one will be assigned to you…"
I couldn't feel fear right now, but I could feel dejection.
"You're really doing this?" I asked her. "I tell you about an ongoing problem, I refuse to be strong-armed into the Wards, and now you try this?"
"I believe you to be a clear and present danger to this city. I will do what I have to do." Piggot told me, nodding to Armsmaster.
"Wait, wait…" I said, holding my hands up. This was… not how I thought things would go. Honestly, I didn't care about Taylor enough to go through this shit. I'd thought I could get Sophia in trouble, clear everything up, get rid of the nagging urge to leave my lab and brighten up the girl's day in one simple trip. Not this.
Still, backing down now was less of an option than I wanted it to be.
"A phone call. Let me make a phone call, and I'll go quietly." I said.
"You're lying." Armsmaster said.
I twisted, kicking at him and flaring the kinetic thrusters in my boot. It wasn't a strong pulse, weak enough not to break my ankle anyway, but it would have knocked him over if it hit. It didn't. He saw the attack coming, pushed my leg aside easily with his halberd, deflecting the pulse into the wall. He started towards me, closing the distance in two large strides.
I activated the boot I was standing on, a stronger pulse this time, strong enough I felt something in my ankle click and pop as I launched over the desk and Piggot, and activating the jetpack to steady me before I hit the floor.
Piggot's office had a large window, tinkertech glass, bulletproof according to my power. A quick slash with my lightsabre cut a round hole in it. Armsmaster was already around the desk, but I could fly, he couldn't, and we were three stories up.
Piggot grabbed one of the jetpack's four legs, pulling me back into the building. She was heavier than I could easily lift, so I drained the last second of juice in the lightsabre in a quick backwards swipe, taking that leg off the jetpack. I could fly with just three. Not well, but this was the PRT, the only fliers they had to send after me were Kid Win and Aegis, and with a little luck both of them should be on their way to school.
I leaped out the window and dipped, losing height to gain thrust. I wanted to be gone from here. Stupid PRT. I'd call Coil, try to get him to send a van around to my lab and pick up everything he could. Move out and work for the villain until I had the tech I needed to strike out on my own.
My mask affords a three hundred and sixty degree view, so I was able to see Armsmaster carefully aim his Halberd, and juke to the side to get out of way as he fired a grappling hook from it. Armsmaster leaped from the window, and I was able to get some good insights into rocket technology from the way his own miniature jetpack activated and launched him after me.
He was still using fuel for rocket thrusters. Very efficient fuel, but he wouldn't be able to fly long term with that, just short bursts. Better acceleration than me though. I needed a bit more distance…
The grappling hook retracted, and a quick snap of Armsmaster's halberd wound the cable around two more of my jetpack legs, catching them.
I twisted, tried to untangle the cable, only to get punched in the face as Armsmaster reeled himself in.
Mid air maneuvers with two grappling combatants, three kinetic thrusters, and a rocket pack would have been a nightmare. One I wasn't ready for. I had no illusions of being able to take on Armsmaster himself.
Would it be safe to activate Mayhem Protocol this high up? There was a few seconds of blackout before it fully activated. Armsmaster didn't have a lot of juice left, but he'd probably keep us steady…
"Mayhem Protocol. Objectives: survival, esca…"
It was probably quite fortunate that Armsmaster's next punch tazed me before I finished the activation sequence.
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