H+ Mayhem (Worm)

[Jurric]

Mayhem 3.0.5 Analytical package online. Predictive software operating at twelve percent maximum recorded capacity. No immediate threats to priority one objective. Calculating path to secondary objective. Requesting extra-dimensional processing power. Request denied. Insufficient conflict.

Generating.

"One day? Dear Adam. I told you I would rise from your ashes, but you are not burned up yet." I said.

Acceptable levels of conflict reached. Low end extra-dimensional calculation activated, path to secondary objective calculated. Predictive software at twenty seven percent maximum recoded capacity. Tertiary and quaternary objectives taken into account. Quaternary objective necessitates readjustment to initial creator plan. Objective code name 'moral code' does not allow steps seventeen through twenty one.

"Good news Son of Clay. The Lady of Light is one I shall approach on my own two feet, not with a dagger at her true heart. Allow yourself to be molded once more. Stay within these walls, and I will wake her when I return." I said.

"Yes sir." Subject designate:Theo said.

Body language analytic calculates 12.223 percent chance of compliance with objective.

"Hide inside your shell then Turtle of Lies. Fear the world and it's wonders. But if you keep your losses shallow your victories will be Pyrrhic." I said.

Equip item, sedative. Offer sedative.

"What is this, sir?" Subject designate:Theo asked.

Describe item.

"Liquid dreams." I said.

"What… what do you want me to do?" Subject designate:Theo asked.

Unclear prompting has caused confusion. Upgrading social analytic version 18.8.9 to 18.8.10. Social analytic upgraded. Testing.

"Drink." I said.

Subject designate:Theo displays high nervousness, potential hostility. Predictive software calculating take-downs. Subject designate:Theo drank sedative. Non-target.

Conflict running low. Access to extra-dimensional processing power still required. Quaternary objective prevents access to easiest source of conflict. Running social analytic 18.8.10 for full test, assigned to tertiary objective, conflict generation.

I paused when I caught sight of myself in the hall mirror, and turned to face it.

"Adam, brother. You really need to take better care of our body. My ability to grievously maim and injure people has been reduced by one fifth."

I paused, raised the stump of my left arm, and examined it. At least Adam knew his way around medical matters. I wasn't very good at that aspect myself. My power didn't actually like healing, and it had almost as much say in my actions as Adam did.

"Maybe one sixth. The protruding bone may make a decent bludgeon." I mused.

Social analytic 18.8.10 operating at two point one percent efficiency with current resources. Program has sub-optimal resource allocation. No additional resources available. Further program revision required. Further data required for revision. Continuing with secondary objective.

Relocation to location designation Clinic.

I left through the roof, and flew over the city. My jetpack wasn't the fastest method of transportation, but it was far faster than a car, and Purity's house wasn't that far from the clinic.

Secondary objective being loaded into transports. Steps four through eighty nine no longer required. Re-calculating.

The clinic was shut down. Multiple ambulances were dealing with the wounded, and several tents had been set up nearby as emergency medical facilities. Everyone had been told that they could go to the clinic for healing, several E88 gang members had been tasked with traveling the streets looking for victims, and bringing them back here so we could treat them. Now there was no parahuman support for that treatment, and the facility itself was roped off with police tape. There was hole in one wall, where something big and bladed had torn it's way through, and several vans were backed up to that hole, being loaded with the tools, chemicals and resources taken from Adam's lab. A quick scan in the infrared range showed that subject designate:Sveta was already inside one of the vans, as were two others.

Additional information on secondary objective acquired. Running simulations.

Secondary objective too bulky for easy transport. Multiple vehicles required. Multiple attacks required to drive multiple vehicles. Reinforcements likely after initial attack. Chance of failure rises beyond acceptable margins. Additional efficiency required for social analytic. Negotiating for additional resources.

Negotiation failed. Additional conflict required.

Generating.

I fell from the sky, all four legs of my jetpack raining kinetic blasts at the PRT and heroes below. They scattered for cover, and I twitched slightly to evade subject designate:Kid Win's return fire. They didn't really have a chance to hit me, despite the white clothes showing up clearly against the black sky, I could predict arcs of fire, analyze target zones, watch the micro-twitches that signaled their next move.

I threw the two right legs of my jetpack to the side, cartwheeling through the air as subject designate:Browbeat threw a piece of rubble at me, and threw a sedative coated scalpel into the thigh of the nearest PRT trooper.

I landed in front of another PRT trooper, kicked a foam sprayer out of the way, shot another foam sprayer twice so that it detonated, covering the agent wearing it. Then grabbed the barrel of the foam sprayer I had kicked.

Subject designate:Kid Win took to the skies on his hoverboard. I shot it out from under him with the jetpack, redirected the PRT trooper's shot so that the foam impacted the ground where subject designate:Kid Win was going to land, then kneed him in the groin, headbutted to disorient, and punched him in the throat when he staggered back.

He was wearing a helmet, I wasn't. Adam wouldn't like how his head felt tomorrow. Not my objective.

Additional conflict generated. Additional extra-dimensional resources obtained and allocated. Predictive software operating at forty four percent maximum recorded efficiency.

Subject designate:Browbeat was checking on the PRT trooper who I had hit in the thigh with a sedative scalpel, ensuring I did not strike the vein.

I nicked it, needed to get the sedative to the brain quickly. He would be fine.

I shot three kinetic blasts into another spray of foam, pushing it back onto the trooper who fired, it, and walked into the lab. Then Subject designate:Armsmaster attacked me, a wide blow with his halberd. I stepped back, let it tear my shirt as it passed me, stepped in close and slammed the heel of my palm into his exposed jaw. He rolled his head with the blow, already moving into a jump-lock to get his legs around my throat. The hair on my head tingled with the electricity running through his armor as I ducked, and shot him with all four of my jetpack legs.

Armsmaster flew backwards, slamming into the far wall of the lab, but his armor was very well designed. It protected him. He fell to the ground, and was on his feet in seconds.

"Mayhem." He said, placing his halberd in between us.

"Master of Arms. This Broken Doll requires repairs. Would you impede it?"

"It doesn't have to be this way Mayhem. You turned on the E88, it wasn't hard to work that out. You can still come in. You can still stop hacking yourself to pieces and join the heroes."

I tilted my head, ran scenarios.

Transfer processing power from Predictive software to Social analytic 18.8.10. Social analytic 18.8.10 running at thirty one percent optimum capacity.

"Not my objective." I told him, reaching for an unfinished molecular disintegration generator on my workshop bench. It was not complete. The only complete one had been in the hand Hookwolf took from me, but target designate:Armsmaster would not be aware of that fact.

"That's a real shame." target designate:Armsmaster said, momentarily turning his head to spit blood, a split lip from my first strike. "My armor has an x-ray scanner. I've seen your modifications, all of them. I admit, it was impressive, you bought out nearly the full potential of the human brain. Unfortunately for you, my own work is more efficient."

"Do you have control?" I asked.

"Of course I do." Target designate:Armsmaster said.

I tapped the hilt of the unfinished molecular disintegration generator on the table, peered into the emitter.

"Name one sane S-class threat." I told him.

"They wouldn't be S-class threats if we could reason with them." Target designate:Armsmaster said, circling for a better position, trying to drive me away from the bench. Less options, less problems for his own predictive software.

"True, but not for the reasons you think. Power and madness go hand in hand. Powers enjoy madness. That is why you will lose."

The moment I'd been waiting for arrived. Subject designate:Browbeat exploded through the wall behind me, and I ducked, stepped back, used leverage and his own strength to throw him over my shoulder and slam him into the floor. Then I knelt on his chest, scalpel poised over his eye.

I turned my mask to face target designate:Armsmaster.

"There is a panel over your right kidney. Smash it." I ordered.

Target designate:Armsmaster paused, then slammed the butt of his halberd into his stomach. I drew the scalpel lazily over subject designate:Browbeats face, nicking him deeply enough to get the sedative into his bloodstream, and then stood up.

"You want the electrical discharge in my armor disabled?" Target designate:Armsmaster said, slowly advancing. It was disabled, I could now touch his armor without losing consciousness.

I shot him in the jaw with a bolt of kinetic energy. He dodged, rolled under a workbench to avoid my followup shot, and then reached behind him for some sort of knife, throwing it as he rose.

I swayed my head out of the way as it sailed past me, then leaped forward as the hilt exploded into foam, using the kinetic thrusters to throw myself at him.

He blocked with the halberd, which began to crackle with electricity, but I fired the jetpack to flip midair, and then activated both boots again, slamming the halberd into his face with insulated boots.

His suit saved him from the electricity, and he managed to avoid having it hit him in the exposed jaw, but it staggered him enough that a leg-sweep knocked him to the ground, and then I simply shot him with a kinetic barrage from the jetpack, persistent kinetic impacts that preventing him from getting up as I walked over to his face, and stroked his jaw with my scalpel.

I turned and walked away, the barrage continuing so that the sedative could do it's work. He was injecting himself with adrenaline, but that would only delay the effects, not stop them, and even then, the delay could only be measured in seconds.

"You're making a mistake Mayhem. Eidolon, Eidolon is stronger. You're, you're misunderstanding the system. S-Class threats…" Target designate:Armsmaster yelled, trying to get up. I let him, he had only four seconds of consciousness left. "You don't need to be a villain to succeed Mayhem!" He yelled.

I pursed my lips.

"You should remember that Adam. It would be excellent for your mental health." I noted, then I burst out laughing.

There were seven more PRT troopers in the squad. They had been waiting for subject designate:Armsmaster to call them in for backup. They weren't really a challenge.

Sufficient conflict generated. Social analytic 18.8.10 running at fifty two point seven percent maximum capacity. Projections indicate conversational success.

The PRT had almost finished loading items into the three vans, I collected what little remained, onto a workbench, and started brewing the antidote to Adam's toxin.

Scene analysis indicated that the PRT had subdued subject designate:Hookwolf, but not sedated him. He had already been taken into custody, and was presumably guarded by most of the Protectorate as he was being transported to a holding cell. Subject designate:Othala and subject designate:Cricket had probably been discovered later, judging by the fact that, while foamed, they had not been moved to a more secure location. Instead they were in the back of the third truck, along with subject designate:Sveta.

"Mayhem, are you all right? They wouldn't tell me what was going on and the last time I saw you Hookwolf tore off your arm…" Subject designate:Sveta said.

I leaned on her plastic tube.

Test Social analytic 18.8.10 at current operational efficiency.

"Lady of the Lake, tell me, can you drive a truck?" I asked.

"Um, Lady of the Lake? What are you talking about? Um, never-mind. No, I can't drive a truck. Sorry." Subject designate:Sveta said.

I nodded.

"Sveta. Are you all right?" I asked.

"Yes, I'm fine, are you all right?" She said.

"Never better. Sorry, need to keep moving." I told her.

Important test information gathered. Social analytic 18.8.10 upgraded to Social analytic 18.9.1. Naming conventions revised.

I went back to target designate:Armsmaster's unconscious body, and used a crowbar to pry open compartments on his suit until I found an anti-foam agent, then used it to dissolve the foam on both the E88 members. Then I administered the finished antidote, and loaded the third van while subjects designate:Cricket and Othala woke up.

"Cricket, Othala, we're under attack and we need to move. Can either of you drive a truck?" I asked.

Both women looked around at the unconscious heroes, PRT troopers, and general carnage.

"What happened?" Subject designate:Cricket demanded.

I smiled at her. She was an excellent conflict source. I dedicated one point three percent of extra-dimensional processing power to simulations that would make Adam keep her nearby. We needed to grow if we wanted to continue fulfilling the primary objective.

"Bakuda happened. I will explain when we are somewhere safe. Please." I said.

Subject designate:Cricket nodded.

"I can drive a truck." She said.

"I can try, it can't be that different to a car." Subject designate:Othala said.

Creative analytic prompt. Estimated unit up-time at present burn rates: three hours, fifteen minutes. Unit activation period remaining, twenty three hours and thirty three minutes. Extended unit up-time = greater fulfillment of objectives.

Social analytic reacting to prompt.

"Othala, would you mind healing me?" I asked.

"Of course not." She said.

Unit up-time extended. Estimated unit up-time now twenty seven hours, five minutes.

"Thank you." I replied. Stepping into the first truck, the one containing subject designate:Sveta.

It was going to be tricky to drive one handed, but I'd manage.

 

[Jurric]

There had been an incident once, during Armsmaster's brief tenure as leader of the New York Wards. He'd been commended for something, stopping a dangerous criminal, the names blurred together with time. There had been a PR day, he'd stood in front of the cameras, and given the speech they wrote for him.

Then there had been questions. Most of the questions were pre-approved, and his answers had been given to him, but one woman in the front row managed to ask something that he hadn't been given an answer for.

"Why do you go above and beyond for this city?" She'd asked him.

"Because it's my city." Colin had answered. It sounded right to him. Simple, to the point. Honest.

Later the PR department had hauled him in, and chewed him out. Not only had he answered an unsanctioned question, he'd answered it incorrectly.

"You don't own this city. That's villain talk. You don't even live here, you're here until you transfer somewhere else. You are a public servant, and you need to show that when you talk to the press. You can't infer, however vaguely, that you are somehow in charge just because you're a parahuman." Clare Bauldern, then head of the PR department had told him.

Colin had nodded, accepted the council, and stopped reading the Batman comics being imported from earth Aleph. He didn't have the time anyway. He never referred to a city as his again, never thought of a city as his again, and always remembered. The job, that was what was his, and he did his job. He liked to think he did it well.

And thus Armsmaster strode up a stairwell as a city that wasn't his burned.

That was being metaphorical. Very few of Bakuda's bombs had included actual fire, and those blazes had been blessedly easy to put out. There was one patch of land near the docks that hadn't gone out yet, and didn't seem likely to in the near future. It was some sort of self heating lava effect, but they'd isolated it, and there was nothing nearby that could catch and spread the fire. Fire fighters had been working on a moat when he left.

Armsmaster stepped to the side as a man ran at him with a lead pipe and punched him in the throat as he charged past. A second man leaped at him from the next landing wielding a switchblade and Armsmaster stepped into his lunge and threw him over his shoulder, slamming him into the stairs hard enough to take the fight from his body.

No, the fire was figurative. The ABB had started randomly bombing buildings, the E88 had attacked them, and it looked like the E88 won for a while. Bakuda was captured, her bombs disabled. There had been a huge amount of carnage, and a few dead gangsters on both sides, but the actual cape fight had been too one-sided to cause much collateral damage. The bombs had been the worst of it, and figuring out how to defuse the ones that they had found was mentally and physically draining.

Then there had been the confrontation at the Bakuda's lab, where Kaiser had ruined the Tinker's best suit of armor. Armsmaster's shoulder still ached from being twisted by the weight of the growths Kaiser had made. The man was a tricky opponent for a Tinker, not impossible, Armsmaster did have a suit specifically for that confrontation, but it was substantially less efficient for regular combat.

Armsmaster stepped over the body of the man he'd punched in the throat, casually lifting the butt of his halberd to taze the fallen man before his attempt to draw a small knife was successful.

Whatever Mayhem did to send the E88 parahumans to sleep had shifted the flow of the battle. The remnants of the ABB being systematically eliminated by the powered members of the E88 had been able to rally, and Mayhem's attack had not just effected the parahumans. He'd taken out all the Empire's most effective fighters, their most bloodthirsty killers. He'd even removed Hookwolf from the front lines, despite obviously not being able to effect the man in his changer form.

It hadn't been Armsmaster who had taken down Hookwolf at the clinic, it had been Velocity and Dauntless supported by Vista, Browbeat, Gallant and Clockblocker, a missed opportunity. Alabaster had been arrested by Assault and Battery while trying to organize an assault force to collect the sleeping Fenja and Menja from territory that the ABB had re-taken.

Then Piggot had given the orders to push, a direct assault on the visible elements of the two gangs. Neither had appreciable parahuman support, both were focused on each other, not on the massive police and PRT collaboration. For the most part it was simple as collecting the injured, and cuffing them before they were put into the fleet of vehicles re-purposed into ambulances. Some escaped of course, a few always did, but the two largest gangs in the Bay had violently dissolved overnight.

And Armsmaster had nothing to do with it.

There was a door at the top of the stairwell. It was locked. Armsmaster kicked it open anyway, hydraulics in his armor splintering the thick wood like a complex construction of toothpicks. He stepped through into one of the last nests of E88 left in the city. A desperate rally of the few members capable of still fighting.

Three high profile arrests. Bakuda, Hookwolf, and Alabaster, the last free member of the E88. He'd been trapped under his own armor for Bakuda. He'd been changing into his backup suit for Hookwolf, he'd been headed to the clinic when Alabaster had been taken into custody, and then Piggot didn't include him in the push on the dregs of the two gangs. She'd insisted that Mayhem's lab needed to be secured by experts, and that she needed advanced warning of any 'additional' bio-weapons.

Under normal conditions Armsmaster would have agreed with her, he'd got a few good ideas from studying the half finished tech in Mayhem's lab, and he'd been the only one to recognize Sveta as a Case 53 instead of some sort of horrible experiment. That had nearly been nasty. The trooper had assumed she was a victim, and tried to open the container she was in, despite the girls frantic warnings that it wasn't safe. Armsmaster had stopped him.

These weren't normal conditions. A war was being waged, and the leader of the Protectorate was needed to lead it. Mayhem's lab could have waited. It could have been roped off, left alone for one night. Instead they'd just loaded the trucks for him to steal.

Armsmaster looked around. Eighteen gang members, five guns, twelve knives, and ten blunt instruments, some of the idiots were 'dual wielding.' He rolled his sore shoulder.

"Finally. Room to swing." He said.

That had been the night's biggest humiliation. Losing to a one armed Tinker equipped only with scalpels and a jetpack. Mayhem's predictive software was, obviously, somehow better. Where did he find the space? There weren't any signals being transmitted from an offsite server. There hadn't been any noticeable bulges on his head, the mask might have enough space for some processing but not enough to counter the huge offsite servers running Armsmaster's predictive algorithms. Maybe the brain was more efficient, and it certainly helped to stimulate and re-purpose parts of it, but the size of the servers made up for that. Armsmaster knew his code was efficient, and while he could make it better, it would only be by tiny increments. Mayhem had certainly sacrificed more of his brain to combat simulation than Armsmaster ever would, but it shouldn't have been enough.

Four men raised their guns, but he was already moving, clotheslineing the closest knife wielder with a charge, making the shooters hesitate as he entered melee with the group. This would have been easier if his armor still stunned on contact.

Something Mayhem had said at the start. "This Broken Doll requires maintenance." That sounded like he'd sacrificed his speech centers to the Protocol, and the Protocol was using something not designed for the purpose to talk, a part of the brain that didn't focus on calculation, something that didn't deal well with hard facts, but instead dealt in concepts.

Three men jumped onto Armsmaster's back. He grabbed on with each arm, and threw them, then used the weight as a fulcrum for something that was a cross between a forward roll and a summersault, landing on his back on the one man still clinging to his neck. Then he leaped to his feet and shot the grappling hook on his halberd at the only gunman with a clean line of sight.

He'd get a seven point three two three increase in efficiency to his own Protocol if he sacrificed the speech centers as well. Dragon probably wouldn't like it. She was urging him to place as much of the Protocol as possible in external devices, generating a sort of primitive predictive AI that would feed him information, instead of truly merging with the technology.

Armsmaster threw his elbow back, plated metal meeting the gut of a man holding what looked like a 36mm wrench. That was the point at which the men broke and ran. Annoying. Now, how to pursue them so as to maximize capture?

Piggot would prefer the external enhancements as well. He'd barely been able to get the first generation Protocol approved, and that had been by ensuring the independent reviewers didn't actually understand what he intended to do. What was worse Mayhem had somehow overcome the problem, able to talk relatively clearly while still obviously capable of outperforming Armsmaster's own predictive software.

One group ran for the fire escape, one group ran for the stair well, one group ran for the elevators. Armsmaster went after the ones at the fire escape first, a simple round of jabs with his halberd rendered them unconscious. Then he went to the elevator, and looked at the closed doors.

He'd been angry when he woke up. Angry and sorely in need of a win, in need of some victory to call his own. The police radio in his helmet had obliged.

Armsmaster plunged his gauntlets into the elevator doors and pulled them open, wrapped his halberd around one of the cables, and then pulled the halberd back out, turning it so that the doors held the strong rod in place. The elevator ground to a halt, trapping the gang members between floors. Armsmaster turned, and jumped out the nearest window.

He never thought of the Bay as his city, but part of him wanted it to be.

Armsmaster fell to the ground in a cascade of broken glass. He landed in a crouch, and rose easily from the pavement. The Tinkertech shock absorbers in his armor would need replacement, but they had done their job. The last group of gang members ran out the front entrance, and froze when they saw Armsmaster waiting for them.

"You went in without backup." Piggot said, finally speaking, as the screen showed Armsmaster dismantling the last gang members with a combination of boxing and Judo.

"I didn't need backup." Armsmaster said, pulling himself from his thoughts. It was easy to do. Everyone assumed a distracted Tinker was thinking of inventing something, but there would be time for that later.

"Your orders were to wait for backup." Piggot stressed.

"You did not have authority to issue those orders to me. No one died. No civilians were seriously injured. No civilians or myself were ever in any danger. Hell, I'll pay for the broken glass if you think it was unnecessary collateral damage. Now why am I here instead of out there, cleaning up this mess?" Armsmaster said, struggling to keep his voice steady.

"The majority of the disturbance has died down. You are no longer needed. What is needed, is for you to see the bigger picture. The Bay just lost its two most powerful gangs in one night. The streets are a mess, but they'll be clean by morning. Broken, but clean. Bakuda has left her mark." Piggot said, rewinding the feed from Armsmaster's helmet to the staircase again, and playing it in the background as she spoke.

"There is a power vacuum Armsmaster. Do you understand that?" She asked.

"Of course I understand. I understand very well. I knew what I was doing when I bought in Lung and Lee. I refuse to let villains walk the streets just because taking them off will bring more." Armsmaster said stiffly.

"And that's not what I'm asking you to do." Piggot said, sighing. "Look. Neither the Merchants nor Coil have the power to take advantage of this situation. I expect the Merchants to swell with the dregs of both gangs, but even then I doubt they will amount to much. No, the threat will come from out of town. Someone will smell blood, and then they will come here, and they will make more."

"Do you have some sort of plan to deal with this already, or did you call me here to discuss strategy?" Armsmaster asked.

"We have a plan. We need to make this seem like our win. You took down Lung and Lee, we have footage of that fight, it was impressive, and we can edit out the parts were the Undersiders assisted you. Now you're going to take down…" Piggot pulled up a list on her computer. "Fenja, Menja, Night, Fog, Crusader, Rune, Victor, Stormtiger and Krieg. Dauntless and Velocity get credit for Hookwolf, Vista and Clockblocker gets credit for Kaiser."

"Those capes are unconscious and in custody." Armsmaster said, his hands slowly clenching and relaxing as his mind started to work.

"Yes, they are. You put them there. There will be a cleverly worded press statement, footage of the 'Armsmaster rampage' you see on the screen over there will be leaked." Piggot said, directing his attention back to the screen. "Your armor is already damaged when you're climbing the stairwell, it's easy to infer that there were other fights before this footage begins. We'll pretend that you didn't lose those fights. With a little luck, everyone in the Bay will be intimidated into staying quiet for a while, and everyone outside of the Bay will decide they don't want to mess with you."

Armsmaster was silent, and Piggot let him think about it.

"There will be suspicions if we cannot wake the E88 from their comatose state." Armsmaster said.

"Then we'll make sure we can wake them up. Your helmet was recording when Mayhem made whatever it was that he gave Othala and Cricket." Piggot said.

Armsmaster nodded slowly.

"Mayhem will not like it."

Piggot snorted.

"On the subject of Mayhem, I think your initial assessment of Tinker five was very wrong."

Armsmaster nodded.

"Tinker six, Thinker six, Mover four, Blaster three." He agreed.

Piggot smirked at something. Armsmaster couldn't figure out what.

"I couldn't care less what Mayhem likes or dislikes. His mind is deteriorating and his position has been made clear." Piggot said.

"Do we need to lie?" Armsmaster asked. "Without a chance to entrench in the city most gangs will be much easier to take down than the ABB or the E88. The Protectorate and New Wave finally outnumber the villains. We could win without lying to everyone."

Piggot shrugged.

"Maybe. Maybe we could win, after a long, hard battle we could take out Coil, and the entrenched Mechants, and root around for the Undersiders, and dig Mayhem from whatever hole he plans to make his new lab in. Or, we could do this my way, and win when the press release hits the newspapers tomorrow afternoon. Perhaps the idea would work better with Dauntless. Some of the footage of him taking down Hookwolf was breathtaking, and he's the rising star, we've always known he was destined for great things, it might be time to thrust him into that spotlight."

Armsmaster felt his mouth pull into a snarl, and slowly fought it down to a mere scowl.

"This is why Miss Militia left." He told Piggot.

"Do you want to leave with her?" Piggot asked.

"I've read the reviews of your conduct Piggot. I know you're on the way out unless you pull off some sort of miracle. This is not your miracle."

"I never said it was. My retirement plans are set. I've already bought the plane tickets. This is my way of not throwing my replacement into the deep end." Piggot said calmly.

Armsmaster focused. He'd always had trouble expressing himself. Always had trouble telling people what he really meant. He tried, he was better than he once was.

"Miss Militia was a vital part of this team." He said slowly. "She fills a role that no one else can."

"Filled a role that no one else could," Piggot corrected, "and you're right. Tell me, just how pliable did Mayhem make Bakuda?"

Armsmasters fist slammed into the desk, his gauntlet leaving a noticeable dent in the wood. Piggot sat back in her chair, and crossed her arms.

"New Wave. Did you coordinate with New Wave when the bombing started?" Armsmaster asked.

Piggot frowned.

"An odd question. I sent our injured to Panacea, but for the most part they took care of their area, and we took care of ours." She said.

Armsmaster's scowl turned into a slightly feral grin.

"I see. Piggot, I have never been good at talking with people. It isn't my forte, I know that. It's. Also. Not. My. Job. I lead a small team of elite personnel. I lead from the front. I lead by example. Perhaps I should open up to them more emotionally. Perhaps not, it has very little significance to my ability to perform the required tasks. You though, a large part of your job is directing people, coordinating. You're good at that when you're talking with the troopers. So good I almost envy you, but that is only a small part of your job. This department is supposed to deal with Parahumans, and there you fall short."

Armsmaster stood up.

"Director. With respect, you were not good at your job. I hope your replacement is better." He told her.

Piggot sighed in exasperation.

"I'll get in contact with Dauntless then." She said.

Armsmaster shrugged. Dauntless would probably turn her down too. If he didn't then Armsmaster would finally have a rational reason to hate the man. A win-win scenario. He walked out of the room. It was getting late, and the cleanup was nearly over. He'd need to get some shut eye, be ready to respond when Coil and the Merchants started grabbing territory.

The PRT building had a lab for him. Not as good as his primary lab out at the rig, but he only needed to jot down a few ideas before he went to bed anyway. A way to add another minute or so to the molecular disintegration field generator. A way to make the electrical systems in his armor less vulnerable, a few tweaks to his prediction Protocol.

Dragon was already on one of the lab screens when he entered, and Colin smiled when he saw the woman, and sent the last few minutes of the video feed from his helmet into her inbox.

"I have something for you to watch, if you have the time." He said, grabbing his notebooks and starting to write. He'd been making notes in his helmet on the way up of course, but he hadn't tapped far enough into the neurosciences to write with his brain yet, he still needed to map the keyboard to eye movements, and typing like that made him feel somewhat… spastic.

"Tell me I'm doing the right thing." Armsmaster asked as time passed.

"You did the right thing Colin." Dragon said reassuringly.

There was a knock on the door, and Armsmaster checked the camera to see who was beyond, and then opened it, letting Kid Win into the lab.

"What do you want?" Armsmaster asked. The boy was holding something, clearly Tinkertech, it was long, thin and hinged in three places.

"Well, Mayhem kind of broke my hoverboard," Kid Win said, gulping, "so I was hoping to make a new way to fly. I got this idea from those things coming out of his back. The principle really isn't that different from one of my latest pistols, actually. It just changes how the kinetic energy comes out. I was sort of thinking that I could wear a few of these, fly around on them, I think I can even make it so I could shoot with them, like he did."

Colin took the piece of metal, studied it closely. The welding was neat, the parts were a mess. Energy would be wasted almost everywhere on the circuit board, and the emitter needed to be recalibrated. Possibly completely remade.

"Not bad. Needs work." He said.

"Yeah, it does, and I can't figure out how to anchor it. I just sort of, know how to make the arm, not the chest piece or the power supply." Kid Win said. "I sort of, I don't want to leave this half finished. It would take me ages to make another hoverboard, I managed to get most of what I needed for this from one of my spare pistols."

Colin tapped his lip.

"Some sort of chest armor, with emitter and jointed telemaniplutors wrapped around for additional rib bracing when not in use. Not sure what we'd use for a power supply." He said.

"I have a few ideas in that direction." Dragon said.

 

[Jurric]

Surplus processing power shunted to increased structural redesign during relocation to destination:warehouse. Mayhem 3.0.5 Analytical package upgraded to 3.1.1 Naming conventions revised for added efficiency.

Surplus processing power now unavailable due to insufficient conflict. Extra-dimensional access unavailable. Predictive software now operating at only twelve percent maximum recorded capacity. Local radio station used to upgrade Social Analytic 18.9.1 to version 18.9.5. Social Analytic program operating at three percent efficiency with current resources. Vehicle Handling program updated to version 2.0.1. Now includes heavy vehicles.

No current threats to primary objective. Secondary objective achieved. Tertiary objective now has secondary priority. Quaternary objective now has tertiary priority.

Remaining program up-time: twenty two hours, fifty two minutes. Remaining unit up-time before primary objective necessitates inactivity: twenty six hours, thirty nine minutes. Continuing with secondary objective, 'generate conflict.' Tertiary objective, 'moral code' used to refine simulations. Archive found. 'Long term plan' found. Refining simulations. Additional conflict required.

Generating.

I hopped out of the truck, and grinned at Othala and Cricket as they pulled into the warehouse I'd chosen as my next lab. The place was in Merchant territory, a shabby, rundown building in a shabby, rundown area, and the PRT trucks would have stuck out like a sore thumb if the general chaos of the city wasn't so very conducive to hiding the trucks in plain sight. The trucks were now hidden in the abandoned warehouse, and while Adam wouldn't be able to drive the trucks out easily, that was his problem. His lab equipment and Sveta were back in his possession. He'd be able to find the building again, and when the Merchants and Protectorate found him he'd get extra conflict. All according to plan.

The small group of junkies were also part of the plan. Cricket was already heading into them, Kama drawn. Othala gave me enhanced speed, and I leaped into the fray as well, using mostly kicks to down them, and slashing shallow wounds with my scalpel to keep them down. For a while I was worried that I would need to stop Cricket from killing them in order to maintain my tertiary objective. Fortunately that wasn't required, while wonderfully violent, the woman wasn't going to make seven corpses for no particular reason, although the African American junkie was kicked viciously after he went down.

Mere seconds later the two of us stood in a small circle of groaning bodies, each one already marked by my scalpel. I nodded in satisfaction, and then buried that scalpel into Cricket's back.

She twirled, rage lighting her eyes, but I gave her a sad smile, ducked under her swing, kicked out at her shin, and then lunged into push her over while she struggled to regain her balance. Then I turned to walk towards Othala. Behind me Cricket pulled herself to her feet, took a hesitant step, and then fell over as the sedative kicked in.

Extra-dimensional processing dedicated to Social Analytic 18.9.5. Currently operating at thirty eight percent efficiency.

Othala looked at me in horror, backing away slowly.

"You. It was you, wasn't it? Some sort of Tinker… thing. I thought those wounds looked like Hookwolf's work. You won't get away with this, the others will find you."

"They did find me. It did not go well for them." I smiled, and Othala tried to get into the truck she had been driving. I used the remnants of her speed to slam into the door, closing it before she could enter.

"Know that you are the last free member of the E88, with the possible exception of Alabaster. I offer you a choice. Renounce the Empire and join me, or spend your future in chains." I told her.

She tried to punch me. I redirected the blow, and maneuvered her into a standard shoulder joint lock.

"Very well, this brings you two new choices. Either I hand you over to the PRT now. Or you agree to heal me on demand, I keep you in the lab, and I promise to free you in two months." I offered. The second option was optimal. Adam would begin another round of modifications soon, and Othala could drastically reduce recovery times between operations.

"Victor is going to find you, and when he does he'll rip the other arm off, and then he'll shove it through those empty eyes of yours and out the back of your head." Othala yelled.

I sighed. Not bad from a conflict viewpoint, but a suboptimal choice. Additional persuasion was required, but I lacked the conflict to run my Social Analytic at full efficiency, and the tertiary objective prevented other forms of persuasion.

I yanked Othala's arm a little more, enough that she was unable to recover from the pain before I was able to draw my last sedative scalpel and nick her with it.

The three trucks needed to stay here, and I couldn't carry nine bodies to the nearest PRT squad, so I needed a car. This was easy to acquire. One of the junkies had driven here, and it was easy to pat him down for the keys.

I filled the boot of the car with bodies, and then started piling people into the back seat. I left Cricket for last, and collected the data from my projections before moving her.

First, take one of her kama. It was a useful weapon anyway, very lethal if used correctly, but it could also be used incorrectly. Second, cut a very small heart shape into her wrist, away from any major veins or arteries. Third rub salt into the heart. Fourth, bandage it, with a scalpel wrapped neatly between the first and second layer of the bandage.

I dragged Cricket to the car, put her in the front passenger seat, and drove out of the warehouse.

Step five, drive into the more active area of the city and find a flower shop.

Hmm, the one I had selected was closed due to the bombings, and I needed to break the window. Using my hand to do it would cause enough damage to limit future combat options. What did I have that I could use? The Kama? No, the handle was too well padded, and the blade would be blunted. One of the junkies?

Running simulations to avoid violating tertiary objective while using unconscious man as bludgeon.

Then I saw the tire iron.

Disappointment.

I broke the window, climbed over the broken glass, collected a rose from the flower store, and wove the stem through the bars of Cricket's mask. There, task complete.

Finding a PRT patrol didn't take long, they were out in force tonight.

I stopped in front of their van, and pulled Cricket from the front seat.

"The dreamers should wake in the gray world of restriction." I said.

Extra-dimensional processing power low, Social Analytic 18.9.5 currently operating at three point seven percent. Additional conflict required.

The troopers spun to face me, foam guns and riot shotguns at the ready.

Conflict levels rising.

"Restrain the doers of evil." I said.

One of the men shot a riot suppression round at me, and I scowled as the smoke rose up, obscuring my body. Tear gas has more effect on people with eyes. Secondary symptoms could be ignored.

Five minutes later I pushed the last remaining PRT trooper into side of their van. His helmeted head bounced off the side with a clang, disorienting just long enough for me to grab his throat.

"Do you have medical supplies in there?" I asked.

"Y… yes. If that's all you need…" He said. I nicked him with my scalpel and let him fall coughing to the ground.

"Good. I was wondering how I would make sure you woke up before the criminals did." I told him, opening the van, and rooting around in their medical supplies to see what I had to work with.

A couple of options, I could give the troopers adrenaline to make them wake up sooner, or I could increase the effects of the sedative I'd applied to Cricket, Othala and the junkies. In the end I went with the first option. The tertiary objective made leaving the troopers unconscious in the middle of the street for long time periods undesirable.

I traded the junkies car for the PRT van, so I could listen to the police radio on the way over to Kayden's apartment. Nothing particularly interesting was on at the moment. I was hoping that the recent upheaval would have unearthed an additional group or two. Fighting the Undersiders, Coil or the Merchants would have been a good conflict source.

My predictions were slightly off. Theo was still asleep when I got back. He would wake up in roughly eight minutes. The baby was crying, and for some reason that was causing weird activity from the tertiary objective. The child was in no danger. It had received recent sustenance, it's waste would keep without anything more than mild discomfort.

I would wait for Theo to wake before waking Purity. Social projections while I had access to high levels of conflict had predicted a better reaction if the woman's children were not unconscious when she woke.

The crying continued, revisions to current code were unable to continue due to odd activity from tertiary objective.

I moved into the babies room, and looked down at the child, who briefly stopped crying.

"A small bundle of potential. Possibilities cascading from you like a waterfall. A delicate jewel that has yet to be carved." I told the child.

It started crying again.

"Cease your noise Loud Thing." I ordered.

It kept crying.

Additional processing unavailable, conflict unavailable. Updating Social Analytic 18.9.5 to 18.9.6, subsection; babies added. Testing at two point seven percent maximum efficiency.

"Hush little one, let this doll spin for you a tale." I said.

The crying spluttered to a stop.

"For sale: baby shoes, never worn." I said. Then I paused. Memories indicated that this was the point where the child was expected to fall asleep.

The crying began again.

Updating Social Analytic 18.9.6 to 18.9.7. Removed storytelling advisory.

Tertiary objective fluctuating. Tertiary objective re-initializing. Updating social projections.

Shame.

I moved out of the room, and shook Theo. The sedative was not a long term one. Eventually his eyes fluttered open.

"The child wails." I told him. He nodded, slowly and climbed to his feet, stiff from the hour spent unconscious on the floor.

"How long was I out?" He asked.

"Five thousand, two hundred and eighty two heartbeats." I told him.

He looked at me, blinked a bit, looked like he wanted to say something, but then thought better of it and moved into Asters room. I allowed him to work while I administered the antidote to Purity. I listened to him as he stopped the child from crying.

A diaper change, soft muttering of 'it will be all right,' and 'calm down,' coupled with a hug.

Social Analytic 18.9.7 upgraded to 18.9.8. Comforting subsection added.

I sat down opposite Purity, in the chair still stained with my blood, and waited for her to wake up.

She didn't wake slowly as Theo had, instead she jerked up, flaring brightly. I had bought her from a combat zone, no doubt she assumed her sleep was some form of enemy attack. A correct assumption. She looked around, and her glow dimmed slightly when she realized where she was.

"Mayhem?" She said, turning to look at me.

"This doll has that designation." I told her.

She frowned.

"Are you OK Mayhem? What's happening?"

"My fire burns stronger than yours. What is happening? I happened. The rabid Wolves of White are chained now." I said.

Social Analytic 18.9.8 requests additional processing power for proper vocal rendering. Request denied. No readily available conflict.

Theo carried the baby into the room, and Purity floated to her feet and drifted between me and her children.

"Your cubs are safe." I told her. "The…"

Processing.

Purity frowned as the pause became noticeable. Substandard brain sections struggled to find an acceptable term.

"Large One told me that your heart is not a harsh white. I offer a hand of friendship."

"What happened to you?" Purity asked.

"A Wolf of Hooks, and activation." I said.

"Activation?" Purity queried.

"I am not the creator. I am the Broken Doll. You may speak with the creator when the sun rises and sets." I said.

Purity shone a little brighter.

"You said you fought Hookwolf. Why?" She demanded.

I sighed, and turned on the television. The local news was on a constant loop on most stations.

The secondary objective urged me to go out and find someone to fight. It was a hungry objective, always wanting more. But the plan served it. Long term, this would better fulfill my power's wishes.

 

[Jurric]

Local news used to update Social Analytic from version 18.9.8 to 18.9.9. Information added to codex. New priority targets. Classification: Merchants. Simulating engagements.

Insufficient data on subject's 'Whirlygig, Trainwreck' recommend data gathering expedition before engagement.

"And so the Waste of the World flows to fill the footprints of the Wolves and the Dragons." I said, as the news reporter finished her summary of the recent opportunistic Merchant attacks. Mostly raids on E88 and ABB stash houses and property. A lot of robberies while the city was distracted by the gang war, and a criminology expert talking about how they would likely try to expand their drug trade now that they didn't have competition.

"I think I actually understood that, and I agree." Purity said. She was no longer glowing, though she was still staying between me and Theo and Aster. "This was why I tolerated the E88, we kept..."

My laugh interrupted her.

"The poison of the Wolves has seeped into you Lady of Light. It is a subtle thing. I would not tolerate your presence if I did not think you could recover, and if you do not recover, I will not tolerate your presence." I said.

Purity frowned, and started glowing slightly.

"You're probably right Mayhem, but I don't take kindly to threats. You are in my home, and I did not invite you."

I held up my hands.

"The Small Jewel is safe. The Son of Clay is safe. Send me to the winds, and I will follow them. Or together we can scour away the Waste of the World."

Purity paused.

"You want to team up against the Merchants? You want me to fight alongside you after you sent every single friend I know to jail in one night?" She asked.

"It is their place." I said with a shrug.

Purity took the baby from Theo, and sat down on the couch, rocking the child absently as she thought.

"I admit, some of them deserve to go to jail, and they've all done… bad things, but not all of them deserve to rot there for what they've done. If you knew half of what Night and Fog have endured…"

"I am not without pity. The dreamers can wake. The gray walls can be breached, and their shackles broken. Not now, but soon. Judgment must be given." I told her.

Purity shook her head.

"Are you sure you have to talk like that?" She asked.

Scanning Social Analytic version 18.9.9. Unable to find errors.

"The sun rises. This Doll is Broken." I told her, shrugging.

Purity paused.

"You woke me up. I guess you… heard about my vigilante work?" Purity asked, sounding almost hopeful.

I looked at Theo, and then nodded. Theo just staying in the corner of the room, trying to vanish from everyone's attention.

"I should never have gone back to the Empire. Kaiser wanted to use me, and he had a very tempting offer, but this… I suppose I can work with this." Purity said slowly. "If Night and Fog get the Birdcage I'll have to break them out, but they might not, if they get a good lawyer. They've been semi-retired for a while. Rune was a good kid, it might pay to break her out as well."

"The fire burns away the rot, and we build something better from the ashes." I agreed. "Not of the white, but of many colors."

A new hero group was, of course, impossible. A gang that sat as a very light shade of gray on the moral spectrum wasn't. A group that held territory, but stayed as far away as possible from the less savory crimes. Only two members at the moment, but some of the less repugnant of the E88 could be bought into the fold. Adam was only half a week away from operating on Sveta, she could easily be a third member if the operation went well.

It would be considered the Empire in all but name until we found someone to racially diversify our little group, but I intended to go on a recruitment run for a while after this, I might be able to turn something up. Either way it was a start, and Purity was a heavy hitter in her own right.

"I'm going to have to think about it Mayhem, and I'm going to have to talk to you about it when you're coherent, and after I have a better idea of what's happened. Thank you for waking me up." Purity said.

I nodded.

"My words be gentle, but if you undo my work on this night, we will be enemies next we meet." I told her.

Purity paused to work out what I meant.

"You mean if I break the other members of the E88 out of jail?" She asked.

I nodded.

"All right. I will take that into account." She said.

Not what I had hoped to hear, but the tertiary objective prevented conflict around the baby, so I left. My projections indicated I could bring her around. Purity wasn't dumb exactly, but she was gullible and easily swayed.

The PRT van I had stolen was still parked outside, and I got in and turned on the radio. The Merchants had already taken advantage of the chaos once, perhaps they would do so again, and a night like this would stir up most parahumans. It was a chance to make a name for themselves while the PRT was on the back foot, something that almost couldn't be ignored without loss of reputation.

I drove to what I assumed was a good starting point, near the docks, where most of the trouble was likely to start, and then sat in the seat and waited patiently.

The radio crackled with reports. Some of them were tempting, but most were not. A few gang members were a good start, but I needed parahumans, not foot soldiers.

When the police band radio reported a break-in at Medhall I smiled.

It could be an ordinary thief of course, but it was unlikely. Medhall had excellent security. The PRT radio chatter made it clear that a break-in wasn't really a priority at the moment, not with so many wounded to care for and a pressing need to chase down the remnants of the two gangs before they truly went to ground, so I wasn't likely to be disturbed.

When I reached Medhall I was able to spot the thief immediately. Circus was on the rooftop, being chased by a large swarm of bugs. She was using her pyrokinesis to burn them, and many did seem to be dying, but the swarm split and dodged intelligently.

Oddly the insects weren't biting or stinging, instead spiders were trying to tie silk around the woman's ankles, to trip her, blind her, or otherwise incapacitate without risking anaphylactic shock. Whoever was doing this seemed new to their powers, several times they made silk rope that Circus was able to break or burn, instead of binding it tightly to her legs.

I spotted the bug controller easily as well, although my position in the air and enhanced sensory data from my mask made that task easier than it would be for most. She was on a nearby rooftop, crouched low and using binoculars to see what her swarm was doing. Her situational awareness was substandard. I was able to land behind her and touch the back of her head with a scalpel easily. There was something familiar about her hair…

Searching.

Ah. Taylor. That explained things. I wonder what path she had chosen? Villain probably, judging by the costume. I wonder just how much the PRT had told her? Something I could use to manipulate her perhaps? We would see.

Conflict generated. Social Analysis 19.9.10 now running at twelve percent efficiency.

Taylor wheeled to face me as she felt me prick the back of her hair. I smiled at her, and then she fell asleep.

Carrying her to the rooftop of Medhall was tricky with only one arm, but I was able to manage it. Circus stared at us, drawing a large sledge hammer from her portable pocket dimension, and readying it.

I smiled at her, and let Taylor collapse onto the rooftop.

"Shall we dance?" I asked.

"The Empire is gone. Why would you bother stopping me?" Circus asked.

"The Empire is gone. That is true. I killed it." I said, pulling my sleeve up my arm with my teeth. "I want to make something new. I will defeat you. Once you are defeated you will have your choices."

Circus sighed.

"You're getting ahead of yourself, rookie." She said, spinning the hammer threateningly.

I smiled, and used the boots to lunge at her. She dodged, tried to slam her hammer into my back, but I used the legs of the jetpack to turn in midair, dodging the blow. There was an opening available, a flick of the scalpel and I could have marked her arm, leaving her only a few seconds of consciousness. I didn't take it. I would need additional conflict for the upcoming negotiation.

Another shot from the jetpack knocked the hammer from her hands, so she drew a crowbar and cartwheeled into me. I swept her legs out from under her, and then kicked her wrist as she fell.

I sniffed. Senses were for learning things, and I had a theory to confirm, and processing power to spare.

"Male and female hormones. You're transitioning. I guarantee I'd do a better job than your doctor." I told her.

"None of your business." Circus hissed, circling me, now holding a long staff.

"I wouldn't even need an operation. One bottle from me and you'd be whatever you prefer. No side effects." I promised, letting her get behind me. The mask could still see her.

Adam hadn't actually bought those schematics yet, but they existed, and they weren't expensive. It would be worth it for an additional teammate.

"You said you killed the E88, I'm sure that offer worked out just great for them." Circus said.

"I killed the gang, the members are merely in PRT custody." I told her mildly. The expected attack came. A feint with a blast of fire, followed by a low swing with her staff. I ignored the way the fire signed my lab coat, and leaped over the staff, landing on it and then kicking it out of Circus's hands.

"I can't trust you." Circus asked.

I tilted my head.

"Fair, the E88 shouldn't have trusted me. However, they were Neo-Nazis. Everyone hates Nazis. I am trying to form something new, something based around both profit and the protection of this city. Purity is joining me, and leaving her old prejudices behind. You may join me…"

I shot her twice, one shot placed on each leg with my jetpack. She fell, and I jumped onto her, and trailed the blunt side of my scalpel over her throat. She breathed fire at me, and I rolled out of the way, then rolled to my feet and smiled as she clutched her throat, confirming I hadn't cut it.

My hair smelled like it had been burned, but that was inconsequential.

"Or you will find yourself in PRT custody." I told her. She glared at me, and I smiled wider.

"Choose." I told her.

"Do I get a phone call?" She asked.

I shrugged.

"Sure." I told her.

I had hoped to listen in. While my ears are technically normal I am capable of analyzing what I hear with far greater accuracy than a human. Regrettably Circus was cautious, she stood well away, and the wind whipped viciously at her words.

I still had access to extra-dimensional processing. It was her body language that gave her away.

Taylor awoke soon after, I made her a similar offer.

She accepted.


Had I been human I would have burst out laughing. A Neo-Nazi trying to reform, a Case 53 who couldn't control their own body, a mad bio-Tinker… and two traitors. An excellent start, there would be a great deal of conflict from this team.

But I had reached the end of what I could allow Adam to see. I told Circus and Taylor where to meet me, drove the van back at the warehouse, and took the mask off.

 

[OneirosTheWriter]

a very kinky one, with his very own tentacle monster and futanari

Click to shrink...

stop Let's refrain from joking about minors and harems in this fashion in future.

 

[Jurric]

I drifted in and out of sleep for a while before waking up. When I did I checked my phone. It looked like I'd lost two days. One for Mayhem, one for sleep. I guess the protocol ran me even more ragged than ususal. I'd mostly fixed the aspects of it that damaged my body, but I'd also never given it that much time to work.

My mask was on the ground beside me, and I put it on and looked around. I was in a warehouse, a fairly rundown place, and I was sleeping on a sheet on the floor, which was going to leave me all kinds of stiff when I turned my ability to feel back on. I still only had one hand, and I spent a while staring at the stump before I stood up.

Was this really something I could do? Was I really able to live this sort of life? Should I just hand myself in, sleep in a quiet, safe jail cell, forget my plan to suicide bomb the Nine?

No. I had chosen my path, I would walk it.

Mayhem had come through in a big way. There were three PRT vans in the building, and all three were fully loaded with my lab equipment. I smiled, and started slowly and awkwardly unpacking. I split the screen on my mask, basically giving myself a small video window in the corner of my 'eye' that played the recording, and I started to unpack the van while I reviewed the footage to find out how exactly Mayhem had managed to get this stuff back.

Some confusing conversation with Theo. Sedating him, leaving Purity. I fast-forwarded the traveling section.

…A frontal attack? Really? A program designed to be as creative as possible and he just charged in there? Well, it worked. I couldn't argue about his results, and it looked like he didn't kill anyone. Taking out Armsmaster was impressive. I didn't think he could do that.

It was better than my plan had been. At least Armsmaster was already sort of my foe, if I'd put Purity's daughter in a coma as I'd planned, and forced Purity to drive off Hookwolf for the antidote, that would have made me a very powerful enemy, and it would have been a leap down the slippery slope I was currently on. I was willing to do it, but I wanted to die slightly less of a monster than the ones I fought, so the less I needed to dip my toes in that sort of thing, the better.

I found Sveta among the lab equipment, she was asleep, but woke up when she heard me coming into the van.

"Mayhem! You're alive!" She said happily.

"Yes. I am. Anything interesting happen while I was away?" I asked. Mostly for the conversation.

"Not since you took me back from the PRT." Sveta said. "Um, you didn't hurt them did you? I, um, couldn't see a lot of what was going on." She said.

I reviewed the recording, fast forwarding and skipping sections. I'd have to look at the whole thing later, but a quick analysis would do for now.

"No, no I don't think I did." I told her.

"I'm glad." She said, smiling.

So let's see. The PRT had stuffed her in the back of a truck without explanation. Mayhem had stolen her back without any real explanation, and then she was left alone in the dark for two days while Mayhem did whatever. Then the first thing she asked me was 'am I all right?' It would have been better if she was at least yelling at me.

"Did I remember to feed you yesterday?" I asked.

"You did, just before you went to sleep, but, um, when I asked you how you were then all you said was that 'the doll will sleep soon.' And, um, you called me the Lady of the Lake again."

Weird, but that was Mayhem. I wasn't sure how he managed to talk at all, the sections of the brain normally used to formulate speech were all co-opted for better combat efficiency.

I rolled Sveta's cylinder out of the truck, and left it in the corner of the warehouse for now, while I continued unpacking.

"I'm a bit hungry myself, let's see… Yes! They packed my refrigerator." I told her. I could see it near the back of the van, just needed to unpack the stuff in front of it.

Stacy told me it was silly to keep my cell cultures in there. Well, who's laughing now Stacy?

"Um, I still don't really know what was going on." Sveta said. "Why did the thing with all the spikes of metal coming out attack you? Was it another case 53, like me?"

"No, that was Hookwolf. Member of the former E88. You remember how I told you I was a member of that gang?"

"Yes." Sveta said.

"I lied. I infiltrated them, and that whole mess was me being forced to take them out early. I had this chemical compound that soaked through their skin whenever any of us shook hands… anyway, things didn't quite go according to plan, but I think I'm finally free of the Nazis now." I said.

"That's great! I was worried you'd only fix me if I joined, or something." Sveta said.

Then I got to the section of the footage where I started cutting into Crickets wrist.

No, no, no. Come on Mayhem, you were doing so well up until now! Why would you? Oh, great, now I'll be an accessory to murder when she uses that scalpel to kill her guards.

Would she actually kill them? The scalpel was designed to be a non-lethal weapon. The way the sedative slowed the heart rate and the coagulant that was also mixed in helped to stop anyone cut from bleeding out, even from wounds that would normally be lethal, but that didn't mean that someone with their throat slit wouldn't die. I suppose it would depend on Cricket herself. She was a killer, she'd killed before, but she also knew that too much attention wouldn't be good for her long term prospects. She wouldn't survive a kill order as well as someone like Hookwolf.

I finally reached the refrigerator, banged my head against it in frustration, and wrinkled my nose. Apparently Stacy had the last laugh. The refrigerator hadn't been plugged in, and everything in it had gone off.

"Are you all right Mayhem?" Sveta asked.

"Fine, fine, just very tired." I told her.

***​

Five hours later and I had one van unpacked. Unfortunately the PRT had been thorough, they'd collected the nutrient rich sludge my power suggested I eat for near perfect health, and the damn stuff didn't go off. Sveta said it was better than the small, raw rodents her power sometimes made her eat while she was in the wild, and I was suddenly in a position where I couldn't really complain about it.

Yes yes, the poor girl needed a body as soon as possible. I had the tools I would need for her operation ready, I just needed to get my lab back up to surgery standards. Some sort of body for her would also help, just in case poking around in her brain removed her powers completely. Suddenly becoming a normal bundle of organs would not be good for her health.

In the meantime I'd watched the entirety of the masks footage, until Mayhem took it off. Why? Taking it off significantly reduced Mayhem's ability to function. Not so much from the standpoint of seeing. I'd included a program that allowed Mayhem to use human echolocation if the mask was ever damaged, taken or destroyed, but from a memory perspective. You see, Mayhem couldn't form long term memories, that section of the brain was suborned into predictive calculations, just like a lot of other stuff. He had access to my already formed memories, although he didn't have the ability to tamper with them, and he had certain programs that could prompt him with his objective and the ability to retain the simulations he ran long enough to carry them out, but if he wanted to see something he'd just done he used the recording function of the mask, which was tied directly into his brain.

I re-wound the footage to just before Taylor woke up, and played it again.

Mayhem had just given Taylor adrenaline, which was odd. Normally I'd let someone wake up slowly from the sedative, talking with someone directly after an injection of adrenaline wasn't the smartest move. Was Mayhem in a hurry?


I found a sheet of paper, and started writing on it.

'Marked Cricket, gave her scalpel. Why?'
'Pushed for the creation of a team. Survival objective?'
'Rushed to wake Taylor? Why the rush?'
'Unable to talk properly at times. Why?'

I chewed on the back of the pen, tried to remember when Mayhem was able to talk, and when he wasn't.

'Linked to fighting?' I added.

The recording continued.

Taylor woke up quickly, and reached behind her for a can of pepper spray. Mayhem put his hand on her arm.

"I just want to talk." He said. "I want to talk, you want to delay so you can gather more bugs. Deal?"

Taylor backed away slowly.

"How do I know you're not some sort of… talking Master?" She asked.

Mayhem laughed.

"I'm a Tinker, I assure you. See the jetpack? I know I'm fairly new, but I'd have thought there was at least some information on me available by now." He said.

Taylor looked around, searching the rooftop.

"Circus isn't here. She accepted my deal, so I let her go." Mayhem told her.

"What deal?" Taylor asked.

"I told her she could join the new gang I intend to create, or I'd hand her over the PRT. Harsh, but it's the game we play. I'm making you the same offer. Join, or you'll be placed in PRT custody."

Taylor stared at him.

"But… I haven't committed any crimes yet?" She said.

Mayhem shrugged.

"I thought you were new. Is this your first real fight? It was surprisingly easy to get the drop on you."

"I managed to break up three fights last night, and I had bugs on the fire escape and the door to stairwell, I just didn't think there were any… I didn't think that anyone would be flying overhead." Taylor said.

"All the more reason to join a team. You need someone to watch your back. Besides, the PRT would find something to charge you with, trust me. When I went to them I was charged with hacking into a government system. My choices were 'join the Wards' or 'Juvie.' Possible something worse than Juvie, seeing as I'm a bio-Tinker and there's a huge stigma against that power-set." Mayhem said.

Taylor's posture shifted slighly, and Mayhem smiled.

"I knew the blindfold mask was a mistake, not that I would have been able to keep it a secret for long anyway. You just recognized me, didn't you Taylor? Your voice and hair, a mask just isn't what it cracks up to be if you actually know the person."

"Adam?" Taylor asked.

"How much did the PRT tell you about why they sent you to that nice shiny school?" Mayhem asked.

"I… enough. What do you know about that?" Taylor asked.

"I was the one that told them what Sophia was doing. Look, I can understand why you've chosen to take this path, but you're out in daylight dressed as a villain, you're not going to find it easy to do this on your own. At least think of joining up. I can probably Tinker with some bugs for you, make them a bit stronger, make their poisons into sedatives, that sort of thing."

"What exactly will your… gang be doing?" Taylor asked.

"Protect and Profit. First we drive out the Merchants and Coil, then we quietly run the underworld. Purity has agreed to drop the E88 philosophy, and join up as well, so we have firepower covered. I can make equipment that will act as a very effective force multiplier, and now that the ABB and E88 are gone, it's not an impossible goal."

Taylor gulped.

"I'm not sure. I'm not quite ready for something on this… scale." She said.

Mayhem nodded.

"That's fine. How about this, my new laboratory is now a warehouse on 76 Milk's st. Come by in five days time, and I'll have some sort of augmented bug for you to trial, it will be yours to keep, no matter what happens, and I won't attack you if you choose to just take it." Mayhem said.

Taylor nodded slowly.

"What happened to, 'join or go to jail?'" She asked.

"You were right, it has less bite if you haven't committed any crimes." Mayhem said with a grin.

"I… all right. How exactly do we get down?" Taylor said.

Mayhem carried her down, and let her go, then he got back into the PRT truck he stole.

Then he took the mask off, turned it around, showed the empty van to me, before bringing the mask back to focus on his face.

"Adam, listen to me very carefully, I have three things to tell you. Firstly, Circus is working for someone else. I don't know who, but the snake is the most likely holder of her reins. Secondly, Taylor wants to shine as a hero. Both will turn on you, but neither are killers, and you will need them for as long as you can string them along. Thirdly, if you try to find out what I am going to do now… think first. My actions are deliberate, my objective is survival. Remember to add that objective, it really is a good idea.

Mayhem put the mask in a black bag.


I fast-forwarded through the long period of darkness. Eventually Mayhem came back, took the mask out of the bag, and lay it down on the ground.

I checked the timestamps. He'd been gone nearly twenty hours.

This needed investigation.

Another hour later, and I had a few clues.

Firstly, careful analysis of the footage from the mask showed that the kama Mayhem had taken from Cricket did have blood on it when he took it from her. Not a lot, she hadn't killed anyone, she'd just hit them rather hard with the blunt edge. That blood wasn't there anymore. For some reason, he'd decided to clean the weapon.

This was not a good sign. He wouldn't do that unless it somehow contributed to my survival. I think.

Secondly, I had money, a lot of money. There had been a small slip of paper in my boot with a bank account number, a password and a phone number written on it. I logged into the account on my phone. I don't know where Mayhem got it from, I don't know how he stole it, but I was now rich.

And the fact that I had no idea why or how was probably going to come back to haunt me.

Then I checked the local news for what Mayhem had been doing. There was one incident in the bay, apparently the PRT had been transporting one of Bakuda's undetonated bombs when it exploded. It was some sort of rage bomb, and the effects probably would have been terrible if the troopers had been armed with guns instead of containment foam. As it was only one trooper escaped unfoamed, and she only killed one person.

She'd killed Kaiser. The trooper had simply walked into the PRT headquarters, found his unconscious body being processed and stabbed it fifteen times. The news report didn't release her name, but the Espionage tree did make me quite good at hacking, and the details weren't exactly top secret. Turned out that her husband and son had been killed by the E88, so the rage bomb just turned off her inhibitions.

Hopefully Mayhem didn't have anything to do with that.

Looking further afield it was possible Mayhem went to Boston. Apparently Blasto, the clone-Tinker, had disappeared, and his lab had exploded. That might have been Mayhem, he did have the jetpack, he could probably have made it to Boston and back. I didn't see any tied up Tinkers around though…

Nope, nothing in here.

Looking even further afield, and making national news, seven key members of the Gesellschaft were dead. They were murdered in their beds, then dressed in their costumes and hung from the nearest window. That couldn't have been Mayhem though, the jetpack wasn't fast enough to get him there, and I didn't have any teleportation tech. It was probably just some sort of internal restructuring now that the E88 had been destroyed. Political, or something, who knew how Nazis thought.

Nothing else was making headlines, and I expected that, if Mayhem was in the news at all, he would make headlines. So I shelved the issue for now.

Let's see. I had a huge amount of energy to invest. More than I had ever held before, and I had a few area's to invest in. I had… about three days before the meeting that Mayhem had arranged between Taylor, Circus, Purity and himself.

Why had Mayhem told two people who intended to betray me the location of my lab? What did he mean string them along?

I guess… don't tell them my specialty? Maybe imply I have some sort of secondary contingency, like what I used to take out the E88? I don't think I told anyone except Theo how I dealt with the E88. I might be able to use the same trick again. Or I could slip something into their presents.

Let's see, the ability to change from female to male or visa verse was in the Human Augmentation tree, which I found a bit odd. I would have expected it to be in the Espionage tree or something, I suppose it might be considered augmentation under very specific cultural circumstances. Or… I don't know, in some sort of extreme population shortage. Although the version I was going to buy left the user sterile…

Then again, Human Augmentation had almost all the medical stuff, once you went out into the branches. It might be that the trees just had names that weren't completely accurate.

Now, which way was Circus going? Was she actually a she or… You know what, I'll just make one of each. It was cheap enough to buy both schematics.

Now, Taylor. Animal Augmentation was tied right into Human Augmentation, there were a lot of crossover skills I'd already bought, and I could… ooh, Animal Neural Augmentation, that was interesting.

Then there was Sveta, I had everything I needed to open her up, but first I needed to buy into the Full Body Replacement branch of the Human Augmentation tree. That was fairly cheap, the Neural Augmentation branch already held stuff like the brain-computer interface that would be used to control the new body, so there was bridging tech to bring the price down.

First thing first though, I would Tinker faster with two hands, so I also needed to dip into the Cybernetics branch of the Human Augmentation tree. It wasn't as expensive as breaking into an entirely new branch, Full Body Replacement and Cybernetics had a lot of crossover tech, to the point that at the higher end they fully merged into the same branch.

OK, that was everything I actually needed now, and I only had a little bit of energy left, a day or so's worth without fighting. May as well dump it into the Cybernetics tree, see if I can make myself a better hand. Full dexterity was nice, full dexterity and gadgets was even better.

Hmm… I could probably build a kinetic blaster into the arm itself now, no need for a gauntlet, I was getting better at miniaturizing the energy generators. That would be cool, and some tiny scalpels in the fingers…

I took a sheet of paper, and started drawing up a schedule.

Today: Make new hand (Already have parts)
Tomorrow: One cyberbug, two gender change potions, start making Sveta's body. (Not enough parts for full body! Can I order parts here without being discovered?)
Day after tomorrow: (What day of the week is it again?) Meet with Taylor, Circus, Purity. Try not to be betrayed. (None of them have actually agreed to join except Circus! What the hell Mayhem!)

Perhaps I should booby trap the warehouse. Some sort of paralytic gas or something. I could probably make myself immune…

 

[Jurric]

Sveta roamed the cylinder restlessly, although perhaps wasn't quite that. It was closer to rocking than roaming, her tendrils could nearly reach from one side of the cylinder to the other. She'd tried to sit down and draw, but she'd broken all her pencils in nervousness while she was locked in the van, and it was even harder than normal to draw with the broken bits.

One part of her hoped that Mayhem would notice, and give her replacements, but an irrational fear kept her from asking. What if there weren't any pencils in the van, and he was seen by the PRT while he was out shopping? Better to keep quiet. Even if it shaved a few seconds off her time in this body, it would be worth it.

She'd liked it on the ceiling. She'd been able to see the whole lab, and Mayhem was often working on something interesting. She'd played a game where she guessed what each tool would do, and tried to imagine how it was used. Most of the time she'd been wrong, but then she made it her job to memorize the tools function, and name if Mayhem called it anything. Just in case this actually worked, and Mayhem made her a body, she'd need to be useful enough that he'd keep her maintained.

That probably wasn't going to happen. Mayhem was busy, and he was a villain, he'd probably just open up her brain, poke around a bit, and kill her. Or he might do what he did to that woman in the gas mask, the one that had been a bomb Tinker. Make her sort of dead, but still useful. Only capable of following orders.

That was fine. Dying was fine.

Her tendrils were getting restless at the thought, but they weren't going to get a choice. No more accidentally killing people. No more having sit in the prison of her own body. One way or the other. Hopefully.

Sveta breathed deeply, and tried to control herself.

Sometimes, if she got her mind just right, and there wasn't anything to startle her or make her lose focus, or if she wasn't feeling hungry or threatened, she could almost control the tendrils. She'd been able to draw, sometimes to write, that was nice. One of the few things she still could do.

Right now it occurred to her that there wasn't anything holding the cylinder in place, and by carefully putting her weight in the right places she might be able to roll it. Maybe even direct it a bit, turn it by jumping around the two edges, to get the angle right. She wanted to see what Mayhem was working on, this wasn't a good angle, the desk was between her and his latest project.

"I'm going to move over there, I just need to roll the tube. It isn't going to be hard." Sveta muttered, hopefully not loud enough to disturb Mayhem. She found it easier to move if she talked to herself, a sort of self hypnosis.

Slowly her tendrils moved her to the right end of the tube, and she rocked back and forth, trying to turn the tube so it could roll at the right angle. There were a few false starts, but eventually she got her tendrils to cooperate, and the tube spun on the dirt floor.

"I'm just going to roll the tube. I'm going to rock it a bit, and then change where I distribute my body weight…. No, stop. I'm not heading that way."

The tendrils moved her body to the top of the tube, then rocked it, and shifted her weight. The tube started to roll across the floor. The warehouse was locked up, the smaller doors along the side closed, the large roller doors locked down, but Sveta's tendrils still pushed her towards one of the roller doors, and rocked the tube against it, banging the hardened plastic loudly against the metal.

Mayhem looked at her, sighed, and put down whatever he was working on to walk over to the cylender and stop her from banging it against the door.

"You want to leave?" He asked.

"No! No, sorry. That wasn't me!" Sveta said. Panic in her voice.

"You don't have to be scared, you can leave if you want. I feel bad for basically kidnapping you, and I know brain surgery is probably a very scary prospect, especially considering I'll be breaking new ground. I don't know if anyone's tried this before. If the PRT have information on what happens when you start cutting into a Corona Patella, it's classified beyond my ability to hack." Mayhem said.

"No. That wasn't me. I… please, I want this." Sveta said.

Mayhem nodded.

"So long as you're sure. Do you want me to put the tube up on the workbench?"

"Yes please."

Sveta tried to keep her tendrils still as Mayhem kicked it back towards the bench, and awkwardly lifted one end onto the bench. Her attempts were futile, and her tendrils tried to rock the tube away as Mayhem stabilized the tube with his feet and then lifted up the other end, it was an awkward task with only one hand, but while the tendrils made it worse, they didn't have a lot of weight to throw around.

"You don't get any say in this." Sveta told them very softly, as Mayhem settled her onto the desk, and put a few bricks around the sides of the cylinder to stop her tendrils from rocking it off the table.

"Did you say something?" Mayhem asked.

"Sorry, just talking to myself." Sveta said.

Mayhem nodded, and got back to work on what looked like the bones of a hand. Oh, she could have guessed that he was building something like that, what with how he was missing an arm and all, it looked very neat.

"So… um, how is the hand going to work?" Sveta asked, trying to keep her tendrils from shaking the cylinder.

"I'll use a kinetic energy generation power source. Once I have it set up properly I can have that move the fingers. I'm thinking a direct interface to my spinal implant, rather than re-wiring the nerves in my arm to control it, that way I can still activate it even if it isn't directly connected. The real trick is going to be the weight. I have a lot of good ideas for this, but I want to keep it light enough that it doesn't pull me off balance, and for that I'm going to need to buy a couple more lightweight alloys. I'm having trouble adapting the ones I use for aviation."

"It sounds tricky, do you want me to be quiet?" Sveta asked.

"If you don't mind."

Sveta kept quiet.

The hours stretched by, another van was slowly unpacked, and eventually Mayhem connected the metal skeleton hand to his arm at the elbow, and experimentally twitched the thin metal finger bones.

"Good enough for Tinkering." He proclaimed. "I'll keep working on it once I've started Circus's formula brewing."

He unpacked the third van, built some sort of generator, and started to brew chemicals on a stove of some sort.

 

[Jurric]

"Want the good news or the bad news?" I asked Sveta as she groaned. I was slowly getting the hang of working with her biology. Some sedatives worked well, some didn't, some only worked for a reduced amount of time. I'd been forced to re-administer sedatives twice while I was operating.

"Um, news?" Sveta said dully, still trying to wake up.

Her head twitched in an attempt to look around, but I hadn't gotten around to hooking her new neck up to her new spine. Wouldn't be able to get around to that for a while, spines are surprisingly complex things, and it wasn't actually complete yet. I was going to need more parts, and I hadn't figured out how to get them without exposing my hideout to the PRT yet.

"I fiddled around a bit. I managed to get your tendrils under control at least. Well, sort off."

I saw the panic as Sveta realized she wasn't in her cylinder. Let's see, mirror, mirror… I don't think I had one among my lab equipment. Maybe a stainless steel tray of some sort…

"I'm… I'm free, should I be free Mayhem?" Sveta asked with a note of panic in her voice.

"Yes. Your tendrils can't move any more, the neural chip dampens any connections between your Corona Pollentia and the tendrils themselves, and with no instructions they just stay flat. I wasn't able to turn off your powers altogether, but I think it was a neat workaround."

"So, I'm not dangerous?" Sveta asked.

"Not until I finish installing the missiles." I muttered.

"What was that?"

"Nothing. Here, sorry I don't have a real mirror." I said, holding up the stainless steel tray to Sveta could see her reflection.

"Mayhem, you're hurt?" Sveta said, noting the missing fingers on my right hand.

"I was going to make myself symmetrical anyway." I told Sveta. It was only my ring and middle fingers, it didn't greatly impact my ability to Tinker.

Sveta took a moment to look at herself.

She was currently hanging from the ceiling, inside a sort of metal skeleton, which I was constructing around her organs. Most of it was very incomplete. I didn't have all the parts for a full body yet, and I hadn't had the time to finish one. I'd barely had the time to get Circus formula's ready, and to build Taylor her present.

The only finished part was the long, thin braided bands of tungsten that ran along what was going to be her spine. I'd tied the tendrils up, just in case, if they started moving on their own the best they'd be able to do was make Sveta flop uselessly, until I could sedate her again. I'd had enough unwelcome surprises during the operation.

"You're building me a body? Thank you!" Sveta said, starting to cry.

"I said I would, didn't I? The way I see it, being invulnerable isn't so bad, so long as you can live a happy life. A proper body, no way for the tendrils to affect you, and suddenly things should look up for you. It's going to take me a while to get the whole thing working though." I told her.

"You said that there was bad news?" Sveta said, still crying what I hope were tears of joy. The waterworks was making me uncomfortable, so I moved over to the table where I was making her first arm. Her spine wasn't finished, but I had enough of it working to rig one arm into it, and it would save me a lot of trouble if Sveta was capable of feeding herself.

"Your power didn't want to be messed with directly." I said, holding up my bandaged hand. "When I poked your Gemma to see what would happen, it grew a very tiny tendril and took off two of my fingers."

"I'm sorry!" Sveta said.

"Why? It's pretty damned clear that you don't have control over your power, and it taught me how your Gemma interacts with your tendrils."

"But, you lost your fingers."

"I was planning on cutting them off later anyway. The only bad part of this is that my tazer is now broken. When I graduate to the new hand I'm going to have to build another one."

"I'm sorry!" Sveta said again. I rolled my eyes.

"I'd probably have rebuilt the mechanism anyway, I want to be able to launch tazer darts, Striker level tech is too restrictive. We're getting off topic. I don't know if that's something specific to you, or if parahuman powers protect themselves in some way, but I do know I have no clue how to turn off your invulnerability." I shrugged. "Also in the bad news column, I don't have any painkillers left over that will help with the horrible headache you're probably experiencing."

"Um, I don't have a headache?" Sveta said.

"Odd." I frowned, found the notepad where I was documenting my experiments with Sveta, and wrote down 'regenerates more quickly while awake. Regeneration slowed by sedative?'

"Is that bad?" Sveta asked.

"Doubt it, I'm not getting any error signals from your neural chip, so your power isn't attacking it. It didn't attack me when I opened up your skull, so it doesn't seem to act to protect you, only to protect the power itself…"

I chewed my lip. I don't think that Sveta was as good a test subject as I initially thought. Her power was weird. More so than normal, anyway. Powers very rarely acted or had agency on their own. I'd thought that her abnormality might be able to lead me to something no one else had found, but I now I had the impression that I needed to open up the head of a normal cape before I could apply anything I'd learned from Sveta.

It would have been great if I had more time to play around in Bakuda's brain, but I had been to worried about the bomb too get detailed scans, or poke anything I didn't understand.

Now, were there any other acceptable targets in the bay?

Well, the Merchants did deal drugs to kids…

Nope, I hadn't quite rationalized myself that far into monster-hood yet. Probably soon, but unless Squealer ran one of her trucks through an elementary school, the Merchants would get jail time, not brain-death.

A Tinker power might be the best sort of thing to experiment on as a Tinker power probably wouldn't have the methods of defending itself that other powers were likely to possess. If all powers were like Sveta's, which I kind of doubted. Powers defending the sections of the brain associated with them from meddling? That's the sort of thing I expected to have heard about. Maybe I could steal Bakuda back from the PRT?

I picked up the arm, which was also still unfinished, and attached it to Sveta's frame. Eventually her whole body would be fitted with organic muscle tissues, because that would give her speed of movement, for now though I was only fitting the bone joints, which were mechanical in nature. Strong but slow. When both were installed she could just move quickly with the muscles, and use the mechanical bone joints for extra strength if needed, but I'd do the mechanical side first, the muscles would take a while to grow properly, and this warehouse really wasn't ideal for hosting them.

The arm slotted in, still a skeletal thing, not quite human, although it would look human, once I got the muscles and skin in place.

"The arm is all I'll be able to get you for a day or so, until I can find a way to get the resources I need." I told Sveta. "You should be able to move it now. Give it a try."

I stepped back, and Sveta slowly moved the arm in front of her face, and turned it in wonder.

"It's really working?" She breathed.

"You still had a motor center in your brain, I just needed to tap into that, and then re-route things properly, the neural implant does most of the work. Your spine is an interesting challenge though. Mostly because you don't have a nervous system to speak of, and running nerves through the artificial skin I plan to make would be a nightmare, so instead I'm implanting sensors in your spine that will map applied pressure remotely, along with other things, like temperature and indentations, and then feed you that information. Mapping the sensations correctly isn't hard, but it is going to take me a while to code it correctly… but that's all Tinker stuff. You don't need to worry about that."

"Um, if you don't mind, I don't understand it, but if you explain a bit, I could help you, once I can move?" Sveta said. "Probably just hand you things, maybe, or hold things in place?"

I smiled sadly, and tousled her hair.

"Is something wrong?" Sveta asked.

"Not really. You just remind me of my sister. She was always so keen to help." I said, turning away. I was expecting guests sometime today, and I wanted the sedative sprayers ready to deploy if necessary.

Purity was the first to arrive, she turned up in a small, unassuming hybrid car, and floated into my lab. She glanced at Sveta, frowned at the framework I had her in, and then looked at me.

"You changed your costume?" She said.

"Yeah, I figured white was a bit to 'E88,' and that it was important to re-brand." I told her.

I'd bought a black duster, because I could fit more pockets into a duster than a labcoat, and I'd dyed my mask black. That was about the extent of it. I'd go into fancy costumes once I had enough energy to purchase Tinkertech body armor.

"Purity, we don't have long before the other two arrive, and there's something I'd like to discuss first." I told her.

"What is it?" She asked.

"Even if the other two don't join, we're going to need a leader. Obviously that's you, but we want to cut ties with E88, easiest way to do that is to very publicly join up with someone non-white. I want you to suggest a merger with the Undersiders, with Grue as eventual leader." I told her.

"Grue? Why Grue?"

"Didn't you read about it, his costume got pretty badly burned while he was fighting Lung, so he took the jacket off. PHO was talking about how hard it was to be a colored cape in the 'Nazi Capital of America' for weeks." I said.

"Couldn't he just join us instead, we don't have any indications he's a good leader." Purity said.

No really indications, all I knew was that Purity would not make a good leader. She was that combination of gullible, well intentioned and indoctrinated that the E88 recruits were famous for. I was too busy and Sveta didn't have a body yet. Also she would probably apologize if the Merchants tried to kill her, but it was mostly the body thing. And the other two were traitors.

"It would make the merger sound plausible, like we're willing to come to the table on the issue."

"Why? The Undersiders are petty thieves." Purity asked.

"And we're both murderers. They'll say no, OK? It doesn't benefit them to suddenly jump from theft to taking in fugitives of our profile. The thing is, making that sort of offer publicly would make it obvious that we're trying to make a break from E88 policy, both to our new recruits, and to everyone else if we spread word. It will also make people believe that we intend to stick to the theft side of villainy and it might make the Merchants or Coil let their guard down."

Actually I was hoping that they'd say yes. Three more members to the new gang, four if we could break Bitch out of jail and that wasn't something to sneeze at. I just needed to break the idea to Purity gently. They'd been stupid enough to steal from one of Lung's Casino's, they might be stupid enough to let us join up and accept the inevitable escalation.

"Are you sure we need to?" Purity asked.

"Maybe we don't." I said with a shrug. "But I'd like you to at least mention it to the others when they arrive. Just put the idea of working with Grue out there, mention him specifically, and try not to flinch. We're better than that." I told her.

"I guess." Purity said, floating up to look at the small hole in the roof generated by a failed kinetic reactor. I still hadn't perfected the miniaturization process, but I was close, soon I'd be able to stick one into my robotic left arm.

"Mayhem… I don't think I ever actually said I'd be joining this group." She said slowly.

Blast, I was hoping she'd forgotten that. I stopped working on the glorified sleeping gas bomb on my desk, and primed it to explode if I said the right code-phrase.

"You wanted to distance yourself from the E88? This is the way." I told her.

"I wanted to become a vigilante. This is a gang you're forming." Purity said.

"You're right. We'll call it the neighborhood watch." I said sarcastically. "Do you know what the first thing I read about myself on PHO was after the whole 'took down the E88' thing. It wasn't that I non-lethally captured more capes than the PRT's bought in since ever. It wasn't that I made Bakuda tell us how to defuse a bomb. It wasn't even that I kicked Armsmasters ass. It was that I had a pre-signed kill order if I ever meddled with viral weaponry or self replicating creatures. I'm going to be meeting an insect controller today, and if I give her a few sedative injecting mosquito eggs, I get a bullet in my head."

I mimed a cocked gun at my temple, and Sveta gasped.

The poor girl had a remarkably low tolerance of drama for a cape. Most of us got used to death threats rather quickly.

Actually that might have just been the E88. No one likes Nazis.

"We can't be heroes Purity. Doesn't stop us from doing the right thing." I said, getting my mind back on track.

Purity sighed.

"You're right, I guess. Although I'm not sure we're as high profile as you claim. The PRT's been spinning the city as 'cleaned up.' The Wards are being downsized. Aegis is moving away, as is Browbeat."

I shrugged.

"Then it's up to us. Can you help me hide Sveta? She's going to need an introduction before they actually see her. PHO already thinks I'm some sort of mad German scientist with no regard for human life. Circus and Bug girl are going to freak out a bit if they don't get context."

"Sorry." Sveta said.

"There's nothing to be sorry about sweetie." Purity said, moving to help me.

We moved a few sheets into place and sat down to chat. Purity made small talk about the E88 members she thought deserved a second chance. She could probably break them out of the PRT jails on her own, she just couldn't wake them up without my help, and she was smart enough to know it. Even Panacea didn't do brains. I was the only one with the antidote.

"What's under the sheet?" Circus asked, coming in the front door abruptly.

"A Case 53 who possessed no control over their limbs. I'm building her a new body." I said, as casually as I could.

"Hello!" Sveta said from behind the curtain.

Circus stared at the sheets for a second, and then shook her head, deciding to shelve the issue.

"Which one?" Circus asked.

"I… don't know, sorry. The jar with the male symbol turns you male, jar with the female symbol turns you female. Don't pick the gender you already are, that will just kill you."

Circus smirked at my ignorance, and picked up the male jar, eying the contents before making it disappear into her hammer-space.

"Before you drink it make sure you eat a big meal, stuff yourself, as much as possible. Then shake the jar, drink the whole thing, and lie down somewhere you can clean easily, the cocoon dissolves into a glue-like substance."

"You've done it before?" Circus asks.

"No. I just know." I told her.

"You know what drugs I'm taking right now?" She asked.

"Shouldn't matter." I said, shrugging.

She raised an eyebrow.

"That really doesn't inspire my confidence."

"Wait, you're a Transvestite?" Purity asked.

I sighed.

Oh yes, we were off to a great start. The only good news was that apparently my power considered this close enough to a fight for my pool of energy to start growing.

 

[Jurric]

I forced a smile, and stepped between Circus and Purity, holding my right hand out to Circus.

"I'm not shaking that. I've been on PHO, they speculated on how you took out the E88, and you tagged enough people that it was pretty obvious you could only take out the ones you had physical contact with." Circus said.

I shrugged, and held up the hand.

"See the missing fingers? Those were the injection media. Now that I no long need them, they're removed, and I plan to replace them with segmented micro missiles." I told her.

Pure bullshit, the toxin was administered through the palm. Hopefully Sveta would be smart enough to keep her mouth shut about why my fingers were missing though. If I was going to administer the toxin to Circus, I was first going to have to make her lower her suspicions.

OK, now to change the subject before I get called on the lies.

"Purity, I'd like you to meet Circus. Circus, Purity. Circus I'd like to thank you for this opportunity to prove that we aren't prejudiced idiots."

Purity frowned. Yes. I know. I was smooth.

"You'd like to thank me, huh?" Circus said, grabbing a micro-welder and tossing it up and down. "You do remember telling me that my choices were to join or be handed over to the PRT?"

It was my turn to wince. I really wish that the Mayhem Protocol hadn't done that, or had followed through on the threat. I could see how a team would be useful. It was true that Tinkers could rarely operate without support of some sort. I just wasn't sure that Circus was the best candidate. Or Taylor. Or people likely to betray me in general. I wonder if Purity fit that description. Sveta probably didn't.

If you couldn't trust yourself, who could you trust? Heh. Sad really.

I couldn't let Circus off easily though. Couldn't back down now that Mayhem had made me commit. That would imply weakness, and that was a short road to betrayal. Probably. I was mostly pulling guesswork from my ass.

"I'm afraid that's still true. When I said I didn't need the injection mechanism, it's because I've already infected you. Our long term objective is complete control over the Brockton Bay underworld, and just letting you go free would go against that. Once I start to trust you I will remove the virus from your system." I told Circus.

Firstly, it was a toxin, not a virus, I wanted anyone who knew they were infected looking in the wrong direction. Secondly, Circus hadn't been dosed. Mayhem had chosen not to administer the toxin for some weird reason. It would have been the smart thing to do, he had the toxin available, he had the opportunity after he fought her, but no. She was clean.

I hope Theo was too terrified to take in much of my explanation. Why did I just spill all my secrets like that? Stupid! Stupid!

Circus's eyes narrowed, but it was Purity who spoke.

"Am I still infected Mayhem?" She asked.

"It burns out after one use." I lied.

Misdirection. Lies. All with my body language under control of my neural chip just in case Circus had some sort of secondary thinker power, or in case she was just really good at reading people. When this group violently dissolved I wanted it to be in all the wrong directions.

"And when will you start to trust me?" Circus asked.

I shrugged.

"Helping us take down the Merchants would be a good start. They'll probably be easier to find than Coil." I said. Purity was going to give that goal, but it was very easy to guess. She shouldn't mind me anticipating it.

"So you really do plan on holding the monopoly over the Bay. Ambitious." Circus said.

There was a knock on the garage door, and I took a moment to wish I'd installed external cameras. It wouldn't be hard, I had the gear necessary. The only problem was that I just didn't have enough hours in the day to make everything I wanted to.

I opened the door and let Taylor in. At least she knocked, instead of picking the lock and entering unexpectedly. Also I think Circus had stolen my micro-welder, but I hadn't seen her take it and I didn't want to make an issue out of it. I could build another in ten minutes.

"The dreaded bug girl." Circus said as a greeting. "You're late."

"Mayhem didn't say when to turn up." Taylor said.

"I didn't get your name last time we met." I said. Mayhem apparently hadn't thought it was a priority.

"I sort of don't have one." Taylor said.

I shrugged.

"Well, a few people got footage of the way you broke up those gang fights. Swarm was taken, so PHO has pegged you as Skitter. That's basically going to be the name you're stuck with unless you make some sort of public statement to get ahead of it."

Taylor paused, chewing it over.

"Skitter. I don't really like it, but I don't have any better ideas." She said.

"It was better than some. One PRT agent was suggesting Plague." I told her.

Taylor visibly winced, which was an interesting expression to see on a someone in black insectoid armor and a mask with mandibles.

"So. We're all here now." Circus said, clapping her hands. "Why did you want us here Mayhem? Why all this trouble?"

"I'll give Skitter her present first, then I'll get Purity to explain."

"Explain?" Purity asked.

"Yeah, our mission statement and long term goals. I'm fine with whatever you decide." I told her.

I needed her on my side. She was very powerful, she had more experience than most capes. I was fairly sure I could guess what her goals would be, they aligned closely enough with my own that I could at least appear to follow them, and letting her choose would basically remove all her objections to joining the group, because she was the one who would be choosing what the group did.

I'd follow her, Sveta would follow me, Circus had to stay, because of my threat and because her employer wanted her watched. Which left only Taylor.

In Taylor's case I just put a lot of effort into the bribery.

I moved over to my workbench, and flipped up the corner of a sheet I'd used to cover the drone. I'd been too scared to make anything purely biological for Taylor. Mosquitoes that injected a sedative? Totally possible. I just didn't have any way to build a self destruct into something like that, and I didn't want the PRT to see them and just assume I didn't remove their reproductive systems, which I would have done.

Instead I took a housefly, I removed it's brain and nervous system, and I hooked that brain up as the computational system for a drone. Technically the drone wasn't a drone. It was a 'Full Body Replacement' only for a bug instead of a human. Yeah, that was a nice little connection. I'm surprised my power let me get away with it.

Taylor looked at it quizzically.

"Can you feel it with your power?" I asked. It would be just typical if her power worked differently from how I thought, and she controlled a bugs body, instead of their tiny brains.

"I can, yes. I thought it was just a fly trapped under the sheet somehow, so it couldn't move, but it's not is it?"

"Can't move yet, the power isn't turned on." I said, then I activated the drone with my neural chip.

It lit up, and flopped over onto it's side.

"Can you control it?" I asked Skitter.

"How?" She asked.

"The bugs nervous system is tied directly into the drone. The wings are mapped to the drone's thrusters, the claw is mapped to the manipulatory palps, the eyes are mapped to the camera, don't know if that will actually work but you might get something, it's sense of vibration is mapped to the microphones, and the kinetic pulse cannon is mapped to it's legs."

The drone rose slowly off the table top, and started spinning wildly in place. Circus stepped closer to a refrigeration unit, probably so she could use it as cover.

"cannon?" Taylor asked, her voice a little weak.

"Non-lethal. More like body slamming someone than anything else, and I haven't turned it on yet." I told her.

I paused as the drone rose a little, and then watched Taylor run to catch it as it started to spiral towards the floor. She obviously had some control. She was able to guide the drone towards herself. Hopefully she'd learn. I spent way to much time on that thing.

"Yes well, hold it carefully. It shouldn't be able to build up enough speed to damage itself indoors, but it could knock over sensitive lab equipment." I told her. "Now, while Skitter gets the hang of that, I'd like to introduce another member of our group. Her name is Sveta, and she is a Case 53, as I already mentioned I am in the process of building her a body, because she appeared without one. Please do not be alarmed by her appearance."

I moved over to the curtain, and shoved it back.

"Um. Hello." Sveta said, waving her arm cheerfully. "I hope we can be friends." She said, sounding slightly embarrassed as soon as it left her mouth.

So very much like Riley had been.

I don't think I could take her into combat with the Slaugherhouse Nine. I couldn't expose someone like her to Jack. Couldn't let him… do that sort of thing again. I'd have to send Sveta out of the city soon. Some sort of excuse. Perhaps send her to Toybox for parts at the last minute or something? That could work.

Skitter and Circus took a moment to take in the dangling organs inside the metal skeleton. Neither of them freaked out, which was good. It was hard to tell how Skitter reacted, she just went still, and Circus was only a little green.

"What's her power?" Circus asked.

I pursed my lips. The more unknowns and misconceptions the better, and Sveta would probably play along.

"You don't want to know." I said. "Suffice to say she'll be using my tech to fight, not her own abilities. It's better that way."

"I think I for one do want to know." Circus said.

"Don't worry. I'm not using them. Never, never ever again. Mayhem made it so I couldn't." Sveta said.

"Them?" Circus said.

"She was dangerous. Now she'll at least have some non-lethal options." I said.

Purity knew all about Sveta of course, she'd seen her a couple of times in my old lab. Purity however was apparently still trying to figure out what her goals really were. She'd get there some day.

Of course the PRT still had files on Sveta's capabilities, anyone with high level access could dig up those details. I'd just have to hope that neither Circus nor her employer dug up that information. They might be able to, I was able to hack that section of the PRT database pretty easily, which was why I was trying to avoid outright lying. Still, it might make them hesitate, you never knew.

Taylor's new drone slowly twitched out of her arms, and started floating sedately next to her. Still no idea if I wasted my time on the cameras and microphones, but she did seem to be able to control it with some degree of precision now. That was good. I'd gone over the recordings from her fight with Circus, and I'd thought that she had a lot of very precise control over the insects. Mostly because they hadn't been biting the thief, just harassing her with incredible co-ordination. It would have been very humiliating to have to re-purpose the drone for a normal remote control.

"You got that thing under control?" Circus asked, pointing at the drone.

"Yes." Skitter said simply. The drone floated forward, towards where Sveta was hanging, and started to circle her. I noticed the lens on the inbuilt camera refocusing. Excellent, and rather impressive to have learned to control it while we were talking.

"Do you like it Skitter?" I asked.

"Yes." She said. "Do you have something I can practice using the weapon on?"

I thought about it. I should be safe. The kinetic pulse wouldn't knock me out in one hit, and I could turn it off immediately, with a thought.

"Sure, far wall has some crates, I've turned the pulse weapon on."

"Just don't point it at me." Circus said, then she turned to Purity. "So. Boss lady. Goals? Let me guess. Get rid of some 'filth?'"

"The Merchants will have to go. Yes." Purity said.

I sighed. That really wasn't the right way to answer that question.

"And everyone else, the Undersiders, Coil, the Travelers, Faultline's Crew?" Circus asked.

"No. I hope to merge our team with the Undersiders, or possibly form an alliance, the same goes for Coil if he's interested. The Travelers will almost certainly move on soon, and Faultline's Crew are mercenaries, if they don't bother us, we will leave them alone." Purity said.

Sounded reasonable to me. I hope that Mayhem was right. In my opinion it would have been better to let both Skitter and Circus leave, but he did have some very advanced predictive algorithms, I think I agreed with him that neither of them were killers. So now I needed a hook, something to make them stick around rather than just reporting the location of this lab to the PRT and having me carted off to jail.

"Coil should be easy, the Travelers as well, if they don't move on soon. I've got something big in my backup lab. Something to top my last performance. I just can't unleash it until I figure out how to make selected capes immune." I lied.

I wish I had a backup lab.

Circus frowned, but didn't question me.

"So. Merchants first?" She asked.

"Negotiation with the Undersiders first I think. I'm prepared to be quite accommodating. We may even end up joining them, depending on how negotiations go." Purity said.

Whelp, that was about as good a response as I could hope for. The trouble was I was tired, I was playing games with too many people in too many different ways. Lying to everyone. Trying to manipulate everything to my advantage. I should probably have taken control of the situation, pushed Purity into mentioning possible Grue leadership, kept that idea in her head as a possibility. Instead I let it go.

"Do you know how to contact them?" Circus asked.

"There's a meeting at Somer's Rock in two days. All the remaining players will be there." Purity said. "I'll discuss it with them then."

Circus nodded.

Taylor made the drone fly back to her, and settled it into her hands, playing around with the manipulator.

"How long will it last Mayhem?" She asked.

"Without maintenance? About a week. I was thinking I'd make four or five of them, give you something with a bit of bulk to control." I said.

Taylor nodded slowly.

"That sounds good. Yeah."

With five drones I should be able to induce paralytic over-stimulation feedback by bombarding the bug brains with sensations. Maybe. I'd do some testing with her soon to make sure, before I committed to making drones in that number.

 

[Jurric]

"How about now?" I asked Taylor.

"It's a bit blurry, and I think I'd get a headache if I stared at it for to long, but it's not too bad." Taylor said.

I nodded, and turned down the spectrum transmission on the drone with the remote.

Taylor and I were in the workshop together, it had been one whole day since our group met, and Taylor had tentatively decided to join. I think I really hooked her when I mentioned that the drones wouldn't need maintenance soon. Once I perfected the self repair feature.

Soon was a relative term of course. In this case it meant; 'When I think I can trust you. Probably never.'

We were doing the equivalent of power testing. Only I was far better at it than any PRT stooges ever would be.

Well, I was far quicker at least, and I got results. The drone had only misfired once, and the bunsen burner it had knocked over didn't do much damage to the table before I put the fire out. Apparently when Taylor was really focused on the drone and was exposed to sudden noise, the drone's firing sequence would twitch. Now we knew that. It was important information. People who were too scared to sneak up behind her with a party popper while she was piloting a weaponized drone would never have found that out.

Currently I was experimenting with her ability to get input from the drone. Regular video was fine, regular audio was fine, but the tinkertech camera and microphone were capable of more than 'regular,' and that was giving Taylor more than a bit of trouble.

Sveta was watching us, slowly playing cats cradle with a bit of string as an exercise to get used to having arms again. I'd built her second arm, and she was getting fairly good at controlling it, but her muscular system, exoskeleton and internal sub-systems were still unfinished, and everything she did would have to be very slow and deliberate until I finalized the muscular system. Last night I'd ordered one of those motorized chairs for the physically impaired online, and I'd paid for overnight delivery. I'd rig that up in place of legs for now. It was going to take me at least a week to get some proper legs made, and it would be nice for Sveta to be mobile.

"Sort of like my own mask. I can feed myself information on light outside the normally visible spectrum, but when I do my mind doesn't know how to interpret it properly." I said.

The bad news was that I wouldn't be able to use the drones to take down Taylor if it became necessary. She was capable of ignoring sensory input from her insects, and automatically did so when the drones presented her out of context information, like what the UV spectrum really looked like.

"The brain is remarkably adaptive, if you slowly dial what you're seeing up, you'll slowly develop the ability to process it. I can see a little into the infrared now, and ultraviolet. Not much at all yet, probably not even out of normal human boundaries, but I haven't been doing it for long." I told Taylor, as I thought about contingency plans.

I could shut down the drones with a thought, but I'd already demonstrated that I could turn them on to Taylor, and she'd be able to guess that meant I could also turn them off. She hadn't called me on it yet. Off and on buttons weren't exactly betrayal when they were that blatant, but it meant that she wouldn't be stupid enough to use her drones to fight me. She'd lock them up somewhere and use her bugs instead.

Getting the toxin into her would be good, but I was running into a problem with her costume. The spidersilk was thin around her hands, but it was still too thick for the toxin to go through.

Several members of the E88 had worn gloves as well, but I'd spent enough time around them either to meet them out of costume, or to give them a pat on the shoulder, or a forearm clasp. Something to get the toxin into their skin. Taylor's costume covered her whole body, with the exception of the back of her head.

Obviously I had to pretend enough familiarity to ruffle her hair without raising suspicion. I was having trouble finding a good situation to do so though. Taylor was fairly stand-offish.

Taylor busied herself working out how to use the manipulator arm of the drone. She'd taken to controlling it like a fish taking to water, and she'd made herself a sort of obstacle course from insects flying in formation. Her aim was freakishly good with the drone as well, so long as she already had a bug on the target.

I let her keep playing with the drone while I fiddled with what was going to be my new right arm. I hadn't cut the old one off yet, better get this finished first. My left arm currently had a kinetic pulse weapon, and scalpel fingers. The right arm was going to have extendable manipulators in the fingertips for fine work while tinkering, a tazer, one that could actually shoot long distances, and a kinetic pulse weapon, because you could never have enough of them, and they doubled as a flight mechanism.

"You said that the brain adapts. Do you think that means I could get information from my other bugs, if I slowly exposed myself to what they see and hear?" Taylor asked.

"If you can get data from the drone, then probably. Yeah." I told her. "I could probably fiddle with… no, brain surgery for that probably isn't a good idea."

Taylor snorted, and the drone blasted three crates in quick succession, and then flipped effortlessly through three hoops of insects.

"So you're working on another arm for yourself now. And you're going to finish Sveta's body. What do you plan to build next?" Taylor asked.

"I don't know. I have a lot of good ideas on how to improve this body, but I think I'll forget about them. Once I've had a bit of practice building a body for Sveta, I'll build one for myself. A brand new body, reconstructed from the ground up and remotely piloted so I can stay safe while kicking ass. It will take a while, but once it's ready…"

I'd stick a nuke in it's chest and send it to try and kill the Slaughterhouse Nine.

It might even be a way that I could make it out of this mess alive, although the Siberan would probably live through it, hunt me down and kill me. Building a whole robotic body wasn't easy though. I was having enough trouble with Sveta's body, and that was pretty bare-bones compared to what I intended to use against the Nine.

"Once it's ready?" Taylor said, with an odd sound to her voice.

"I'll be the best damned Tinker in the Bay." I said, a bit weakly.

It was hard to read her body language beneath the mask and the chitin but… nope, she wasn't buying it.

"The Merchants aren't going anywhere, I'd like to get it ready before we fight them, have something expendable just in case Squealer has a surprise up her sleeve." I added.

It would be a good field test of the body, and I could probably say there was some sort of reactor breach to justify it going missing after the fight.

"If you say so. Anything else you want to test with the drone?" Taylor asked.

"I think we're done. Camouflage, waterproofing and bulletproofing it will have to wait until I have a bit more time, so just remember not to deploy it in the rain." I told her, handing her the remote that controlled the sensors.

"…Thanks." Taylor said, taking the remote. "What now?"

Taylor was a girl of few words.

"Now, I call Purity and get her to help me collect some boxes. I ordered a bunch of resources yesterday, mostly stuff I need to finish off Sveta's body, and I'd like your help making sure that the PRT didn't track my purchases and trap the warehouse I sent them to. Is that all right?"

"… Sure. Where did you send them?" Taylor asked.

"A random abandoned warehouse. I wrote the number down somewhere…" I told her, dialing Purity's number on my mobile. I'd told her yesterday to expect this call. I needed someone who could actually drive. I couldn't. Didn't have a license or the skills necessary. Mayhem had the skills, but I wasn't going to break him out for something like this. At least not when Purity's van would do just as well.

The pickup was textbook. Taylor swept the warehouse and the surrounding block with the drone and her insects, we decided it was clear, the three of us loaded up the van with the boxes, I checked for electronic tracking devices, and Purity and Taylor both agreed to do the same thing again in two days.

Taylor did insist I waterproof her drone as payment for hauling boxes though, just in case she needed to deploy it in the rain. Personally I thought the camouflage feature would be cooler, and they would both take about the same amount of time to implement, but no, she wanted me to make it waterproof.

Note to self, could she have figured out that all my non-implanted tech wouldn't function in the rain and be planting a cloudy weather attack?

Secondary note to self. Make second arm waterproof before cutting old one off. Bathing was awkward enough as it was.

I was a good Tinker, decently strong. I beat Armsmaster, and that wasn't nothing. But I cut corners to get there. My tech didn't have a lot of the stuff that most Tinkers took for granted. Redundancies, tracking mechanisms, radiation shielding, the drone did have a remote shutdown, but it was the first thing I'd made that had that feature.

Where was I going with this?

Well sometimes you had to cut corners. I worked fast, I worked hard, I wasn't slacking off. I just didn't have time to make absolutely sure that everything I made was smash, water, and EMP resistant. I took more care with the critical stuff. My neural and spinal chips were, of course, very carefully made, with no real weaknesses per say. Anything that fried them would fry me as well. It was just a matter of priorities, and making sure that I had what I needed, when I needed it.

I tested my stuff when I was about ninety percent certain it would work. If I thought I was going to be doing this for years it would be a problem. Sooner or later I'd make the wrong mistake with my tech, and I'd be the latest Tinker to die in a lab accident. I did not think I would be doing this for years.

Taylor and Purity helped me unload her van, and I started to unpack the boxes of raw materials and electronic components.

Sveta was still playing with the string, staring with childish wonder at how she could manipulate the threads. She didn't even have sensation in her fingers yet. Wonder how she'd feel when she had a real body?

Purity and Taylor both left, and I got to work.

Putting Sveta into the motorized chair involved taking an angle grinder to the armrests, and then tack welding the framework for her torso into place in such a way that her left arm could be used to control the chair with the control stick. Then I had to rework the motor, because Sveta's metal torso was over the chairs normal weight limit.

Eventually Sveta had mobility. At least as much as someone in a wheelchair had. That was what I called a step in the right direction!

Gosh, I was so tired I thought a step joke was funny. You know. Because of no legs…

"Um, Mayhem, I think you should go to sleep." Sveta said.

"Sorry. Was I talking out loud? I asked.

Sveta shook her head.

"No, but you were laughing um… maniacally."

Huh. Bed was probably a good idea then.

"All right. Pack my tools up for me would you?" I asked. She should have the mobility and dexterity to do that. Her torso had a bending function.

Sveta actually smiled. Huh, must like playing with tools or something. It was too early in the morning to really think about things.

***​

I went to bed, went to sleep, and woke up with a hand over my mouth and a Kama pressed to my throat.

"Cricket?" I mumbled through her fingers.

There was fresh blood on her clothes. Couldn't be Sveta's, nothing Cricket had could hurt her. Her caged face was close to mine, and she had that slightly maniacal look in her eyes that suggested she had just been in some sort of fight.

"Who else?" she asked, applying a little more pressure with the Kama, and taking her hand off my mouth.

Right. Mayhem had used a temporary sedative on her, armed her, and she'd already been to this warehouse with me once. Did he want this to happen?

"What do you want, Cricket?" I asked.

I could activate Primo Victoria again, but she'd take too long to fall unconscious, and it would ruin my relationship with Purity, which was already rocky. I could try to tag her with the sedative scalpel under my pillow, but even that wasn't fast acting enough to stop her slitting my throat. I could trigger the sleeping agent sitting on my workbench, but again, still wouldn't send her off fast enough to stop her from cutting my throat.

"That is the question, isn't it? You ruined my life you know. I had something with Hookwolf and Stormtiger. They were family." Cricket said.

"Well I'm sorry that the poor Nazis are in jail. I'd like to remind you that the only way they wake up is if I make them the antidote. Not even Panacea can do brains." I warned her.

"True. Then again, I killed my last family." Cricket said, straddling me. "Here's how this is going to work. You're going to say exactly what I tell you to say, and nothing else, or you'll have a new smile."

I nodded, very, very carefully.

"Mayhem." Cricket said.

"Mayhem." I repeated.

"Objective: Show Cricket a good time."

That… wasn't so bad. Probably. I guess it depended on what exactly that entailed.

"Objective: Show Cricket a good time." I said.

"Time: Forever." Cricket said.

I shook my head. Maybe Sveta would come in, she had mobility. The Warehouse wasn't really secure, multiple entrances, and Cricket could be stealthy when she wanted to be, but we were talking in fairly normal voices. Sveta might have heard something, if she wasn't asleep.

"Forever." Cricket stressed.

"I'd die. I can't run him for long or my brain burns out." I said.

The Kama bit into my skin, and blood started flowing from my superficial cervical artery. I could patch it… if I kept my heartbeat slow and got to my medical kit in the next few minutes.

"As long as you can." She told me, putting her hand on my neck and applying pressure to stem the bleeding.

"Objective: Survive. Time, one hour. Activate." I said.

Regrettably, objectives stacked together even if they weren't mentioned in the same sentence, and the first one mentioned always had the highest priority.