In Nuclear Fire

[Poliamida]

After the examples of @Hydralisk 's Kathy's Brockton Bay Adventures (Worm/Tinker of Fiction) and @Kejmur 's Get Away From Brockton Bay! "Tinker of Fiction" SI birthed in the pool of madness that's the Tinker of Fiction Discord, I decided to bite the bullet and try my hand with a Worm SI. For those that don't know, the Tinker of Fiction switches tinker trees after a couple weeks.

I have 8 chapters written and will slowly be posting them as I give them the final edits.

Let's see how this goes!

Go Big or go off

In nuclear fire - 1​

From a very young age, I developed the capacity to ignore my problems, pushing them to the back of my mind where they can't bother me until they crashed directly against my face. 'It will somehow get sorted out' isn't just my motto but also my way of life.

Doing my homework? Studying for the exams? Sorting those very important papers for my boss? I can do that the day before the deadline no problem. As long as I fulfill my task and don't bring attention to myself, I can keep doing the things I actually like.

I just want a peaceful life, you know? Surrounded by me, myself, and my hobbies.

That was why unexpecteds were the bane of my existence.

Did anyone else ever have this one nightmare of crossing a door and suddenly finding oneself in a different world? I also had this phobia of entering my house and finding out that my family had moved years ago. Or being told 'but you are dead!'

Things like that.

Things that would drastically change my well-oiled routine.

Well, like most things in life, it eventually happened one week ago, and just now I'm feeling coherent enough to reassess my situation.

Waking up in an unfamiliar bed was a bad start which only got worse from there on as I discovered that I was in an unfamiliar body too. The icing on the cake was then discovering that I was on my way to a place named Brockton Fucking Bay.

And the even worst part is that remaining under the radar won't be an option.

Because I'm in Worm. The world that will be destroyed in just a couple years.

I'm a Tinker. Someone who everyone will want to get their hands on.

And if this bloody city doesn't turn into a smoking crater at the end of the month, I will consider it a victory.

My previous life here is a huge confusing mess of broken memories, but as I have been told by my social worker I'm an eleven-year-old Canadian whose entire direct family recently died in a car crash.

Good thing that they assumed that my lapses of memory are because of my grief and trauma.

Grief and trauma that I don't need to fake because, hey, I'm in Worm! Everything is shit, it will only get worse, and finding a rope to hang myself very much under consideration.

But that's for later because here I find myself in front of the tiny wooden house, I no longer have time for procrastination or panic, and I need to see how I sort this out.

The door opens and I see the family that will be looking after me from now on. The man was a cousin of my local late-mother and was married to a woman who also died in a car accident.

Standing some paces behind him is his daughter, a girl of fifteen years old who is very emphatically avoiding looking at me.

Her name is Taylor Hebert, and everything that can go wrong will go wrong around her.

---

I sit silently through most of the conversation between Danny and the social worker, my fidgeting only interrupted when I reply to questions aimed directly at me.

I miss my phone so much! Nothing like a phone to push through boring reunions and social gatherings. I think that what I missed the most is all the progress I had on my Gacha games. That one stings. So many months lost there.

Immediately my mind starts rushing with ideas for a complex communication device, small enough to carry in my pocket yet powerful enough to move any contemporary program.

I steady my hands and with them my desire to dismantle the cheap TV to build it. Or, better said, to build the tools that I'll need to eventually build it.

This is getting stressful. Do the Heberts have a PC?

"Peter?"

They should. Taylor is good with computers after all, and even an old PC should have enough material for-

"Peter!"

That puts an end to my train of thought as I remember that 'Peter' is my name in this world.

"Yes?"

Danny exchanges a look with the social worker that looks almost apologetic. "I asked you how you felt about living with us."

"Ah." I shrug. "I feel fine."

And that's pretty much the end of the conversation. After some final papers are signed, the social worker leaves and Danny leads me to the attic.

"I'm sorry we don't have a better room for you."

"It's okay." My 'bed' is a mattress on the floor with a lamp next to it. Nothing fancy, but my grandpas in my previous life tended to visit us often, so I have gotten accustomed to sleeping on the floor. A bit of a killer for the back but I can deal with it.

"Well, if you need anything, don't hesitate to call me or Taylor."

"If I need anything, I will."

I'm left alone after that to unpack and think. From this life, the only things I have left are a suitcase with a random assortment of clothes, some items for personal hygiene, and little else. I don't even have a watch for fuck's sake! What am I supposed to do now?

Well, I can start with a bomb. A very big bomb to blow this place up to smithereens! Heavens know it deserves it.

My first thought is a nuclear device, relatively simple to build. No, no, I need something bigger if I want to destroy the entire planet. A cannon. A prismatic core that will channel the energies of the void into a continuous beam. I just needed to aim it down and it'll reach the core with little effort.

But the material requirements are… insane. I'll need to raid several nuclear plants just to get enough materials for half of the entire project.

I let myself fall into the bed and look around. There is so much wood around me. Wood and cardboard boxes. A spark here and the entire house will burn down. Why do the Americans build such flimsy houses? Stone and bricks are far better.

I sigh.

I haven't really been thinking a lot about what I should be doing, allowing myself to go with the flow until I found a good place to rest.

Taylor is a magnet for problems and bad decisions. I could have refused to come to the Heberts and go instead to a foster house. But what is the point? The entire world can die at any moment now! I have no place to flee to, so why not staying in the Bay? If I die it at least will be fast.

Unless Bakuda gets me.

Or Jack Slash.

Or any of the other bad things around the world that won't allow me to die.

Can I build a suicidal vest for emergencies? The answer I get from my power is… inconclusive. I have been trying to figure out how my power exactly works but it isn't clear to me. Tinkers are supposed to be extremely flexible, but I only have specific 'blueprints' that I can build and nothing outside those. I can mix and match them but only to a certain degree. Tinkers shouldn't have such a 'clear' vision of what they can do like I have, as experimentation is the name of the game for them. It's weird, as is the fact that the designs in my head look somehow familiar. I just can't put my finger on why.

Oh, well. As rolling down and dying isn't Plan A (it's B) I could at least try to have some fun while at it. If I somehow manage to right some of the many wrongs that offend me in the process, all the better.

One by one I open the boxes in search of things I can use. I do find an electric heater, but the rest are useless winter clothes.

I need something to help me collect resources. Something like… a drone, yes. A modular drone that can not only dig, mine, and dismantle materials, but can also modify itself on the fly to adapt to different environments. Several can also combine into different configurations, from bigger combat forms to mining platforms and even factories!

Yes! That's exactly what I need!

The only problem is that I can't build it. It isn't just expensive, but the precision tools I need I won't be found in any house. I'll need to build those too.

Shit, there was always one thing or the other.

Can I join the Wards? Or any similar faction?

Nah.

The drone alone would have people screaming 'kill order' over self-replicating technology. I can't say I'd blame them as the drone can recycle organic matter, like humans, but that's something I see as a feature. And then there's also the many, many improvements I can do to my body. I don't know what policy the PRT has on self-modification but I doubt they'd allow an eleven-years-old to practice surgery on himself.

Criminal groups would be more flexible with that but then there's the disgust I feel towards them.

Taylor calling me to eat is a welcoming distraction from my problems. She places a plate in front of me with her and Danny seated across the table. What follows are several minutes of silence only broken by the cutlery. Is this how the Hebert family behaves at the table?

I like it. Silent, quick, and to the point. I can get accustomed to it.

Once Danny is done, he announces that he's leaving for work. It's Saturday but he switched his shift so he can be here to receive me. Oh, well, that only means that Taylor and I will have the house for ourselves for the rest of the day.

We finish our food mostly at the same time, and by instinct I move to clear the table.

"What are you doing?" Taylor asks me with a raised eyebrow.

"Clearing the table. Or do you prefer to clear it and me to wash the dishes?"

She looks surprised by my answer. "No, I… I can wash them. Thanks."

With that done I move back to the attic.

I need something cheaper than the drone to help me start. Something like… a helmet. Yes, a visor that detects electric currents and electronic equipment. It will also have heat vision, x-ray vision, and even sonar. Yes, yes. I like it, and it won't be very expensive! Once again I think about the TV in the living room.

But I better not, it going missing will be far too noticeable.

My next destination will then be the basement! I haven't found anything useful in the attic, beyond the heater, but maybe down there I'll be luckier.

I walk down to the second floor and hear Taylor in her room. Maybe doing homework or practicing with her bug control powers.

I don't know, and frankly don't care.

Continuing down, I soon find the door to the basement.

The place is a mess. There are boxes upon boxes covered in dirt and grime. Even the steps of the stairs are covered in dust as I can see the footprints left by my shoes.

I should have brought gloves. And maybe a mask. But it's too late for that now so I force myself to endure and open the first box, kept shut by spiderwebs instead of duct tape.

Okay, this… this is far more interesting. In the first box, there is a mixer, and in the second one there's a dusty sewing machine. A hairdryer, a hair straightener, a radio, an alarm clock. A freaking old laptop! This is a treasure trove of trash that I can turn into something useful!

And in this box…

Oh, yes, now we are talking. There are jewels in here. Lots and lots of gold and silver that I can turn into very efficient conductors. There are diamonds and other jewels too. My mind rushes with possibilities!

I move some more boxes out of the way and… I almost lose my lunch. I find spiders. Dozens, hundreds of them with their long and hairy legs. They are almost dancing in a perfectly synchronized routine as they sew something. A suit.

Ah, yes. It was here where Taylor was making her hero (later villain) suit. I had totally forgotten about that!

'Taylor controls them' I repeat over and over in my head like a mantra, slowly making my way back. A way that I find obstructed by the sound of someone walking down to the basement too.

It's Taylor, and when she sees me her expression turns into a scowl of fury.

It probably has something to do with the box of jewels I have in my hands, which probably belonged to her deceased mother.

The fact that I found her hero suit doesn't help my position either.

Okay, she's mad at me, what should I say in a situation like this? "I didn't see anything if you didn't see anything."

That's evidently the wrong thing to say as Taylor twitches and suddenly all the bugs are on me. I don't scream but that's mostly because I suddenly find the air in my lungs lacking.

First day in Brockton Bay and someone is already trying to kill me. Joy.

"What are you doing here?!" She demands. "And don't try to lie! I will know!"

She will know? I'm fairly sure that she doesn't have any power that can let her... Ah! That must be a lie to scare me.

This is annoying. Also a waste of my time.

Okay, breathe, breathe. Calming breaths.

This isn't the first time I'm forced into a bad position having to explain myself. At least Taylor isn't one of the many people I wouldn't mind seeing gutted. Even if she's close to that.

Now, my solution for situations like these is to just stare at them blankly until they get tired of being angry at me and go out to do more productive stuff. That has never failed me!

"I needed parts to build things." I explain in an even tone.

Taylor blinks a few times trying to comprehend what I just said. "To do what?"

I hate so much repeating myself. Even more so when I'm covered in bugs. "To build things. I am a Tinker."

A twitch starts to develop in her eye. "That was why you were stealing our things!?"

"Yes. It's a basement. This is where people toss stuff they don't care about anymore."

"It's not your basement!" Her voice almost breaks there at the end. "These are still our things!"

"Fine, sorry." I reply with a shrug. "Want me to build you something as compensation?" I can't wait to be done with this so we can all get back to doing more useful stuff.

"What?!"

Again with this? "I asked you if you want me to build you something with all this. As a token of good faith, you see."

"What is wrong with you!?" Taylor asks me close to what looks to be hysteria. "People shouldn't act like that when covered in bugs!"

I roll my eyes. "Do you have complete control over your bugs?"

There is a pause while Taylor studies me carefully. "Yes?"

"Then I have nothing to fear as I don't think you want to go over the hassle of hiding a body." Horror flashes over her face. "At least I think you don't. I don't know you well enough yet."

Several seconds pass during which the only sound I hear is that of the crawling insects. Then one by one Taylor's spiders retreat from my body, and without saying another word she turns back and leaves the basement.

I pick the stuff I have found up and head to my room. Maybe this time I can tinker in peace.

 

[Poliamida]

In nuclear fire - 2​

As it turns out, no, I can't tinker in peace because Taylor has decided that she needs to learn more about tinkers. And that's why we soon find ourselves in the bus on the way to the library, me with her because Taylor has unilaterally decided that I need supervision. I feel offended at that, I'm still very much an adult inside this childish body who's responsible enough to handle power tools!

I can even give her classes on how to use them! Literally. I have given several of those in the past.

The trip is amazingly boring. What am I supposed to do? Taylor's as uninterested in talking as I am. At least I have the chance to experience what Brockton Bay actually looks like by seeing it pass out of the window.

Not as bad as I feared if I'm honest. There aren't groups of men carrying weapons in the open and there aren't that many bums sleeping on the streets. The amount of graffiti paintings is a surprise, and some people might have raised their eyebrows at the amount of trash bags pilling in some corners, but all in all, it isn't that different from my previous city.

"We're here." Taylor's words shake me out of my boredom.

The library is a massive hulk of concrete, the monotony of the grey stone broken only by the many graffitis scattered around it.

Once inside she aims at a chair close to the reception desk. "Wait here." And then leaves without waiting for my reply. She greets the librarian by his name -a name that I promptly forget- before leading me to one of the private rooms with a single computer inside. She takes a seat at the keyboard and starts typing.

With nothing else to do, I look around the room. It's big enough to hold some six people comfortably and the walls are covered in bookcases filled with heavy tomes about mechanical engineering. I pick one at random and sit at the table with it. Not something as easy to do as I was expecting considering that the books are deceivingly heavy for my small frame.

The impact of the book against the table makes Taylor flinch. "Are you… are you reading that?"

"Yes." Less reading and more skimming but the idea's the same. Some of these topics are about things I still remember. I wonder if I can make a machine that automatically downloads books into my brain. I always wanted to have one of those to save time.

"Those are university books."

"Entry-level from what I'm reading. What about it?"

My question is left unanswered.

"Okay." Taylor announces soon enough, pressing her palms over the keyboard. "Can we talk for a moment?"

"Are you sure you want to talk about those things here?" I ask without raising my eyes from the book. We are in a public location after all.

"With my bugs, I can know if someone gets close."

"Fair enough." I look around. "There doesn't seem to be any listening devices. My power should have allowed me to find them." At least I hope so.

"Aren't you exaggerating?"

In a city that has Coil in it? "I don't think so." The deal he later formed with Chariot wasn't bad all things considered, but the guy is firmly on my 'free for impalement' list.

But if I want to go for cruel and unusual I can create a larva that will eat him from the inside-out. And I can make it work on a timer, ensuring that his timelines don't protect him from it!

Wait, does my power have biological constructions too? Something to think about later.

"Well, just…" She struggles with her words. "Are you feeling alright? Do you have any strange desires?"

"Are you trying to give me 'the talk'?"

If she had been drinking anything, she'd have spitted it all out. "No! And aren't you too young to know about it?"

"I'm too young for a lot of stuff." I say with a shrug. "And to answer your question, I'm barely holding myself back from dismantling that PC." But I don't know if that's a 'tinker fugue' or just me feeling that I can finally build something awesome with my hands. After years of dreaming of building robots and other machines, I finally have the power to do so and just want to exercise it!

She pinches the bridge of her nose and takes a deep breath. "Yeah, that's what I feared." She gestures at the screen. "According to this, tinkers that don't build something for a long time get more and more anxious until they start taking apart their houses."

"Not much different from a drug, is it?"

"You…" I'm sure I see the veins of her forehead about to pop. "Yeah. It isn't." She presses her palms together. "Have you considered the Wards?"

"Have you?"

"This isn't about me!"

Well… I don't have much interest in arguing against that. "I don't care about them. I don't care about the child soldiers that they turn into action figures to sell to the masses only for their brand to get devalued once they die against a villain or an endbringer." I can almost hear the hinges of Taylor's mouth shrieking as her jaw hangs freely from her mouth. "I also don't like people. I don't want to be forced to talk to people, to be forced into the public, and smile while I answer their question or sign their posters." I don't remember at what point I started cracking my fingers, something I like to do whenever I feel angry. I tend to do that a lot.

"Okay, I… I at least can understand that." That puts an end to our conversation and soon we are on our way back to her house.

---

The floor of my room is covered by the remains of the things I dismantled, next to Danny's discarded tools that I borrowed.

After finding out about Tinker Fugues, Taylor agreed to let me build one item fearing that I'll go insane if I don't. Or insane-er, if the way she keeps glancing at me is anything to go by. I use almost all of what I found in the basement for this, with the exception of Taylor's mother's jewels that I'm saving for a special occasion.

My work done, I spend a moment looking at my creation: a wristband with a green jewel encrusted into it.

This is… this is the first thing I have built with these powers. How many times have I daydreamed of doing something like this? There is something relaxing about putting all the pieces of the puzzle together and seeing it work like the well-oiled machine that it is. It is precise. It is controlled. It is something that I can very much enjoy.

"What did you build?" Taylor asks from the side, wearily looking at the wrist-mounted contraption.

To answer her question, I activate the device causing the blade to materialize.

Taylor's eyes light up. "Is… is that a Lightsaber?"

"Not exactly." I tried to build one at first but my power refused to build the hand-held version. I guess that this way I have my hands free for other stuff, even if the lack of a crossguard makes me uncomfortable. "But it should be just as powerful, being able to cut through nearly anything." I turn the blade off, remove it from my arm, and strap it to Taylor's.

She eyes it wearily, but after explaining how to use it she presses the activation button. The blade makes her flinch as it is longer than when I used it, able to adapt to her longer limbs.

She looks enraptured at the blue color of the plasma, and after a moment she finally dares to make some test swings far away from me.

"Do be careful as it's extremely sharp. So I suggest that you only use it on brutes and regenerators."

She immediately turns it off. "What do you mean when I use it?"

"I have no use for it. I have no intention to go out and fight people personally." Doing so is plain stupid considering that I have in my head designs for multiple autonomous robots. Why risk myself when I can send others to do my work?

Her eyebrows knit into a scowl. "Are you trying to bribe me with Tinkertech?"

"No." And that's all I tell her as I go back to tinkering. Luckily I still have just enough to build the visor I want. "How good are you at close quarters combat?" I ask her trying to make some small talk. It is the polite thing to do.

"What?"

"Combat. How good are you? You need to be good to defeat your enemies."

"Why do you want to know?"

"What is the suit in the basement for if not for punching people?"

A groan escapes her lips. "I honestly don't know." And then we are back at the silence. At least it doesn't last as long this time around. "What are you building?"

In my hands, I have the frame of what look like very advanced glasses. "This visor will allow me to switch between several tactical views. It will have infrared, sonar, and several others that I hope will help me find materials easier."

"That is... good."

Okay, that sounds like she's sad. Or mad. I can't tell.

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine."

"You don't sound fine."

She throws her hands up in the air muffling what might be a scream. "It doesn't matter, okay? You… you keep doing whatever you want to do." She removes the Psi Blade, places it over a box, and with heavy steps she marches out of the attic.

I look down at my half-finished visor and for a moment I consider just continuing my working on it, but the sound of Taylor slamming her door changes plans. I walk to her room and knock at her door.

"What?!" Comes the voice from the other side.

Charming.

"I want to talk to you."

"I don't want to! Go away."

What to do? Maybe if I just ignore her the problem will go away.

While thinking about it I press myself against Taylor's door… and promptly fall into her room. As I scramble to my feet I realize that her door not only isn't locked, it doesn't have a lock, with the space it should occupy in the frame of her door empty.

Do these people have no privacy?

Taylor's room is surprisingly girlish. And old. Not because of the decorations but the stuff she has inside. There are some plushies, dolls, and a couple of other things, but they all look so old. And dirty. The same with the walls that look as if no one has bothered to give them a second helping of paint in years.

Pressed against a corner, underneath a window, is Taylor's bed. And in said bed is Taylor, looking at me as if she's thinking about committing first-degree murder.

"Sup." I greet her again with a raised palm.

She throws her head back releasing a groan. "What are you doing here?"

"In your room or in general?"

"In my house! Here! Everywhere!"

What was my alibi again? Oh, yes. "My parents died in a car crash and Danny Hebert was my closest relative." I immediately fall to the ground under the force of the cushion that Taylor just threw at my face. "Ouch!"

"What is wrong with you?"

"Do you want the list in alphabetical order?"

And then she groans again. "Oh, my God! You act like a robot!"

"Yeah, I have been told that in the past. Also sociopathic." Good memories of my past life, those ones. "But I'm not! At least that's what the tests I took online told me."

Oh, yes, there's Taylor's eye-twitching again. Her cushion already expended, she picks her pillow up and hurls it to me. But this time I'm ready and manage to catch it mid-flight! Only to once again fall to the ground as this childish body is unable to resist even that little force.

I'll have to improve it one of these days. Maybe starting with a new spine.

Once I pick myself up, I see that Taylor has crouched into a little ball and is now staring at the wall, showing me her back.

I'm sure now that she's mad! Or sad. One of the two.

What to do?

"Do you want a hug?"

"No! Why would I want one?"

"Because hugs are nice." Now, what would an 11 years old say? "That's what the pink dinosaur on the TV usually says." Barney is still a thing, right?

She slowly raises up and turns to look at me, making me feel like a bacteria underneath the microscope. I stay my ground, staring back, as she reaches at me and pokes me in the shoulder.

"Ouch." I say despite not really hurting me. It just feels like the appropriate thing to say under the circumstances.

Then she pokes me again.

"Ouch."

And again.

"Ouch." Ok, this is getting tedious and repetitive. "For how long are you going to keep doing that?"

She pulls back, still looking at me with a creeped-out expression in her face. "Have you always been like this?"

"Like what?"

"Like, you know, have you always behaved like this?"

That's an excellent question! I don't know what the child I'm inhabiting was like before all this started. I don't know if he even existed before my arrival. "I don't know. How can I know?"

"Did your parents ever take you to see any… therapist or psychiatrist?"

Not in my previous life at least. "I don't know?"

"How can you- Sorry, sorry. It's not right for me to talk about your family under the circumstances." Is she... sobbing? Oh, God, did I cause her to have a relapse over her mother's death? "I remember when mom died. The first weeks… the first months were hard."

Yeah, they always are when a close relative passes away. "The place they used to occupy is now empty. Sometimes you think that maybe this time when you look they will be there but they aren't. They never are. But you learn to keep moving, and as you keep moving you keep surviving."

"How can you be so cold?"

"Well, the fact that I don't remember their faces help." Her back straightens up and her eyes widen as dishes. "What?"

"You… you what?"

"I don't remember their faces." I repeat. "I know that the social worker told me their names but I forgot them too." Oh, names, I suck at them. "I remember going to school," At least the school of my previous life. "Reading books and watching TV. But when it comes to my parents," These parents, not my real ones. "There's not-" And suddenly I find myself unable to speak as Taylor is now hugging me.

Yes, hugs are indeed nice.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"Eh, it's okay." Not like the death of people I never knew or cared about can affect me.

"No, it's not! Do you… do you really not remember anything about them?"

I shake my head. "My memories from before the crash are fuzzy." Non-existent would be more accurate. "The clear ones start after that."

"Jesus Christ." And there she is hugging me again. And then she chuckles. It is a sad chuckle that sounds more like a sob. "I'm pathetic. And to think I was jealous of you."

Now that makes me cock my head in confusion. "Jealous of me? Why?"

"It doesn't matter."

"Is it about your power?" I do remember she considered her bug control week.

Slowly she breaks the hug and releases a sigh. "Yes, it is." She opens her palm to let a fly land on it. "You built a lightsaber from a bunch of trash in an afternoon." The fly lifts off and makes several maneuvers in the air before returning to her palm. "And I can do this."

"And so you feel inadequate."

She snores. "I guess I do." Progress! She sounds better already.

Now, I know that with months of practice she'll be able to do some incredible stuff, like seeing and listening through her bugs or even imitating human speech with them. But at this stage she's very early in her path to mastering her power.

Time to give her a gentle push in the right direction.

"How many insects can you control at the same time and what's your radius of control?"

"Why would you want to help me?"

"Why wouldn't I? You have been nice to me so I don't want you to die." At least not for the time being.

"The first thing I did was covering you with spiders!"

"Yes. That should clue in on how my interactions with other humans usually go." And isn't that just so, so sad? "Now, about my question?"

Her shoulders drop in defeat. "I control all insects on the block."

"Do you know where all of them are?"

"Every moment. Yes."

I stand up and pace back and forth around her room pretending to think. "Wait here." I leave and in a moment I'm back with a broom. "Place a fly there." I aim at a spot on the wall.

"Why?"

"I have an idea. Come on! Let's experiment!" I don't have to pretend to be excited.

"Fine." The fly sets in location. "Now what?"

I give her the broom. "Hold this up as if it was a rifle and place two other flies on it. One at each end."

Her eyes narrow. She looks at me, then at the broom, then at me again and finally at the wall. She picks the broom up and snaps it into position as if the handle was the barrel of a gun. The 3 flies are perfectly aligned with each other. She lowers it and then aims again. Another alignment. She moves a couple of steps to the left, spins, and aims again. Yet another perfect shot.

Then she does something that I wasn't expecting. She walks to the window and aims the broom outside. I can see her moving it as if she was tracking a target.

"What are you doing?" I ask.

"There's a tick on the back of a cat across the street."

Now there's that legendary Taylor intelligence I heard so much about! A pity that she uses it for combat and not for social interactions.

And with me at her side, that means that we are doomed if we face anything that we can't just pummel into a bloody pulp.

Is there anything I can create to help us there? There is a pheromone that can mind-control people, not really what I'm looking for, and a band that can connect the users to a hive-mind. Now that's something that I want! But it is on the expensive side of things.

Done with her own tests, Taylor takes a step back and puts the broom aside, still glimpsing at it as if now realizing what she just did. "That was interesting. But I don't want to shoot people!"

I swear, at this point she's just being fastidious for the sake of it.

"Why not?"

"I don't want to kill people!"

I released a sigh. That's a mentality that we'll need to work on. "It's okay, I can build you a rifle that incapacitates the targets without killing them."

"Can you really do that?"

I go through the blueprints I have in my head. I have plasma rifles, gauss rifles, bio-acid, and others that are even worse. No non-lethal options in there. Oh, well, I'm sure everything will get sorted out at the end. "Of course I can. But I'll need a lot of resources that I currently don't have." Maybe if I tell her that she'll stop complaining and start helping me.

Taylor purses her lips as if rolling a reply over her tongue. "Fine. If we-"

And that's when we hear the sound of a car stopping soon followed by the main door opening.

"Taylor, Peter! I'm back!"

It seems that most of our afternoon was consumed by the trip to the library and then by my tinkering.

We'll have to continue our talk another day.

Dinner is also a mostly silent affair but Danny does comment on how happy he is to see Taylor and I getting along.

No idea how he can tell or what us 'getting along' even looks like.

After helping Taylor with the dishes I go to my room and use the final hours of the day finishing my visor.

Good thing that tomorrow is Sunday.

 

[Poliamida]

In nuclear fire - 3​

Behind the cover of a dumpster I turn the Psi Blade on, cutting through the chained door as if it was butter. I make my way in. The lights don't work but the Blade once again proves its worth by acting as an improvised lamp. Not for my sake as I have my visor on, but for Taylor's.

"What's that smell?" She asks, covering her nose with the sleeve of her shirt.

The place we are in is an old factory not that far away from her place that supposedly was closed ages ago. Just to be on the safe side both of us scouted ahead, she with her bugs and me with my visor, but no signs of life were found.

"Cat piss and rat droppings I'd say." The smell isn't as bad as the smell of the settling ponds of a tannery I visited once, but it's still very bad. The building consists of the main production area, which at first glance looks empty beyond piles of useless debris, followed by an office section. My visor once again proves its worth by letting me find traces of metals: several meters of copper cable that no one bothered to remove from the walls.

"You look excited." Taylor comments as she helps me pull the wires out of their sockets.

"This is a good start. There's a lot I can do with this." Our work done, I store the wires in a backpack that Taylor lent me. It's red and grey, not really what I was expecting a girl her age to own but I guess it' a result of her bullying. The cheapest and dullest it looks, the less it will hurt once it inevitably gets vandalized.

That reminds me that I have to kill the Trio once I make sure I can get away with it. A stealth suit and an anti-matter rifle should do the trick. Not anti-material, anti-matter. I really like my power.

With nothing else of interest to be found in the production area, we move to the offices.

What receives us is a pile of computer towers. "Are those computers?!" Taylor asks me in surprise.

I walk to one of them and effortlessly I toss it aside. "No, it's just the cases. They are empty." If these have actually been computers I'd have thrown myself to the ground and thank God for his mercy but of course I'm not that lucky. There are some keyboards and mouses around that I break open to retrieve some useful parts but that's about it.

With the first office down we move to the second, and then to the third. We don't find anything of interest in them either so we move to the last one.

"Ahhhhh!" Taylor's scream tears through the building, making my heart jump to my throat as I instinctively turn the Psi Blade on.

I rush to her to see what the problem is.

"Shit!"

It's a man lying on the floor on a pile of newspapers and what seems to be his own vomit. He's dirty and surrounded by bottles.

Fuck! How is that I didn't see him? This is bad! This is a fucking disaster!

"Stay back, Peter! Stay back!" Taylor says, putting a protective hand over my chest.

No, no. That's impossible, my visor should have detected any human signals.

The man isn't moving and just now I realize that he is the source of the smell we noticed earlier.

Now that, that does remind me of the settling ponds.

Oh. That's why my visor didn't detect him.

"God! We need to call an ambulance! The police, someone!"

"Taylor, that man's dead."

His chest isn't moving, his half-opened mouth has long since dried out, and I can see that his eyes remain opened behind his long disheveled hair.

Taylor takes a step back and then another. She searches for my hand and once she finds it we both rush out of that place.

Two streets later I realize that she's still holding my hand. I don't mind that at all.

---

"We should have done something." Taylor sulks as she passes me the second ice cream. After the factory, we didn't return home and instead came to the park. Danny gave Taylor some money for us to enjoy, and what better way to lift one's spirit than with ice cream?

"There was nothing for us to do." That feeling eats me from the inside. The guy probably died last night, no way for him to be so… intact if that wasn't the case. That must be why insects didn't set on him, and why Taylor didn't detect him. It was too early.

Maybe it was an overdose or just a lack of food and medication.

Maybe he got cold, and his body just gave up.

It's so fucking unfair. Why do these things happen? Why do people allow them to happen?

And to think that I'm in Worm where people should consider themselves lucky if they end as he did! There are just so many incompetent assholes to deal with!

I'm trembling.

Taylor puts a hand on my shoulder and the trembling stops. "We should have called the police."

I did think about doing that, but what were we supposed to say? "And tell them we were breaking and entering? They would have asked questions."

"They would have informed his family."

"You saw him. Do you think he has one?"

As a form of an answer, she buries her face into the ice cream. In just a moment both our ice creams are gone and we are left with nothing else to do but watch the people around.

There are several families coming and going, some people doing exercise and some more taking their pets for a walk.

"When was the last time you came to a park?" I ask Taylor trying to distract her from what happened. "Or shared food with anyone?" Maybe I should consider researching how to distract people from bad topics in ways that don't remind them of worse topics.

"A long time ago." A dog dashes in front of us, his leash waving freely behind him and his owners try to catch him. "You know, we used to come to this park a lot. We were even talking about getting a dog before… everything."

Yes, exactly like that! My question did manage to distract her from the dead stranger by reminding her of her dead mother. Bravo me! Yes, I am being sarcastic. "Say, how many people do you think are here?"

"I don't know." She shrugs. "A hundred?"

"If you put a fly on each of them you will know."

She narrows her eyes in concentration. "No, that… I thought that was only one person but it's two. And that's only one…" After a moment she shakes her head. "It's hard to coordinate my bugs when I can't see where they are going." She sounds so defeated.

"That makes no sense. Your spiders were working without you being there."

"I had already set them to work. Here I have to see the people so I can direct my bugs to them. That's the part I'm struggling with."

"Something to work on, then."

After that, we make our way back to Taylor's house. Thankfully Danny doesn't seem to notice our dark moods. I don't know if that's because we are good at hiding it or because that has become the standard in this house.

Probably the latter.

---

As it turns out, my transference to the new school isn't ready yet so I'm forced to see Taylor depart to Winslow (firmly on my to-burn list) while I follow Danny to his work. At first, I think about resisting and telling him I'll be fine alone at home, but what is there for me to do? My progress building my stuff has slowed to a crawl due to lack of resources and after what happened the last day I don't want to go out on my own.

Besides, the docks sound like a perfect place to find stuff.

"Danny, hi! Is this the runt?" The one to greet us is a short, chubby man with a chin almost as big as his forehead.

"That's the one. Peter, say hi to Kurt."

"Hi." I say and offer him my hand.

He ignores it and proceeds to ruffle my hair. "Pleasure to meet you, kid!" I suppress a gag at the smell of tobacco coming from his mouth.

We just met and I already don't want anything to do with this man.

Ignoring my discomfort (or maybe just not noticing if I felt like giving him the benefit of the doubt), Danny continues talking to him. "What news do you have today?"

"Nothing good, I'm afraid. They guys from Rick's group are complaining that they are still missing half their pay."

I tune their conversation out as I focus on more useful things. Namely, trying to take my bearings of the place.

Danny's office is located on the second floor of a truly massive warehouse. There are several other offices in there, and what looks to be a meeting room, but they look abandoned and one has even been left half-built.

Or half-demolished.

I take notice of more copper wire and the remains of an electric board scattered all over the ground. There's also a broken phone! And a modern-looking one on top of that. There's a lot that I can salvage from there.

I walk past Danny's office without him even noticing I'm there and make my way to the ground floor.

My initial observation of the place proves to be wrong as it's only 'mostly' empty, one small section of it dedicated to the storage of goods.

My hands start shaking.

Those are electronics!

TVs, microwaves, and hair dryers. And cell phones! My sweet lord, glorious cell phones! Dozens of them. I can build so much with that.

But there's no way I can steal that cargo without being immediately found out. I still take note of the place, maybe I can return once I have the stealth suit ready, just after I murder the trio. And a lot of other people now that I think about it. I should make a list.

My search continues and takes me outside, into the area where they store the containers. The place's deserted and my disappointment is immeasurable as I see that the containers are all empty, with most having turned into nests for birds. Pieces of broken wood make my progress difficult through the parts that nature has reclaimed for herself, with weed growing through the cracks and with seagulls being the only living thing on sight.

I knew what had happened to this place. I knew that after Leviathan and the economic collapse the maritime industry had died, but it in person is hard. So much progress lost.

And in the distance I see the boat graveyard. Dozens of ships left there to rust and fall apart, no one bothering to invest in them. I want to get to them so badly! There's no way they were fully dismantled so they must still contain useful equipment. That's a goldmine waiting for me.

I wander off a bit more but I fail to find anything of interest, just even more empty containers and even emptier storehouses that were abandoned to the elements.

For a brief moment I consider giving up and joining the Wards, or even one of the gangs, but I quickly murder both ideas. I'm stubborn and somehow I'll make this work.

Eventually I make my way back to Danny's office.

He didn't notice when I left the same way he doesn't notice when I return.

---

With my backpack full of the material I found, we make our way back to Taylor's house. She hasn't returned yet and so I go to the attic where I can start the next stage of my work: building more advanced tools.

I lose track of time and only notice Taylor's arrival when I hear the door to her room opening and closing. From there she comes to my room with a book on her hand. Without saying a word she takes a seat on a corner and starts reading, allowing me to continue my work in peace.

And like that we spend the rest of the day.

It's nice how we can share the silence.

 

[Poliamida]

In nuclear fire - 4​

As I look at the entrance to my school, with all the children rushing in, I ask myself: 'How long do I have before going insane?'

I already went through all this and the entire idea of tolerating the drama of highschool again is as appealing as having the hairs of my nose pulled one by one.

So, why am I doing this? Why am I not proclaiming my intellect so I can be moved to a higher grade?

Simple, it's easier this way. This isn't about me thriving or building the foundations for a bright future. I have no future here. My objective is to survive the coming months for long enough for me to attain material independence, and sixth grade will allow me to do just that. I'll barely need to study or pay attention in classes beyond the minimum necessary to keep myself out of trouble while I use my time on important stuff.

But it's not like that perfectly logical reasoning will make tolerating my classmates any easier.

There's the one with the mischievous smile, who looks to have been dropped as a baby, and is just playing with the tips of his fingers.

The pair of girls that whisper at each other and laugh uncontrollably at random.

And oh my God, there's the chatterbox who just doesn't shut up! He keeps talking and talking about any random stuff! From the car of his dad to the boyfriend of his sister to the new cartoon on TV!

And then there are the few that looked as bored as I was. At least with those I feel a sense of kinship.

Better not to get too attached to any of them because who knows how many will still be alive at the end of the month.

The first activity of the day is English.

"Good morning class." Greets us the English teacher. "As you see, today we have a new student. Peter, why don't you say hi?"

I stand up, look at my classmates, and do exactly that: "Hi." And then I sit back down.

"Well, I hope that Peter can make good friends here."

Before the week is over I'll already have forgotten all their names.

The class continues mostly uninterrupted with the teacher droning something about how to properly read and discuss a piece of literature. At least I can appreciate the book they are reading, Treasure Island is a good story. Far, far better than any of the movies it inspired with the exception of the Muppets one.

This is also the last class they'll be working on it, and I'm so delighted to see the expression in my classmates' faces as their dreams and hopes are crushed upon reaching the ending. There's no emotional reunion between John Silver and Jim at the end of the book. The pirate just leaves and that's it. That of turning him into a father figure for Jim is nothing more than saccharin added to shelter kids from the reality of the outside world.

Well, suck it up, kids! This is the kind of stuff that builds character.

The alarm rings and the next class starts with the new teacher: a man in his late forties that reminds me a bit of Danny.

"Today, kids, we'll start with fractions."

Fractions.

No fractional equations, no exponential fractions, nothing like that. Just simple fractions using natural numbers.

Dear Lord, I'm being taught sixth-grade level mathematics.

That really shouldn't have surprised me as much as it did but is still frustrating.

I have given classes on how to integrate complex fractions! And this guy's trying to explain to me what a common denominator is?

And the worst of it is that he doesn't even teach! He's reading the book out loud and transcribing what's in there to the board. Why do we need you? If you want to be this useless you can just give us the damn book and be done with it! I at least have the attention span to read it.

Like, at least during literature I could keep myself entertained. Arguing with children about the literary value of a book is a fun experience in itself. But this? It takes me one glance to already know the solution to the problem the teacher's expecting us to struggle with. It's that easy. I open my book to read ahead and, yes, things won't be getting any more interesting in my foreseeable future.

"Pet-r…"

I could solve all of this in an afternoon if I had the disposition for it.

"Peter…"

Fuck this shit! Maybe I should reconsider my presence here and just forget about classes altogether. I'll just ditch school and stay home claiming depression.

"Peter Brown!" Oh, yes, that's my name. I keep forgetting that. "Would you like to solve the problem on the blackboard?" Shit, the teacher sounds angry. I think he has been calling my name for a while now.

Oh, well. I stand up, walked to the board, and write the answer. It's 3. Then I return to my seat.

The teacher does get flabbergasted for a moment before getting angry again. "How did you reach that answer?"

"By doing math." I swear I don't want to sound condescending but sometimes I feel that's just my default attitude towards the world.

"You didn't write the step-by-step solution."

"Don't need to."

"You should solve the problems as I teach you to solve them."

"You aren't teaching anything! You're just reading what the book says!"

"Be careful with your tone, young man!"

"Or what?"

First day of class and I'm spending the breaks in detention. I feel like laughing at these fools, are they seriously trying to punish me with social isolation? They have no idea who they are dealing with!

I am forced to do some extra exercises during the break but I solve those in a breeze and spend the rest of the time scribbling diagrams for my next inventions.

Once the day is over I return to Taylor's house with a new understanding of her frustrations. I find her waiting for me at her usual spot in the attic, reading the book she started yesterday.

"Taylor, let's go scavenging."

"Yes, please."

This time we find no bodies and return with a nice amount of scrap.

---

On the second day of school, we have history.

"The red coats weren't conscripts! They joined the army willingly, and one of the reasons why America won was because England didn't have enough soldiers to send! Oh, but who am I arguing with? You Americans love rewriting history to make yourselves look good!"

This time I spend the lunch break in detention.

That only means more peace and quiet for me while I scribble some more.

---

On the third day, we have social studies.

"Oh, please, the Athenians were assholes!" To be fair the teacher doesn't disagree with my statement, just the way I say it.

This time they try to make me stay after hours. Of course that 'try' is the operative word.

"Mister Brown, where are you going?" One of the teachers asks me as I make my way out of the building.

"Home."

"You have detention today!"

"I know. I'm not staying for that."

"We will inform your guardian about this!"

"Do as you please."

When I enter the living room I find Danny already waiting for me together with Taylor.

"Peter, can we talk for a moment?"

My reply to that consists of me tossing my backpack aside and sitting in front of him on the chair he has already prepared.

"Peter, with Taylor we're worried about how you're doing at school."

She's very much not looking at me, without confirming nor denying her father's claims. Considering how her experience with Highschool has been going, she probably believes this to be as much bulshit as I do.

"We understand that you're going through difficult times but we only want to help you adjust to your new situation."

I wonder if he's using his 'union' speech with me.

"I talked to your teachers and I agreed that, to help you integrate, they'll assign you a partner your own age."

Taylor breaths out sonorously through her nose.

Shit! Is she angry at me? Danny pretty much abandoned her after Annette's death, and it was Alan Barnes of all people who convinced him to start giving a crap about his daughter again. And now here is Danny interacting with me after I went through something similar.

"Is that alright, Peter?"

"Yes, Danny."

He palms me on the leg with a smile before moving to the kitchen where he has a pile of papers waiting for him to look over.

Taylor's the next to leave, going up the stairs with me behind her. To my surprise, she doesn't go to her room but follows me to the attic.

"He always does the same." She says once we are on our spots, and my confusion must show on my face because she immediately elaborates: "When it comes to his family, he lets other people decide."

Oh...

Ohhhh. Ok, yes, I massively misunderstood how she saw my talk with Danny.

"It's okay."

"No, it isn't!" Her reaction surprises me. "It's not fair that they treat you like that!"

"Life's unfair. That's why I'm trying to build an army of robots to force it into submission."

Taylor chuckles at that. "Yeah, that sounds like something I'd like to see." Then her shoulders drop. "I can't go with you scavenging today. I need to do math."

Now that's something I can definitely help her with. "Are you having trouble with that?"

"No, no, it's just that… it's just that I lost my maths book."

Lost, sure. The Trio must have stolen it. "Let me help you."

"Really, you don't need to-"

"Taylor," I don't shout but I do raise my voice. "I assure you that I'm better at math than your teacher. And I want to help you as a way of sticking it to mine."

That makes her smile and we spend the rest of the afternoon working on that. It's so nice to work with someone who listens and puts the effort into learning, doing something more than staring at me like a dead fish.

And talking about dead fishes, I wonder who the school roped into being my partner.

---

"Good morning, Peter! I'm Missy Biron."

Well, fuck me.

 

[Poliamida]

In Nuclear Fire 5​

Missy Biron.

Cape.

Ward.

Heavily traumatized badass extraordinaire. At least after Leviathan happened.

Not like I should know any of that. What's a surprise to me is that she attends to the same school I go to, with the difference being that she's in grade B while I'm in grade A. I might have discovered that earlier if it wasn't for the fact that I spent the previous days in detention isolated from my peers. Or 'classmates' better said as I don't have 'peers' here.

Oh, well, no point crying over spilled milk.

"Hello." I tell her offering her my hand. And oh, my God, she actually shakes it! Finally someone fucking polite in this stupid world! That immediately gains her several points in my book.

Accompanying us is also the teacher that presented us. "I leave him to you, Missy. Do call if you need anything."

"Of course miss García."

The room we are in is a bit separated from the rest of the classrooms that we can see across the playground through the glass windows. It's the perfect set-up for the teachers to keep an eye on the problem children.

Missy takes her seat across the table and from her backpack she starts pulling out books.

"Now, Peter," She gestures at an empty chair. "Why don't you tell me what subjects you're having trouble with?"

I sit down. "None."

"Really? Because that's not what your teachers told me." I swear she's enjoying lording over me.

I breathe out sonorously through my nose. "My teachers say a lot of things. Few of which are true."

Wow, she can make a very scary face despite being only 12. "Did you always have that attitude?"

"I only speak the truth." At least the way I see it.

"I wonder if you will keep saying the same after I kick your ass."

That… is most definitely not what I was expecting to hear from her. And the worst part is that I have no doubts that she can make good on her promise. I don't think that even old adult-me could stand a chance against her either, even without her using her powers.

"What? Surprised that a girl can curse?"

"Admittedly, yes." Then I remember that this girl stitched herself the wounds she received from Hookwolf.

"Good! Maybe now you can start taking me more seriously." She places several books over the table. "So, what's your problem?"

And there we are at it again. "My problem is that my stupid teachers don't know how to te-Ouch!" She hit me with a book! "What was that for?"

"Stop being so condescending!"

"I can't! That's my default mood!" Jesus Christ this girl. "But fine, if you want to know I'm bored."

She keeps staring at me in deep thought. "Is that why you spend most of your time drawing?"

I feel a chill running down my spine. Missy knows Kid Win and knows Armsmaster, so she might be able to recognize tinker blueprints for what they are. "Yes. Not like I brought any with me today." Please, stop asking about them.

"You know, I'm sure that miss García would like to see them."

"Who?"

She might be giving me the flattest look anyone has ever given me. That's an accomplishment. "Your Visual Arts teacher? The woman I was talking to a moment ago? The woman who brought you here?"

"Ah." Admittedly, I do feel a bit embarrassed. "I'm terrible with names. But no. I draw because I like it, and I like it because I don't need to. If I'm forced to do it for school, then it's no longer fun."

Now it's her turn to roll her eyes. "No one here wants to force you. For my part, I just want to help you."

"Why? Why would you care and why would they have picked you to do this?"

She puffs her chest at that. "Well, the school asked me because I'm their best student with the highest marks."

Oh, pride. She reminds me of… well, me at her age. At any age in fact, except for the fact that I'd have never tried to help any of my classmates back in school.

"And the reason why I care is because I have a side job where I work with kids that went through traumatic experiences."

The Wards. She's talking about the Wards.

"So, you believe that the death of my parents has driven me crazy."

She snores at that. "Your words, not mine."

"I'm perfectly fine." 'Fine' might not be the correct word here. I'm still an adult inside the body of a child, so 'functional' should be more appropriate.

"Yeah, what do you say about hearing a professional's opinion?"

"Not interested." I say with a dismissive gesture of my hand.

"Are you sure? Mr. Petersen, the school's psychologist, is great."

"Yes, I am." And that's when the bell rings, signaling the end of our initial meeting. "Do I have to stay or…"

"No, no. You can go." She lifts two fingers to her eyes that she then aims at me. "But I will keep my eyes on you."

Joy.

During the rest of the day, I manage to keep my tongue on a leash for long enough to not go into further troubles, and making true of her word Missy stays around during our breaks. She asks me about how I'm acclimating to the Bay. "I was expecting it to be worse from what I heard." And about the family I'm staying with. "Taylor is nice. Goes to Winslow. She's intelligent and, unlike most people, does listen to me. And I like Danny because he doesn't care about me."

I finish school celebrating the start of the weekend.

"Do call me if you need help with your homework." Missy tells me on our way out.

"I won't." And with that, I make my way to Taylor's home.

---

"Good afternoon!" I call from the entrance as I make my way in. Danny isn't there, but Taylor's school bag is on the sofa. "Taylor? Hello?" The fact that she hasn't answered me yet is worrisome.

I go to the upper floor and find the door to her room open. There she is on her bed, with her face pressed against the pillow. It looks as if she has been crying. I walk to her. How are you supposed to comfort a teenager? I sit with my back against the bed and there I wait for her to start speaking.

I wait for a long time.

"They said I copied their homework."

I feel my nails digging into the wooden floor. I don't bother to ask who 'they' are. I already know the answer.

"The teacher got angry at me."

My jaw starts hurting with how hard I'm pressing my teeth.

"Told me he'd call my dad."

And that's when I can't contain it anymore and make Taylor jump when I punch the wall.

"Peter?"

"Sorry." I say, clutching my hand. "I felt like hitting something." Damn, that hurt like a bitch.

"I know the feeling." She slowly pushes herself up, turning around to look at the ceiling. "I just want something they can't ruin."

"Fuck it!" I find myself yelling. "Just ruin them! You could do it. A spider bite, a scorpion sting. It would be so easy! And it could pass as an accident!"

Horror flashes over her face. "I'm not going Carrey on my school!"

Yeah, yeah, the entire concept of letting loose on one's school and killing classmates and teachers. "Why not?" For the love of me, I can't understand how that isn't a daily occurrence in the world of Worm, it isn't as they don't deserve it after all.

"Because… because…" Taylor clutches her head, her breathing reaching a crescendo before it drops once again. "I have asked myself the same question more than once. But no. I want to forget about them and just be happy."

I can understand that. It doesn't mean I agree with her reasoning, but I can understand it. Killing them all will offer her nothing but a brief moment of joy, and things will only get worse if she doesn't have a plan to fall back into. "We all want the same thing."

"I thought I could just stop going, but then what? We don't have the money for a GED and they know where I live. Home is the only place where they don't bother me. I want to keep that."

A defense grid. A network of security towers that will fill with lead whoever dares to approach. Can I find a way to make that look like an accident?

"You could sell your powers. You could be a great exterminator."

"You think I didn't think about it? I did look up what I'd need to become a Rogue but it's far too complicated. I'd need to be of age for starters." She laughs. "You know? It's kind of funny that being a vigilante is easier than being a Rogue."

The joints of my fingers ache as I twist them. "Of course it is."

I'm so done with this place. With the stupidity, with the incompetence, with the bullshit. Just everything.

So many people to kill and places to destroy.

"But I don't think I'd do it. I… I want to do something big." She raises her arms. "I don't know what but I want to feel like I accomplished something special. Anything."

Now she's speaking my language. "Or die trying."

She presses a palm against her eyes. "Yeah. I guess that's okay too. I just don't want to give them the satisfaction of admitting defeat. I just want to go out there and do something awesome."

I want to help her. And raze the world in the process if necessary.

"We will need nails." I find myself gasping for air. How quick is my heart racing? "And a lot of them."

"Nails?" She asks in confusion. "What are you going to build with them?"

She's thinking tinkertech.

This isn't going to be tinkertech, but not any less useful because of that.

"We are going to build caltrops. And we'll need eggs too." Before she can ask questions I elaborated. "You fill them with sand and cover the hole with duct tape. That way you always have sand to throw at your enemy's eyes. Powdered glass or pepper also works."

She scowls. "That sounds nasty."

"Don't argue with the results."

"Can't you just build your stun gun as you promised?"

I grumble under my breath. I di promise that, didn't I? "No luck there. There's something that I'm missing." For more than I have tried, the blueprints for a non-lethal range weapon still elude me. I still don't fully understand how my power works, it looks broad at first glance but lacking in specifics. That isn't how tinker powers are supposed to work, right? They allow for adaptation and creativity. Mine's as if it had a very specific and limited number of 'blueprints' I can build, being extremely hard for me to deviate from them. That's the antithesis of how powers should work and of what the entities want! But maybe I have been looking at this the wrong way. My problem isn't that my power lacks non-lethal options, it's that I have been focusing on 'range'. I do have a blueprint that fits my needs. "I could use the Psi Blade."

I jump to my feet and start pacing back and forth around Taylor's room.

"Yes?" She asks, straightening up as her curiosity is piqued.

That's it! Forget about a ranged weapon, I can do this with a melee one! "I can improve it. Give it a secondary mode that allows it to function as a Darkcoil."

"I don't know what that is but continue."

I can see it in my mind! How is that I didn't see it before? It will be so easy! "The attack won't be lethal but will discharge its energy around the target, incapacitating everyone in some 3 meters radius. But the effect won't last more than a couple seconds," That's a problem. A big problem. Not enough time to secure the enemies. "But if I improve it with a Stunner it will also release an electric shock that will knock out a fully grown man for several minutes." That's it! A full room of unconscious people in one swing of the blade!

"That sounds like something I can use."

No, she can't.

Too dangerous.

"But it's no good, you'd need to get close for it to work."

"I'm fine with that, I'll just be careful."

"No, no, no." I shake my head. Solution. Solution. I need to find a solution. "You need… you need something to go in and out of combat quickly." Once again my power provides me with the answer. "A teleporter. Yes, a teleportation band with a very short range but a very fast recharge rate. Fast enough for you to go in, hit the enemies, and get out."

"How much time do you need to build that?"

Damn it, Taylor! I know you're excited but you aren't asking the right questions! Just think for a damn moment! "Several hours but that's not the problem, I'm lacking far too many resources."

Taylor dashes to her wardrobe, opens it, and starts pulling out a lot of stuff, hurling her clothes all over the place.

"What are you doing?"

One by one Taylor pulls out dozens of objects. Odds and ends of every shape and color. There are some electric dolls, a flashlight with the face of Minnie Mouse, and even one of those old handheld game systems, those that advertise having more than 900 games with half of them being Tetris. There's even a mini TV there! But one that looks to be broken. In fact, none of these artifacts seemed to be working.

"Is this enough?"

I make a quick mental calculation and… no, it's still not enough. Not enough! I could build the upgrade to the Blade with this but the problem is the teleporter. Something that complex needs rarer materials.

Unless…

There's something else I can build using Annette's jewelry. A crystalline matrix, an incredibly complex system that will be almost alive and that once built will start growing on its own, allowing me to harvest it for resources. It won't be a perfect solution, it'll only let me replace some electronics once the crystals have grown big enough, but overall it will cheapen some of my future projects. I will just need some extra time.

"Yes, it is." I press my fingers together while I think. "How's your suit going?"

"Nowhere near done. I will need another month and a half to finish it."

"What part is ready?"

"The shirt."

"That's the most important part." Gunshots are bad. Gunshots to the chest are worse. "Go get yourself a mask, and while I build your equipment start building those caltrops and filling those eggs because tomorrow night we go on patrol."

"Yes!" She rushes towards the kitchen.

"Also, Taylor?"

She pauses, staring at me.

"Start thinking about a name."

 

[Poliamida]

In Nuclear Fire 6​

Reboot finished,

Capacitors loaded,

All systems green.

"So?" Taylor asks next to me. "Is it working?"

To answer her question, I trigger the device. There's a flash of light and a moment of disorientation, but it works and in a blink I'm teleported across the attic. I should have been more careful with my destination, though, because I end up landing on an unstable pile of boxes. I slip, fall, and the boxes follow.

"Kids, what are you doing up there?" The voice comes from somewhere downstairs.

"Nothing, Danny/dad." We reply at the same time.

"Okay, I'm going to sleep. Don't make too much noise."

"Yes, Danny/dad."

None of us move a single muscle for several seconds after hearing the door to his bedroom closing.

Taylor's then the first to speak.

"Are we ready?"

I look down at what I have built. 'Ready' is a strong word. My mental calculation was way off and I was forced to cut several corners to make all the devices work.

The first one to go was the independent power source of the teleportation belt, which now shares battery with the Blade. As a result of that, both the Blink and the Darkcoil share the same cooldown. To give Taylor the option to use one after the other in quick succession, she can disable the blade altogether for a couple of seconds.

And talking about Darkcoil, I had to remove the in-built target selection VI. Normally the blade would be able to automatically discriminate friends from foes to stun, but I lacked the circuitry for that. The solution was to link the Blade to my Visor, giving me the job of Taylor's spotter. By default, the blade will hit all the targets that surround her, but I can select who to spare if the need arises.

What I thankfully had materials for, was a second visor for Taylor. I made it cheap by making it wirelessly share programs and processing power with mine. It will only work when the two are close, but it'll allow us to share sound and visuals.

"Not as prepared as I'd want us to be, but this will have to do."

She gives me a determined nod and pulls out her top to reveal the grey spider web shirt underneath. It's cold outside so she adds a dark grey jacket to her look, the pockets excellent to carry more equipment, like the caltrops and the eggs. She equips the blink band, the blade, and the visor before rolling her hair and hiding the rest of her face behind a balaclava.

With all that bulk, and her hair hidden, it's difficult to tell that there's a girl underneath all of that.

I dress up in a similar fashion of dark blues and greys with my visor and a balaclava of my own.

"So this is it, right?" She says shifting her weight from foot to foot. "This will be my first night out."

Yes, her first night, more than a month before what should have been her fight against Lung. I feel like saying some words of encouragement. "And so start the adventures of Tech-Priest and… I'm sorry, what name did you pick for yourself?"

She suddenly finds the floor very interesting. "I… the only thing I could think about was Ladybug."

I try not to chuckle. I fail. "Taylor, honey, you do not look like a 'Ladybug'."

"Do you have any better ideas?"

"Not really, no." I shrug and clear my throat. "And so begin the adventures of Tech-Priest and Ladybug. It doesn't matter what we do, it only matters that we have fun while doing it."

I activate my Visor to see if Danny's asleep. With that confirmed, I set a beacon for the teleporter on the top of a roof some hundred meters away, at the edge of the band's range. Taylor puts an arm around my shoulders and together we teleport into the night.

---

If I didn't know any better I'd say that Brockton Bay at night isn't particularly different from any other city. There are no fires, no police barricades, and no explosions that ruptured the space-time continuum.

Of course, I do know better. We're still a couple of weeks before things get really ugly so this is nothing more than the calm before the storm.

Our search for troubles takes us south to Downtown, then east, and from there we follow the boardwalk all the way to the North.

The Blink Band proves its worth by allowing us to cover all that distance in just an hour, instead of the several it would take us on foot. Even with that, we fail to find any criminals to beat up.

"This wasn't how I thought my first night out would go." Taylor says looking at the empty streets.

"What were you expecting? For Kaiser to show up, challenge you to a one-on-one duel, you defeating him and then dragging him to the PRT?"

"Well, no." She does sound a bit embarrassed by my description. "But... something, you know? At least a robbery or anything that I could stop."

And like summoned by her words, a warning suddenly flares on my visor. Taylor, who received the same message on hers, grabs me and presses me underneath a roof just in time to see a figure fly over the streets on a hoverboard.

I quickly add an identification to my visor, labeling the person as 'Kid Win' of the 'Wards' faction. He isn't alone, though, as another person follows close behind, this one flying on his own power. That's Aegis, the current leader of the Wards.

I add his label too as we see them heading towards the trainyard.

"Should we follow?"

I answer Taylor's question with a nod and we start teleporting behind them, being careful to not be noticed.

My technology isn't good enough to just crack the PRT signal, at least I don't think it is, but it allows me to listen to what the two Wards are saying.

'We're approaching the site of the disturbances.' Kid Win informs what I assume is the PRT console on the other side of the radio. Immediately my visor registers the unmistakable sound of gunshots. Several of them in fact, some that are even fully automatic. 'Yes, understood.'

'How long for reinforcements?' Aegis asks next. Despite being the leader he seems to be delegating to Kid Win. I don't know if it's to train him or because Kid Win's equipment allows for better communications.

'Ten minutes'.

They take cover behind a billboard, and we behind the chimney of an old factory far away from their sight.

From there we see what attracted the PRT's attention. There's a building next to a dock that advertises itself as a caffé. Surrounding it there's a group of some ten men firing at the place. Inside it, there's a group of another five entrenched men who're firing back.

My visor identifies three bodies scattered around, one inside and two more on the street. I'm not sure of what gang the two groups belong to.

Next to me, Taylor straightens up. "P-Tech Priest, how many people can the blade stun at the same time?"

Yes, she's thinking the same thing I'm thinking. "It's not the number of people but the area. The ones on the street are too scattered for you to take down at the same time, but the ones inside the house you can knock in one hit."

According to the timer I set, we only have 8 minutes until the PRT reinforcements arrive.

Taylor goes quiet for a moment. "Okay, my bugs are ready."

"Anything that can deliver a punch?"

"Fire ants, spiders, and paper wasps."

I nod. "Let's do this then."

There's a sudden shift in the flow of the battle as the attackers scream and flail around with cockroaches, spiders, and ants crawling over their pants while wasps circled them, stinging them over and over again. That would have turned them into sitting ducks for the defenders, but that's when Taylor goes in. In a flash of light, she's inside the room, and before the defenders can even register her presence she attacks.

The result is… much, much better than what I anticipated. There's a discharge of dark-colored energy followed by arcs of electricity that jump from target to target, only sparing Taylor.

7 minutes for reinforcements and one group is already down with no casualties.

'Console, did you see that? Yes, understood.'

But the light show hasn't been ignored and that's when the two Wards intervene.

"Tech-Priest, what's going on out there?" I can sense the nervousness in Taylor's voice. She's out of energy and it will be several seconds before she can use any of her items again.

"Kid Win's shooting at the other gang. I think it's a stun laser." We need one of those. "Aegis' just body-slamming them." His enhanced physiology allows him to out-fight any normal human and ignore gunshots. Not like he needs to put much effort into it because the bug bites have left the shooters already half-incapacitated. "It's over, they are all down." And that's when I Kid Win aims his board towards the caffé. "Shit! They are going for you!"

20 seconds for the recharge.

Looking left and right, Taylor finds an open window that leads to a balcony. She jumps through it.

15 seconds.

Kid Win goes into the room through a second window. He looks around and then notices the balcony.

10 seconds. I don't know if we'll have enough time.

Kid Win approaches the balcony.

5

4

3

2

1

There! Her systems are back online, so Taylor can just… jump out of her hiding spot and hit Kid Win with the Darkcoil.

"Ladybug, what are you doing?!"

"I panicked!"

"Kid Win!"

And there's Aegis charging in. He blasts through the wall just in time to see Kid Win hit the floor, only to immediately cry in surprise and take his hands to his eyes. Taylor… she just used the black eggs! I'm so proud!

That moment of distraction allows her to flee by jumping down to the street below.

"Throw something off the dock!" I radio her.

"What?"

"Now!"

She grabs a piece of broken brick and hurled it in, making a sonorous splash when it hits the water. The distraction works and Aegis goes to investigate, thinking that Taylor just jumped there. Too late he realizes that he has been tricked, and with the Band recharged once again Taylor teleports back to me.

I grab her by the wrist and together we flee the scene with the sound of the PRT sirens closing in.

---

It's around three in the morning when we finally return to the attic. We didn't stop running since the incident so just now we have the chance to slow down and talk about what happened.

"I think that went fairly well." I tell her in whispers to not wake Danny up.

"That was a disaster." She cries, massaging her face. "I can't believe I attacked a Ward."

"Live and learn, next time we'll do better."

"This was a terrible mistake."

"Taylor!" I grab her by the shoulders. "Listen to me. You are fine, I am fine, so we can only go up from there. Now, the important thing is, how are you feeling?"

She lets herself fall into a seated position so she can take the balaclava off. "My hands are trembling, my heart is pumping, and I feel like a porcupine the way my hair is standing on end." She takes a deep breath. "And honestly? I don't remember when was the last time I felt this good."

"That's the spirit!" I palm her back. "Are we doing this again?"

"Oh, absolutely. But not any time soon. I need some time to rest."

"Yeah, me too."

She picks her clothes up and makes her way back to her room. Truth be told I'm feeling mostly the same and in desperate need of several hours of sleep.

But there's something that's nagging me on the back of my head. It's a sensation that refuses to leave me alone, something related to my power. I don't know how to properly explain it but I'm sure, without any shadow of a doubt, that at this time next week my power will be gone. I'm not about to lose them completely but I'll lose access to all the things I can build right now. And replacing them I will get… something else. I don't know what but also related to tinkering.

So that's what my power's special gimmick is! That's why it feels so constrained, it switches at random every so many days!

Damn it, I so much don't need this right now! I've been banking on the idea of saving up materials and slowly building towards my more expensive blueprints, but with this? This means that I can't think long-term with my powers as I'm unable to predict what they'll turn into.

Now I need the drone more than ever before. Its self-modification properties will be invaluable once the switch happens as it'll allow me to adapt on the fly. It's just that useful! And once it receives enough materials it can rearrange into new forms, like the Mecha-Hydralisk for combat, or the Mecha-Mutalisk for aerial reconnaissance, or…

Wait, what? Those names… I didn't come up with them, those have just been provided by my power.

My mouth goes dry.

Fuck, those are Mecha-Zergs!

The band and the blade… those are Protoss! And the Visor is Terran!

Fuck, I have the power of Starcraft!

How is that I didn't notice before?

Fuck, we should have stayed and stripped Kid Win of all his equipment!

 

[Poliamida]

In Nuclear Fire 7​

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

I lick my lips, as I consider which hand to attack with.

Taylor, who's showing her back to me, remains tense.

Having settled on one, I swipe with my left aiming at her knee. Without needing to see me, she tries to sidestep, but she gets entangled on her own feet, stumbles, and I manage to hit her exposed flank.

"Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!" She groans, as she falls to the ground.

"Are you alright over there?" I offer her a hand that she promptly accepts.

"Yeah. I need more practice with this." We are in the abandoned factory. The first building we found a week ago, this time devoid of uncomfortable bodies. We don't know what happened to it, and just assume that someone complained about the smell.

We go back into position to restart the exercise.

The idea's relatively simple: Taylor puts a fly on each of my limbs, and I proceed to punch and kick her at random, hoping for her to evade through bug-sense alone.

It works!

The problem now is that she simply lacks the speed, and training to react on time. That's something to be fixed with exercise.

After a couple more minutes of that, we drop, exhausted, to the ground. The punches and kicks weren't that draining, but Taylor refused to start without twenty minutes of running followed by half an hour of calisthenics. It was during that time when I realized that she's in far, far better shape than I am.

"Have you thought about taking self-defense lessons?" I ask while passing her a bottle of water.

"With what money?"

That's an excellent point. Can I build a training bot or something similar?

I make a mental note on that.

"Have you figured out what the problem with your power is?"

After the mild panic attack that I suffered the previous night, I decided to tell her. Not that my power's based on a videogame but that it'll soon switch into something else. It was the right thing to do, we're partners in crime now after all! And I don't want to screw her over by being unable to complete something she wants.

The good thing is that maybe the next tree will have the stun rifle that Taylor has been asking for. See? Everything will work out at the end.

"I don't think it's a problem but a feature." I say scratching my chin. "My specialty will change and that will allow me to build new things."

"But you don't know what."

"No, I don't and that's frustrating me. I need to finish my drone before the week's up." Figuring my specialty was like opening a floodgate. Now my brain is full of hundreds of blueprints, each one more absurd than the last. From plasma cannons and bombs to giant mechas and freaking Motherships. And even those pale in comparison to the Zerg. The living, breathing Zerg that could eat this planet in weeks if left unchecked.

Of course I'm not going to build them, at least not the biological ones. I find them unpleasant to look at, lacking the elegance and refinement of their mechanical counterparts.

And now I feel sad again thinking about all the awesome stuff that I won't be building because my time is running out.

My sour mood must be reflected in my face because Taylor places a comforting hand on my shoulder. "Could you do it if you dismantle all your other stuff?"

I did think about that. "Maybe if I dismantle everything. But I don't want to sacrifice all our stuff for this one project. You know what they say about putting all your eggs in one basket."

"Yeah, I don't want us to go back to square one either."

She tosses me the water bottle back and, with every muscle of my body groaning in pain, I put it back in the bag. "Ugh, my everything hurts! I don't want to imagine how I'll wake up tomorrow."

"Come on, after that little warm-up?"

Taylor has been in an incredibly good mood since last night and that translated into some light banter.

Well, she has been training for more than a month at this point as preparation for her hero career. I have a lot of ground to catch up to.

"In my defense, I'm not supposed to see actual combat. I'm the Q to your Bond!" Good thing that those two predated Zion's arrival.

"Didn't you tell me to always have a backup plan in case of emergencies?"

I grumble under my breath.

"Come on, you should join me in the mornings for my daily work-out! It will be fun. And it will be nice to have someone to do it with."

This girl's going to be the death of me. Maybe literally considering who she is. "Fine, I'm in."

I'm going to regret this.

---

The sound of the alarm makes me jump off my bed. The source of it is my visor which I turned into an alarm clock the previous night and is currently displaying the 6 am.

Why did I set it up so early? I still have an hour before I have to get ready for school!

"Peter! Are you ready for some jogging?"

Oh, right, that.

Yes, here comes the regret.

---

Forcing one foot in front of the other, I drag myself into my classroom despite the protest of my sore limbs and my eyelids that insist on remaining closed.

The first period is maths. Fuck me, I don't want to deal with that!

Oh, well, I'm too freaking tired to argue with the teacher in any case so I can use the time to relax. I'll just rest my eyes for a moment.

When I wake up, I find out that I'm once again in detention.

---

During my lunch detention, Missy approaches me. As far as I understand it other students aren't supposed to interact with me during the period, but I guess that she gets a free pass for being my partner. I also suspect that the school might have realized that their 'detentions' are more like rewards for me, but that might be giving them too much credit for. "So, do you want to talk about what happened earlier?"

Today's menu is a tasteless piece of hard meat with vegetables that I swallow while talking to her. "What is there to talk about? In my defense this time I accept that I was the one in the wrong."

"Really now?" That mocking grin of hers promises pain. "Then would you mind sharing why you fell asleep? Didn't you take enough sleep during the weekend?"

I didn't, but that isn't the sole reason why I'm so tired. "It's my cousin's fault. She's a slave-driver who insists that I exercise with her during the mornings. What kind of madman does that at 6 am?"

"I do."

"Thanks for proving my point." I'm immediately hit by the edge of a book. "Ouch!"

"You deserve it." She then opens that same book and shows me a blank page where there are some formulas written in pencil. "And talking about points, can you help me with my math homework?"

"Sure, that's what I'm best at." I look up at what she has written. "Well, your problem is here, you forgot to turn the exponent into a root there."

"Of, course! Silly me." Missy exclaims while slapping her forehead. "How could I have missed that?" Does she need to be that dramatic? It's not a big deal.

"Eh," I shrug. "It's a simple mistake, a lot of people make it when they start."

"Yeah, yeah. Say, can I have your phone number? If I need some more help I can call you."

"Sure." I write down the number to Taylor's home and give it to her.

"Thanks!"

And with the sound of the bell, we make our ways back to our respective classes.

All things considered, I'm slightly surprised that Missy already started with quadratic equations.

---

I finish my day of school without further troubles and make my way back to Taylor's.

"I'm ba-"

"Peter!" Taylor cries at me rushing down the stairs with panic written on her face. That can't be good. "Close the door." I do. "When I got home I found this in the mailbox."

It's a flyer.

A flyer urging families to enroll parahuman children in the Wards program.

Shit. Good thing that Danny isn't home yet.

"To the attic!"

We close the windows and I put my visor on to scan the block. "Okay, no surveillance vehicles around us. I can also see that the neighbors received the same flyers." Electronics sensor, zoom, and X-rays. I seriously love my visor. "But that could be the PRT masking who the flyers are actually intended for."

I must say that I'm making a really good job pretending to keep my cool.

The opposite to mine is Taylor's reaction, who looks as if she's about to start pulling her hairs out. "This is bad. Were we followed? Can they force us in if they find out? We did attack the wards! Why did we run?!"

What could have happened? How did they…

Missy.

Oh, fuck me! Of course that question from earlier was too advanced for her! It was a trap!

"Taylor, breathe!" I tell her, finding her desperation contagious. "If they suspect one of us, then it's me."

"You? Why you? They didn't see you!"

"My school must have informed them about me."

And now her panic gives place to the anger. "Why? What did you do at school?"

My resolve is tested under her glare. "Nothing!" I lie. "But schools inform the PRT about students that go through extreme experiences."

As fast as it came, all that anger banishes as her brain seemed to go through a hard crash. "What?"

"Adding to that my behavior problems, they must suspect that I have powers. So this," I gesture at the flyer. "Must be them assuming that Danny also knows and trying to convince him to add me to the program." Shows what they know. Danny wouldn't realize that I have powers even if I paraded around the house in power armor.

Taylor blinks at me in confusion. "Slow down and go back. What was that about schools informing the PRT?"

Is that actually canon? I remember reading something about how the locker incident was badly archived, and that being the reason why the PRT never came to interview her. "Yes. Power manifest during moment of extreme emotion. So, if something big happens to a child -like the death of their parents- the school informs the PRT so they can go check if they are capes."

What follows reminds me of the implosion of an apartment block in slow motion.

The first ones to collapse are Taylor's ankles, then her hip. With a trembling hand she searches for a spot to sit on the floor, and with her remaining energies she drags her knees against the chest.

I can't see her spirit, but I'm sure it's lying in pieces all over the floor.

"W-why," Her voice sounds as dead as she looks. "Why didn't they tell the PRT about me?"

I don't have an answer to give her. I don't know if that was malice, incompetence or a genuine error. I also don't know who is to be blamed, if Winslow or the PRT. Knowing the setting I'm in, the answer could be all of the above.

Seriously, fuck that locker, fuck the government, fuck Winslow, and fuck its principal in particular.

I sit next to Taylor and give her a one-armed hug. "It's what the school administration should have done."

Her face is hidden between her knees but I hear the distinctive sound of sobbing. "Always the same story. I try to keep pushing but every day is harder. Sometimes I don't know if anyone would even care if I died."

That's not a nice thing to think. I should know, some years ago I went through a similar phace. "They are imbeciles that don't value you. That's them being in the wrong, not you." I offer her a handkerchief that she uses to clean her face.

"Thank you. For believing that." She… oh, God, poor handkerchief. I allow her to keep it. "What should we do now?"

I press the tips of my fingers together while I let my brain work. "Now we keep doing what we have been doing. A sudden shift in our behavior can be as damning as any other evidence. So we go out, we train, we scavenge, but are careful about it."

She nods. "That sounds good." With a visible effort, she manages to curl her lips into a smile. "You know, I was about to suggest we stopped our morning runs but thanks for convincing me against that."

That cheeky brat!

I let her win that one. She has gone through enough already.

---

There are no further alarms after that one and the week progresses smoothly. I keep using my visor to look after surveillance vehicles but nothing suspicious shows up in the HUD. Maybe ours was nothing more than an overreaction and the flyers a coincidence, or maybe the PRT has decided to go for the 'wait and see' approach hoping for Danny to make the first move. Little they know that man has the initiative of a dripping wet blanket.

In matters of tinkering, the khaydarin crystal has continued growing providing me with the materials needed to finish Taylor's equipment. There are no more cut corners and now she sports a fully functional set of Visor, Blade, and Teleporter.

And then coms Thursday.

"I must say, you do have talent." Missy says looking at the drawing I brought to school.

I came up with a very elegant solution to mask my tinkering: I used two sheets of paper to write my idea, a normal and a tracing one. I wrote all the nonsensical numbers and symbols that my power needs to work on the tracing sheet, so when I removed it I was left with a very good drawing of a marine armor. No tinkertech here, no sir.

I just hope that's enough to trick her.

"Thank you. Drawing has always been a hobby of mine."

"Can I keep it?"

I open my mouth to reply but the words don't come out. That's mine! It's something that I created and that I needed to build! Who is she for me to give it to her freely?

No, no, that makes no sense. Those aren't my real thoughts! That's my power talking! I brought the blueprint of the armor because it's not something I want to build! Or better said, not something that I can build before my powers shift.

It's something I can allow myself to lose! Still, the idea of giving it to someone else…

"S-sure." Damnit, I stuttered! Why did I have to stutter there?

"Thank you, Peter." She puts it inside her folder and leaves, allowing me to continue lunch in peace.

That could have gone better.

Would Armsmaster or Kid Win be able to tell if that's true tinkertech from a drawing of the finished product? I don't think so. There are no formulas or symbols, and no details on the inner mechanism either, but I can't be sure with how arbitrary powers work.

The PRT's claws are slowly but steadily closing around me. And once they do I'll have to say 'bye-bye' to all my plans of replacing humanity with robotic doppelgangers.

I do have an option but it isn't an idea I'm totally into.

I could just rob an electronics store.

The problem there is that I don't know what kind of defenses a place like that will have. In the world of Worm, where tinkers run amok, it only makes sense to be extra careful with that kind of stuff.

There has to be a reason why one doesn't hear about Hardware Stores being robbed daily, or why the PRT doesn't set up traps in them for enemy tinkers.

Damn, there's still a lot that I don't know about this world!

Too many maybes and unknowns that can easily screw me over.

With those and many other thoughts flying inside my head, I make my way back to the classroom.

And that's when I see it.

Glued to the bulletin board there's a newspaper clipping announcing an event to take place in Arcadia High.

Arcadia High Science Fair!

Come look at the amazing inventions of our students

Open all weekend​

That…

That could work!

In a science fair, there won't only be electronics but also rare metals, magnets, chemicals, and maybe even a geod or two. I'll be sacrificing the quantity of the store for the diversity and maybe even the quality of the fair.

Ok, no. Let's calm down and try to think this through. I have to consider the security, and Arcadia is the place where the Wards go, so it's just logical for it to have some powerful defenses.

But will they be better than the Shopping Mall's?

Probably. Children do go there en masse. But the fair is an extraordinary event that will attract even more people than usual, many of them outsiders coming from all over the city to look at the stands.

Logic dictates that if one were to find a breach in Arcadia's security, it'd be during an even like that. And the fair will be open all weekend, so the objects will most likely be left there during the night, ready for the taking.

It'll be stupidly dangerous. Maybe far more stupid than dangerous. But if I manage to pull this off I won't be worrying about resources for a long time.

My mind set, I start planning.

 

[Poliamida]

In Nuclear Fire 8​

"Goodbye Peter, see you on Monday!" Missy waves at me as she walks to her bus.

"Goodbye, Missy!" I wave back, trying not to think about the fact that we could end up seeing each other much earlier. Like if, for example, she's one of the Wards to respond to tonight's attack. Or if I get captured and forced into the Wards with her.

No, no, those are the thoughts of a defeated fatalist. Very much me-thoughts but I can't allow myself to be like that during the final hours of my preparation.

"So, Peter, will we be going to the factory today?" Taylor asks me after I arrived home. I very much liked that we started calling our impromptu hideout 'the factory'.

"Sorry, but not now. I want to finish this."

She looks disappointed by my answer. "Okay, I have some homework to do anyway. But tomorrow we'll go out on patrol, right?"

"Of course we will!" Assuming I don't spend the weekend behind bars.

I haven't told her about Arcadia and my plans involving it. I just don't think that's a line she's willing to cross. Yes, we attacked the Wards but that was an honest accident while what I'm about to do is a very premeditated affair.

That only puts even more pressure on me to do it right.

And the first step towards my success is the object I'm building now. It cost me all my remaining scrap, but it'll be the most important piece in my endeavor: an EMP grenade. Once activated it'll fry all the unprotected electronics of the area. It'll destroy a lot of useful material but a lot more will be left unscathed, and I'll be free to roam around without the danger of being recorded.

The authorities will be alerted once Arcadia's security system goes down, but with my teleporter I can get in, steal the useful stuff, and get out in seconds.

Also, if they suspect parahuman involvement I hope that the security guards will be ordered to hold back until Protectorate reinforcements arrive. That should give me even more valuable seconds.

"Peter!"

Taylor's voice makes me jump to my feet. "What?"

"Dinner's ready."

"Dinner?" I look at the clock. Already several hours have passed since the last time I checked. The afternoon has gone in a flash during my tinkering. "Oh."

"You look very distracted. More than usual." Taylor's concern is appreciated but ultimately unneeded.

"Yeah, sorry. Just thinking about what will happen with my powers tomorrow." That technically isn't a lie. As far as Taylor knows, I have given up on collecting the necessary materials for the drone and will be dismantling our equipment. I don't feel like correcting her.

Dinner is, as usual, a somber affair. Now even more noticeable after Taylor's improved mood that Winslow has failed to crush so far. And I just can't shake the feeling that she keeps glancing at me.

I help with the dishes and then go back to my room. With my EMP grenade finished I have nothing else to do but wait, and wait, and wait a bit more.

At some point I fall asleep but that's what alarm clocks were made for. It's midnight, I'm still tired, but the sudden influx of adrenaline pushed it away. I ready my visor and check around the house. Danny's asleep and Taylor… is too. Perfect!

I change clothes, tie the Blink Band around my waist, equip the Blade, and teleport away.

---

My second nocturnal trip around the city isn't anything at all like the one we had with Taylor almost a week ago. That time we went in zig-zag around the city without a clear destination in mind, stopping every so many blocks to check for trouble or criminals to fight.

This time I have a very clear destination in mind and an objective to fulfill.

Arcadia… is most definitely not Clarendon. And I'm absolutely sure it isn't Winslow either. Seriously, no school has any right to be this pretty. It's four stories high, and with an auditorium and gym to boot. The cafeteria's on the southern side, and I can see it because of the massive glass panels that lead to the gardens outside. There's a parking lot for cars and another one for bicycles, with no graffiti or litter ruining the view.

Damn, I wouldn't mind attending classes here.

Another thing that I see, and that's far more important for my problem at hand, are the security guards stationed in and outside the place. With a glance I count eight, three in each of the two main entrances and another two patrolling the place, but my visor reveals several more inside. Also cameras. Lots and lots of cameras.

The good thing is that Arcadia's surrounded by tall buildings, and so I have several places to use as watchpoints while I scout the place.

This operation should have needed several days of scouting just to get a proper feeling for the guards' patrol routes and schedules. I'd have felt more comfortable if I had done this earlier, but that's what the grenade is for: a battering ram that will crack Arcadia open like an eggshell.

Now, where's the science fair? In the gym. What are the defenses of the gym? Three cameras and two security guards.

I can also see the computer lab on the second floor but I doubt I'll have time to hit both places at the same time. Even more so considering that dismantling the computers will take me several minutes each.

As sad as it is, the lab isn't an option.

Ok, I know what to do.

First I'll need to cause a distraction somewhere else in the building to attract the guards' attention. There's a blind spot on the third floor next to a fire hydrant. I'll teleport in, open the hydrant, and then teleport out. An EMP grenade later I'll move in for the kill.

Yes, I like how that sounds.

My visor indicates it's 2 AM. I have spent the last hour just looking at the place but now I'm ready for it.

I can win! I feel great! I can do this!

My little chant done, I clench my fists, set the beacon for my teleporter, and…

And suddenly I find myself face down as someone tackles me to the ground.

Who? How? When?

I trash around but I can't break free of their grip.

A villain? A hero? Maybe Aegis? No, Glory Girl! It has to be Glory Girl!

I try to activate the blade but discover it's no longer attached to my wrist. How did that happen? How did they know it was there?

And then I see a very familiar visor staring down at me. Familiar because I built it.

"T-Ladybug?"

"What.The fuck. Do you think you're doing?" Taylor's tone sends a chill down my spine. She's most definitely not happy with me.

"W-what does it look like?"

"It looks to me like you're about to rob Arcadia."

"Yeah, it is just what it looks like."

She steps out of my chest, grabs me by the neck of my jacket, and pulls me into a seated position. "Can you explain to me what crossed through your head when you decided to come here?"

At least that's a question I can answer. "The science fair."

"The what?!"

"The science fair. I was expecting to find a lot of useful material to farm." She just remains there staring down at me, so I use the chance to ask a question of my own. "And, mhh, how did you find me?"

She pulls her visor out a bit to rub her eyes. "My bugs woke me up when you teleported out of the house." Okay, that sounds amazingly useful. "Then I dusted off my bicycle and followed you here." She throws a thumb over her shoulder aiming at the fire escape.

Bicycle? I didn't know she owned one of those. "But how did you know I was here? I'm sure I was moving faster than any bicycle." To answer my question, she presses the side of her visor. Mine immediately starts beeping, showing an arrow pointing at where Taylor's is. "Oh. I had totally forgotten I had installed that function."

She raises her hands as if fighting against herself to not strangle me. "Why would you do this? Why would you rob Arcadia?"

For the first time since arriving here, I feel the age people believe I have. "Because I need to."

"No, you don't!"

"I do! And why do you care? Why are you trying to stop me?" I talk back, not bothering to moderate my volume. "Taylor, they never did anything for you, they don't even know you exist. You owe them nothing!"

"I care because this is Arcadia! This is the only fucking place in this city that's worth a damn!"

Is she being serious? Is she being this self-righteously stupid? "Oh, please, it can't be as good as you imagine."

"Of course it can't! I already know that, do you think I'm stupid?" Her reaction makes me flinch. "Nothing in my life has ever gone right, so why would Arcadia be any different? But I want to believe that there's a better place! I want to believe that, maybe, there's a place where I could be happy. That's one of the few things that keeps me going every day!"

I… shit. "I didn't know you felt that way."

"Of course you didn't. You never asked!"

Now I feel like I screwed up. "Yeah, that-"

"So why didn't you tell me about this?"

"Because it's a crime." I answer with a shrug. "I thought you'd try to stop me."

"Of course I'd try to stop you because what you're doing is stupid!"

"Well, it was the easiest way I saw to get the resources I needed."

Taylor stands up and walks back and forth before returning to me. "How can you be this smart but so, so stupid?!"

In her defense, that isn't the first time someone has asked me that. "I like to consider that as one of my charming quirks."

"Living with you will be an experience." She pinches the bridge of her nose and under her breath I can swear I hear her counting up to ten. "Okay, what do you need? Can't you get it somewhere else?"

I push myself to my feet. Is she trying to help me? "I thought about assaulting an electronics store but I assumed their security would be higher."

"And you assumed that a school wouldn't have that much security because…?"

"Because it's a school, what kind of monster attacks one?"

I can only imagine the face she's giving me underneath her mask. "Of course, of course. But why Arcadia?"

"Because of the Science Fair as I said. They have a lot of different stuff. I'd be like a child in a candy store there!"

"And you can't find it somewhere else? Like…" She takes a step back and clenched her fists as if not sure what to say. "Like Winslow?"

I have to do a double-take at that. She's talking about attacking her High School. That hellhole of a place that should have been razed to the ground years ago.

Why didn't I think about that?! I'm a goddamn moron!

"I-"

"They have a computer lab! Some thirty computers in there, and the principal's office has an a/c unit and a better computer than anything we have in the lab."

"We-"

"S-so, if I take you to Winslow, can I convince you to not rob Arcadia?"

I take a moment to process everything she just said. "Yes, yes you can."

---

With a swipe of the blade, I cut open Winslow's back door, together with the chain that binds it.

We are in.

There's no need for scouting or complicated plans here. No security guards patrol these corridors, with only one at the entrance. Security cameras are almost nonexistent too, with some few real ones and many decoys.

What there is plenty of, is litter that the janitor hasn't cleaned yet, and a lot of graffiti spread over the walls. There are also broken locks, broken windows, and chipped paint.

"This is not a school, this is a bloody spittoon!" I don't bother hiding my voice as there's nothing, and no one, to hear us there.

"Don't remind me." Taylor hugs herself and glances over her shoulder as if expecting someone to jump out of the shadows. "These hallways look so big when there's no one in them."

"Try to imagine how they look to me." Something that my smaller size doesn't help with. "Now, where to?" I can use the visor to find my way to the lab but letting Taylor lead me sounds like the polite thing to do.

"Over here."

It's on the second floor where we find our objective.

"Oh, this is nice." As she said, there are some thirty computers neatly arranged in lines of fifteen. It would be impossible for us to take that many computers with us back home, but I don't need the entire things. "Help me break them open. I only need the electronics, so take out the motherboards and ignore the rest."

She wasn't kidding, those computers are old but they will fulfill their purpose as raw materials.

"Shit!" Taylor's curse is accompanied by the sound of a cracking motherboard. "Sorry about that."

I look at what she just did, and an idea comes to my brain. The main thing is to have fun, isn't it? I check my visor and… oh, look at that, Winslow's sole security guard is across the street buying cigarettes at a 24/7 store. What a tragedy. "Don't worry about it, I'll recycle it anywise so don't be afraid to be a little rough." I pull another component, tearing the wires out, and as I do so I very purposely hit a monitor with the back of my arm. It hits the floor with a bang of broken glass. "Oops." I tell her with a smile.

I can't see her face, but I know that underneath the balaclava she's smiling too.

"Oh, Tech-Priest, how clumsy of you." She grabs one of the towers, drops it against the ground, and with a foot pressed against it she tears the wires out. "That's how you do it."

We hurl the keyboards across the room, smash computers opened with chairs, and even nail the mouses into the styrofoam ceiling.

We laugh as we trash the place, leaving pieces scattered all over the room. An hour later we are done, with our bags full of useful components and time to spare.

"Hey, Ladybug."

"Yes?"

"Want to go check if your headmistress has anything interesting?"

I can see her smiling underneath her mask.

One of the few cameras that does work is the one that leads to Blackwell's office, no surprise there, but the most worrisome thing is the proximity sensor. It's an older, cheaper model that will send an alarm to the authorities if activated. Same if I cut the power because it has a back-up battery.

Good thing that the EMP grenade will burn both the camera, the sensor, and the battery in one fell swoop, meaning that no signal will escape Winslow.

"Three, two, one." I make the countdown and the device triggers. It doesn't explode like a conventional grenade but unfolds as it emitted the pulse. Very useful for stealth operations. "Okay, let's go in." I also made a small field modification to reduce its radio of effect to just a couple meters, meaning that the only affected room is Blackwell's.

"Ugh, what's that smell?"

"Burnt plastic, Ladybug." After opening the door I see that the main server has been toasted. I also see several shelves with files and a desk where Blackwell's personal computer rests. Thankfully it has been spared due to being unplugged.

"I never liked this place."

"You were dragged here often?"

"At the start to discuss my conduct. Then I stopped complaining." There's a slight temblor in her voice, as if she's holding her anger back. I hear a cracking sound and see that the files and books are being covered in insects. "Why did no one believe me?"

That only cements my decision of what to do with this place, and I rush out of the office. "Follow me."

"What about the AC?"

"Ignore it."

"O-okay."

Our backpacks are full, and so are our pockets. This had been a great raid, amazing in fact, and these materials will last me a long while.

But there's one last thing to be done.

With her longer legs, Taylor has no trouble catching up to me as we go into the Gym. "Why did we come here? There are no computers here."

"I'm not here to collect materials, Ladybug."

On the back, there's a room with two important things: one is the storage full of wooden equipment, and the other is the pump station that controls Winslow's fire system. I'm kind of surprised that Winslow has one of those.

The Psi Blade makes short work of the engine, splitting it in half.

"What was that for?" Taylor takes a step back in surprise.

"To help me burn this place down."

She flinches at that. We had a lot of fun ruining the place, but burning it might be too much for her. "What?"

"Yes. This place is a hellhole. It's hurting you, and will only keep hurting you until you're done with it. I don't want you to go back here."

"I know that but-" She clutches her sides. "But that's a step too far."

Ok, I need to put my foot down. She needs to hear some hard truths. It will hurt but it's for her own good. "Ladybug, just once in your life, stop being the victim!" My words make her recoil. I have delivered a good punch and now I need to keep going. "It feels good, doesn't it? It makes you feel righteous, superior to your bullies, and it gives you the right to complain." I should know. I spent years acting like that. "Well, guess what? It doesn't fucking work like that! It's a drug, a placebo! Complaining does nothing and is just an excuse for you to avoid taking any action! If you are gonna be like that you might as well have stayed in that locker!" My words are violently cut short as I see stars, my surroundings spinning due to the fist that Taylor just delivered to my jaw.

"You fucking asshole!" She cries out.

I straighten up, checking if there's anything broken. "Now that, that's what I wanted you to do."

She sniffs, folding her arms over her chest. "What you said was terrible."

"But you didn't just take it and instead forced me to shut up."

"It doesn't work! Guess what, Sophia is stronger than me!" That's the first time she names one of them. "I tried that once. She just pushed me into the floor and didn't stop hitting until I gave up!"

That must have sucked, sure, but she still doesn't see what I was trying to tell her. "Ladybug, you don't fight your enemies where they are stronger. You are taller and bigger than me, so you could outfight me, but against your trio? You fight them in a field where you are the stronger one."

She clutches the side of her head. "You're talking about using my powers again."

"Yes. Or mine." That reminds me. "That was why you brought me here, didn't you? Why did you point me to Winslow if you didn't want me to do something stupid about it?"

She averts her eyes. "I pointed you at Winslow because I didn't want you attacking Arcadia."

"That's a lie and you know it. If you wanted that you could have pointed me towards Immaculata or Clarendon. Face it, you want this place gone, and don't want to accept that you're using me to get rid of it."

"I..." She keeps glancing between me and the destroyed engine.

Ok, ok. I am making progress. "Look, the system is against you, you won't win inside it. The only way you can win is by fighting on your own terms."

"This is not fighting! This is running away!"

Oh, for the love of me! How can she be this stubborn? "And what will staying here and getting beaten up every day accomplish?" I push back. "All that you are getting right now is making yourself miserable because you are too bullheaded to admit that you are in pain! Just end it! End the pain already!"

Taylor looks at me as if about to say something. And then she starts chuckling, and that chuckle turns into a laugh. "We'll both end in prison before the year is over, won't we?"

Her laugh proves contagious. "Only if we fail."

She keeps staring at me for what feels like an eternity. "Fuck it!" She throws her arms up in the air. "We might have left too much evidence here anyway. But give me the blade, I'll do it."

There isn't anything else to say after that. We walk to the storage room, and with the edge of the plasma blade, Taylor sets one of the wooden crates on fire.

We teleport to a roof across the street and don't go back home until we see the flames spreading into the main building.

---

Next morning we wake up to the news that Winslow has burnt to the ground.

 

[Poliamida]

In Nuclear Fire 9​

I remain silently staring at the TV. The images displayed are those of what used to be Winslow, now reduced to smoking rubble. The place is surrounded by police cars and the firefighter trucks that lie in wait in case the fires start again. From what the reporter's saying the causes of the fire are unknown, but soon the investigations will start.

What they will say, well, remains to be seen.

"This is terrible, how could such a thing have happened?" That comment comes from Danny to my right.

To my left, and using me as a shield against her father, is Taylor doing anything in her power to not look at either of us.

"Most fires are caused by electrical problems." I point out. "That's why there's so many during Christmas."

"Because of the lights, right? Every November we receive flyers about it from the firefighters."

Taylor doesn't participate in our conversation, trying only to become as small as she can. Her distress is plainly clear for everyone to see, but thankfully Danny has no idea about its true cause.

"This must be strange for you, Taylor. I don't know what we're going to do now, but I promise you we'll find a solution."

She still doesn't say anything, only curling deeper into herself

Eventually, he has to leave for work, leaving Taylor and me to enjoy our Saturday.

"He never noticed the bullying, did he?" I ask Taylor.

Slowly she unwinds, and as she does so I can see the marks that her jeans left against her face. "No. I never told him." She shakes her head. "God, I can't believe we actually did this."

"We did something productive, Taylor." I lift a finger. "And remember, we don't talk about that thing that we did."

"I know, I know. It's just that… don't take me wrong, one part of me is happy but the other is terrified."

"That's what changes do to people."

"And what a change this is." She chuckles. "I'm still unsure what's expecting me."

"Freedom, Taylor. Freedom's what expecting you." I proclaim with my hands on my waist. "Now, want me to prepare a celebratory breakfast?"

"I'll help you just in case you decided to set the kitchen on fire next."

"I feel offended by that! I'm not a pyromaniac."

"Maybe, but you're a lot of other stuff."

"That, I agree with."

---

I bite the toast, drink the milk, and tighten the bolts.

I bite the toast, drink the milk, and weld the wires.

I bite the toast, drink the… my cup is empty.

"Want me to bring you something to drink?"

"Thank you, Taylor. I'd appreciate that."

For the last hour, I have seen my drone slowly coming together. And it's a beautiful sight.

Soon enough Taylor returns with a glass of water. "So, how long until it's ready?"

The internal motors are ready and so is a good chunk of the outer carcass, but I'm just starting with the wiring. "A couple more hours."

"And what will exactly do?"

I do have an extensive list on my head, but I suspect that Taylor will appreciate the abridged version. "It will dig tunnels, repair my stuff, help me build new stuff, and process materials into useful forms."

"I can see why you wanted so badly to build it. It sounds extremely useful."

"I know, right?"

The hours roll on, Danny comes, and we enjoy a quick lunch before I return to my room. This time alone as Taylor is tired and seems to have started trusting me on tinkering maters.

It's about four in the afternoon when it's finally ready. I put it inside a bag and rushed to her room.

"Taylor, Taylor!" I knock at her door being careful not to accidentally open it.

"What?"

"It's ready! Want to come with me to see it's first activation?"

"Sure."

In the living room, we find Danny. The TV is on but seems to be there only to provide background sound, as Danny is currently reading a newspaper.

"Where are you kids going?" He asks without lifting his eyes from the pages.

This time it's Taylor the one who takes the initiative. "Do you know if the mini TV is in the basement?"

Mini… is she talking about the one she pulled from her closet and I turned into her visor? So she can lie! At least to her father. Must be the years of hiding the bullying.

"That old thing? I don't know what happened to it. But I think it was no longer working."

"We just want to make sure." She grabs me by the shoulder and forces me in front of her. "It's for Peter, you know? So he doesn't get bored in his room."

"Sure. Tell me if you need anything."

We march on.

The basement is as much of a mess as the last time I was there, maybe even more so considering that I didn't come back to put the boxes back in their place.

I set the bag on the ground and pull the drone out. Now, a fully grown Zerg Drone is the size of a big quad. This one isn't nearly that big, being the size of a dog, but that only means that I won't need that many resources to turn it into a hatchery and start producing more.

Taylor, though, doesn't look that surprised. "Is that it?"

"Yes! Isn't he cute?" I say scratching underneath his chin. "I think I'll name him George."

"And you complain about my 'Ladybug'?"

"Well, what would you name him?"

She pokes the inside of her cheek with her tongue. "Atlas."

I try to hide my surprise. Wasn't that the name that she gave to his flying giant scarab in canon? "Why Atlas?"

"Because he looks like a gigantic beetle."

"Not… that big, is it? I mean-"

"When was the last time you saw a beetle the size of a bulldog?"

I open my mouth but realize I don't have anything to say to that. "You know what? That's an excellent point." From my backpack, I also pull out our visitors. "I already linked our visors to the drone so we can both control it in case of emergency. Now, are you ready?"

She nods, adjusting hers to her face.

"Okay then." I rub my hands in excitement. "Let's do some magic." I press the button on the back of the drone and it expands into its full size. It has four articulated spikes on each side connected by a membrane that, when unfold, give the appearance of wings. They help with mobility by creating a very weak gravitational field to compensate for the tiny legs it has underneath. And in the front, at each side of the head, he has two claws that can turn from pincers to manipulate stuff, to a variety of tools to build and repair, and finally plasma buzz-saws to cut through the strongest of materials.

I can't contain myself and giggle with excitement seeing the little guy do a test run of his servo motors. Reminds me of a puppy stretching out for the first time.

"Can it fight?" Taylor asks, maybe noticing the saws.

"He can cut through metals, so he can defend himself. But lacks mobility and armor, and I'm most definitely not risking him in battle yet." This one drone is worth his weight in gold and losing him would be a disaster. I must ensure he turns into a hatchery ASAP. "Now, let's' put him to work!"

From my visor I run the program -which I immediately rename - and give him his first orders. The buzz saws start spinning and the little guy aims down, cutting through the concrete of the floor. His work is surprisingly silent, and in just a moment we lose sight of him as he tunnels underneath the house.

I could spend hours just tracking his progress but Taylor interrupts. "He's not going to cause any sinkholes, is he?"

"Fear not! The drone is an expert digger and knows how to reinforce the walls of his tunnels. I also added to his sensors functions similar to those of our visors, so he'll make sure not to damage power, gas, or water lines." I also added a function to map Brockton Bay's underground, scanning, and tunneling around man-made structures. If this works as I expect it to, it will help me locate Coil's bases. I know of the main one underneath downtown, but I remember him having several other small bases spread all over the city.

I switch the display in my visor and I can now see a 3D map of our surroundings, with the drone some meters below. The map is small but with time I hope to let it grow until it has encompassed the entirety of the bay.

Leaving the drone to continue his work, we return to our rooms, telling Danny on our way how disappointed we are for not finding the TV.

---

The rest of the day passes at a crawling speed. The knowledge that my power is about to change keeps me from making any further plans, and so I just wait for the great event.

Dinner comes and goes, and then with Taylor we move to the Attic to prepare for tonight's patrol. Because despite everything we went through, she still insists on going out.

"I don't know what I'd be doing if I knew something would happen to my power." She wonders out loud while she fills her belt bag with zip ties. They are a fast and easy way to keep normals tied up.

For my part, I'm loading my backpack with bottles of water and snacks. "Maybe freaking out in silence while pretending to be okay?"

She gives me a worried look at that. "Are you really that bad?"

I have to think for a moment about that. Honestly, there are times when I no longer know if I'm being sarcastic or not. "No. Well, I am frustrated because of all the things I won't be building." I so much wanted an Odin! "And yes, I'm a bit scared that my next tree won't be as good." I mean, it's Starcraft! It has AIs, lasers, giant robots and more! And what if the next tree doesn't mesh well with my drone? What if I don't like it or have trouble using it? My power can't be that cruel, right? "But I'll keep going and roll with the punches. At least I won't lose it."

"Yeah." Taylor sits cross-legged and plays with her toes. "Losing it would be horrible. After what happened, my power at least makes me feel like all I went through amounted to something, you know?"

Powers are very cruel compensation for indescribable amounts of pain and suffering. "Would you give your powers back if it meant going back and stopping any of that from happening?"

She takes a moment to reply. "I wouldn't even doubt it if it meant bringing mom back. But in exchange for stopping the trio? I don't know. I really don't."

Could I be able to bring Anette back? I know that the Protoss managed to replicate the memories of Fenix into a robot, but I don't know if I could make that work with a person that has been dead for years.

Maybe a future tree will give me a solution.

"Everyone wants to get powers but no one wants to go through the pain of getting them." I tell her, now waiting for the final minutes until midnight.

"Are all capes the same?"

"From what I know, yes. Some had it better, some had it worse, but they all went through terrible stuff."

She releases a sigh. "That means that the most powerful people on the planet are the most traumatized ones."

"And that's why the world is like it is."

"Shit."

"You said it." I give my backpack a last check and- I suddenly find myself in the ground. I feel dizzy. Everything is spinning uncontrollably around me.

"Peter!" Taylor rushes to my side and helps me sit down. "What's wrong?"

I glance at my visor and confirm that, yes, it's midnight.

"It's happening."

Is this what computers feel like when one deletes a file? Images that a moment ago were so clear in my mind are suddenly gone. It's like waking up from a dream, with the memories of the dream clear at first but slowly dissolving into dust as the eyes get into focus.

And like a torrent new information rushes in replacing the previous one.

Electro-active polymers to replace muscles.

Sub-dermal armor strong enough to stop small-caliber bullets.

Nanobots that can fuse into human biology, enhancing all its properties.

My eyes widen as I realize what tree this one is.

Taylor is still next to me, concern written in her face as she waits for me to respond. "Peter? Are you alright?"

I look at her. My attention falls on her shoulder, her neck, her face. How is that I never noticed before? "Your eyes."

She goes very still, her cheeks flaring red. "What."

"They are horrible." Seriously, look at them! They are ill-shaped, and those glasses leave a bad taste in my mouth. There's so much I could do with them! So many enhancements I could give her! "Can I replace them?"

A groan escapes Taylor's lips as she pinches the bridge of her nose. "No, you can't. And do I assume that you know what your new power is?"

I nod. "I have a lot of blueprints in here." I say, tapping the side of my head. "But if I were to give it a general description, it'd be 'human mechanical augmentation'."

It's Deus Ex.

 

[Poliamida]

In Nuclear Fire 10​

With my legs hanging from the edge of the roof, I pulled a chocolate bar that I break in half. One half I keep, and the other I give to Taylor who receives it with greedy hands.

"So, just so we are clear," She says with her mouth full of chocolate. "I'm not going to wake up one day with an extra arm, correct?"

Why does she keep bringing that up? "No, Ladybug, you won't. I'm not doing something like that without your consent first."

"If you say so."

I can taste the doubt in her words. "Besides, it's not like I'd allow anyone but me to be the first to have extra arms."

She chuckles as she drinks from her bottle. "If you get four more you could then change your name to 'spider', a great match for my 'ladybug'. But what would you do with your shirts?"

"Oh, that's the easy part! I'm thinking about replacing my spine and adding several sockets in my back for modules that I can install. That way I can plug in the extra arms when I need them, and take them out when I don't."

There's a dripping noise and I see that Taylor is staring at me, the content of her bottle falling to the ground from her limb grip. "You know, I said it as a joke but now I'm genuinely worried about you doing this."

"Why would you be?"

"Well, most people have concerns about mutilating themselves." With the bottle now empty, she puts it back in her backpack so we can toss it once we find a trash can.

"I think we already established that I'm not 'most people'."

"True. Just be careful with it, alright?"

"Always."

Our break done, we move on.

Last week we went East from Taylor's home, so this time we go West, to Captain's Hill, and from there to the South into Downtown.

We move at a more relaxed pace, enjoying the sights and allowing ourselves to rest from time to time. I must say that there's something hypnotic about a city at night, especially if we talk about the nicer parts of it. Gone are the homeless people and abandoned factories of the docks, having been replaced by tall office buildings and nightclubs covered in blinking lights.

For a brief moment, we see Glory Girl in our visors, the star child of New Wave flying further south. She doesn't see us and soon we lose track of her as she takes a turn behind a skyscraper.

"You know, someday you'll have to interact with other heroes." I point out.

"I know, but not now. Not with these costumes and I want to make a name for myself before that."

"You don't want them to treat you as inferior." Can't blame her after Winslow. If she's going to talk to them, she wants to do that as equals. "Well, you did beat Kid Win and Aegis."

"Don't even remind me! That's one of the reasons why I want to change my costume."

Yeah, the entire concept of the 'masquerade' is absurd. As long as you don't have a super-obvious power, you can dress up as a villain, do whatever you wish, and then change it for a hero costume. At least it's something that we can make it work for our benefit. As long as Taylor isn't carrying the Psi Blade when she goes to meet them, they won't know it was her the one who attacked them.

"Well, it doesn't seem like you'll make a name here." There are some fights outside a couple of nightclubs, but nothing that the bouncers can't fix. "Want to keep going south?"

"No, Glory Girl went there. Let's go back to the trainyard, there we should-" And suddenly Taylor goes very still. "Someone just spilled blood."

That… is not good.

"What? Where?"

"There! A block and a half away."

I aim my visor following the line of her finger.

"Shit." What I see are three men in an alley next to an empty street. Two of them are standing, one holding a knife, and between them is the last one. He isn't moving and is losing blood fast.

We don't lose a second and teleport to a balcony above their location. For ten agonizing seconds, we do nothing but wait while the criminals empty their victim's pockets. I know that Taylor already wants to go in but I grip her wrist, holding her back. If she unleashes her bugs now, the robbers' panic could end up causing even more harm to the victim.

They are done and are already leaving, but we're ready too. We teleport to their backs and with a swing of the blade Taylor knocks them down in a shower of sparks. From her pockets, she pulls the zip-ties out, and I go check the victim.

It's not good. Not good at all.

He's well into his fifties and too well dressed for these parts of town. His head is bleeding but that's only superficial, maybe a bruise suffered during his fall. The truly bad wound is on his thigh. Evidence of that is his quickly reddening pants and the dripping blade of the knife.

He also seems to be unconscious.

"How is he?" Taylor asks me once she's finished with the robbers, panic clear in his voice.

"Bad. He needs an ambulance." My visor helps me to locate three cell phones, two that seem to belong to the robbers and one to the victim. "I'll make the call. You take his pants off."

"What?!"

"He needs first aid, Ladybug! So take his damn pants off!" I'm angry and we have no time to waste, but thankfully she doesn't ask any more questions and moves to do as I say while I call the emergency line.

The phone rings three times and I can feel the sweat running down my back. "911, what's your emergency?"

"I have a stabbing victim in an alley between-" I use my visor to look at the nearby street sign. "Seventh and Wisconsin."

"Understood. Who am I speaking to?"

Yes, yes, I know the routine. "Independent hero Tech-Priest with independent hero Ladybug. Victim is a fifty-year old male. We incapacitated his attackers, but the victim is bleeding from his thigh."

"Very well, sir, I'll need you to-"

"I know how to perform first aid!" I look at Taylor who has just finished with the man's pants. Shit! Why didn't we bring bandages?! "Ladybug, here. You talk to the lady and give me the blade." She gives me a nervous nod.

While Taylor gives further details to the emergency personnel, I use the blade the cut open the shirt of one of the robbers. It's not the cleanest of clothes but it'll have to do.

Shit. I know the theory of how to treat deep wounds like these but this is my first time actually doing it. My hands tremble. There's so much blood and it keeps flowing out!

No, no! I can do this! I have to do this because I'm the only one here who can.

I push on, lift his leg, and tighten the piece of cloth around the wound.

The makeshift bandaging is quickly turning red too and my hands are sticky with blood, but it's done.

"Tech-Priest! They ask if he's conscious!"

I pinch underneath his armpit. He groans. "He's breathing. Reacts to pain but he isn't-" And that's when he opens his eyes.

"W-what's going on?" His voice sounds weak.

"He's conscious!"

"Did you hear that?" Taylor asks the operator. "Yes, okay."

While she keeps talking to the phone, the man's eyes switch from her to me. "Who are you?"

We must look scary with our balaclavas. Even more reasons to switch costumes soon. "Independent heroes. Try not to move, you lost a lot of blood." I take my coat out and place it over his chest. The night is cold but he needs it more than I do.

"What happened?" Ok, he sounds coherent. That's good!

"Well, we aren't sure but once you get out of the hospital the police will want an interview with you."

"Uh, yeah." His eyes flutter open and closed. Damn, I need to keep him conscious!

"Do you have family, sir?" A bit of a gamble here that I hope works.

"I have a son. He's twenty-five."

Perfect! I can use that. "Really? Does he have a girlfriend? My sister's about his age and looking for a boyfriend." Taylor goes very still with my comment.

He chuckles at that. "I'm sorry but he's taken. And my wife likes his current girlfriend for once."

"Oh, well. She'll have to keep up the search."

And that's when we hear the sound of several sirens. An ambulance parks at the entrance of the alley and in come two paramedics carrying a stretcher. Behind them come a couple of cops that replace the zip-ties of the robbers with handcuffs.

We move out of the way to give them room to work, and I pick my coat back.

"W-will he be okay?" Taylor asks one of the paramedics.

"The knife seems to have missed the main artery, but he'll need to be looked over at the hospital." And that's all they say before loading the man into the stretcher and from there into the ambulance. It speeds off and they are on their way.

The policemen do their part loading the criminals on their car, sparing only a moment to ask us some questions about what we saw and did before they, too, drive away.

They didn't even offer us to stay and speak to a PRT representative! It seemed that a simple assault and robbery isn't worth the Protectorate's attention, or there might be some jurisdictions in-fighting.

Once alone I turn to look at Taylor, who I find staring at the pool of dry blood.

"Ladybug, are you alright?"

"Yes, yes. Just… let's get out of here."

"Yeah, let's." There's a nice roof across the street, over what seems to be a restaurant that only works during the mornings. I set the beacon and in a blink, we're on top of it. "Would you want us to-" And suddenly I find myself being hugged by Taylor. "Ladybug?"

"Sorry, I just-I just need a moment."

I hear sobbing. And it doesn't just come from her. Shit, just now I realize how much I'm trembling.

Palming her back, I aim at the edge of the roof. "Let's take a seat."

She nods. We make ourselves comfortable and from my backpack, I pull out another bottle of water. Taylor accepts it and pulls her mask off. "This part is never mentioned in hero stories."

"People like stories about big heroes defeating villains in epic battles. They don't like the parts of normals being stabbed in dark alleys."

"I know it happens, but-" She takes a drink, and then uses the rest of the bottle to wash her face. "It was too intense."

"I know."

"I got nervous when we fought those gang members and the Wards last week but, shit! It wasn't like this. That man almost died!" She presses her palms against her eyes. "How did you know what to do?"

"I read several books on first aid." I also attended several training sessions but I better keep that part to myself. "But believe me, they don't prepare you for the real deal."

"You were great. I don't know what I'd have done if you hadn't been there." She cleans her face with the sleeve of her shirt. Then she looks at me, trying to smile. "Say, what was that about your twenty-something sister?"

I shrug. "A half-lie to make him think about his family. That usually helps when you're fighting for your life."

"Why only 'half' lie?"

That… is a good question. Did I really just say that? I guess that I've truly started seeing Taylor as family. "Well, you aren't twenty-five."

"Thank you." She hugs me again. "If we hadn't found him-"

"Don't!" I interrupt. "Don't think about the maybes. They lead you to insanity."

"Yeah, I know. And we did save his life, didn't we?"

"That we did." At least I hope so. Knife wounds are nasty, and we can't know if the man won't suffer further complications at the hospital. Better not to mention it. Or think about it. Shit! Why didn't I build the medical gun from Starcraft? It could have fixed the guy no problem! Deus Ex has medkits but they aren't as good! They are only one-time use for starters and I don't have the resources for that!

Adam Jensen had a self-healing module powered by a bio-cell, but I can't implant that in any person that gets stabbed, it would be ridiculously expensive!

But…

Can I make it mobile?

And that's when a realization comes to me. The blueprints I have from Deus Ex are mostly static and I can't modify them in a way that changes their function. But I can mix them with the items I built with Starcraft.

Psi Blades built inside my arms like Jensen's blade! Eye implants with the properties of the Ghost Visor! And if I look at what the Mecha Zerg Drone can do… it already has subroutines for repairing itself and Zerg structures, so if I upgrade it with the Health System implant... and maybe add some of JC Denton's nanobots to the mix… I'll have a device that can interface with a human body, repair it, and then detach itself to continue working on something else.

It's brilliant! And stupidly expensive! But less expensive than what it would cost me to fully implant a person with the upgrade!

I feel someone poking at my shoulder. "Tech-Priest?"

"Sorry, what?"

"You have that look where you have an idea."

I don't know what 'that look' is, but she isn't wrong. "That's because I just did. I think I can turn the drone into a mobile medical unit, but I'll need a couple of days to build the upgrade."

"Will you need more materials?"

Normally building the nanobots would be insanely expensive, but if I piggyback their functions into the Drone's own systems it'll represent a massive cut on the final price.

"Thankfully no, just time." This technology… would be extremely useful in case of emergencies. Like an Endbringer attack. And that reminds me that I have less than two months until Leviathan's Canonical arrival. I'll have to get ready for it. "I'll need a lot of metal to turn the current drone into a factory that I can use to produce more."

"Yes, having more than one will be useful." It's so nice that Taylor sees things my way. "How much metal are we talking about here?"

Yeah, that was the difficult part. "At least three or four ship containers. Maybe with the stuff they have inside too."

"That's a lot of metal."

"Indeed." I'll also need to think about a place where to put it. It'll have to be big enough to house the installations, but far away from people so randos can't stumble on it. "But let's think more about that tomorrow. I think we both need a rest."

"Yeah." Taylor nods and puts her mask back on. "Let's go back home. I'll have time in the coming days so I'll use the mornings to search for stuff."

"Remember not to do anything stupid while I'm not around!"

"I don't think I can do anything stupid without you around to inspire me."

"Ha! But seriously, do be careful when you're alone."

"I know, I know."

She puts an arm over my shoulders and we teleport back home.