He's planning to grow up to be the boogyman that villains fear will take them out if they touch the wards
Legendary Tinker (Worm/LoL)
- Thread starter Fabled Webs
- Start date
- Location
- Philippines
Actually if Rubedo ends up establishing some form of precedent for the violation of Unwritten Rules, wouldn't that have a high chance to affect something major, like the establishment of the Brockton Bay Brigade?
3.8 Charmed
Fabled Webs
Lord Weaver, Glorious and Wise
- Location
- Arlington, VA
Preface: Yes. That's right. I was going to write an omake, but decided to reward everyone with the entire rest of this arc. You'll get the rest throughout the day. The best pranks are the ones everyone can laugh about so happy April First!
Charmed 3.8
2000, July 13: Phoenix, AZ, USA
With the most complicated part of the EMP generator finished, I was able to complete the project a day later. The materials weren't expensive or hard to find either. I essentially just needed various bits of piping from an old school steam boiler in good condition.
I stripped down most of it and even fashioned brand new pieces scaled down to fit, but when it was over, I was left with something the size of a basketball.
I was proud of it. When you pressed a button, it would use an internal battery supply to flash-boil a container of water. The energy and pressure would then catalyze the activation of the prototype Hex Core, releasing a large amount of mana. An intricate web of wires and transformers would then channel the flood of mana and convert it into electricity, scattering the electricity outward in a dome of static that was completely harmless to organics but would play merry hell on any form of technology.
The truth was that electricity did not play nice with open air. Pokemon lied: Flying types would shit on electric types because air was one of the best insulators out there.
The Hex Core and internal transformers did not convert mana into electricity perfectly. This wasn't a design flaw, but a matter of necessity. It needed at least some mana to function. In order to keep the static discharge both nonlethal and somehow coherent through air, the device wove mana amidst the electric currents in a way that was frankly impossible to put to words.
Hextech was bullshit.
As homage to the great golem, I made my new contraption look like Blitzcrank's faceplate, two golden plates that joined together at the center to form the outline of a skull. Two shining "eyes" finished the look. Taken on its own and without the context of Blitzcrank's body, it actually looked a little like the closed carapace of a beetle.
I heard footsteps behind me. La Torcha. I'd felt her coming when she entered the building, her confident gait and pantsuit attire at odds with the disguised gang members who dressed like they did hard labor working for a shipping company.
"Is that the EMP generator you promised Lawless?" she asked.
"Yes," I nodded. "I'm thinking about naming it the Blitzpack. What do you think?"
She took it from me, the bitch. "I think it's mine and I don't care what it's called so long as it works. What's its range?"
"About two hundred feet, so approximately the length of a city block. Radius, not diameter."
"I think I'm going to have this tested outside the city first. We have so many beautiful national parks after all."
I snorted. "Aren't they on fire at the moment?"
"Not all of them. A fair chunk is desert."
"Fine, whatever." I pointed to a knob where Blitzcrank's spine would be. Below that was a switch that could have belonged to a lamp. Because it had. "That holds water, a bottle's worth. You're going to need to refill it whenever you use it. That switch turns it on. The static will fry absolutely everything in the area that relies on electricity, from cars to phones."
"Use once. Reload. Simple enough. Anything you want from me?" She laughed at the look on my face. "You don't have to look so surprised. I told you, I want you on my team and my executives get rewarded."
I could see Lawless listening in from the other room, no doubt using the chance to figure out what exactly I can make. Out of sight, out of mind, except he wasn't ever out of my sight. I needed something that wouldn't be considered too risky, but something that could also give me an edge.
"Tools," I decided. "All the tools. Power drills. Electric saws. Voltage testers. The strongest welding torch on the market. Everything an electrician, plumber, carpenter, or construction foreman might have in his truck? I want the best there is."
La Torcha made a show of looking around the room at the lab she'd had set up before my arrival. "What's wrong with this?"
I shrugged. "Nothing, but I'm going through the 'tools to build better tools' phase. I could probably make a better welding torch for myself out of a car battery and a lighter if I needed to, but why bother when I can source better materials to start with?"
"I give you free reign to ask me for something and you want tools? No games? Food?"
"I told you. My goal is to murder Scion and prove I'm the greatest tinker ever. This is my hobby. Besides, Cam gives me good food anyway."
A slow smile spread across her face. "Fine, I can do that." She gave me the side-eye. "Don't think you can use any of this to escape. I'll be working out of here for a few days while you make this thing."
"Then you'll test all its functions and make sure I can't use it to kill any of your minions," I finished for her. "Yeah, yeah. I got it."
The swat I got for my cheek was worth it.
I had a pile of handheld power tools on my workbench within the hour.
I wasn't just testing La Torcha's willingness to give me potentially dangerous tools; she obviously didn't think I could make anything to escape with while she was on-site. And truthfully? She was right. Her power let her turn into fire, phasing through all physical attacks. As far as anyone knew, she was invulnerable.
I had my own guesses. I hypothesized that La Torcha's Shard was taking her physical body and translocating it into a different dimension and that the energy required to do this produced an exothermic reaction which ignited the air around her, causing everyone to mistake her breaker state as "turning into fire."
Which meant simply dousing her in water or otherwise depriving her of oxygen wasn't going to work since she wasn't in the world to begin with. Hell, even the blossoms likely wouldn't work in her breaker state. It was why I also guessed that she'd be immune to poison. She'd shown some instinctive phasing ability in the past when she avoided gunfire she couldn't have seen coming. There was a reason she managed to escape LA without Alexandria ramming a fist up her ass.
No, my goal was for once completely transparent: I wanted a multi-tool, one that would be with me throughout the years. And since I didn't need to pretend my tinker specialization was strictly alchemy anymore, I saw no reason to limit myself.
I'd drawn from Viktor, so it was only fair that I drew on his counterpart this time: Jayce, the Defender of Tomorrow. Pretentious and hopelessly optimistic name aside, he was a genius whose work rivaled Viktor's.
Everyone saw his Mercury Hammer as the single greatest thing he'd ever made. That's because people were easily distracted magpies. They saw the flashy, shiny weapon and oohed and aahed, but never considered what it took to make such a hilariously impractical thing function in the first place. Not just function, but have all of its parts synergize to create a greater whole than the sum of its parts.
Jayce's goal in life was to raise the standard of living among Piltovans and Zaunites by creating mechanical marvels that could perform anything and everything a job required. Essentially, he made mecha-shift weapons from RWBY, but for civilian use.
He made a shovel that could shift into a pickaxe for miners. He made a hammer that could double as a laser drill for demolitionists. But that alone wouldn't have made him a legend. Even in Earth-Bet's fledgling internet, there were dozens of pictures of "redneck engineers" stapling together random tools in the name of innovation. Hell, there were professional manufacturing companies coming up with "tactical shovels" that had their heads sharpened into hatchets with telescopic shafts that could house a hidden flashlight and so on.
They were all, without exception, utter dogshit.
A multi-tool alone wouldn't have made Jayce a legend. Rather, it was what he did to get mecha-shifting multi-tools to work perfectly that made him a household name. He, alongside Viktor, made hextech capacitors that could seamlessly transition from one function to the next while adapting to different energy sources, switching from mana to electricity to steam and more. Versatility was the name of Jayce's game and he was a master. Hell, it would be the inspiration for Viktor's own Hex Core.
Take the Mercury Hammer for example. Though it was originally made for civilian use, Jayce tweaked it into his iconic hammer to fight Viktor and reclaim the Namestone.
The Namestones were crystalline containers which housed the life force and memories of the Brackern, a race of scorpion-like sentients native to Shurima. Skarner, the Crystal Vanguard, was the greatest of their number.
The Namestone was also required for the construction of a truly sentient Hex Core, which was why I'd called the one in the Blitzpack a prototype.
'It's funny,' I mused, 'how so many things Piltover and Zaun made come back to the crystals of Skarner's people. In a way, they were never inventing anything new using magic, merely reapplying an existing magical resource in a new way. Then again, I suppose that is the soul of innovation in the end…'
The Mercury Hammer was no different in that regard. It used a fragment of a Namestone to meet its tremendous energy requirement. Jayce had to make his own hextech capacitors because the ones widely available weren't good enough. But the end product spoke for itself. It was a hammer that could lob electricity on rapid-fire, shift into a fully functioning cannon, generate a static field that somehow had kinetic force enough to knock back and electrocute enemies, and enhance the hammer's impact using electromagnetic fields. Defense. Offense. Utility. Range. It had it all.
My head slammed into my workbench. I opened one eye and glared at my latest creations. Two rectangular capacitors stared back at me. They were small, the size of a Lego block each.
They were also the only things I'd managed to make despite working at this for over four hours.
"Andy, come have dinner," Camille called in that entrancing way of hers. It was almost familial the way I could see her in the other room pulling out paper plates for pizza.
I glared at the evidence of my snail's pace but got up. Paradoxically, I'd found that the easiest way to minimize my contact with Camille and her power was to force myself into interacting with her. She'd seek me out less this way. Even that was getting more difficult by the day.
2000, July 14: Phoenix, AZ, USA
I snuck into my lab at two-thirty in the morning. Time was working against me. Not only was Camille's power slowly Pavlov-ing me into being her lapdog, the only way I could tinker without Lawless' oversight was to do so in the dead of night. But working like this was wreaking havoc on my eight year old body. And equally as bad, I needed to sleep more if I wanted to make my blossoms bloom.
More meditation. More sleep. More tinkering. More… everything.
It was wearing me thin.
Still, I powered through. Once the blossoms fully bloomed, I would be able to make my escape. Until then, I needed to make use of every second I had.
I pulled my pillowcase inside out, removing the six dream blossoms. Every night, as I waited for Lawless to fall asleep, I'd made small handfuls of Mana Crystals, storing them alongside the blossoms. And every night, as I got up to tinker, I'd move what few I'd managed to make without my trademark blue light show into a box in my lab. So long as I didn't think about wanting to use them and kept myself distracted during the day, I could keep them hidden.
Tonight was no different. I snuck into my lab and added the crystals to my hidden stash. Thirty-three in all greeted me. That seemed like a lot, but I reminded myself that my relic pistol had taken forty. Even counting my newly increased pace, I'd need more.
Thankfully, tonight's tinkering session could barely be called that. I converted the holy water into the Water of Life before placing a pair of scissors and ten Mana Crystals inside. After that, I used the Mana Crystals to slowly merge the water and the scissors.
As dawn approached, I stuck the bowl of holy water inside an out of the way cabinet and thanked God I didn't necessarily need loud power tools to tinker.
Tomorrow, I'd be ready.
I finished my multi-tool.
It wouldn't exactly be seeing much combat, so I didn't need the overwhelming energy capacity of a Brackern Namestone. Instead, the two capacitors acted sort of like batteries. The primary difference between a capacitor and a battery was that a capacitor kept electrical energy as a charged field while a battery generated electrical energy through chemical reaction. A capacitor could also discharge its electrical field instantly, where as a battery could take a bit of time. In exchange, a capacitor couldn't usually hold its charge for longer than a day.
I wanted to make sure that no one else could use my tech, so I hooked up a transformer to the capacitors. The transformer was tinkered to convert mana to electricity, something I'd figured out how to do while making the Blitzpack. This way, no one could charge the capacitors except me and the multi-tool would quickly run out of power when in someone else's hands.
Eventually, I wanted to replace this setup with a full Hex Core, turning it into a smart-tool that could assist me independently, perhaps even making it into a Wrenchbot like Dr. Heimerdinger did, but for the moment, this would suffice.
The tool itself looked for all the world like a standard wrench, if thicker and heavier than normal with a blockier profile. The teeth could be adjusted, naturally, but would also emit plasma between them to weld anything with ease. It was thicker than the average wrench because I'd made sure it could double as a hammer. Hell, there was even a mana-based scanning array modeled off of the Oracle's Elixir and a voltage tester that could tell me the exact metrics of anything the light touched, along with the voltage, amperage, density, and atomic composition.
A portion of the shaft had even been replaced by a thick, transparent plastic filled with fluid so it could act as a leveler. Its reverse end contained a power drill, electric saw, miniature compartment to store screws, a foldout ratcheting box end, and a flashlight, just in case.
It wasn't the bullshit plot device that was a Mass Effect omnitool, but I was reasonably confident that it could do everything I'd need it to even should I be forced from my lab.
It was evening when I finished. I very reluctantly demonstrated every function to La Torcha, then only thought about how much I wanted it back as she took it away.
I unfolded a taco dorado and slathered on a layer of sour cream and guacamole before sprinkling a layer of ketchup and hot sauce. Rolling the goopy mess, I took a giant bite.
"Okay, that ain't right," Lawless whined. "Which fucking idiot told you you're supposed to put ketchup on tacos?"
"Bandit," I said plainly, shoving him the bird. I missed the peppy shortstack. "She's 'bout as Mexican as it gets so fuck off."
"Ain't no accounting for good taste."
"Leave him alone, Kevin," Camille said, sending my heart aflutter. "You're not the one who has to eat that."
"But I do have to watch. What happened to expensive tea and shit? Thought you had class, kid."
"I do. For tea. And music. And literally nothing else. Now fuck off and let me enjoy my tacos."
"Shit, been here a week and he's already giving me lip. I ought to smack you for that."
"You will not," La Torcha said calmly, but there was an audible hint of warning in her tone, like embers smoldering beneath the coals. "Leave him to enjoy his dinner as he pleases."
Lawless raised his hands in the air in mock surrender. "Alright, fine. Let the kid have his insult to food. Anyway, he's done with that sonic screwdriver shit, so what else is he gonna make?"
"Something for me," she said as she looked at me with eyes like smoldering embers. No, there were literal embers dancing within them. "Eventually, I want you to kit out your fellow executives in tinkertech tailored for their specific powers. You'll start with me of course."
I stared at her flatly; it was about as much rebellion as I dared. "And what would complement your powers? You're immune to physical harm because you phase through everything so armor is useless. I'm pretty sure your breaker state makes you super fast and you can set things you touch on fire. What? You want a gun so you don't have to run people down? Some goggles so you can see infrared? Maybe some kind of knife for heatproof enemies? For that matter, can you even use tech? Your power generates heat. A lot of it. Wouldn't it just melt anything that isn't custom-made for you?"
"No to the last one. Otherwise, I'd burn off my own costume. As much as men might prefer that, that's not how my power works. I think it was called a Manton limit? Nothing I have on me seems to burn or heat up."
I nodded. This was one more support for my theory that her Shard was shunting her body, and anything she was carrying, into a separate dimension away from her power's exothermic output.
"Okay, fair enough. Have you tried firing a gun while in your breaker state? If you can't fire a normal weapon, I don't recommend trying it with tinkertech."
"I can," she confirmed with an uncaring shrug. "Who knows how physics works where powers are concerned?"
"Fine. So gun, knife, or goggles?"
"Hmm… You know, ever since I was a little girl, I've always wanted to fly. Not that I'm complaining of course, but it'd be nice."
I thought about it. Had she chosen a knife, I would have just made another Petricite dagger. Had she demanded a gun, I would have made her the most inconvenient weapon I could with an incredibly high skill cap, namely Cait's sniper rifle.
In contrast, I actually wanted to make the goggles. By drawing on Master Yi's Seven Lenses of Insight, I wanted to make some progress into figuring out permanent sight for myself, even if it meant giving La Torcha telescopic, infrared, ultraviolet, and x-ray vision. It'd give her some utility, but she wouldn't become any deadlier.
"Wings…"
"You can't do it?"
"I can…" I trailed off. "Let me think…"
Hextech Anivia had wings of course, but I felt like I'd be insulting the goddess if I gave someone like La Torcha her wings, even a shitty, third-rate effigy. No, a regular hoverpack was fine. It wasn't about the specs; it was a pride thing.
"I'm going to need more generators, maybe a solar battery or dozen, exhaust pipes, and a few laptops. Oh, and a motorcycle helmet with tinted out lenses."
"I don't exactly need a helmet."
"No, but you do need the UI. User interface," I explained at their blank looks. "You do want to be able to steer this thing, right?"
"Fair enough, get me a list."
Author's Note
Did you know that a plasma cutter can output plasma at 45,032 F? Or that the surface of the sun is about 9,940 F? A plasma cutter is about five times hotter than the sun. I read that while doing some research for this fic and it blew my mind.
Tacos dorados are sometimes called flautas or taquitos. They're a Mexican dish inspired by American hard-shell tacos. Because no, Mexican tacos are almost always soft-shell. A tortilla is layered thinly with meat on one half before being dropped into oil and deep fried. The tortilla is folded immediately in the oil, making it a bit crispy but still decently chewy. It's served as is, with cheese, lettuce, and other condiments on the side so each diner can add their own. They're popular in southwestern United States and northern Mexico.
I live in the DC area and I'd murder your dog for a good taco… Send help.
Charmed 3.8
2000, July 13: Phoenix, AZ, USA
With the most complicated part of the EMP generator finished, I was able to complete the project a day later. The materials weren't expensive or hard to find either. I essentially just needed various bits of piping from an old school steam boiler in good condition.
I stripped down most of it and even fashioned brand new pieces scaled down to fit, but when it was over, I was left with something the size of a basketball.
I was proud of it. When you pressed a button, it would use an internal battery supply to flash-boil a container of water. The energy and pressure would then catalyze the activation of the prototype Hex Core, releasing a large amount of mana. An intricate web of wires and transformers would then channel the flood of mana and convert it into electricity, scattering the electricity outward in a dome of static that was completely harmless to organics but would play merry hell on any form of technology.
The truth was that electricity did not play nice with open air. Pokemon lied: Flying types would shit on electric types because air was one of the best insulators out there.
The Hex Core and internal transformers did not convert mana into electricity perfectly. This wasn't a design flaw, but a matter of necessity. It needed at least some mana to function. In order to keep the static discharge both nonlethal and somehow coherent through air, the device wove mana amidst the electric currents in a way that was frankly impossible to put to words.
Hextech was bullshit.
As homage to the great golem, I made my new contraption look like Blitzcrank's faceplate, two golden plates that joined together at the center to form the outline of a skull. Two shining "eyes" finished the look. Taken on its own and without the context of Blitzcrank's body, it actually looked a little like the closed carapace of a beetle.
I heard footsteps behind me. La Torcha. I'd felt her coming when she entered the building, her confident gait and pantsuit attire at odds with the disguised gang members who dressed like they did hard labor working for a shipping company.
"Is that the EMP generator you promised Lawless?" she asked.
"Yes," I nodded. "I'm thinking about naming it the Blitzpack. What do you think?"
She took it from me, the bitch. "I think it's mine and I don't care what it's called so long as it works. What's its range?"
"About two hundred feet, so approximately the length of a city block. Radius, not diameter."
"I think I'm going to have this tested outside the city first. We have so many beautiful national parks after all."
I snorted. "Aren't they on fire at the moment?"
"Not all of them. A fair chunk is desert."
"Fine, whatever." I pointed to a knob where Blitzcrank's spine would be. Below that was a switch that could have belonged to a lamp. Because it had. "That holds water, a bottle's worth. You're going to need to refill it whenever you use it. That switch turns it on. The static will fry absolutely everything in the area that relies on electricity, from cars to phones."
"Use once. Reload. Simple enough. Anything you want from me?" She laughed at the look on my face. "You don't have to look so surprised. I told you, I want you on my team and my executives get rewarded."
I could see Lawless listening in from the other room, no doubt using the chance to figure out what exactly I can make. Out of sight, out of mind, except he wasn't ever out of my sight. I needed something that wouldn't be considered too risky, but something that could also give me an edge.
"Tools," I decided. "All the tools. Power drills. Electric saws. Voltage testers. The strongest welding torch on the market. Everything an electrician, plumber, carpenter, or construction foreman might have in his truck? I want the best there is."
La Torcha made a show of looking around the room at the lab she'd had set up before my arrival. "What's wrong with this?"
I shrugged. "Nothing, but I'm going through the 'tools to build better tools' phase. I could probably make a better welding torch for myself out of a car battery and a lighter if I needed to, but why bother when I can source better materials to start with?"
"I give you free reign to ask me for something and you want tools? No games? Food?"
"I told you. My goal is to murder Scion and prove I'm the greatest tinker ever. This is my hobby. Besides, Cam gives me good food anyway."
A slow smile spread across her face. "Fine, I can do that." She gave me the side-eye. "Don't think you can use any of this to escape. I'll be working out of here for a few days while you make this thing."
"Then you'll test all its functions and make sure I can't use it to kill any of your minions," I finished for her. "Yeah, yeah. I got it."
The swat I got for my cheek was worth it.
X
I had a pile of handheld power tools on my workbench within the hour.
I wasn't just testing La Torcha's willingness to give me potentially dangerous tools; she obviously didn't think I could make anything to escape with while she was on-site. And truthfully? She was right. Her power let her turn into fire, phasing through all physical attacks. As far as anyone knew, she was invulnerable.
I had my own guesses. I hypothesized that La Torcha's Shard was taking her physical body and translocating it into a different dimension and that the energy required to do this produced an exothermic reaction which ignited the air around her, causing everyone to mistake her breaker state as "turning into fire."
Which meant simply dousing her in water or otherwise depriving her of oxygen wasn't going to work since she wasn't in the world to begin with. Hell, even the blossoms likely wouldn't work in her breaker state. It was why I also guessed that she'd be immune to poison. She'd shown some instinctive phasing ability in the past when she avoided gunfire she couldn't have seen coming. There was a reason she managed to escape LA without Alexandria ramming a fist up her ass.
No, my goal was for once completely transparent: I wanted a multi-tool, one that would be with me throughout the years. And since I didn't need to pretend my tinker specialization was strictly alchemy anymore, I saw no reason to limit myself.
I'd drawn from Viktor, so it was only fair that I drew on his counterpart this time: Jayce, the Defender of Tomorrow. Pretentious and hopelessly optimistic name aside, he was a genius whose work rivaled Viktor's.
Everyone saw his Mercury Hammer as the single greatest thing he'd ever made. That's because people were easily distracted magpies. They saw the flashy, shiny weapon and oohed and aahed, but never considered what it took to make such a hilariously impractical thing function in the first place. Not just function, but have all of its parts synergize to create a greater whole than the sum of its parts.
Jayce's goal in life was to raise the standard of living among Piltovans and Zaunites by creating mechanical marvels that could perform anything and everything a job required. Essentially, he made mecha-shift weapons from RWBY, but for civilian use.
He made a shovel that could shift into a pickaxe for miners. He made a hammer that could double as a laser drill for demolitionists. But that alone wouldn't have made him a legend. Even in Earth-Bet's fledgling internet, there were dozens of pictures of "redneck engineers" stapling together random tools in the name of innovation. Hell, there were professional manufacturing companies coming up with "tactical shovels" that had their heads sharpened into hatchets with telescopic shafts that could house a hidden flashlight and so on.
They were all, without exception, utter dogshit.
A multi-tool alone wouldn't have made Jayce a legend. Rather, it was what he did to get mecha-shifting multi-tools to work perfectly that made him a household name. He, alongside Viktor, made hextech capacitors that could seamlessly transition from one function to the next while adapting to different energy sources, switching from mana to electricity to steam and more. Versatility was the name of Jayce's game and he was a master. Hell, it would be the inspiration for Viktor's own Hex Core.
Take the Mercury Hammer for example. Though it was originally made for civilian use, Jayce tweaked it into his iconic hammer to fight Viktor and reclaim the Namestone.
The Namestones were crystalline containers which housed the life force and memories of the Brackern, a race of scorpion-like sentients native to Shurima. Skarner, the Crystal Vanguard, was the greatest of their number.
The Namestone was also required for the construction of a truly sentient Hex Core, which was why I'd called the one in the Blitzpack a prototype.
'It's funny,' I mused, 'how so many things Piltover and Zaun made come back to the crystals of Skarner's people. In a way, they were never inventing anything new using magic, merely reapplying an existing magical resource in a new way. Then again, I suppose that is the soul of innovation in the end…'
The Mercury Hammer was no different in that regard. It used a fragment of a Namestone to meet its tremendous energy requirement. Jayce had to make his own hextech capacitors because the ones widely available weren't good enough. But the end product spoke for itself. It was a hammer that could lob electricity on rapid-fire, shift into a fully functioning cannon, generate a static field that somehow had kinetic force enough to knock back and electrocute enemies, and enhance the hammer's impact using electromagnetic fields. Defense. Offense. Utility. Range. It had it all.
My head slammed into my workbench. I opened one eye and glared at my latest creations. Two rectangular capacitors stared back at me. They were small, the size of a Lego block each.
They were also the only things I'd managed to make despite working at this for over four hours.
"Andy, come have dinner," Camille called in that entrancing way of hers. It was almost familial the way I could see her in the other room pulling out paper plates for pizza.
I glared at the evidence of my snail's pace but got up. Paradoxically, I'd found that the easiest way to minimize my contact with Camille and her power was to force myself into interacting with her. She'd seek me out less this way. Even that was getting more difficult by the day.
X
2000, July 14: Phoenix, AZ, USA
I snuck into my lab at two-thirty in the morning. Time was working against me. Not only was Camille's power slowly Pavlov-ing me into being her lapdog, the only way I could tinker without Lawless' oversight was to do so in the dead of night. But working like this was wreaking havoc on my eight year old body. And equally as bad, I needed to sleep more if I wanted to make my blossoms bloom.
More meditation. More sleep. More tinkering. More… everything.
It was wearing me thin.
Still, I powered through. Once the blossoms fully bloomed, I would be able to make my escape. Until then, I needed to make use of every second I had.
I pulled my pillowcase inside out, removing the six dream blossoms. Every night, as I waited for Lawless to fall asleep, I'd made small handfuls of Mana Crystals, storing them alongside the blossoms. And every night, as I got up to tinker, I'd move what few I'd managed to make without my trademark blue light show into a box in my lab. So long as I didn't think about wanting to use them and kept myself distracted during the day, I could keep them hidden.
Tonight was no different. I snuck into my lab and added the crystals to my hidden stash. Thirty-three in all greeted me. That seemed like a lot, but I reminded myself that my relic pistol had taken forty. Even counting my newly increased pace, I'd need more.
Thankfully, tonight's tinkering session could barely be called that. I converted the holy water into the Water of Life before placing a pair of scissors and ten Mana Crystals inside. After that, I used the Mana Crystals to slowly merge the water and the scissors.
As dawn approached, I stuck the bowl of holy water inside an out of the way cabinet and thanked God I didn't necessarily need loud power tools to tinker.
Tomorrow, I'd be ready.
X
I finished my multi-tool.
It wouldn't exactly be seeing much combat, so I didn't need the overwhelming energy capacity of a Brackern Namestone. Instead, the two capacitors acted sort of like batteries. The primary difference between a capacitor and a battery was that a capacitor kept electrical energy as a charged field while a battery generated electrical energy through chemical reaction. A capacitor could also discharge its electrical field instantly, where as a battery could take a bit of time. In exchange, a capacitor couldn't usually hold its charge for longer than a day.
I wanted to make sure that no one else could use my tech, so I hooked up a transformer to the capacitors. The transformer was tinkered to convert mana to electricity, something I'd figured out how to do while making the Blitzpack. This way, no one could charge the capacitors except me and the multi-tool would quickly run out of power when in someone else's hands.
Eventually, I wanted to replace this setup with a full Hex Core, turning it into a smart-tool that could assist me independently, perhaps even making it into a Wrenchbot like Dr. Heimerdinger did, but for the moment, this would suffice.
The tool itself looked for all the world like a standard wrench, if thicker and heavier than normal with a blockier profile. The teeth could be adjusted, naturally, but would also emit plasma between them to weld anything with ease. It was thicker than the average wrench because I'd made sure it could double as a hammer. Hell, there was even a mana-based scanning array modeled off of the Oracle's Elixir and a voltage tester that could tell me the exact metrics of anything the light touched, along with the voltage, amperage, density, and atomic composition.
A portion of the shaft had even been replaced by a thick, transparent plastic filled with fluid so it could act as a leveler. Its reverse end contained a power drill, electric saw, miniature compartment to store screws, a foldout ratcheting box end, and a flashlight, just in case.
It wasn't the bullshit plot device that was a Mass Effect omnitool, but I was reasonably confident that it could do everything I'd need it to even should I be forced from my lab.
It was evening when I finished. I very reluctantly demonstrated every function to La Torcha, then only thought about how much I wanted it back as she took it away.
I unfolded a taco dorado and slathered on a layer of sour cream and guacamole before sprinkling a layer of ketchup and hot sauce. Rolling the goopy mess, I took a giant bite.
"Okay, that ain't right," Lawless whined. "Which fucking idiot told you you're supposed to put ketchup on tacos?"
"Bandit," I said plainly, shoving him the bird. I missed the peppy shortstack. "She's 'bout as Mexican as it gets so fuck off."
"Ain't no accounting for good taste."
"Leave him alone, Kevin," Camille said, sending my heart aflutter. "You're not the one who has to eat that."
"But I do have to watch. What happened to expensive tea and shit? Thought you had class, kid."
"I do. For tea. And music. And literally nothing else. Now fuck off and let me enjoy my tacos."
"Shit, been here a week and he's already giving me lip. I ought to smack you for that."
"You will not," La Torcha said calmly, but there was an audible hint of warning in her tone, like embers smoldering beneath the coals. "Leave him to enjoy his dinner as he pleases."
Lawless raised his hands in the air in mock surrender. "Alright, fine. Let the kid have his insult to food. Anyway, he's done with that sonic screwdriver shit, so what else is he gonna make?"
"Something for me," she said as she looked at me with eyes like smoldering embers. No, there were literal embers dancing within them. "Eventually, I want you to kit out your fellow executives in tinkertech tailored for their specific powers. You'll start with me of course."
I stared at her flatly; it was about as much rebellion as I dared. "And what would complement your powers? You're immune to physical harm because you phase through everything so armor is useless. I'm pretty sure your breaker state makes you super fast and you can set things you touch on fire. What? You want a gun so you don't have to run people down? Some goggles so you can see infrared? Maybe some kind of knife for heatproof enemies? For that matter, can you even use tech? Your power generates heat. A lot of it. Wouldn't it just melt anything that isn't custom-made for you?"
"No to the last one. Otherwise, I'd burn off my own costume. As much as men might prefer that, that's not how my power works. I think it was called a Manton limit? Nothing I have on me seems to burn or heat up."
I nodded. This was one more support for my theory that her Shard was shunting her body, and anything she was carrying, into a separate dimension away from her power's exothermic output.
"Okay, fair enough. Have you tried firing a gun while in your breaker state? If you can't fire a normal weapon, I don't recommend trying it with tinkertech."
"I can," she confirmed with an uncaring shrug. "Who knows how physics works where powers are concerned?"
"Fine. So gun, knife, or goggles?"
"Hmm… You know, ever since I was a little girl, I've always wanted to fly. Not that I'm complaining of course, but it'd be nice."
I thought about it. Had she chosen a knife, I would have just made another Petricite dagger. Had she demanded a gun, I would have made her the most inconvenient weapon I could with an incredibly high skill cap, namely Cait's sniper rifle.
In contrast, I actually wanted to make the goggles. By drawing on Master Yi's Seven Lenses of Insight, I wanted to make some progress into figuring out permanent sight for myself, even if it meant giving La Torcha telescopic, infrared, ultraviolet, and x-ray vision. It'd give her some utility, but she wouldn't become any deadlier.
"Wings…"
"You can't do it?"
"I can…" I trailed off. "Let me think…"
Hextech Anivia had wings of course, but I felt like I'd be insulting the goddess if I gave someone like La Torcha her wings, even a shitty, third-rate effigy. No, a regular hoverpack was fine. It wasn't about the specs; it was a pride thing.
"I'm going to need more generators, maybe a solar battery or dozen, exhaust pipes, and a few laptops. Oh, and a motorcycle helmet with tinted out lenses."
"I don't exactly need a helmet."
"No, but you do need the UI. User interface," I explained at their blank looks. "You do want to be able to steer this thing, right?"
"Fair enough, get me a list."
Author's Note
Did you know that a plasma cutter can output plasma at 45,032 F? Or that the surface of the sun is about 9,940 F? A plasma cutter is about five times hotter than the sun. I read that while doing some research for this fic and it blew my mind.
Tacos dorados are sometimes called flautas or taquitos. They're a Mexican dish inspired by American hard-shell tacos. Because no, Mexican tacos are almost always soft-shell. A tortilla is layered thinly with meat on one half before being dropped into oil and deep fried. The tortilla is folded immediately in the oil, making it a bit crispy but still decently chewy. It's served as is, with cheese, lettuce, and other condiments on the side so each diner can add their own. They're popular in southwestern United States and northern Mexico.
I live in the DC area and I'd murder your dog for a good taco… Send help.
He's been kidnapped for almost two weeks?! God damn the PRT is useless. If they finally realize the Crips have Rubedo once La Torcha is flying, then they have some shit detectives. You'd think they would realize something is up with the Crips just by process of elimination. Heck, just suspect the gang with the master on the team.
Well now he has something he can plant a bomb on. If La Torcha takes the jet pack into her extra dimensional space, then it can still harm her real body. It doesn't need to be a bomb. Any trap will do.
Well now he has something he can plant a bomb on. If La Torcha takes the jet pack into her extra dimensional space, then it can still harm her real body. It doesn't need to be a bomb. Any trap will do.
Ayyy, what a wonderful gift for a day usually utterly bereft of them. Our lad is taking a lot more chances but he's also making a lot of progress. Still, this kind of thing can't continue long term as an 8 year old.
I see the World Rune agreed with me on the teleportation, though it probably thought Ryze's tattoos were amateur hour (or just correctly deduced that the 8 year old may have trouble explaining the need to tattoo himself with mystical runes to his captors). Rip free stopwatch though, and damn if magical footwear wouldn't have been a good base for eventual Merc Treads.
Opportunity cost. Free mover power is nothing to sneeze at.
Guess we'll just have to wait and see if he'll be able to leave Camille once he has the chance.
I see the World Rune agreed with me on the teleportation, though it probably thought Ryze's tattoos were amateur hour (or just correctly deduced that the 8 year old may have trouble explaining the need to tattoo himself with mystical runes to his captors). Rip free stopwatch though, and damn if magical footwear wouldn't have been a good base for eventual Merc Treads.
Opportunity cost. Free mover power is nothing to sneeze at.
Guess we'll just have to wait and see if he'll be able to leave Camille once he has the chance.
Odeeyou
cookies will crumble
- Location
- yooesaye
I live in Alaska. I feel your pain SO deeply...
3.9 Charmed
Fabled Webs
Lord Weaver, Glorious and Wise
- Location
- Arlington, VA
Charmed 3.9
2000, July 15: Phoenix, AZ, USA
Veronica, La Torcha, wouldn't be seeing her hoverpack. Or anything else for that matter.
It was time.
All throughout, my captivity had been one giant exercise in self-control. During the day, I had to be very careful about what I wanted, what I was willing to act on, and what I was willing to sacrifice in the name of buying myself time and materials.
I was no Lee Sin, with an unshakable discipline that could channel the Dragon of Ionia. I was no Kai'Sa, with an iron will that could hold back the Void for a decade. I was no Atreus, with an unrelenting resolve to face down gods.
Aside from the Mana Crystals, I gained no supernatural effects from meditation, but the ability to compartmentalize my burgeoning love for Camille and balance it with rational thoughts and the need for subtlety even in my own mind was a testament to my increasing self-discipline. I would have never been able to do this in my past life and I felt a burst of pride at my progress.
This last stretch was the single hardest meditation session I'd ever put myself through.
I'd waited for so long, prepared and bided my time. I could surely wait five more hours, I told myself
That didn't change the restlessness I felt. My skin tingled in anticipation even as I drowned out the nervous energy in a sea of mana and introspection.
And still I waited. I didn't know when La Torcha liked to sleep so I had no choice but to stay in meditation longer. I formed crystals in my hands beneath the covers and sank the rest into the Tear.
Finally, at long last, Lawless went to sleep. I reached out and took a sip of the Oracle's Elixir beside my bed as my world expanded around me. Off near the edge of my range, I saw La Torcha getting into bed. Dozing, but not fully asleep yet. I glanced at the clock; three-twenty, two hours later than usual. There were eight normal humans I could see around the warehouse in varying states of wakefulness. I could see a few stirring restlessly, but with the time being what it was, this was as good as I'd get.
As quietly as I could, I shuffle-tugged my pillow from the pillowcase and carried the entire thing like a makeshift sack filled with Mana Crystals and dream blossoms.
First things first, I had to ensure that the gang members would remain asleep while I worked. To that end, I snuck into the kitchenette and picked out my incense burner before taking it to my lab. Fortunately for me, Lawless and Camille had largely forgotten about my incense burner. After all, what the hell could I make with a fancy clay pot, right?
Arrogance was a sin punishable by death.
Then, I snuck into the office Lawless worked out of. He always kept the shutters raised so he could shout profanities down at the workers so I lowered them as quietly as I could, plunging the office into darkness.
There was a safe beneath the desk, three inches of hardened steel. It was where the previous warehouse manager kept his cash and valuables, also where La Torcha locked up my multi-tool. Only she and Lawless knew the password and they figured that with the most versatile tool I had in their control, I wouldn't be able to sneak off to tinker without their oversight, or lash out and hurt someone.
The safe itself was a sturdy affair. Even if I had the Elixir of Wrath, I didn't think I'd be able to break it open, and definitely not without waking the entire warehouse. The lock wasn't really something I knew how to pick either. While there were hundreds of thousands of expert thieves in Runeterra, Inspiration didn't automatically mean I'd be able to draw on their memories, not unless I was in the midst of creating something new.
I formed my hand into a finger pistol and channeled. The spark of infinity within my soul answered. My right hand glowed as the first of three bullets ignited. It was warm, almost uncomfortably so. I felt the World Rune consolidate into my tattoo before lancing out in a beam of azure light. There was an almost cartoonish "pshwoo" sound as the hyper-concentrated mana displaced the air and made contact with the safe. Thankfully, the noise wasn't too loud and confined by the office walls.
The transmutation spell contained within activated immediately. A single flash of light and I was looking at a neat hole carved into the safe. It was almost artistic how most of the safe, about my weight in steel, had vanished into thin air, converted into mana and dispersed in moments. The "cut" was so perfect that the edge looked professionally done, as if made intentionally to be some kind of postmodern art sculpture.
Inside, my multi-tool and Blitzpack sat waiting for me.
"I fucking love this thing," I chuckled as I glanced at my hand. One of the three bullets was dull now.
I snuck back into my lab and set my incense burner on the workbench. Normally, working with glazes was a pain. Trying to make any change, however minor, to an already finished ceramic piece was damn near impossible thanks to how rigid it was. After all, glazes were essentially chemically altered glass and ceramics weren't exactly known for malleability.
That was where my new multi-tool came in. With a narrow enough nozzle, I could condense the welding torch. Even a normal welding torch was much hotter than high-fire glazed ceramic, but I didn't want to melt the glass. I needed the plasma to be so hot and so concentrated that it would immediately cut through the material like butter. It was possible if I overcharged the capacitors. They'd burn out in short order and I'd need to replace them, but I planned on that anyway.
So, hextech multi-tool in hand, I began to engrave runes into the incense burner. Every finished rune was charged with a Mana Crystal until I was left with a fully functional censer, one specifically designed for dream blossoms.
Originally, Lillia's censer was made from the branch of the Dreaming Tree, but I had none so this bastardized version would have to do. Along with propagating the incense through both physical and spiritual means, the censer was engraved with runes of protection for the wielder, me. It wouldn't do to knock my own ass out after all, a bit of Lillia's magic bullshitted into my version of the censer.
Six dream blossoms, fully bloomed over the course of the week, were joined with the censer in an alchemical ritual that reshaped the vessel. Milky-white porcelain was replaced with a deep, rich blue. Jade-green carps were replaced with royal-purple flowers. A hoop extended from the top so it could be held in hand or hung from a staff. I knew that despite its fragile, elegant appearance, it could easily be used to club a man's skull open and not receive the slightest fracture.
I grinned. It was four-fifteen, but that would be enough time for what I had planned.
I channeled mana from within, holding nothing back. Every rune glowed with an azure light, almost indistinguishable from the inlaid flowers. A blue smoke that smelled of midsummer nights and forest floors wafted from the censer. I knew that so long as I supplied it with mana, it could produce this smoke at will.
The dream blossoms were special. The reason I went for these instead of any type of mundane or even magical poison was that these flowers were intrinsically tied to the spirit world. They were dual existences, with a half-step in both the mortal and spiritual worlds. Because of this, walls did not confine their influence. Nor were they impacted by wind, temperature, rain, or anything else that would typically hinder a gaseous attack. As an added plus, they couldn't be resisted by any kind of enhanced biology either. The only way for a human to resist was to reside in an entirely separate space, to not be in the area at all.
I watched the smoke-that-wasn't-smoke disperse throughout the warehouse and even further out. Everyone I could see fell deep into slumber, their chests rising and falling in steady rhythm. Outside, the guards who had been masquerading as night watchmen slumped in their booths. I had until the break of dawn and the new shift to make my escape. I didn't know exactly when the changing of the guard was, but I decided to assume it was at five-thirty and gave myself a little over an hour.
The first thing I did was find a duffel bag and fill it with my creations. Moving to an unused cabinet in my lab, I pulled out the tray full of holy water. Inside was a pair of scissors I'd intended to engrave with runes had I any reason to extend my stay. I tossed the tray but packed the scissors; I could complete this one later.
This was one of the main advantages alchemy had over traditional mechanics: Tools and an established lab were more like suggestions than requirements.
I loaded the Blitzpack and released, causing a complete electronic blackout in a two-hundred foot radius. It also shorted out my multi-tool, but that was fine; I'd gotten my use out of it.
I then slung the EMP generator and wore it like a backpack. In hindsight, the spherical design made carrying it a bit awkward. That was what I got for my tunnel-vision insistence on making it look like Blitzcrank, one more thing I'd have to reshape when I had the time.
With the multi-tool, Blitzpack, and Dream Blossom Censer in hand, I only had to collect three more of my creations: the Petricite dagger, my relic pistol that I still needed a name for, and the Control Wards.
I decided to knock out the hardest part of this right away and moved to Camille's room.
The room reeked of half-dried semen and sweat. I almost wished I was an actual eight year old; at least that way I wouldn't recognize the smell for what it was. Freeform and Camille were sprawled on the bed butt-naked, blankets kicked to the floor in the heat of their nighttime activities.
I made a beeline for the nightstand drawer where I knew Camille kept my relic pistol and the knife I'd made her. I was taking no chances with the changer-yes. I tucked the pistol and holster in my belt and faced the two "lovers."
I crawled onto the bed and placed my left hand over Freeform's mouth before unsheathing my dagger and plunging it into his heart.
His eyes shot open as he let out an agonized scream. He began to thrash about but could not escape nor change. I could have drawn the blade over his throat, but then the Petricite might slip away from contact with his body. This way, his own ribs would help my child body hold the dagger there. I wanted to give him no opportunity to shift away.
I didn't know if he could make out my face in the darkness, but I didn't give him long before I let go of the dagger and jammed my finger into his would, expending my second Minion Dematerializer directly into his chest cavity. His eyes widened further but he couldn't say a word before sixty-eight pounds worth of flesh and blood vanished into mana. I'd made sure to aim upward, taking his brain and corona with the attack. No corona, no power. His leftover lower torso and legs began to soak blood into the sheets.
"Huh?" I heard Camille slur in her sleep. "Babe?"
"Shit, you weren't supposed to be awake," I muttered before I could stop myself. I picked up my dagger and loomed above her.
That forced her wide awake. "Andy?"
A single word and I was hers. My name on her lips was the sweetest song I'd ever heard.
Her power demanded my attention. It demanded that I focus on her honey-sweet voice and her naked body, never mind that the Oracle's Elixir meant I already knew what she looked like at all times. I saw the pool of half-dried fluids around her core and smelt the faint stench of vomit and liquor on her lips. Disgusting, but forgivable, the sinister part of me whispered. I saw her expression as she felt the warm, sticky blood from her lover's stray legs and put two and two together.
"Camille," I breathed out. I didn't know what to say. I wanted to say so much. I wanted to just kill her. I knew it had to be done, but my blade wouldn't move. I backed away, first one step then another.
"You-You're awake," she tried as she rose to a seated position. "You killed Freeform… You're not going to hurt me, are you?"
"I…"
"I love you," she said, three words I'd happily kill to hear, three words I knew people had killed for.
'No doubt Freeform felt the same,' I thought.
I knew. I knew in my mind what she was doing. It didn't help much. I felt like a sheep being sedated before being lured into the slaughterhouse.
"You killed him," she continued, eyes wide and facing where she assumed I was standing. "You saved me. H-He hurt me, Andy, and you saved me. You're my little hero, you know that?"
Another step back. "I'm not-"
"You are. Come here. Can… Can you hold me?"
I knew it was pure manipulation. I knew that my feelings weren't real. It did very little to help when faced with the siren before me. I took a half-step forward.
'I can't hurt her,' I thought despairingly, conflicting feelings of love and hate waging war in my heart. "I can't…"
"You can. Come here."
I turned the dagger away from her. For one moment, the briefest instant, I saw a triumphant smirk flit across her face.
Hesitance transformed into resolve, resolve into rage, rage into hate.
Hate into action.
The dagger dropped.
Pain lanced through my leg.
I didn't know whether it was the Petricite or the pain, but I felt like True Ice had been injected into my veins.
Clarity restored, the relic pistol rose and I snapped off three shots faster than I'd ever fired before, not that that was saying much. One went wide, but another struck her chest. I lucked out with the third, striking her in the base of the neck, cutting off her startled shriek.
I felt numb as I watched her lifeless corpse collapse.
'Firearms practice. One more thing to add to my to-do list,' I thought. Thinking of anything else but her cooling corpse helped me shove my mounting despair into a deep hole. 'Later.'
I walked over and knelt by her side as her mouth opened to give voice to soundless cries. Did she want to curse me? Tell me how La Torcha would burn me alive? Break me with words as she confessed her eternal love for me? Or perhaps plead for her life one last time?
I didn't know and not knowing hurt.
I watched the light fade from her eyes as I whispered, "I love you."
I sat like that for far too long, too emotionally troubled to find it in myself to move.
I buried my emotions deep and got up on shaky knees.
In comparison to the clusterfuck that was Camille, the rest of my raid through the warehouse was hilariously simple.
A quick slash across the throat here. A charged beam of light through the head there.
La Torcha got the Freeform treatment, a stab through the heart with Petricite to disable her power while my final Minion Dematerializer removed her corona along with any chance for her Shard to retaliate.
I looted the warehouse of any cash, almost $30,000 in loose bills. Then, I found myself some nondescript clothes, a pair of gray sweatpants and jacket, and used the blood-soaked ones for target practice.
Just as the earliest rays of dawn broke over the horizon, I walked out of that warehouse with newfound resolve and a broken heart, a killer of a dozen men before the age of ten.
They were waiting for me.
Author's Note
Not 100% happy with this. Honestly, it's my first time writing an escape scene, though it was very low risk thanks to the Dream Blossom Censer. That's the trouble with League items sometimes. They're honestly game-breaking even when I stay away from the OP shit (for the moment). Hopefully I did the Camille scene some justice. The biggest challenge for an author is providing a sense of catharsis and I don't know that I did that well here.
Also, a brief show of how the Minion Dematerializer works. "Anything in its path" gets converted to raw mana and dispersed into the air. The safe is that "thing," meaning it won't just automatically take a spherical bite out of everything. If it hits a shield for example, the shield will vanish, but the person holding it will still have his hand. I'm going to take some liberties with this and say it ignores most clothing so he's not just stripping people. It's a shameless narrative "fuck you" beam.
I know that this fic took a turn for some heavy shit towards the end of this arc. Honestly? I'm pretty surprised by this too. I didn't set out to write something this heavy; I just wanted something fun to distract myself with. Originally, the Inspired Inventor mini-series was how I envisioned this fic: comedic, with a touch of seriousness. Still, I'm more or less happy with how things turned out so I won't apologize.
2000, July 15: Phoenix, AZ, USA
Veronica, La Torcha, wouldn't be seeing her hoverpack. Or anything else for that matter.
It was time.
All throughout, my captivity had been one giant exercise in self-control. During the day, I had to be very careful about what I wanted, what I was willing to act on, and what I was willing to sacrifice in the name of buying myself time and materials.
I was no Lee Sin, with an unshakable discipline that could channel the Dragon of Ionia. I was no Kai'Sa, with an iron will that could hold back the Void for a decade. I was no Atreus, with an unrelenting resolve to face down gods.
Aside from the Mana Crystals, I gained no supernatural effects from meditation, but the ability to compartmentalize my burgeoning love for Camille and balance it with rational thoughts and the need for subtlety even in my own mind was a testament to my increasing self-discipline. I would have never been able to do this in my past life and I felt a burst of pride at my progress.
This last stretch was the single hardest meditation session I'd ever put myself through.
I'd waited for so long, prepared and bided my time. I could surely wait five more hours, I told myself
That didn't change the restlessness I felt. My skin tingled in anticipation even as I drowned out the nervous energy in a sea of mana and introspection.
And still I waited. I didn't know when La Torcha liked to sleep so I had no choice but to stay in meditation longer. I formed crystals in my hands beneath the covers and sank the rest into the Tear.
Finally, at long last, Lawless went to sleep. I reached out and took a sip of the Oracle's Elixir beside my bed as my world expanded around me. Off near the edge of my range, I saw La Torcha getting into bed. Dozing, but not fully asleep yet. I glanced at the clock; three-twenty, two hours later than usual. There were eight normal humans I could see around the warehouse in varying states of wakefulness. I could see a few stirring restlessly, but with the time being what it was, this was as good as I'd get.
As quietly as I could, I shuffle-tugged my pillow from the pillowcase and carried the entire thing like a makeshift sack filled with Mana Crystals and dream blossoms.
First things first, I had to ensure that the gang members would remain asleep while I worked. To that end, I snuck into the kitchenette and picked out my incense burner before taking it to my lab. Fortunately for me, Lawless and Camille had largely forgotten about my incense burner. After all, what the hell could I make with a fancy clay pot, right?
Arrogance was a sin punishable by death.
Then, I snuck into the office Lawless worked out of. He always kept the shutters raised so he could shout profanities down at the workers so I lowered them as quietly as I could, plunging the office into darkness.
There was a safe beneath the desk, three inches of hardened steel. It was where the previous warehouse manager kept his cash and valuables, also where La Torcha locked up my multi-tool. Only she and Lawless knew the password and they figured that with the most versatile tool I had in their control, I wouldn't be able to sneak off to tinker without their oversight, or lash out and hurt someone.
The safe itself was a sturdy affair. Even if I had the Elixir of Wrath, I didn't think I'd be able to break it open, and definitely not without waking the entire warehouse. The lock wasn't really something I knew how to pick either. While there were hundreds of thousands of expert thieves in Runeterra, Inspiration didn't automatically mean I'd be able to draw on their memories, not unless I was in the midst of creating something new.
I formed my hand into a finger pistol and channeled. The spark of infinity within my soul answered. My right hand glowed as the first of three bullets ignited. It was warm, almost uncomfortably so. I felt the World Rune consolidate into my tattoo before lancing out in a beam of azure light. There was an almost cartoonish "pshwoo" sound as the hyper-concentrated mana displaced the air and made contact with the safe. Thankfully, the noise wasn't too loud and confined by the office walls.
The transmutation spell contained within activated immediately. A single flash of light and I was looking at a neat hole carved into the safe. It was almost artistic how most of the safe, about my weight in steel, had vanished into thin air, converted into mana and dispersed in moments. The "cut" was so perfect that the edge looked professionally done, as if made intentionally to be some kind of postmodern art sculpture.
Inside, my multi-tool and Blitzpack sat waiting for me.
"I fucking love this thing," I chuckled as I glanced at my hand. One of the three bullets was dull now.
I snuck back into my lab and set my incense burner on the workbench. Normally, working with glazes was a pain. Trying to make any change, however minor, to an already finished ceramic piece was damn near impossible thanks to how rigid it was. After all, glazes were essentially chemically altered glass and ceramics weren't exactly known for malleability.
That was where my new multi-tool came in. With a narrow enough nozzle, I could condense the welding torch. Even a normal welding torch was much hotter than high-fire glazed ceramic, but I didn't want to melt the glass. I needed the plasma to be so hot and so concentrated that it would immediately cut through the material like butter. It was possible if I overcharged the capacitors. They'd burn out in short order and I'd need to replace them, but I planned on that anyway.
So, hextech multi-tool in hand, I began to engrave runes into the incense burner. Every finished rune was charged with a Mana Crystal until I was left with a fully functional censer, one specifically designed for dream blossoms.
Originally, Lillia's censer was made from the branch of the Dreaming Tree, but I had none so this bastardized version would have to do. Along with propagating the incense through both physical and spiritual means, the censer was engraved with runes of protection for the wielder, me. It wouldn't do to knock my own ass out after all, a bit of Lillia's magic bullshitted into my version of the censer.
Six dream blossoms, fully bloomed over the course of the week, were joined with the censer in an alchemical ritual that reshaped the vessel. Milky-white porcelain was replaced with a deep, rich blue. Jade-green carps were replaced with royal-purple flowers. A hoop extended from the top so it could be held in hand or hung from a staff. I knew that despite its fragile, elegant appearance, it could easily be used to club a man's skull open and not receive the slightest fracture.
I grinned. It was four-fifteen, but that would be enough time for what I had planned.
I channeled mana from within, holding nothing back. Every rune glowed with an azure light, almost indistinguishable from the inlaid flowers. A blue smoke that smelled of midsummer nights and forest floors wafted from the censer. I knew that so long as I supplied it with mana, it could produce this smoke at will.
The dream blossoms were special. The reason I went for these instead of any type of mundane or even magical poison was that these flowers were intrinsically tied to the spirit world. They were dual existences, with a half-step in both the mortal and spiritual worlds. Because of this, walls did not confine their influence. Nor were they impacted by wind, temperature, rain, or anything else that would typically hinder a gaseous attack. As an added plus, they couldn't be resisted by any kind of enhanced biology either. The only way for a human to resist was to reside in an entirely separate space, to not be in the area at all.
I watched the smoke-that-wasn't-smoke disperse throughout the warehouse and even further out. Everyone I could see fell deep into slumber, their chests rising and falling in steady rhythm. Outside, the guards who had been masquerading as night watchmen slumped in their booths. I had until the break of dawn and the new shift to make my escape. I didn't know exactly when the changing of the guard was, but I decided to assume it was at five-thirty and gave myself a little over an hour.
The first thing I did was find a duffel bag and fill it with my creations. Moving to an unused cabinet in my lab, I pulled out the tray full of holy water. Inside was a pair of scissors I'd intended to engrave with runes had I any reason to extend my stay. I tossed the tray but packed the scissors; I could complete this one later.
This was one of the main advantages alchemy had over traditional mechanics: Tools and an established lab were more like suggestions than requirements.
I loaded the Blitzpack and released, causing a complete electronic blackout in a two-hundred foot radius. It also shorted out my multi-tool, but that was fine; I'd gotten my use out of it.
I then slung the EMP generator and wore it like a backpack. In hindsight, the spherical design made carrying it a bit awkward. That was what I got for my tunnel-vision insistence on making it look like Blitzcrank, one more thing I'd have to reshape when I had the time.
With the multi-tool, Blitzpack, and Dream Blossom Censer in hand, I only had to collect three more of my creations: the Petricite dagger, my relic pistol that I still needed a name for, and the Control Wards.
I decided to knock out the hardest part of this right away and moved to Camille's room.
X
The room reeked of half-dried semen and sweat. I almost wished I was an actual eight year old; at least that way I wouldn't recognize the smell for what it was. Freeform and Camille were sprawled on the bed butt-naked, blankets kicked to the floor in the heat of their nighttime activities.
I made a beeline for the nightstand drawer where I knew Camille kept my relic pistol and the knife I'd made her. I was taking no chances with the changer-yes. I tucked the pistol and holster in my belt and faced the two "lovers."
I crawled onto the bed and placed my left hand over Freeform's mouth before unsheathing my dagger and plunging it into his heart.
His eyes shot open as he let out an agonized scream. He began to thrash about but could not escape nor change. I could have drawn the blade over his throat, but then the Petricite might slip away from contact with his body. This way, his own ribs would help my child body hold the dagger there. I wanted to give him no opportunity to shift away.
I didn't know if he could make out my face in the darkness, but I didn't give him long before I let go of the dagger and jammed my finger into his would, expending my second Minion Dematerializer directly into his chest cavity. His eyes widened further but he couldn't say a word before sixty-eight pounds worth of flesh and blood vanished into mana. I'd made sure to aim upward, taking his brain and corona with the attack. No corona, no power. His leftover lower torso and legs began to soak blood into the sheets.
"Huh?" I heard Camille slur in her sleep. "Babe?"
"Shit, you weren't supposed to be awake," I muttered before I could stop myself. I picked up my dagger and loomed above her.
That forced her wide awake. "Andy?"
A single word and I was hers. My name on her lips was the sweetest song I'd ever heard.
Her power demanded my attention. It demanded that I focus on her honey-sweet voice and her naked body, never mind that the Oracle's Elixir meant I already knew what she looked like at all times. I saw the pool of half-dried fluids around her core and smelt the faint stench of vomit and liquor on her lips. Disgusting, but forgivable, the sinister part of me whispered. I saw her expression as she felt the warm, sticky blood from her lover's stray legs and put two and two together.
"Camille," I breathed out. I didn't know what to say. I wanted to say so much. I wanted to just kill her. I knew it had to be done, but my blade wouldn't move. I backed away, first one step then another.
"You-You're awake," she tried as she rose to a seated position. "You killed Freeform… You're not going to hurt me, are you?"
"I…"
"I love you," she said, three words I'd happily kill to hear, three words I knew people had killed for.
'No doubt Freeform felt the same,' I thought.
I knew. I knew in my mind what she was doing. It didn't help much. I felt like a sheep being sedated before being lured into the slaughterhouse.
"You killed him," she continued, eyes wide and facing where she assumed I was standing. "You saved me. H-He hurt me, Andy, and you saved me. You're my little hero, you know that?"
Another step back. "I'm not-"
"You are. Come here. Can… Can you hold me?"
I knew it was pure manipulation. I knew that my feelings weren't real. It did very little to help when faced with the siren before me. I took a half-step forward.
'I can't hurt her,' I thought despairingly, conflicting feelings of love and hate waging war in my heart. "I can't…"
"You can. Come here."
I turned the dagger away from her. For one moment, the briefest instant, I saw a triumphant smirk flit across her face.
Hesitance transformed into resolve, resolve into rage, rage into hate.
Hate into action.
The dagger dropped.
Pain lanced through my leg.
I didn't know whether it was the Petricite or the pain, but I felt like True Ice had been injected into my veins.
Clarity restored, the relic pistol rose and I snapped off three shots faster than I'd ever fired before, not that that was saying much. One went wide, but another struck her chest. I lucked out with the third, striking her in the base of the neck, cutting off her startled shriek.
I felt numb as I watched her lifeless corpse collapse.
'Firearms practice. One more thing to add to my to-do list,' I thought. Thinking of anything else but her cooling corpse helped me shove my mounting despair into a deep hole. 'Later.'
I walked over and knelt by her side as her mouth opened to give voice to soundless cries. Did she want to curse me? Tell me how La Torcha would burn me alive? Break me with words as she confessed her eternal love for me? Or perhaps plead for her life one last time?
I didn't know and not knowing hurt.
I watched the light fade from her eyes as I whispered, "I love you."
X
I sat like that for far too long, too emotionally troubled to find it in myself to move.
I buried my emotions deep and got up on shaky knees.
In comparison to the clusterfuck that was Camille, the rest of my raid through the warehouse was hilariously simple.
A quick slash across the throat here. A charged beam of light through the head there.
La Torcha got the Freeform treatment, a stab through the heart with Petricite to disable her power while my final Minion Dematerializer removed her corona along with any chance for her Shard to retaliate.
I looted the warehouse of any cash, almost $30,000 in loose bills. Then, I found myself some nondescript clothes, a pair of gray sweatpants and jacket, and used the blood-soaked ones for target practice.
Just as the earliest rays of dawn broke over the horizon, I walked out of that warehouse with newfound resolve and a broken heart, a killer of a dozen men before the age of ten.
They were waiting for me.
Author's Note
Not 100% happy with this. Honestly, it's my first time writing an escape scene, though it was very low risk thanks to the Dream Blossom Censer. That's the trouble with League items sometimes. They're honestly game-breaking even when I stay away from the OP shit (for the moment). Hopefully I did the Camille scene some justice. The biggest challenge for an author is providing a sense of catharsis and I don't know that I did that well here.
Also, a brief show of how the Minion Dematerializer works. "Anything in its path" gets converted to raw mana and dispersed into the air. The safe is that "thing," meaning it won't just automatically take a spherical bite out of everything. If it hits a shield for example, the shield will vanish, but the person holding it will still have his hand. I'm going to take some liberties with this and say it ignores most clothing so he's not just stripping people. It's a shameless narrative "fuck you" beam.
I know that this fic took a turn for some heavy shit towards the end of this arc. Honestly? I'm pretty surprised by this too. I didn't set out to write something this heavy; I just wanted something fun to distract myself with. Originally, the Inspired Inventor mini-series was how I envisioned this fic: comedic, with a touch of seriousness. Still, I'm more or less happy with how things turned out so I won't apologize.
DALuc1f3r
(Verified Boojum)
- Location
- Scotland
...you do realise he is gonna give the unwritten rules the kick in the ass that took fluer's death in cannon, right?
this may even leave amelia with marquis depending on the timeframe
edit: wrote this before the third chapter came out
He's going to need all the therapy.
- Location
- Philippines
Honestly, I got no catharsis out of it. I had no real interest in her as a character and just wanted her gone, so Rubedo's reaction was more of "Oh, is that so?" Honestly, if Camille was designed as a more sympathetic character that would actually hurt to watch Rubedo be forced to kill, then yes. But all there is is an in-universe Master effect that has no justification otherwise. We, as the readers, have only reason to hate her and none to wish her remain alive. Rubedo may have been hurt, but the disconnect was there from the beginning.
There was a bit of catharsis, I suppose, in watching the bastards that led to this arc die, but I never really did quite enjoy death and revenge in fiction. So all in all, I'm just glad to see this arc end once and for all.
Oh, definitely. And I'd hate to say this, but this is probably exactly the desired outcome by the Path if it could predict him. If Rubedo is more blooded and willing to do morally dubious things to achieve his goals, then he's going to be more effective in the long run and make him more conducive to working with Cauldron. Sure, he may feel manipulated about it if it does get confirmed in universe, but it's also the kind of thing this situation would make him more willing to accept.
Last edited:
- Location
- OK
Well, I take it back. There's the payoff I was craving, and it was a damn good one.
- Location
- Philippines
Actually, wouldn't this event make it pretty clear that Rubedo's been sandbagging hard in regards with his creations, as far as the PRT is concerned? As of now, everyone only thinks that he's an alchemist Tinker. But now, he has no less than three different weapons on hand with barely any connection to alchemy, and if he explains how he got out, he'll have to mention at least the Minion Dematerializer which is not equipment based.
Sure, the public may not get to hear it, but I'm sure those in the PRT would be both interested and horrified at how close they were to losing such a miracle gem when already they thought they lost the golden egg.
Sure, the public may not get to hear it, but I'm sure those in the PRT would be both interested and horrified at how close they were to losing such a miracle gem when already they thought they lost the golden egg.
- Location
- California
They might just think it's an expansion of his abilities in the form of a second trigger like Ranchero. Not to handwave away Andy's struggles here, but 2 weeks of captivity with no hint of a rescue? Sounds like a moment to break, but also subsequently slay his captors.
- Location
- Sweden
More like the goose that lays the golden eggs, but yeah. Can't see the PRT happy about how close they got to losing him after this gets out.
- Location
- Philippines
At this point, there's already some understanding of Second Triggers and the conditions that bring them about. It's not enough to be just traumatic - it has to also meet the conditions of how his original Trigger occurred. But from their understanding, it was either the near-death experience from the drowning and being blinded in the middle of an Endbringer attack, or the loss of his father that led to his Trigger.
Neither of which are really applicable since 1) he was clearly not physically in distress, and 2) even if killing Camille counted as comparable emotional trauma to losing his father, it would still be on a wrong part of the timeline - he created weapons to kill the gang (and Camille), not gained the ability to create weapons (and use the Minion Dematerializer) as a result of killing the gang. And if it ever comes out that he created the gun before everything else that happened, well that's definitely a confirmation that Rubedo was never just an alchemist.
In-universe, characters against a Master should lose. And the story reads as though the author is glossing over that by having the main character sort of partly lose with enough resistance to have some agency without actually escaping. And that's not how it should go.
It's like having Alexandria out to kill the main character, and having him fight off her punches by force of will, but not actually be able to escape her. That's realistic in the sense that escaping Alexandria is impossible, yet it's sort of stupid at the same time.
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- Location
- Philippines
Honestly, it would be a surprise if he even gets to stay in the same PRT branch and not under one of the Triumvirates after this. Not only did they fail to protect him (to which the local PRT will definitely take the fall for for the rest of the PRT publically), if his real capabilities come out Cauldron definitely would want him kept closer to their chest.
To be fair, Camille was specifically described as the slow kind of Master and her focus was on Freeform, not Rubedo. The reason why he got away with what he did was because he was underestimated from the start.
- Location
- Deep inside the sand
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Shit he makes her an anti power knife. He better make it defective or a hidden tracker so he can follow it.
He better make sure that he will report Lawless' so called police. So they know they have a leak.
Mwhahaha.
Let the bodies hit the floor!
Let the bodies hit the floor!
Let the bodies hit the floooooor!
I always thought La Torcha was a man. O.O
Liked that he figured out that La Torcha's secret to her power.
I was like "c'mon are you giving magic jetpacks to them too?" But it looks like he wont be making them.
He has been here 10 days?! What the fuck! I can give the PRT and Protecturate 3 to 5 days max. In worst case a week but any longer is completely unacceptable. Even then kidnapping is best to resolve as fast as possible. In a normal case he would have been a lapdog to them at this rate.
Me too buddy. Me too.
This soured it for me. Now will I be thinking on if its a permanent depower or if its a temp depower as long as its in his leg. Not to mention I don't even know if its a wound from a normal source or that Petricite knife.
Let the bodies hit the floooor!
Ehem. I'm unsure if he took the 30k because he decided he wanted to live as a rogue/hero/parahuman outside the PRT's sight. Then again why would he say 'they were waiting for me' if he didn't go back. It's an astonishingly small chance the authorities would let him hold 30k loose bills from likely criminal sources.
3.9.5 Rebecca Costa-Brown
Fabled Webs
Lord Weaver, Glorious and Wise
- Location
- Arlington, VA
Interlude 3.9.5: Rebecca Costa-Brown
2000, July 9: Phoenix, AZ, USA
I sat ramrod straight before the cameras, the picture of professionalism. I schooled my microexpressions into a countenance of practiced concern and focused resolve. My dress shirt was perfectly pressed save for a few minor but noticeable creases, an intentional departure from my typically immaculate appearance. A few crow's feet had been added to my makeup as well, giving the appearance of a stern woman weathered by age and worry over the current crisis.
All according to the Path.
The cameras started blinking, telling me that they were rolling.
"Evening to all," I began. Even those three simple words were calculated not to be friendly, but to be clinical, a woman who wasted as few words on aimless pleasantries as possible. "There have been many rumors and false allegations coming out of the Phoenix area. I am here to set the record straight."
I shuffled the manila folder in front of me. Pointless props of course. I knew what color the janitor's shoe laces were, never mind such an important briefing. Still, Alexandria knew those things. Rebecca Costa-Brown was bound by mortal limits. One more thing to humanize me.
I cleared my throat and began again, head bowed in the picture of remorse.
"It has remained a longstanding mission of the Parahuman Response Team to integrate parahumans into society. We have gone through great lengths to provide parahumans with productive outlets for their powers and have attracted and nurtured a great many promising youths through the Wards program. In the course of this mission, we have likewise faced a great many number of trials and tribulations. Some were growing pains of a young organization with a noble mission but a lack of experience. Others… Others were less forgivable.
"And on July fifth, the Wards program failed utterly and unreservedly. I will not make excuses, nor will I try to hide what has occurred. A Ward was kidnapped from his own home. A senior Wards liaison was murdered. I will not speak further on ongoing investigations, but this much, I believe I must say: We failed. We, the PRT. We, the Protectorate. We, the nation, failed to safeguard one of our own, one who swore to be a hero and entrusted us with his safety. We cannot make things right; but we must try.
"To that end, I have authorized Watchdog to use every resource available. We are at this time certain that Rubedo is alive and well. Further, Alexandria has been dispatched to lead the investigative efforts from the ground. Rest assured, we will save Rubedo. We will bring his kidnappers to justice."
I stood. A brief address, but that was for the best. The cameras stopped rolling and I allowed myself a brief nod at a job well done. I began to walk out, my footsteps echoed by my secretary.
"You have an appointment to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee in fifteen, ma'am," she said. Lena, I remembered. A pretty young thing who studied at Georgetown before deciding she wanted to do something domestic instead of pursue international relations.
She went on for precisely another forty-three seconds and I allowed her to "remind" me of my commitments. Letting her feel useful cost me nothing after all.
"Thank you for your help, Lena," I said, awarding her a practiced smile. It looked "warmer," a smile I'd practiced for those who were presumably in my confidence and a departure from the stern visage I kept up on camera.
She'd be useful one day. She too was a part of the Path.
2000, July 12: Phoenix, AZ, USA
"Take her," I said to Oathkeeper. "There is something I want to verify."
"Yes, ma'am," came her comms.
She, Bunyan, and I were striking out against the Southside Mesa and the arsonist called Calavera.
Over the past few days, I'd taken the screws to several captured gang members. My ability to act as a living polygraph coupled with the not insignificant detail of being interrogated by the strongest brute in the world let me acquire more information than any mundane detective. I found six hideouts, supply depots, and drug labs in short order and organized a series of raids the very next day.
The trouble with SSM and many gangs like them was that they were intentionally anarchic and scattered, lacking a single place they can call their stronghold. Dos Caras was in charge, but with only Calavera to assist him in terms of cape muscle, he had no choice but to spread his forces thinner than usual. It made rooting them out difficult, much like a guerrilla insurgency, but it also meant Dos Caras and Calavera were often separated.
I took advantage of that and isolated Calavera, pinning her with Oathkeeper's squad, all in the name of getting her another accolade under her belt. We'd decided long ago that she was worth nurturing and she'd soon be supervising her own city.
Of course, it wasn't just for Oathkeeper's sake that I veered off. Faith in the Phoenix PRT was at an all-time low. First came a nationally publicized lawsuit against one of their Wards. Then said Ward got kidnapped from his own home even as the largest gang war in the city's history erupts. We may have arranged for this, but even Contessa agreed that complete collapse of the local PRT would be detrimental to our ultimate mission.
So, here I was, bolstering the PRT.
Oathkeeper and Bunyan were more than capable of bagging Dos Caras' remaining lieutenant. This minor triumph would be played up in the news as a grand struggle, injecting some badly needed morale back into the local forces.
As for me, I did as the Path demanded and flew down to a side street, barely more than an alley. There, I found an SSM member doing his best to cover up his tattoos and blend into the scenery. I recognized him, Lucas Parker, one of over a hundred death row inmates in the state of Arizona and one of the prisoners freed during the explosions last Sunday.
He turned and saw me looming above, cape fluttering behind me. "Shi-"
I didn't even let him finish before my hand clamped down over his face like a vice and dragged him from the side street. "Hello, Lucas," I said, tone silky smooth and cordial. He ceased his ineffectual struggles, eyes widening in paralyzing horror.
Yes, Alexandria knows your name.
I allowed myself a hint of smug satisfaction at his reaction. Seeing how I went over every major criminal dossier in whichever city I happened to be in, it shouldn't be surprising. My powers were no secret after all. I'd repeatedly gone on record claiming that my favorite part of my powers was my enhanced cognition. And yet, there was always this visceral terror in the eyes of normal criminals when they realized just whose radar they'd managed to find themselves on.
It was positively delicious.
"Ma'am?" came Oathkeeper's unasked question as I dragged Lucas Parker into the PRT van.
"This one, I have questions for. Do make sure he gets to headquarters, won't you?" I addressed the squad captain.
"Yes, ma-"
Before he could finish, I was off. There were more steps to the Path.
Getting Mr. Parker to squeal was a simple matter. From him, I was able to verify my "hunches," giving a visible source for the Path and its stepping stones.
Death row inmates were kept in a separate wing. Said wing was therefore shielded from the explosions on Sunday. Said inmates could therefore not have escaped without inside help. Far fewer guards and staff had access to this wing, particularly solitary, which Mr. Parker was in until his sudden release. Therefore, we could isolate likely moles in the guards and, tracing their activities, isolate moles in the local forces.
All of this took me a mere half an hour, a feat I'd handwaved as having been made possible with the assistance of Watchdog.
I walked into Calavera's interrogation room and saw her stiffen as she realized just who her interrogator would be.
The muscular woman was permitted to keep her purple skull-shaped mask, but her hands were chained to the cold, metal table using one of Rubedo's power-nullifying shackles. Wonderful bit of tech, that. It'd be a marvelous addition to Cauldron's arsenal and I'd already begun the process of acquiring a steady supply of fossilized wood, even from alternate planets if need be.
She stared at me mulishly.
I scoffed. Her willingness to cooperate was irrelevant.
"James Lewis. Carter Rice. Theresa Mueller. Stephen Guerra. Luis Strong. Sophia Copeland. Juan Navarro. Juan de la Rosa. Vincent Nguyen. Tyler Isley. Isaac O'Reilly. Owen Rowley. Jamal Johnson. Eunice Steinbrook. Booker Walston." I got up and spoke into the mic. "Detain Rice, Johnson, Steinbrook, and Navarro."
"What the fu-"
"Thank you for your cooperation, Calavera," I said mockingly as I exited the interrogation room.
2000, July 13: Phoenix, AZ, USA
It was a simple matter to come to the right conclusion with the information I received from the four arrested officials.
Some were bribed. A particularly important one was blackmailed. SSM did not have the resources to pull off an attack like this, either the breakouts or the kidnapping. Peckerwoods might, but only if they received outside assistance. Gesellschaft's influence did not reach this far, nor did they associate themselves with what they saw as "white trash." The Herren clan were struggling financially and wouldn't bother moving out so far west. This left the Crips or an outside party using them as patsies.
I also made a note that the Peckerwoods were acting strange, as though they were missing their leader despite Freeform still remaining at large.
The Crips kidnapped Rubedo. This conclusion was further supported by in-depth psychoanalytical profiles of all three leaders. Dos Caras was a mad dog. Freeform could be cunning, but only as far as it applied to his own power. He wasn't much of a leader of men. La Torcha though, she was Mortician's strategist and willing to make long-term plans while taking on significant risk in the name of greater ultimate gain.
Watchdog was the final avenue of investigation. Not only did they confirm my conclusions, they raised concerns of a master effect at play as extrapolated from Freeform's strange behavior and the presence of Parade. There was also a not insignificant chance, they said, that Tequila had a master power given her name and the connotations it implied.
All this was reported to Director Lyons, Deputy Directors Silva and Irish, Oathkeeper, and Royalle, along with my intention to stay off the field while I focused on tracking down Rubedo.
"We have to move cautiously from now on," I said, staring each of them down. "Calavera's capture was a great thing, but it in itself doesn't get us any closer to finding Rubedo. I'll be stepping away from the gang war so I can focus on tracking down La Torcha. We know precious few of her hideaways and even back in Los Angeles, she was among the more cunning criminals."
"We understand, Alexandria," Director Lyons said. "Happy hunting."
"Should we prepare anything for when you do find her or will you just swoop in and rescue Rubedo on your own?" Deputy Director Silva asked. He was a hard man with a constant frown. It rankled him that the Phoenix branch needed outside help, even if that help came from a Founder.
"Prepare a squad or two of your finest, but don't take so many from the field that it's noticeable," I responded. "Ultimately, finding him isn't the biggest issue. It's this." I tapped the Watchdog report in front of me. "A master warning means we need to account for the possibility that Rubedo is now hostile, unwilling, but hostile nonetheless. Trying to extract him could end poorly, even for me."
"Surely you're immune to whatever he can do?"
"We're still not sure how much Petricite it would take to negate Alexandria's powers, if any," Lyons said. "And… Rubedo… He's more than he seems."
It was Deputy Director Irish who spoke this time. As a former forest ranger, he was typically stationed overseeing the national parks near the greater Phoenix area. He'd been called down due to the emergency. "How so? He seemed like a good lad from what little I'd seen of him. Remarkably mature and potentially a genius intelligence to go with that maturity. Seemed to have his head on straight."
"There is no such thing as a stable cape," Silva said, then caught the eyes of the three high-level capes in the room. "No offense."
"None taken, director," Royalle nodded. "I know I mess around a lot, but capes… Yeah, being a cape can mess you up."
"Nothing like that," Lyons continued. "Rubedo is fine, at least, fine as far as any therapist can tell. He behaves like he's in his twenties, but he's hardly mentally unsound. I don't have any worries about his personality. It's his tech that concerns me.
"Back when he first debuted, we had a conversation about what else he might be able to make. I admit part of it was my own curiosity, former egghead and all, but most of it was so I could help organize his lab to his specifications. He told me that he could make anything from incredibly potent poisons and antidotes to something called the Shimmer, a super-soldier serum that drives the drinker mad, but is permanent."
I allowed the four others to mull this new information over for a bit.
"Fuck," Royalle summed up the general sentiment. "Why weren't any of us told about it? Are you saying we could have a horde of insane gangbangers with powers soon?"
"Because I vetoed its creation. It was sent along to the chief director, but otherwise left as a simple footnote. He never made it and openly admitted to having such capability rather than try to sneak one by us."
"Be that as it may," I broke in before the others started arguing about being left out of the loop. "I must now work under the assumption that a hostile Rubedo is capable of potentially bypassing even my defenses to poison me. If he's too far gone… Master victims have been known to commit suicide rather than let themselves be captured. We're going to need a more concrete plan. I might have to call in a few favors, maybe with a teleporter."
"A teleporter? We do have Masked Bandit for rescue," Irish pointed out. "Think she'd be up for it?"
"No," Lyons said. "She's just thirteen. She shouldn't have to deal with the Crips of all people. Worse, she's close to Rubedo. I don't want her to be at ground zero if things go wrong."
"Quite," I agreed. "It'll take a few days to get the one I have in mind so we'll carry on as usual until then."
"So more of that 'hurry up and wait' deal, eh? Can't say I missed this from back in my army days," Silva grunted.
"It is what it is," Oathkeeper said, standing. "If you'll excuse me, directors, Royalle, Alexandria, I've got to arrange a few more patrols."
At that, the meeting broke.
2000, July 15: Phoenix, AZ, USA
Gemini, a teleporter and duplicator based out of Salt Lake City, arrived last night. He could make a second copy of himself, his "mirror." He and his mirror could teleport whatever they touched between themselves, including people. Because of this, he was almost always tapped for rescue operations like this.
Gemini's arrival marked the final preparations for what was being called Operation Hot Potato. I allowed myself a quiet chuckle at Deputy Director Silva's ridiculous naming sense; it wouldn't do to let them see Alexandria laugh in public.
Watchdog had identified the Red Sands Moving Company as Rubedo's most likely location. Gemini had been dragged into a brief as soon as he arrived and the raid had been scheduled at dawn.
All according to the Path.
The plan itself was simple. Two squads of the best the PRT had to offer would discreetly encircle the parking lot at six in the morning. The isolation that had helped the Crips get established so quickly would only work against them here, allowing the troopers to approach without drawing too much attention from the public.
Protectorate Team Two, led by Oathkeeper, would be riding along as backup in order to capture any stragglers. Redbird and Echo, formerly on loan to Team Two, would be returned to Team One as they would be needed to raid the Peckerwoods simultaneously. One more feather in the cap of the local Protectorate.
Once we were in position, Gyroscope would scan for and hopefully find Rubedo using his drones. From there, I would drop in through the ceiling. A drone carrying Gemini's mirror would follow shortly behind.
Once Gemini's mirror was through, I would run interference against any local capes and workshop defenses while Gemini made a beeline for Rubedo. As soon as Rubedo was teleported away, I would make my own exit. It was determined that this was the best option to minimize any chance for retaliation.
As soon as Gemini's original got his hands on Rubedo, a trooper would feed him his own Petricite Elixir, just in case. And with Gemini's greenlight, the rest of the backup squads would move in, capturing anyone left inside.
Meaningless, utterly meaningless.
The entirety of Operation Hot Potato was a façade. Rubedo wasn't in any real danger. La Torcha wasn't hurting him. In a vacuum, her goals were actually far more sinister, an attempt to co-opt a tinker, to grow her organization into a national superpower, and ultimately to orchestrate my death. It wasn't greed that made La Torcha so formidable; it was her ambition.
Fortunately, it was also that ambition and a willingness to take things slow, one step at a time, that allowed her to be so easily manipulated by the Path. She was the ideal whetstone with which to sharpen the PRT, Protectorate, and Rubedo himself.
An electromagnetic pulse spread out from the Red Sands warehouse mere five minutes before our arrival, just long enough to disable all other recording devices. The PRT squads slid into the parking lot just late enough to avoid the EMP. We'd be spinning this story on our terms, thank you very much.
All according to the Path.
The squads were gathered around the parking lot. A quick comms check reaffirmed everyone's position and their roles in the plan. And just as I began to tire of this charade, Gyroscope's drones spotted a figure exiting the warehouse.
Some idiot squad captain readied his weapons.
Perfect.
"Belay that," I spoke over comms as I hovered a thousand feet above the ground. "That's Rubedo. He's exited on his own."
"Was the plan leaked, ma'am?"
"No, no one would send the hostage out on his lonesome. I'll approach. Make no hostile movements."
"Be careful, ma'am."
I didn't bother to reply. Instead, I descended slowly, landing lightly ten feet away from the boy. I noticed him tense as I entered within the range of his pericognition, hand going to a bulge in his pants I immediately identified as a gun of some sort. It told me much about his mentality. Hero would have quite the job ahead of him.
We stood there, gauging one another. I'd memorized his picture of course, but there was a certain presence to him now that I was seeing him in person. He had no eyes of course, but if he did, I had no doubt that they would contain them hardened steel of a veteran rather than the fear of a child.
"Alexandria," he spoke, voice tinged with exhaustion that wasn't entirely from a long night.
I made a show of giving him a once-over. He'd changed sometime before emerging, but there weren't any extra shoes. Then, I did something that caught everyone off guard. I walked over, knelt, and hugged him in full view of countless personal cameras.
Alexandria did not hug.
I could practically hear their worldviews shattering as they tried to process this.
I gently but firmly kept his hands to his sides, keeping him from going for the dagger at his hip. Comms off, I whispered, "Your shoes still have bloodspots."
I felt him stiffen and smiled.
All according to the Path.
Author's Note
Can I just say how goddamn hard it is to write Alexandria? I dabbled at it a bit in the Inspired Inventor mini-series, but damn. I think the problem is that we only ever see three sides of Alexandria despite being such a looming shadow for Taylor: We see her as she punches Leviathan. We see her as she tries to murder the Undersiders. And we see her braindead corpse.
Sure, there are other moments, but those are the highlights of her character. She's harsh. She's a bitch. She's strong. Not much to write about as far as personality. We know she's one of the best thinkers in the world, but see very few examples of that aspect of her powers in action.
If you feel there are inconsistencies, my go-to excuse will be that this is Alexandria before she became completely jaded with the world. She hasn't completely abandoned things like human interaction or morality yet.
Arizona State Prison Complex in Florence, AZ, houses all of the state's death row inmates. Currently (as of March 2022), Arizona has over a hundred on death row. Florence is a city southeast of Phoenix and is broadly in the same metropolitan area.
Isn't it funny what weird rabbit holes being a writer drags you into?
2000, July 9: Phoenix, AZ, USA
I sat ramrod straight before the cameras, the picture of professionalism. I schooled my microexpressions into a countenance of practiced concern and focused resolve. My dress shirt was perfectly pressed save for a few minor but noticeable creases, an intentional departure from my typically immaculate appearance. A few crow's feet had been added to my makeup as well, giving the appearance of a stern woman weathered by age and worry over the current crisis.
All according to the Path.
The cameras started blinking, telling me that they were rolling.
"Evening to all," I began. Even those three simple words were calculated not to be friendly, but to be clinical, a woman who wasted as few words on aimless pleasantries as possible. "There have been many rumors and false allegations coming out of the Phoenix area. I am here to set the record straight."
I shuffled the manila folder in front of me. Pointless props of course. I knew what color the janitor's shoe laces were, never mind such an important briefing. Still, Alexandria knew those things. Rebecca Costa-Brown was bound by mortal limits. One more thing to humanize me.
I cleared my throat and began again, head bowed in the picture of remorse.
"It has remained a longstanding mission of the Parahuman Response Team to integrate parahumans into society. We have gone through great lengths to provide parahumans with productive outlets for their powers and have attracted and nurtured a great many promising youths through the Wards program. In the course of this mission, we have likewise faced a great many number of trials and tribulations. Some were growing pains of a young organization with a noble mission but a lack of experience. Others… Others were less forgivable.
"And on July fifth, the Wards program failed utterly and unreservedly. I will not make excuses, nor will I try to hide what has occurred. A Ward was kidnapped from his own home. A senior Wards liaison was murdered. I will not speak further on ongoing investigations, but this much, I believe I must say: We failed. We, the PRT. We, the Protectorate. We, the nation, failed to safeguard one of our own, one who swore to be a hero and entrusted us with his safety. We cannot make things right; but we must try.
"To that end, I have authorized Watchdog to use every resource available. We are at this time certain that Rubedo is alive and well. Further, Alexandria has been dispatched to lead the investigative efforts from the ground. Rest assured, we will save Rubedo. We will bring his kidnappers to justice."
I stood. A brief address, but that was for the best. The cameras stopped rolling and I allowed myself a brief nod at a job well done. I began to walk out, my footsteps echoed by my secretary.
"You have an appointment to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee in fifteen, ma'am," she said. Lena, I remembered. A pretty young thing who studied at Georgetown before deciding she wanted to do something domestic instead of pursue international relations.
She went on for precisely another forty-three seconds and I allowed her to "remind" me of my commitments. Letting her feel useful cost me nothing after all.
"Thank you for your help, Lena," I said, awarding her a practiced smile. It looked "warmer," a smile I'd practiced for those who were presumably in my confidence and a departure from the stern visage I kept up on camera.
She'd be useful one day. She too was a part of the Path.
X
2000, July 12: Phoenix, AZ, USA
"Take her," I said to Oathkeeper. "There is something I want to verify."
"Yes, ma'am," came her comms.
She, Bunyan, and I were striking out against the Southside Mesa and the arsonist called Calavera.
Over the past few days, I'd taken the screws to several captured gang members. My ability to act as a living polygraph coupled with the not insignificant detail of being interrogated by the strongest brute in the world let me acquire more information than any mundane detective. I found six hideouts, supply depots, and drug labs in short order and organized a series of raids the very next day.
The trouble with SSM and many gangs like them was that they were intentionally anarchic and scattered, lacking a single place they can call their stronghold. Dos Caras was in charge, but with only Calavera to assist him in terms of cape muscle, he had no choice but to spread his forces thinner than usual. It made rooting them out difficult, much like a guerrilla insurgency, but it also meant Dos Caras and Calavera were often separated.
I took advantage of that and isolated Calavera, pinning her with Oathkeeper's squad, all in the name of getting her another accolade under her belt. We'd decided long ago that she was worth nurturing and she'd soon be supervising her own city.
Of course, it wasn't just for Oathkeeper's sake that I veered off. Faith in the Phoenix PRT was at an all-time low. First came a nationally publicized lawsuit against one of their Wards. Then said Ward got kidnapped from his own home even as the largest gang war in the city's history erupts. We may have arranged for this, but even Contessa agreed that complete collapse of the local PRT would be detrimental to our ultimate mission.
So, here I was, bolstering the PRT.
Oathkeeper and Bunyan were more than capable of bagging Dos Caras' remaining lieutenant. This minor triumph would be played up in the news as a grand struggle, injecting some badly needed morale back into the local forces.
As for me, I did as the Path demanded and flew down to a side street, barely more than an alley. There, I found an SSM member doing his best to cover up his tattoos and blend into the scenery. I recognized him, Lucas Parker, one of over a hundred death row inmates in the state of Arizona and one of the prisoners freed during the explosions last Sunday.
He turned and saw me looming above, cape fluttering behind me. "Shi-"
I didn't even let him finish before my hand clamped down over his face like a vice and dragged him from the side street. "Hello, Lucas," I said, tone silky smooth and cordial. He ceased his ineffectual struggles, eyes widening in paralyzing horror.
Yes, Alexandria knows your name.
I allowed myself a hint of smug satisfaction at his reaction. Seeing how I went over every major criminal dossier in whichever city I happened to be in, it shouldn't be surprising. My powers were no secret after all. I'd repeatedly gone on record claiming that my favorite part of my powers was my enhanced cognition. And yet, there was always this visceral terror in the eyes of normal criminals when they realized just whose radar they'd managed to find themselves on.
It was positively delicious.
"Ma'am?" came Oathkeeper's unasked question as I dragged Lucas Parker into the PRT van.
"This one, I have questions for. Do make sure he gets to headquarters, won't you?" I addressed the squad captain.
"Yes, ma-"
Before he could finish, I was off. There were more steps to the Path.
X
Getting Mr. Parker to squeal was a simple matter. From him, I was able to verify my "hunches," giving a visible source for the Path and its stepping stones.
Death row inmates were kept in a separate wing. Said wing was therefore shielded from the explosions on Sunday. Said inmates could therefore not have escaped without inside help. Far fewer guards and staff had access to this wing, particularly solitary, which Mr. Parker was in until his sudden release. Therefore, we could isolate likely moles in the guards and, tracing their activities, isolate moles in the local forces.
All of this took me a mere half an hour, a feat I'd handwaved as having been made possible with the assistance of Watchdog.
I walked into Calavera's interrogation room and saw her stiffen as she realized just who her interrogator would be.
The muscular woman was permitted to keep her purple skull-shaped mask, but her hands were chained to the cold, metal table using one of Rubedo's power-nullifying shackles. Wonderful bit of tech, that. It'd be a marvelous addition to Cauldron's arsenal and I'd already begun the process of acquiring a steady supply of fossilized wood, even from alternate planets if need be.
She stared at me mulishly.
I scoffed. Her willingness to cooperate was irrelevant.
"James Lewis. Carter Rice. Theresa Mueller. Stephen Guerra. Luis Strong. Sophia Copeland. Juan Navarro. Juan de la Rosa. Vincent Nguyen. Tyler Isley. Isaac O'Reilly. Owen Rowley. Jamal Johnson. Eunice Steinbrook. Booker Walston." I got up and spoke into the mic. "Detain Rice, Johnson, Steinbrook, and Navarro."
"What the fu-"
"Thank you for your cooperation, Calavera," I said mockingly as I exited the interrogation room.
X
2000, July 13: Phoenix, AZ, USA
It was a simple matter to come to the right conclusion with the information I received from the four arrested officials.
Some were bribed. A particularly important one was blackmailed. SSM did not have the resources to pull off an attack like this, either the breakouts or the kidnapping. Peckerwoods might, but only if they received outside assistance. Gesellschaft's influence did not reach this far, nor did they associate themselves with what they saw as "white trash." The Herren clan were struggling financially and wouldn't bother moving out so far west. This left the Crips or an outside party using them as patsies.
I also made a note that the Peckerwoods were acting strange, as though they were missing their leader despite Freeform still remaining at large.
The Crips kidnapped Rubedo. This conclusion was further supported by in-depth psychoanalytical profiles of all three leaders. Dos Caras was a mad dog. Freeform could be cunning, but only as far as it applied to his own power. He wasn't much of a leader of men. La Torcha though, she was Mortician's strategist and willing to make long-term plans while taking on significant risk in the name of greater ultimate gain.
Watchdog was the final avenue of investigation. Not only did they confirm my conclusions, they raised concerns of a master effect at play as extrapolated from Freeform's strange behavior and the presence of Parade. There was also a not insignificant chance, they said, that Tequila had a master power given her name and the connotations it implied.
All this was reported to Director Lyons, Deputy Directors Silva and Irish, Oathkeeper, and Royalle, along with my intention to stay off the field while I focused on tracking down Rubedo.
"We have to move cautiously from now on," I said, staring each of them down. "Calavera's capture was a great thing, but it in itself doesn't get us any closer to finding Rubedo. I'll be stepping away from the gang war so I can focus on tracking down La Torcha. We know precious few of her hideaways and even back in Los Angeles, she was among the more cunning criminals."
"We understand, Alexandria," Director Lyons said. "Happy hunting."
"Should we prepare anything for when you do find her or will you just swoop in and rescue Rubedo on your own?" Deputy Director Silva asked. He was a hard man with a constant frown. It rankled him that the Phoenix branch needed outside help, even if that help came from a Founder.
"Prepare a squad or two of your finest, but don't take so many from the field that it's noticeable," I responded. "Ultimately, finding him isn't the biggest issue. It's this." I tapped the Watchdog report in front of me. "A master warning means we need to account for the possibility that Rubedo is now hostile, unwilling, but hostile nonetheless. Trying to extract him could end poorly, even for me."
"Surely you're immune to whatever he can do?"
"We're still not sure how much Petricite it would take to negate Alexandria's powers, if any," Lyons said. "And… Rubedo… He's more than he seems."
It was Deputy Director Irish who spoke this time. As a former forest ranger, he was typically stationed overseeing the national parks near the greater Phoenix area. He'd been called down due to the emergency. "How so? He seemed like a good lad from what little I'd seen of him. Remarkably mature and potentially a genius intelligence to go with that maturity. Seemed to have his head on straight."
"There is no such thing as a stable cape," Silva said, then caught the eyes of the three high-level capes in the room. "No offense."
"None taken, director," Royalle nodded. "I know I mess around a lot, but capes… Yeah, being a cape can mess you up."
"Nothing like that," Lyons continued. "Rubedo is fine, at least, fine as far as any therapist can tell. He behaves like he's in his twenties, but he's hardly mentally unsound. I don't have any worries about his personality. It's his tech that concerns me.
"Back when he first debuted, we had a conversation about what else he might be able to make. I admit part of it was my own curiosity, former egghead and all, but most of it was so I could help organize his lab to his specifications. He told me that he could make anything from incredibly potent poisons and antidotes to something called the Shimmer, a super-soldier serum that drives the drinker mad, but is permanent."
I allowed the four others to mull this new information over for a bit.
"Fuck," Royalle summed up the general sentiment. "Why weren't any of us told about it? Are you saying we could have a horde of insane gangbangers with powers soon?"
"Because I vetoed its creation. It was sent along to the chief director, but otherwise left as a simple footnote. He never made it and openly admitted to having such capability rather than try to sneak one by us."
"Be that as it may," I broke in before the others started arguing about being left out of the loop. "I must now work under the assumption that a hostile Rubedo is capable of potentially bypassing even my defenses to poison me. If he's too far gone… Master victims have been known to commit suicide rather than let themselves be captured. We're going to need a more concrete plan. I might have to call in a few favors, maybe with a teleporter."
"A teleporter? We do have Masked Bandit for rescue," Irish pointed out. "Think she'd be up for it?"
"No," Lyons said. "She's just thirteen. She shouldn't have to deal with the Crips of all people. Worse, she's close to Rubedo. I don't want her to be at ground zero if things go wrong."
"Quite," I agreed. "It'll take a few days to get the one I have in mind so we'll carry on as usual until then."
"So more of that 'hurry up and wait' deal, eh? Can't say I missed this from back in my army days," Silva grunted.
"It is what it is," Oathkeeper said, standing. "If you'll excuse me, directors, Royalle, Alexandria, I've got to arrange a few more patrols."
At that, the meeting broke.
X
2000, July 15: Phoenix, AZ, USA
Gemini, a teleporter and duplicator based out of Salt Lake City, arrived last night. He could make a second copy of himself, his "mirror." He and his mirror could teleport whatever they touched between themselves, including people. Because of this, he was almost always tapped for rescue operations like this.
Gemini's arrival marked the final preparations for what was being called Operation Hot Potato. I allowed myself a quiet chuckle at Deputy Director Silva's ridiculous naming sense; it wouldn't do to let them see Alexandria laugh in public.
Watchdog had identified the Red Sands Moving Company as Rubedo's most likely location. Gemini had been dragged into a brief as soon as he arrived and the raid had been scheduled at dawn.
All according to the Path.
The plan itself was simple. Two squads of the best the PRT had to offer would discreetly encircle the parking lot at six in the morning. The isolation that had helped the Crips get established so quickly would only work against them here, allowing the troopers to approach without drawing too much attention from the public.
Protectorate Team Two, led by Oathkeeper, would be riding along as backup in order to capture any stragglers. Redbird and Echo, formerly on loan to Team Two, would be returned to Team One as they would be needed to raid the Peckerwoods simultaneously. One more feather in the cap of the local Protectorate.
Once we were in position, Gyroscope would scan for and hopefully find Rubedo using his drones. From there, I would drop in through the ceiling. A drone carrying Gemini's mirror would follow shortly behind.
Once Gemini's mirror was through, I would run interference against any local capes and workshop defenses while Gemini made a beeline for Rubedo. As soon as Rubedo was teleported away, I would make my own exit. It was determined that this was the best option to minimize any chance for retaliation.
As soon as Gemini's original got his hands on Rubedo, a trooper would feed him his own Petricite Elixir, just in case. And with Gemini's greenlight, the rest of the backup squads would move in, capturing anyone left inside.
Meaningless, utterly meaningless.
The entirety of Operation Hot Potato was a façade. Rubedo wasn't in any real danger. La Torcha wasn't hurting him. In a vacuum, her goals were actually far more sinister, an attempt to co-opt a tinker, to grow her organization into a national superpower, and ultimately to orchestrate my death. It wasn't greed that made La Torcha so formidable; it was her ambition.
Fortunately, it was also that ambition and a willingness to take things slow, one step at a time, that allowed her to be so easily manipulated by the Path. She was the ideal whetstone with which to sharpen the PRT, Protectorate, and Rubedo himself.
An electromagnetic pulse spread out from the Red Sands warehouse mere five minutes before our arrival, just long enough to disable all other recording devices. The PRT squads slid into the parking lot just late enough to avoid the EMP. We'd be spinning this story on our terms, thank you very much.
All according to the Path.
The squads were gathered around the parking lot. A quick comms check reaffirmed everyone's position and their roles in the plan. And just as I began to tire of this charade, Gyroscope's drones spotted a figure exiting the warehouse.
Some idiot squad captain readied his weapons.
Perfect.
"Belay that," I spoke over comms as I hovered a thousand feet above the ground. "That's Rubedo. He's exited on his own."
"Was the plan leaked, ma'am?"
"No, no one would send the hostage out on his lonesome. I'll approach. Make no hostile movements."
"Be careful, ma'am."
I didn't bother to reply. Instead, I descended slowly, landing lightly ten feet away from the boy. I noticed him tense as I entered within the range of his pericognition, hand going to a bulge in his pants I immediately identified as a gun of some sort. It told me much about his mentality. Hero would have quite the job ahead of him.
We stood there, gauging one another. I'd memorized his picture of course, but there was a certain presence to him now that I was seeing him in person. He had no eyes of course, but if he did, I had no doubt that they would contain them hardened steel of a veteran rather than the fear of a child.
"Alexandria," he spoke, voice tinged with exhaustion that wasn't entirely from a long night.
I made a show of giving him a once-over. He'd changed sometime before emerging, but there weren't any extra shoes. Then, I did something that caught everyone off guard. I walked over, knelt, and hugged him in full view of countless personal cameras.
Alexandria did not hug.
I could practically hear their worldviews shattering as they tried to process this.
I gently but firmly kept his hands to his sides, keeping him from going for the dagger at his hip. Comms off, I whispered, "Your shoes still have bloodspots."
I felt him stiffen and smiled.
All according to the Path.
Author's Note
Can I just say how goddamn hard it is to write Alexandria? I dabbled at it a bit in the Inspired Inventor mini-series, but damn. I think the problem is that we only ever see three sides of Alexandria despite being such a looming shadow for Taylor: We see her as she punches Leviathan. We see her as she tries to murder the Undersiders. And we see her braindead corpse.
Sure, there are other moments, but those are the highlights of her character. She's harsh. She's a bitch. She's strong. Not much to write about as far as personality. We know she's one of the best thinkers in the world, but see very few examples of that aspect of her powers in action.
If you feel there are inconsistencies, my go-to excuse will be that this is Alexandria before she became completely jaded with the world. She hasn't completely abandoned things like human interaction or morality yet.
Arizona State Prison Complex in Florence, AZ, houses all of the state's death row inmates. Currently (as of March 2022), Arizona has over a hundred on death row. Florence is a city southeast of Phoenix and is broadly in the same metropolitan area.
Isn't it funny what weird rabbit holes being a writer drags you into?
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The important part is that to his knowledge every cape that knew his identity is dead. Lexie will definitely need to do some fast talking in her Chief Banana of the PRT suit to make the public believe that they couldn't do anything to recover andy before he had to kill 12 people to free himself. As far as i know, Contessa could have made a path to covertly free andy/PR massacre La Torcha in less than 48 hours after finding out about the kidnapping.
Post-Arc 3 Informational
Fabled Webs
Lord Weaver, Glorious and Wise
- Location
- Arlington, VA
Preface: I will add the first chapter of 4.1 after this because April Fool's. That said, the following is a summary of everything Andy has made so far.
As for the outcome of Andy's kidnapping, many of you would be right: Contessa could have fixed all this in about half an hour, if that. She didn't. Think about why she wouldn't want to.
3.X Information
Active World Runes
Time Warp Tonic (Beyond – 1.4): Upon consuming a potion or elixir, Andy experiences a period of accelerated time for ten seconds. In this state of chrono-acceleration, he appears to move slightly faster and with more clarity of purpose. Beneficial effects of all potions and elixirs are fifty percent more effective.
Minion Dematerializer (Tomorrow – 2.8): Three magic runes appear on the back of Andy's right hand invisible to all but himself. They look like three bullets. Andy gains a charge that lights up a bullet once every day, holding up to three.
After channeling for a second, Andy can fire the Dematerializer, a beam of highly concentrated mana. The beam of blue converts the first solid thing it hits into mana, dissipating it through the atmosphere in a cloud of blue. It can convert anything of comparable mass to Andy himself. If it hits something with more mass than Andy, it will convert only up to Andy's mass.
Hextech Flashtraption (Contraption – 3.7): The image of a swirling light overlaid atop a gear appears on the back of Andy's right hand, invisible to all but himself. The bullets of the Minion Dematerializer point to his knuckles, but the gear is a bit further down and it almost resembles a dreamcatcher.
Once per day, the rune can be expended. Andy can channel for three seconds, then teleport to anywhere within his field of perception. Anything he is holding gets dragged with him. Anyone he is touching is likewise taken for a ride. The teleportation is loud, with a halo of golden light. This rune charges once every long rest. May grow stronger with an increased understanding of space-time magic.
Projects Completed
Blitzpack: A basketball-sized machine which can release a wide area pulse of static electricity. It was specifically tailored so that the current would short out electronics, but not harm people. The machine looks like Blitzcrank's faceplate, and uses steam as the catalyst. The steam then provides the energy needed to get the Hex Core running. When not in use, the Hex Core passively gathers ambient static to charge itself. Has an effective radius of 200 feet.
Control Ward: A small totem which resembles a chess piece of some sort with two "wings" merging from the base. It contains a Mana Crystal which can be activated by anyone thanks to the inscriptions engraved on the base. Once active, it will bathe everything in a 164 feet radius circle in waves of crimson mana, revealing all invisible targets. Because of the limited mana supply and the difficulties of allowing it to be used by anyone, it only lasts five minutes once active.
Dream Blossom: A beautiful blue and purple flower descended from the God-Willow. It grows in the Garden of Forgetting and is tended to by Lillia, the Bashful Bloom. It is a mystical flower which exists both in the mortal and spiritual planes. As such, it feeds not on soil and water and sun, but on the dreams of mortals, good and bad.
Dream Blossom Censer: A container covered in blue flowers in which incense is burned. It is famously wielded by Lillia, both as a blunt weapon and a medium for her magic. The floral designs on its surface are so intricately formed that they blend the engraved runes perfectly between their petals and stems.
When mana is infused into the censer, it releases a flurry of pollen through the spirit world bypassing physical resistances and obstacles, and causes dream blossoms to bloom wherever they land. Those caught in the area will enter a deep, restful sleep, but can be awakened with violence or loud noises.
Elixir of Iron: A gunmetal-gray elixir with the consistency of liquid mercury. It tastes like rust and chalk blended into a milkshake. It coats the drinker's skin in a gunmetal-gray sheen, granting the drinker skin akin to steel and increased size, approximately twenty percent, as well as the strength to support these changes, for one hour.
Elixir of Wrath: A blood-red liquid that shines with an ominous luster. It tastes like blood with a citrusy tang. It grants the drinker increased strength, enough to rip small trees out of the sidewalk, for one hour. This is done partially by removing the body's natural limiters, causing a state of hysterical strength. As a result, the drinker's inhibitions are likewise reduced.
Health Potion: A blood-red liquid almost indistinguishable from cranberry juice. It tastes like strawberries and is the most PR-friendly of all of Andy's creations. It rapidly heals wounds by inducing cellular mitosis for one minute. Wounds close quickly, but this potion does not restore lost limbs or organs.
Hextech Multi-Tool: A multi-tool made in the shape of an oversized wrench. The tool is as large as Andy's arm and sturdy enough to suffice as a club.
The pincer end of the wrench contains a plasma welder, hammer, and a hextech scanner that utilizes pulses of mana. The scanner can determine everything from physical dimensions of a scanned object to its density, atomic composition, and electrical output. The shaft doubles as a leveler and the traditional ratcheting box end contains an electric screwdriver, saw, and flashlight.
Mana Crystal: The foundation of everything made by Andy. It is technically not matter at all, rather a form of raw mana drawn from the World Rune and compressed to such a degree that it folds itself into a crystalline structure. It can be used to empower or enchant anything and acts as the primary medium by which Andy channels the Inspiration.
Oracle's Elixir: A pink fluid with the consistency of cough syrup. It glows faintly and tastes faintly of cotton candy. It grants the drinker clarity of mind and perfect pericognition of all things within fifty meters or 164 feet regardless of other powers or obstacles for one hour. However, most minds cannot process the sudden sensitivity to mana and influx of sensory information.
Petricite: A pale, stone-like wood native to the forests of Demacia. It looks like a marble sculpture, but it is indeed living wood, or was. Petricite trees were trees mutated by the chaotic magics of the Rune Wars. Alongside water, sun, and soil, Petricite trees evolved to absorb and utilize mana, their wood turning into the stone-like material used by Demacians.
Petricite Alloy: A pale, metal alloy made using Petricite and steel. Its hardness and strength are comparable to the strongest mundane alloys out there and falls short of other tinkertech materials. However, it retains Petricite's ability to absorb and store mana, acting as a mana dampener. Shackles made of Petricite alloy can be used to restrain most parahumans with external expressions of powers.
Petricite Dagger: A dagger made of the finest Petricite alloy available. Originally made for Camille, Andy took it back when he murdered her and Freeform. The blade is a pearlescent-white and seven inches long with a five inch walnut handle brushed with a dark finish. Like all tools made of Petricite, contact with the alloy can disrupt powers.
Petricite Elixir: A potion that looks like milk. It tastes disgusting, like a mix of tree bark and chalk. Despite appearing completely smooth, it feels very course going down, as though the drinker had consumed a vial of watery mud. Once in the drinker's system, the Petricite inside the elixir can halt internal uses of powers such as biokinesis. However, it does not reverse preexisting changes so a changer will remain a changer. It takes roughly one week for the Petricite to be flushed out of the body.
Prototype Hex Core: A battery made to store and release large quantities of mana. It is light, lasts centuries, and easily charged by Andy. However, unlike a true Hex Core made by Viktor, it does not contain a Brackern Namestone and is therefore not self-evolving.
Relic Pistol: Modeled after the relic pistol used by Lucian (Senna's). It can fire shining bolts of light that burn and explode with kinetic force. The strength of each shot can be adjusted depending on how much mana Andy pours into the gun, from a rubber bullet to a hand cannon. The shot can also be condensed into Lucian's signature attack, Piercing Light. Andy can fire as quickly as he can channel his mana.
Relic Stone: Originally, the relic stones that were used to make the weapons of the Sentinels of Light were found only in the Blessed Isles. They were first used by the Vesani to create autonomous golems before being repurposed into weapons of light and soul by the Sentinels. Andy made a bastardized version using a mix of a diminished Water of Life and Petricite's magic-absorbent properties. Weapons and tools made out of this material have an affinity for light.
Tear of the Goddess: The Tear of the Goddess is a unique, teardrop-shaped gemstone that seems to encase a Mana Crystal. In Shuriman lore, it is said to have been the tear shed by the goddess of the rain. No one knows why she wept, but that was the last time Shurima bloomed. Ezreal, the Prodigal Explorer, found this artifact in a tomb where the holy gem was used to seal away a Void rift.
When held by a mortal, it bridges the gap between the physical and spiritual, slowly empowering the body with soul and soul with body. Over time, the wielder will find that his physical condition amplifies how much mana his body can channel, and in turn his increased mana reserves amplify his physical ability to superhuman heights.
Water of Life (FALSE): The Water of Life as wielded by the Vesani of Helia to create the first semi-autonomous golems. The water has a unique affinity for light, life, memories, and the soul. It is the origin of both the Hallowed and Black Mists. The Ruination greatly diminished the water's power, corrupting it into a mockery of life. The variant made by Andy is this weakened variant.
Author's Note
Andy's made a fair bit of stuff, huh? I mean a good number of these are base materials like Petricite or the Water of Life and the Tear is an incomplete item by definition, but still. I didn't think he had such a long list until I wrote this out.
As for the outcome of Andy's kidnapping, many of you would be right: Contessa could have fixed all this in about half an hour, if that. She didn't. Think about why she wouldn't want to.
3.X Information
Active World Runes
Time Warp Tonic (Beyond – 1.4): Upon consuming a potion or elixir, Andy experiences a period of accelerated time for ten seconds. In this state of chrono-acceleration, he appears to move slightly faster and with more clarity of purpose. Beneficial effects of all potions and elixirs are fifty percent more effective.
Minion Dematerializer (Tomorrow – 2.8): Three magic runes appear on the back of Andy's right hand invisible to all but himself. They look like three bullets. Andy gains a charge that lights up a bullet once every day, holding up to three.
After channeling for a second, Andy can fire the Dematerializer, a beam of highly concentrated mana. The beam of blue converts the first solid thing it hits into mana, dissipating it through the atmosphere in a cloud of blue. It can convert anything of comparable mass to Andy himself. If it hits something with more mass than Andy, it will convert only up to Andy's mass.
Hextech Flashtraption (Contraption – 3.7): The image of a swirling light overlaid atop a gear appears on the back of Andy's right hand, invisible to all but himself. The bullets of the Minion Dematerializer point to his knuckles, but the gear is a bit further down and it almost resembles a dreamcatcher.
Once per day, the rune can be expended. Andy can channel for three seconds, then teleport to anywhere within his field of perception. Anything he is holding gets dragged with him. Anyone he is touching is likewise taken for a ride. The teleportation is loud, with a halo of golden light. This rune charges once every long rest. May grow stronger with an increased understanding of space-time magic.
Projects Completed
Blitzpack: A basketball-sized machine which can release a wide area pulse of static electricity. It was specifically tailored so that the current would short out electronics, but not harm people. The machine looks like Blitzcrank's faceplate, and uses steam as the catalyst. The steam then provides the energy needed to get the Hex Core running. When not in use, the Hex Core passively gathers ambient static to charge itself. Has an effective radius of 200 feet.
Control Ward: A small totem which resembles a chess piece of some sort with two "wings" merging from the base. It contains a Mana Crystal which can be activated by anyone thanks to the inscriptions engraved on the base. Once active, it will bathe everything in a 164 feet radius circle in waves of crimson mana, revealing all invisible targets. Because of the limited mana supply and the difficulties of allowing it to be used by anyone, it only lasts five minutes once active.
Dream Blossom: A beautiful blue and purple flower descended from the God-Willow. It grows in the Garden of Forgetting and is tended to by Lillia, the Bashful Bloom. It is a mystical flower which exists both in the mortal and spiritual planes. As such, it feeds not on soil and water and sun, but on the dreams of mortals, good and bad.
Dream Blossom Censer: A container covered in blue flowers in which incense is burned. It is famously wielded by Lillia, both as a blunt weapon and a medium for her magic. The floral designs on its surface are so intricately formed that they blend the engraved runes perfectly between their petals and stems.
When mana is infused into the censer, it releases a flurry of pollen through the spirit world bypassing physical resistances and obstacles, and causes dream blossoms to bloom wherever they land. Those caught in the area will enter a deep, restful sleep, but can be awakened with violence or loud noises.
Elixir of Iron: A gunmetal-gray elixir with the consistency of liquid mercury. It tastes like rust and chalk blended into a milkshake. It coats the drinker's skin in a gunmetal-gray sheen, granting the drinker skin akin to steel and increased size, approximately twenty percent, as well as the strength to support these changes, for one hour.
Elixir of Wrath: A blood-red liquid that shines with an ominous luster. It tastes like blood with a citrusy tang. It grants the drinker increased strength, enough to rip small trees out of the sidewalk, for one hour. This is done partially by removing the body's natural limiters, causing a state of hysterical strength. As a result, the drinker's inhibitions are likewise reduced.
Health Potion: A blood-red liquid almost indistinguishable from cranberry juice. It tastes like strawberries and is the most PR-friendly of all of Andy's creations. It rapidly heals wounds by inducing cellular mitosis for one minute. Wounds close quickly, but this potion does not restore lost limbs or organs.
Hextech Multi-Tool: A multi-tool made in the shape of an oversized wrench. The tool is as large as Andy's arm and sturdy enough to suffice as a club.
The pincer end of the wrench contains a plasma welder, hammer, and a hextech scanner that utilizes pulses of mana. The scanner can determine everything from physical dimensions of a scanned object to its density, atomic composition, and electrical output. The shaft doubles as a leveler and the traditional ratcheting box end contains an electric screwdriver, saw, and flashlight.
Mana Crystal: The foundation of everything made by Andy. It is technically not matter at all, rather a form of raw mana drawn from the World Rune and compressed to such a degree that it folds itself into a crystalline structure. It can be used to empower or enchant anything and acts as the primary medium by which Andy channels the Inspiration.
Oracle's Elixir: A pink fluid with the consistency of cough syrup. It glows faintly and tastes faintly of cotton candy. It grants the drinker clarity of mind and perfect pericognition of all things within fifty meters or 164 feet regardless of other powers or obstacles for one hour. However, most minds cannot process the sudden sensitivity to mana and influx of sensory information.
Petricite: A pale, stone-like wood native to the forests of Demacia. It looks like a marble sculpture, but it is indeed living wood, or was. Petricite trees were trees mutated by the chaotic magics of the Rune Wars. Alongside water, sun, and soil, Petricite trees evolved to absorb and utilize mana, their wood turning into the stone-like material used by Demacians.
Petricite Alloy: A pale, metal alloy made using Petricite and steel. Its hardness and strength are comparable to the strongest mundane alloys out there and falls short of other tinkertech materials. However, it retains Petricite's ability to absorb and store mana, acting as a mana dampener. Shackles made of Petricite alloy can be used to restrain most parahumans with external expressions of powers.
Petricite Dagger: A dagger made of the finest Petricite alloy available. Originally made for Camille, Andy took it back when he murdered her and Freeform. The blade is a pearlescent-white and seven inches long with a five inch walnut handle brushed with a dark finish. Like all tools made of Petricite, contact with the alloy can disrupt powers.
Petricite Elixir: A potion that looks like milk. It tastes disgusting, like a mix of tree bark and chalk. Despite appearing completely smooth, it feels very course going down, as though the drinker had consumed a vial of watery mud. Once in the drinker's system, the Petricite inside the elixir can halt internal uses of powers such as biokinesis. However, it does not reverse preexisting changes so a changer will remain a changer. It takes roughly one week for the Petricite to be flushed out of the body.
Prototype Hex Core: A battery made to store and release large quantities of mana. It is light, lasts centuries, and easily charged by Andy. However, unlike a true Hex Core made by Viktor, it does not contain a Brackern Namestone and is therefore not self-evolving.
Relic Pistol: Modeled after the relic pistol used by Lucian (Senna's). It can fire shining bolts of light that burn and explode with kinetic force. The strength of each shot can be adjusted depending on how much mana Andy pours into the gun, from a rubber bullet to a hand cannon. The shot can also be condensed into Lucian's signature attack, Piercing Light. Andy can fire as quickly as he can channel his mana.
Relic Stone: Originally, the relic stones that were used to make the weapons of the Sentinels of Light were found only in the Blessed Isles. They were first used by the Vesani to create autonomous golems before being repurposed into weapons of light and soul by the Sentinels. Andy made a bastardized version using a mix of a diminished Water of Life and Petricite's magic-absorbent properties. Weapons and tools made out of this material have an affinity for light.
Tear of the Goddess: The Tear of the Goddess is a unique, teardrop-shaped gemstone that seems to encase a Mana Crystal. In Shuriman lore, it is said to have been the tear shed by the goddess of the rain. No one knows why she wept, but that was the last time Shurima bloomed. Ezreal, the Prodigal Explorer, found this artifact in a tomb where the holy gem was used to seal away a Void rift.
When held by a mortal, it bridges the gap between the physical and spiritual, slowly empowering the body with soul and soul with body. Over time, the wielder will find that his physical condition amplifies how much mana his body can channel, and in turn his increased mana reserves amplify his physical ability to superhuman heights.
Water of Life (FALSE): The Water of Life as wielded by the Vesani of Helia to create the first semi-autonomous golems. The water has a unique affinity for light, life, memories, and the soul. It is the origin of both the Hallowed and Black Mists. The Ruination greatly diminished the water's power, corrupting it into a mockery of life. The variant made by Andy is this weakened variant.
Author's Note
Andy's made a fair bit of stuff, huh? I mean a good number of these are base materials like Petricite or the Water of Life and the Tear is an incomplete item by definition, but still. I didn't think he had such a long list until I wrote this out.
When i read all according to the Path I remember the meme Just (all) according to keikaku and Alexandria saying it.
Do you guys think Alexandria did all this because of the Path?
I honestly expected right at the end for the PRT rescue to run into a warehouse full of corpses, and Alexandria realizing the Path didn't predict this. It would point to Andy's power isn't entirely predictable by Contessa. Maybe his rune growing counts as a trigger, which Contessa can't predict. After mentioning the Path so often, it's a big disappointment there wasn't a twist at the end.
I think you confused Alexandria and Contessa. Contessa is the one constantly using their power and always following the Path. Alexandria also doesn't just blindly follow Cauldron orders, especially if this is early Alexandria. I can't imagine she would stall Rubedo's rescue because Contessa said so. Maybe a single.mention that she's doing this for the Path despite her disgust of the idea? A more plausible scenario is Contessa only providing the necessary information for a timely rescue. Or placing an anonymous call about a child walking around early in the morning alone. Or something else subtle.
Also having a kid murder a dozen people to harden him is pants and head stupid. If the kid is already willing to kill at 8 years old, then you have the totally opposite problem.
I honestly expected right at the end for the PRT rescue to run into a warehouse full of corpses, and Alexandria realizing the Path didn't predict this. It would point to Andy's power isn't entirely predictable by Contessa. Maybe his rune growing counts as a trigger, which Contessa can't predict. After mentioning the Path so often, it's a big disappointment there wasn't a twist at the end.
I think you confused Alexandria and Contessa. Contessa is the one constantly using their power and always following the Path. Alexandria also doesn't just blindly follow Cauldron orders, especially if this is early Alexandria. I can't imagine she would stall Rubedo's rescue because Contessa said so. Maybe a single.mention that she's doing this for the Path despite her disgust of the idea? A more plausible scenario is Contessa only providing the necessary information for a timely rescue. Or placing an anonymous call about a child walking around early in the morning alone. Or something else subtle.
Also having a kid murder a dozen people to harden him is pants and head stupid. If the kid is already willing to kill at 8 years old, then you have the totally opposite problem.
- Location
- UK
I mean...have you SEEN the Cauldron? Even if this is before they went completely dolally, I dont think they were ever entirely competent at their job.