[] Social (Vista & Shipwright)
Heatwave 9.10
Sunday, June 12
That little seed of an idea you had last night – or perhaps early this morning might be more accurate – took root and sprouted as you slept, and it is for this reason that your next casting of Spatial Translocation carries you and Missy not to the Protectorate base or a building near it but instead to the inside of Tim's workshop. She needs to talk to him about what she wants the arm to look like and contain, and while he's working on that, you will tell her the truth about magic.
You look at the younger girl from the corner of your eye. There is no telling how this conversation is going to go. In the best case, she's enthusiastic about magic, you find an active Linker Core, and she becomes another mage in your address book and one without the sticky moral issues the mystically adept Adepts pose. In the worst case, she laughs in your face for being another 'weirdo cape', or even hates or fears you. More likely her reaction will lie somewhere in between those extremes, but exactly where that will be you cannot predict.
Opening the door to Shipwright's inner sanctum of sorts, you find him messing with a collection of cubes, each a different color and all of them attached to one another by wires and cords. Above and to his side floats a display of Dragon's avatar. You raise your hand and are about to call out to him when he touches one of the cubes with a tool shaped something like a soldering iron. It unfolds by means of innumerable sliding pieces until it looks almost like a mouth that latches onto another box and disassembles it before all the different pieces slot back together in a single dual-colored cube.
"That's not weird at all," Missy says to no one in particular.
Her voice distracts both Tinkers from their collaboration, and Tim gives you a wave. "Morning Taylor, Vista. What brings you here?"
"Work, if you have the time for it." Walking over, you drop the case containing Missy's old arm on the floor next to the table. It isn't a normal table, though, not if the glassy surface covered in a grid of lines of various widths is any indication. This must be the programming station Tim had said he needed if he wanted to build Devices, Unison or otherwise. "Vista's patience ran out, and she finally asked for that combat arm you all but promised her."
He snickers and gives the other girl an amused look. "Not gonna lie, I was wondering how long it would take to get around to this. Only problem is I can't exactly get to it right now." He waves one hand over the collection of shapes. "I'm kind of in the middle of a delicate project."
"Every project has convenient stopping points, though," Dragon points out, giving both you and Vista a smile.
"Just because it would be a bad idea to set this particular item to the side doesn't mean it is impossible take a break now and then. A few minutes even to make some concept designs won't hurt it. After all, you can't promise a girl a present and fail to deliver, now can you?"
Missy laughs at the wink that is delivered alongside that taunt.
"Fine, fine. I know when I'm outnumbered. Blasted estrogen squad," he replies in a faked mutter. Pulling up a hologram showing one of the blueprints he made for Missy's arm, he grabs an actual physical pencil and starts sketching additions onto it. The crudely drawn lines automatically correct themselves. At your questioning look, he blushes bright red. "Not a peep out of you. I'm an accountant, not an artist."
Leaving him to his task, you focus instead on your guest, who has chosen to examine the components for what can only be Dragon's future Unison Device body. "Alright. I've been good, I haven't poked my nose in anywhere it wasn't invited, but now I have to ask. What is Shipwright's actual specialty?"
That's a convenient enough opening for you to use. "His specialty is a little weird. It's… Well, it's magical technology."
"…Magic."
"Yeah. Magic."
She blinks at you for a moment. "Okay, I know there's supposed to be a punchline there somewhere, but I can't see it."
"No punchline. No joke. I'm talking about real, actual magic." After a mental prod, Perfect Storm projects the diagram you put together while waiting for her to wake up this morning. Missy looks at the human outline with only its brain and nerves still visible, and more specifically at the blue splotch in the middle of the spinal cord. Time for yet another scientific-ish explanation of magic. "A minority of people, about five percent or so, have a genetic mutation that causes them to gather particles from a multidimensional energy field in a neural structure called a Linker Core. When properly applied, that energy can be used to create all sorts of effects in the world. Effects like flight, teleportation, forcefields, or fireballs."
"In other words, all the stuff you can do," she says, seeing where you're going with this. "But how do you know that's 'magic' and not just another part of your normal parahuman power?"
"That's what I thought at first, too," Dragon says, startling the both of you.
"It took an MRI and an EEG for me to accept that Calamity Witch actually has no gemma and a dead corona pollentia. She can't possibly have powers based on what we know about parahumans, and yet she does."
"People can have parahuman powers without having a Linker Core. People can have magic without parahuman powers, as both Shipwright and I can attest. And I know of a couple of people who I'm ninety-nine percent sure have both. The two have nothing to do with each other as far as we can tell.
"There's a reason I'm telling you this." Missy's eyes brighten as she no doubt figures out your plan. "If you'd like, I can scan you—"
"If you're seriously offering to make me a magical girl, the answer is always going to be yes."
Good enough. Your Barrier Jacket unfolds around you, and she holds still while the blue lights sweep over her. Soon your Devices speaks its fateful words.
"Scan complete. No Linker Core detected."
Oh. You've changed your mind. Having her be enthusiastic about learning magic only to disappoint her by telling her she doesn't have it after all is actually the worst possible option.
"Oh." She takes a breath and shakes her head. "Well, that sucks. Having magic sounded pretty cool."
"I really am sorry, Vista."
"Sorry? For what? You said it yourself, it's rare. Five percent of people, wasn't it? I rolled the dice just like anyone else; I just didn't get lucky. Not your fault." She gives you a weak smile. "Not unless you're anti-non-magical or something. You aren't starting Magical Girl Empire 88 or something here, are you?"
Reaching out, you grab her shoulder and pull her into a one-armed hug. "Vista, it's your smart mouth that's going to drive me off one of these days, not your lack of magic. If anything, it means you won't be able to chase me down so easily."
"Taylor. Seriously. Space is my plaything. You'd only get away from me if I
let you."
"…Oops."
You turn your eyes to the ceiling in a desperate plea for courage. "No. Shipwright, no oops. Oops is bad. We aren't having oops right now."
"It's not that bad. It's just, I forgot to take a few things into account when I offered to build a dedicated combat arm."
"You can't do it?" asks a crestfallen Missy.
"No, no, no. I can do it. That isn't the problem." You finally look at him, surrounded by a small swarm of screens and what looks like a holographic calculator that he's tapping at with the eraser end of his pencil. "The problem is that I didn't take into account the weight of the material I'd need to use. I can build you a new arm, but actually using it is going to require more surgery."
She narrows her eyes at him. "How much more are we talking about here?"
"Depends on how tricked out you want the arm." He dismisses most of the screens and arranges three of them in front of him. The fourth he lets float to his side to show a diagram of somebody's chest with all their skin peeled away and their left arm almost completely chopped off. He holds up the first of the screens, which shows a blueprint that doesn't look all that different from the arm she wears now. "Option one. This is the most lightly armored of the possibilities. Think your old arm with a firm Kevlar skin. I have some upgrades I can throw in, but it's still closer to body armor than powered armor. Weapon-wise, I could give you some lasers or energy projections, but they would all be fairly small. No laser cannons that can blow a hole in a tank, but knocking down muggers and non-Brute capes? No problem." He taps the anatomy screen, and the bone in the upper arm turns red. "It wouldn't take much surgery, either, comparatively. Just need to replace what's left of your humerus with a solid metal version."
The first screen he pushes to the side, and he lifts the second to take its place. This arm is wearing an armored gauntlet reaching almost to the elbow, and at the shoulder it has a funny sling or something. "Option two is a major step up. Plates of armor over the hand and forearm, and it would include a folding plate that slides over your shoulder to protect the reactor and the joint itself. Still has soft armor on the upper arm portion, unfortunately. You would have more options for offense with this arm. The hardlight and lasers could go anywhere, but I could include collapsable mechashift weapons in the hand and wrist, not to mention stronger muscles in the forearm for grip. Have you ever wanted to crush a steel pipe in one hand like it's a soda can?" He waves his hand in a 'there you go' gesture.
"The problem is that we're talking substantially more weight here, even with the best weight-to-strength ratios of the materials I have to work with. More weight than your body can tolerate on its own. I'd need to do some fairly major surgery to prevent your own arm from crippling you. Replace the humerus like before, but I'd also have to reinforce your shoulder blade." A red outline takes shape around the bone in question, and then more lines crisscross over a number of the muscles nearby. "It isn't just bone, though. I'd have to give several of your muscles help too. Pectoralis major in the chest, deltoid in the shoulder, trapezius in the upper back, plus all the muscles that go from your shoulder blade to your arm. I'd probably wind up sheathing them in metalweave to take the brunt of the tension off," he says almost to himself.
You aren't sure what you think of that, but before you say anything you need clarification. "Metalweave?"
"It's a composite material I've been tinkering with lately. A mesh of graphene fibers with specks of different alloys sprinkled throughout the structure. Very strong, not biologically reactive, perfect for implantation in the human body longterm.
"Anyway, that's that. Then there's option 3." This diagram is the most detailed of them all, looking almost like an arm off a twenty-fifth century knight. "Full armor plating, fingertip to shoulder. Increased strength, energy weapons, mechashift, some weird combination of the above? You want it, you got it, whatever and wherever. Now comes the bad news. This is the heaviest arm, and then if you add enhanced strength, it would definitely rip itself off your body if you weren't careful. That means the most surgical revision."
"How much more surgery could you even do? You're talking about covering my bones and muscles in metal," Missy points out.
"There's the rub.
Covering." The crosshatching expands to cover an entire quarter of the diagram's torso. "To use this kind of arm, we'd be talking complete overhaul. Metal bones. Synthetic muscles. I'd have to send some of the power from your generator to the muscles, too, so that means that you'd only be able to run three weapons instead of the four I can give you on any of the other arms. Then again, you get superstrength out of the deal, so that should probably count as a weapon all by itself."
He tilts his head. "Technically, there is a fourth option, I suppose. If you don't want any more surgery, you can just use your old arm. I don't know if you noticed, but it has a denser skeleton than the one you're wearing now. It won't have any armor or weapons, though.
"Anyway, those are your choices. I'm sorry I didn't think of this before I performed surgery on you the first time, but I was focused on being as minimally invasive as I could get away with for what you needed." He spreads his arms, the screens moving to orbit him slowly. "This is the broadest selection I can give you. Where we go from here is up to you, Vista."
Too bad for Vista, no magic. I suppose she'll have console herself with being just a space-warping morality pet. With a prosthetic arm.
And speaking of arms, you get to vote for what kind of arm she will ask for. This vote WILL have a moratorium because in addition to the obvious, it determines how interested or not Vista is in transhumanism and future upgrades.
- No combat arm – Vista will use her original prosthetic for combat due to its denser skeleton and lesser sensation.
- Light combat arm – No armor plating, though soft armor is an option. Weapons are limited to hardlight projections and lasers.
- Medium combat arm – Armor plating is limited to the hand and forearm as well as over the shoulder. Enhanced strength and mechashift weapons are available in the hand only. Energy weapons can be wherever. Build time will include ONE TIME SLOT for surgery.
- Heavy combat arm – Armor plating over the entire arm and shoulder. Enhanced strength, mechashift weapons, and energy weapons can be placed anywhere on the arm. Build time will include ONE TIME SLOT for surgery, and this arm will have one fewer weapon than the others would.
Discuss the plan for the next 24 hours.
