[] Heavy combat arm
[] Long Live the King, Part 3
Heatwave 9.11
Missy looks back and forth between the designs for nearly a minute, nibbling on her bottom lip all the while. "I know which one I want," she says at long last. Her hand rises to point at the screen to the right. "That one, with the heaviest armor."
"The heavy armor?" Tim asks, looking at the screens again. "I honestly didn't expect you to pick that one. You understand what that would mean surgery-wise, right? This isn't like reinforcement, where I could go back in and remove the metalweave. Once your muscles come out, there's no putting them back in."
She nods. "I understand that. This is a permanent decision. It's a little weird, I know, but even though you're talking about replacing a good-sized chunk of my body with metal, I… don't actually find that thought all that icky?"
"Vista," Dragon says in response,
"are you sure about this? Absolutely sure? Regardless about how you feel about additional prostheses, you're talking about going into surgery to have these implants put in. This isn't something you can just change your mind about in a couple of days."
"I'm sure. This is what I want."
That declaration is not as effective as the girl presumably meant it to be, and Dragon eyes her, Tim, and you for a long moment. Despite being a program, her avatar's expression makes her continued worry plain.
"I'm not the best person to tell you why you shouldn't pursue… well, self-improvement
. I'm actually the worst, for reasons I won't go into right now," she adds at Missy's opening mouth.
"While I am not forbidding you from doing this, and wouldn't even if I had the authority over you to do so, I have concerns. Shouldn't you talk to someone about this first and get their agreement about this? Chevalier or Miss Militia. Somebody."
"Because I'm too young? Because I'm just a little girl who can't be trusted to make her own decisions?" Despite her words, her tone is not angry. It is more resigned, as though this is a song and dance she's gone through a hundred times already and that she expects to go through a hundred times more. "You know, that argument loses a lot of weight when you're a cape, especially one from Brockton Bay. I've been shot at by drugged-up Merchants. I would have been flayed alive by Hookwolf if I had been a second slower escaping. I did search and rescue when the Simurgh attacked." She holds up her left arm with a scoffing laugh. "The whole reason I lost my arm was because of Cadejo. Surgery? Ha. The risks of surgery are nothing compared to the risks I take every time I go out on patrol, and this arm will keep me safer than I am without it."
"Then surely one of them will agree with you and give you their support as well. I just want you to check with them before you do anything irreversible."
"Miss Militia was upset that I had the generator implanted for the first arm." You stare at her in shock; the older heroine had not brought that up! Missy waves your concern away and continues, "It's fine now, and I know it wasn't because she wanted me to be without one of my arms, but it doesn't change the fact that her first reaction was disapproval. This is nothing compared to that, and I'm not adding another ten steps and two weeks of getting through red tape before this happens.
"I'm the one putting my life on the line. I'm the one taking on responsibilities that are
supposed to go to adults. That deserves being treated like an adult, in some things anyway. I'm not asking to go out smoking or drinking or whatever, but when it's my own body we're talking about, I think I deserve the right to decide what happens to it."
"Um, we can talk about the specifics later," Tim says in a tight voice, no doubt worried about the look in Dragon's eyes that universally means there is a Talk coming in the very near future. "The actual armament and everything. I, uh, still have work I need to finish for Dragon?"
Seeing that this is about to be a discussion you want no part in, you quickly choose discretion over valor. Or more precisely, you all but hightail it out of there and pull Missy along behind you. "Don't think too badly about her," you say once the door is closed. Missy you like; Dragon you like. You don't wan't them to have bad opinions of each other. "When she found out I beat the Dragonslayers, she was upset because I had put myself in danger like that. All she was doing was trying to make sure you were as safe as possible."
Missy blows out a frustrated sigh. "That's okay, I guess. And she did say she wasn't and couldn't tell me no, which is a lot better than it could have been. She's… Oh, what's the word? She can't leave her house, right? That's why she uses her remote-controlled suits for Endbringer fights."
"It's a little more complicated than that, but yeah, pretty much. That probably has something to do with her worrying. She knows she's not in danger, but other people who don't have her skills as a Tinker are." And really, now that you think about it, that might be the main reason for it. Dragon may not have a physical body to harm – yet – but everyone else she knows does. Which would be worse, to be in danger or to be perfectly safe and yet still be unable to keep those you care about safe in return?
"That makes a little more sense. Less insulting than if she were telling me I'm too young and weak to contribute right before she runs out the door to be a hero. I just hope she's telling Shipwright he needs to make sure he's extra careful when he does the operation, not trying to talk him out of doing surgery at all." She forces a smile onto her face. "Do you think you or Sam would be able to bring me over here sometime this weekend?"
You roll your eyes and bump into her side. "Oh, I'm sure one of us can be talked into serving as your personal taxi."
xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Wednesday, June 15
Three days later sees you walking back into Tim's workshop with Samantha at your heels, though your mood is decidedly more somber. "Tim! You in here?!"
"Just— Ow! A little busy!"
You exchange a look of confusion with your Guardian Beast and head deeper into the building. Sure enough, you find Tim once again sitting at the Device station, a large multicolored circuitboard-looking thing in front of him. "If you have a request, you'll need to submit it in writing and wait for approval from the review board."
"Really, Tim? Really?"
"No, not really," he says with a huff and a roll of his eyes so obvious you can see it even through his goggles. "But I'm in the last stages of building Dragon's Device. If it's not life or death, it needs to go on the back burner."
Dragging a couple of chairs over with your telekinesis, you join him at the station. "Do you at least have time to talk? I'm a little worried about what's going on with everybody."
"Everybody as in your classmates, or everybody as in the villains, or…?"
"The Privateers."
He stops in his task for a moment. "Ah." Shaking the hesitation off, he teases a wire out of its port and fills the hole with a drop of some golden metal before sticking it back in. "What's got you so worried? Last week I would have agreed with you, but now everything seems to be calming back down."
"That's what has me worried. A week ago they were practically at each other's throats, and I was sure an actual fistfight would break out. Now?" You sigh and cross your arms in front of you to prop your head off. "If Kurt's any indication, they're all but sitting around a campfire singing Kumbaya. I mean, I've heard of turning the other cheek before, but this just seems way too fast."
"I thought the same thing," he admits, "but I'm not looking a gift horse in the mouth. If things are going back to normal, that can only be a good thing. I mean, they're out there patrolling just like they used to."
"Really? Who went out? Maybe we could give them a hand," says Samantha, and you nod in agreement. Fighting crime makes for a great stress reliever, and that's on top of the fact that with the foreign villains invading the town, any helpful hand is a welcome one.
"Kurt, Ramirez, Vince, Big John. A few others were rummaging around in the box of bats and crowbars while I was helping Kurt into one of the suits."
Kurt and Ramirez? Just them? You meet Samantha's eyes to find that she looks just as suspicious as you feel. "Were those others Alex or Carl?" If the leaders of the less militant faction within the Privateers are involved, then that would put your mind at ease. If not…
His movements slow as he comes to the same conclusion you have. "No. No, they weren't."
He drops his tools onto the table next to the piece of the Device and scrambles out of his chair, you and Samantha right behind him. "Did they say where they were headed?" she asks.
"No, but I don't need them to. I have other ways of finding them." Tim grabs a bronze suitcase out from under one of the tables against the wall and a cord coming from one of the strange solar panel windmills that you know are his mana collectors, and then he plugs them together. A twist of the clasps on the top does not open the case, but it does set it to humming. Four holographic screens appear in a decapitated pyramid above the machine. "Mandy, one of the suits was taken out earlier. Find it."
"Yes, boss."
"You call your coordination A.I. Mandy?" you can't help but ask.
He stutters and splutters for a moment before confessing, "I named her after a girl I knew back in middle school. Had homeroom with her. She was friendly to everyone, always had a smile, was always willing to help you out if you needed it. She was a really sweet girl." He blushes and looks back at the spinning progress bar on the screen. "I found out later that
wasn't where she got the nickname 'Handy Mandy' from, but it stuck with me anyway."
"…You were a dork in school, weren't you?"
"Sam, I grew up to be an
accountant!" he says, throwing his arms in the air. "How is that even in doubt?!"
The machine bings before the raccoon-woman can poke any more holes in his ego.
"Suit 2 located."
You turn back to the screen to find a red square with a white '2' moving around inside a green building on the side of an unremarkable green road between other unlabeled green buildings. "Did only two of them go with Kurt?" you ask, pointing to the pink triangles near the square.
When he doesn't immediately answer, you turn to him to find him staring at the screen. "Those aren't other people, Taylor," he slowly says. "When I met with Armsmaster, he voiced a concern that I could be tracking Vista with her arm and generator. I'm not, but it gave me the idea to put trackers in all the Privateers' gear just in case something was ever lost or had to be left behind." He points at the triangles. "Those are laser rifles, the one Danny bought from Coil and the one I copied."
"The same laser rifles that don't have nonlethal settings?"
He nods.
"Give me the coordinates. We're headed over."
"Take this with you." Running to another table, he picks up a cylinder and tosses it over to you. The top unfolds and starts spinning, turning the fall into a hover. "That's the scout drone Dragon and I were converting to run off mana. I took some time last week to finish it up. It's linked to Mandy, so I'll be able to see what's going on."
Numbers pop up on one of the screens.
"Coordinates of Suit 2. Good hunting."
Samantha casts the teleportation spell while Perfect Storm deploys your Barrier Jacket, and a second later the blinding orange fades. You immediately cast a shield to block the hail of bullets coming your way.
You've heard Carl, one of the Privateers who is a former military man, call situations "Charlie Foxtrots" before when he didn't want to curse in front of you or Lacey or one of the other wives, and what you're looking at certainly qualifies. On one side of the drug lab stand the Privateers, Kurt in his power armor and Ramirez armed with one of the two lasers. The rest of the group is not carrying crowbars and baseball bats and steel pipes like you thought they would be; instead, it is assault rifles that rattle in their arms. You wish they were facing down villains and gang members from Chicago or New York or even Timbuktu, but that's not the case. Instead it is a villainess in a yellow ballgown and domino mask, behind her a few gang members armed with pistols and in front of her a horde of little stone men who keep sprouting from the concrete floor.
In light of everything else going on, is fighting Fairyland
really the priority right now?!
Your sudden appearance distracted the gang members, and the people you unfortunately call your teammates do not let that lapse in focus go to waste. They duck out from behind the pieces of cover they've claimed and open fire. Most of the bullets fly into the dwarves' faces, shattering them and dropping the bodies lifelessly to the ground. Some of the bullets go wide, hitting benches and beakers and bags of multicolored powder. A few get close enough to their targets that the gang members duck behind the last row of tables.
And a single purple beam sears the air as it punches through a dwarf, a distillery, and then Snow White's abdomen.
Their boss falling to the ground is the last straw for the shellshocked gang members; they turn tail and flee as fast as their feet can carry them. The Privateers cheer, and Ramirez takes a few swaggering steps forward with his laser propped on his shoulder.
Quicker than any of them can make out, you stand in front of him while the head of your staff smashes into his face.
"What the
hell were you thinking?!" you scream at the downed man. The rifles briefly rise in your direction, but they all lower immediately after. You don't know if that's because the Privateers recognize you or if it is your Flare Blade roaring to life, and right now you really don't care. "Why do you have to pick the worst possible times to pull this shit?!"
"Calamity Witch, that's enough." The suit of armor moves forward, and the faceplate slides up to reveal Kurt's stern expression. "If we're ever going to get rid of crime in this city, this is an ugly necessity. You can't handle that? Fine. But that doesn't give you the right to get in the way."
Fury washes through you at being talked down to like a stupid little girl. Perfect Storm shakes in your hand as you master the urge to carve him out of that piece of armor, arms and legs optional. "You want to talk about necessities, Kurt? How about the fact that we have villains pouring in from different cities all over the place? We just got done with the gang war that
he"—you kick Ramirez in the balls, sending him back down to the ground from where he was trying to get back up—"helped start. That was bad enough, and now you're trying to do it all over again and throwing more villains into the mix! That's not an ugly necessity; that's suicidal levels of stupidity!"
"Hey! If you two are done with your dick-waving contest, maybe one of you can help?" Samantha stands up, Snow White in her arms. "She's not dead yet, but I don't know how long that's going to last."
"Take her to Tim—"
"No." You wheel around to glare at Kurt, who glares right back before waving at a few men who are nursing their arms or legs. "We have our own wounded, people who got injured doing what you and the other heroes can't or won't. I'm not letting you risk their safety in favor of a villain.
"You want to help
her? You're doing it on your own."
Well. This is a consequential choice, now isn't it?
ON TO THE VOTE!!!
[ ] Help Snow White
[ ] Help the injured Privateers
[ ] Take the wounded to the Protectorate. They have medical staff on hand.
[ ] Take the wounded to Shipwright so he can perform emergency surgery.
[ ] Take the wounded elsewhere.
-[ ] To where, to whom?
