Arc 4 Shadows
4.1 Setting the Stage
Tattletale had found herself a sort of base. It's a partially collapsed building in the docks. Too much brick and stone and metal to burn after Lung came through at one point. The benefit is that the building looks a lot worse than it is in reality. Of course, that means it's a half collapsed wreck still. That's fixable though. I cease maintaining the armor at combat readiness, and for a couple of weeks help make the new base livable.
My turtles swarm the building over the course of a couple nights, avoiding light and entering the building from the defunct sewer lines. The units cover the inside of the structure with a photoactive chemical trail, limiting themselves to areas not illuminated by the street lights. The next day, the sun cooks any other exposed surfaces. It then takes several days to get a full map of the internals of the building. I program the turtles and ants to seal off the largest internal hollows of the building using one of my stronger materials, but dyed to look like concrete. It wouldn't hold up to an analysis, but anybody just crawling through the rubble, and able to squeeze through some unusually small nooks, would be met with the appearance of unusually compact rubble. That takes quite a lot of material, but Tattletale uses the air tanks and mask to help the turtles and ants go through underwater wrecks for easy to gather resources.
Once the shell solidified, my ants cut a tunnel from the nearest storm drain and into the warehouse base. I have to make my first outing, and it's only exciting for the tinkering. The door in the storm drain needs to look good. Rarely but occasionally, the city sends people to check on their structure. I spend six hours making a door made out of plastic look and feel like a concrete wall. The glamorous life of a cape isn't quite the danger and excitement I admit I was looking forward to. My dad continues to focus on my safety, and is glad I'm keeping head down. On the other hand, I have my units underneath the majority of the city. Oddly enough, aside from the PRT buildings, the areas that I have to avoid the most carefully are sewage treatment and monitoring facilities. They watch for blockages and odd stuff that may disrupt city infrastructure. I'm sure they've noticed a slight uptick in complex carbon chains in the lines, and a decrease in metals, but I doubt anybody will care. The city has a lot of things that matter more, even to the civil engineers.
It's during these weeks that dad and I decide that one or both of us should meet Tattletale. She has stabilized a bit, and dad keeps saying that isolation and her Thinker powers are an unhealthy combination.
Coil's power, we eventually agree, seems like a form of postcognition at range. Anything he knows about, he can passively observe its past. Tattletale was picked up in her civilian ID, and all her escape plans failed, even the ones she made that didn't require any physical preparations. Assuming there's a limit to his powers, I was able to help because Coil didn't know about me and couldn't observe the history of Tattletale to identify her escape plans because she had no idea what the plan was, aside from trusting me. If I met with Tattletale, or dad did, and Coil was watching, then he could start tracking us as well. That's the worst case scenario for his powers that still allow us to have succeeded.
However, we had a new goal. Tattletale had been reviewing the maps of the city infrastructure that I had sent to her, and a few days ago, she had sent back a map, with notes. A distribution of tunnels and pipes had been circled, and marked as 'This is not an Endbringer shelter, Coil has sufficient control over the company Fortress Constructions to have had them build a secret supervillain lair.'
There has been a lot of hand wringing from dad over this news. He initially wanted to turn this over to the PRT. A secret base in the middle of downtown, especially the size of an Endbringer shelter was a huge deal. Despite not being very public, Coil was somehow very dangerous. Coil had spies in the PRT, according to Tattletale, and I really wary of showing up on Coil's radar in any fashion. If he knew about me, his clairvoyant postcog could find me, and then he'd strike after unseen preparations. That would be how he'd picked up Tattletale.
I believed that we needed to hit him first, and then deal with all the issues connected to him afterwards. Also, I could admit to myself, that if Coil was removed as effectively as possible, then, well, the city already had enough Endbringer shelters, and I could really use a fortress lair. Not that I'd use it for evil, but I would have the undisputed champion of all lairs in Brockton Bay, and I could update it with my technology, because I'm sure Coil didn't invest enough effort into taking care of it, or making it look nice, and surely I could take better care of it. I could use it as the hub of all my units throughout the city.
I made the argument with my dad that if Coil had spies in the PRT, he'd know we were on to him, and until we could defend ourselves against his power, we needed to keep as low a profile as possible. In the time it took the PRT to deal with Coil, he might even be able to order an attack against us or something. Eventually dad agreed to see about spying on Coil, and we wouldn't tell Tattletale. Especially after idea that if Coil had clairvoyant postcog, he was likely still watching Tattletale, and hadn't picked her up because he was waiting for me to show myself.
That had been a distinctly chilling thought when dad had voiced it.
Tattletale wouldn't be getting to meet with us after all.
I would need new types of units to spy on Coil. I knew where he was, but my subterfuge had to be perfect. I needed units that wouldn't trigger pressure switches, make sound, or be seen, and still could eavesdrop. Despite the danger, it was very exciting. I settled on an infestation approach. I would, slowly and carefully, build ant tunnels around his base by dissolving the surrounding rock. Once my future lair was fully understood, especially the air vents and all other piping that was in the walls or had surfaces that people didn't see, I'd infiltrate the place using eavesdropping units. Those units would have neutral weight, they would basically float. They'd have very long and slender arms with sounds sensitive membranes at the ends. They would float through the air vents, squeeze through grates as necessary, and finally park themselves well distant from any people, and then record sound. As that information came back to me, I'd evaluate from there. Maybe infiltrate further, or maybe cut our risks by letting the PRT know.
Dad was going to make other arrangements to try and create a deadman's switch for us, in case we did get nabbed or killed by Coil. He wouldn't tell me his plans, and encouraged me to make my own as well, so that the odds of success were better.
School had thankfully been acceptable. Amy sat at my table maybe once a week, which I couldn't really ask her to leave, but she didn't bother me. We didn't talk much, just read books and ate. I think she liked the quiet more than the rest of her group. Thankfully said group left me alone. Sophia continued to look terrible and stressed, but whatever. I certainly wasn't going to feel guilty about her. I knew students were called out class for no reason frequently, in order to give the Wards cover stories for their departures, but I liked to imagine Sophia got her name called just a bit more frequently. I hoped that being used as cover for a hero would grate on her, a lot.
Acceptable also described my tech. It was great, except for being so slow in having my units do anything, and it didn't play well with electricity or light. My ionic charge cells were on the back burner. They worked, but I couldn't do much with them. I guess I could electrocute somebody by cracking them on them, but that was about it. I hadn't cracked an interface between my catalyst driven polymer data storage systems and any form of electronic data storage. Second was light. I had photoactive compounds, but no real camera equivalents. I also wanted to give my units radio communications, or even just visible light signals, but no. The best I'd managed was a slow pulses like binary. That was still better than the 'weaker than most radio antenna' broadcaster I'd built for the library job, but that wasn't saying much.
The highlight was my power suit. Twice a week, it would be sufficiently charged and stable that Tattletale could go out in it for about 8 hours each time. She normally kept usage to about 6 hours each time, just in case. It had pale blue-green organic metal foam scales; and I so wanted a sample of Lung's scales to do a comparison. It would block at least one shot from every gun Tattletale had tested on it. The suit bonded to the skin, thoroughly, and took a while to put on or take off, but there was no tearing or friction damage. The suit wouldn't bind through fabric, so Tattletale could wear a sports bra and underwear and avoid awkwardness, with no real effect on the suit's abilities.
She hadn't needed to use the spike launcher yet. I was glad a bit, even if I want combat data, since it meant she was staying pretty safe. The spikes would likely be enough to slow even most Brutes. Regrettably, the grapple hook ended up being a kind of a bummer. Cartoons had lied to me about their utility. Maybe I could copy Armsmaster's version, as he seemed to make it work for him? The capsaicin nuisance weapons were the most useful tools overall. The hot grenades worked great as temporary area denial. Not so much for clearing a room though. Affected people in close proximity tended to be too upset to leave, according to Tattletale. The suit was sealed against the environment during combat of course. The current secret weapon on it was an ability to spray a capsaicin mist from the skin of the suit, in case somebody tackled her. While it was mostly metal and rigid polymers for protection, the reactive contraction portions amplified her strength some. The power suit provided strength to the point that the main issue was moving the target object, rather than power suit pushing itself up or backwards.
I tend to have an easier time, all said and done, with my smaller units. Despite how effective the power suit was, it was only viable thanks to my much lower management requirement my units swarm, and their ability to collect resources.
Actually, speaking of, I needed to program in the collection of methane, and precursor chemicals, for use as a lifting gas. Hydrogen would be better, and almost as easy to get, but the types of materials that would hold the gas adequately for long jobs was too expensive for me to manufacture at present. Of course, helium was rare and would be hard to get in adequate volumes.
Well, no time like the present to get started, this is going to take weeks and months, and just because I think I'm alone, doesn't mean there isn't a clairvoyant postcog watching me.
If that turns out to actually be his power, I'm going to smack that creeper stupid and then use him as a weapons testing target in my new downtown lair that he built and has been squatting in ever since.
