Problem is, it's still territory and if the Merchants are taken out, neither the E88 or the ABB wants or would want the other side to have it. Even if it's shitty territory, it's still territory to take and use, gain money from, etc...
If this was true the Romans would have conquered the world. Why did they stop ? I mean, win or lose they could have made far more of a go of it.
Because manpower is finite, you can stretch yourself thin and there is a nonzero cost to expansion that must be recouped. Some territory is just too shitty.
Again, it's quite clearly said in the meeting about Lung that no one wants their territory.
Well, the status quo was still going on before Taylor entered the cape scene. The E88 and ABB were doing their thing and sniping at each other from time to time and the Merchants were still peddling their drugs and shit.
Mm. Well...apart from the time Lung killed the old ABB guys. I'm not quite sure when that happened or how much of a threat they were or how much harm the PRT did to them but it was more static in the time period that Taylor was aware of such things (even if she wasn't a cape)
It was hard due to Vegas having a lot of Thinkers, Tinkers, and Strangers. There's not much physical violence so much as money laundering ops and stuff like that. Quote from Drone 23.2: "Vegas employs a group of unsponsored thinkers and tinkers to monitor the venues, much like the PRT does with the economy, ensuring that everything is above-board, that everything is being conducted fairly and that the numbers add up. Vegas changed as a result, developed a different cape dynamic. In Los Angeles or New York, it's the people who can blow down buildings that are seen as true 'heavy hitters'. Here, they're trying to game the system, and the heroes are trying to game them. In Vegas, it's thinkers, tinkers and strangers who rule the underworld."
I know why it was hard. My point is that maybe it's just hard in general to deal with parahumans. We've seen two sides; Vegas and BB. Vegas may be worse since they just hide, but some element of the difficulty might just be because parahumans.
I believe you are mixing up rate and exposure. A Gray is a measure of total exposure - joules of ionizing energy absorbed per kilogram of matter - the time interval is not specified. Gray/hour would be one exposure rate unit. It's like energy vs power (joule vs watt).
You're right I was mixing them up, but the point stands that indications of how long they could last drawn from their current levels of radiation sickness are fundamentally flawed because they're still accruing additional radiation exposure.
If this was true the Romans would have conquered the world. Why did they stop ? I mean, win or lose they could have made far more of a go of it.
Because manpower is finite, you can stretch yourself thin and there is a nonzero cost to expansion that must be recouped. Some territory is just too shitty.
Again, it's quite clearly said in the meeting about Lung that no one wants their territory.
Again, because it's territory that neither side wants the other to have. Remember, both gangs are pretty damn huge in terms of unpowered humans on both sides(we're never given an actual number, but the Merchants have more than both the E88 and ABB), they have to be to contend with each other. The parhumans on both sides cannot be everywhere at once, which is why they have the unpowered members to take and hold territory. The parahumans on both sides are the heads/face of the gangs, but the unpowered members are the body, arms, and legs. They've just never wanted the territory in canon because the Merchants have occupied that and one side(either the E88 or the ABB) turning their attention on the Merchants means the other side will see it as their chance to attack. The only reason the Merchants have survived in the Bay is because both sides(E88 and ABB) are more concerned about each other than the Merchants and believe that once the other side is gone and they've consolidated their power, they can wipe out the Merchants. It's kinda like how the Undersiders avoided attention until the night Taylor came out, they were too weak to really care about and stayed under the radar of the gangs(until they pissed off Lung). The Merchants are just too weak for the E88 and ABB to really care about compared to their rivals. Unless you want to invite the Teeth back into Brockton Bay if the Merchants get taken out, which would solve the territory problem, but lead to even more intense fighting.
You're right I was mixing them up, but the point stands that indications of how long they could last drawn from their current levels of radiation sickness are fundamentally flawed because they're still accruing additional radiation exposure.
Agreed. Any attempt to judge exposure from symptoms is going to flawed due to the lag time after exposure and the wide range of human psychological responses. As well as any ongoing exposure.
Basically, we know that they are f*cked. Not irredeemably f*cked yet, but definitely f*cked. Beyond that, it's hard to narrow down.
I must say, I am a little surprised that Halbeard doesn't have a radiation sensor in his suit.
He probably does. Keep in mind that his suit is crippled by the radiation. Almost all of its systems have failed. All the advanced features are dead, and it's just barely got enough running to keep itself moving.
Now granted you'd kind of expect that he'd have made it shielded against radiation because that's a fairly obvious thing to put into a suit of power armor, and he fights other tinkers and Behemoth on occasion. But my rationalization is that he probably put on his anti-biotinker suit that day before going into battle against Bonesaw and it was specialized against biological and chemical warfare and sacrificed other features like radiation shielding.
Now granted you'd kind of expect that he'd have made it shielded against radiation because that's a fairly obvious thing to put into a suit of power armor, and he fights other tinkers and Behemoth on occasion. But my rationalization is that he probably put on his anti-biotinker suit that day before going into battle against Bonesaw and it was specialized against biological and chemical warfare and sacrificed other features like radiation shielding.
Yeah. I did some research on making electronics radiation-hardened etc. and it mostly consisted of using bulkier, more durable, less efficient materials and then adding lots of shielding around those parts. Considering Defiant is a freak for efficiency and optimization, I assumed that essential systems (hydraulics, air filtering) would be shielded (mostly using the external systems as shielding; for more efficiency) while less essential ones (HUD, various weapons, more experimental stuff like the nanothorns) would not be unless he specifically went out of his way to do so (in prep for battling a EM Blaster or Behemoth; in which case I always imagined him having sort of hulk-buster armor).
His Comms and Sat Nav are messed up partly from radiation and partly because there's no one to talk to.
Yeah. I did some research on making electronics radiation-hardened etc. and it mostly consisted of using bulkier, more durable, less efficient materials and then adding lots of shielding around those parts.
This is true. But then, in the real world, emp weapons are bulky and power intensive, nanotechnology remains a laberatory curiosity, and AIs and anti-gravity remain possible only in sci fi stories. Tinkers are bullshit and consequently ignore many of the limits of our current technological level.
This is true. But then, in the real world, emp weapons are bulky and power intensive, nanotechnology remains a laberatory curiosity, and AIs and anti-gravity remain possible only in sci fi stories. Tinkers are bullshit and consequently ignore many of the limits of our current technological level.
Also true, but I'm trying to write this as hard-er science when I can, since it's so easy as a writer to simply say "Deus Ex Tinker-Bullshit"
I mean, there will be a Tinker ex Machina at some point, but it will be more a literal device than a literary one.
Ergo, Defiant still needs to conform to some of the rules of how science currently works. He can make rad-shielding that works better or is smaller than most, but it's still a bulkier suit and has redundant components that leaves less room for other toys. When he went after Bonesaw and the Nine, he looked at his options and said to himself "Do I really need the suit with the triple-redundant radiation hardening, just in case I get sent to a nightmare dimension full of ionizing radiation and hand-eating face-vag monsters?" and decided, no, he didn't.
Bear in mind that they come from a universe which has a much larger sample set of information about radiation exposure and a much more pressing Endbringer-shaped reason to research treatments with every resource available.
On a related note, yeah it is improbable that Defiant wouldn't have included all possible radiation defenses. Halbeard has displayed a tendency to rig his weapon specifically for an engagement but not his armor.
The flywheel buzzed angrily as it spun madly in place, pouring out kinetic energy that transferred to the main wheels by means of the drive chain. The gearing was set to amplify that energy and turn it into raw speed.
Considering that the bike was still swamped between dead husks of cars, that speed was something of a liability.
In the dark of the tunnel, the cars were often little more than dim outlines or subtle reflections off tail lights; consequently, Defiant sideswiped more than a few of them. Blasto recoiled from the edge of the 'chariot' wall as yet another wing mirror was clipped off by the solid steel frame of their rickshaw.
Blasto hauled himself back up against the wall of the chariot, watching as Defiant's arms pumped like pistons, turning the hand-cranks with machine-like endurance. And with good reason.
The creatures eeled around cars, clicking and screeching as they slid down windshields, darted beneath the high-suspensions of SUVs, and vaulted over compacts.
Blasto had already modified the delivery system for his neurotoxin, using a spray-bottle top from what could have only been a bottle of Windex, delivering sharp streams of concentrated harmlessness… until he fired the catalyst from the spray-bottle in his other hand, at which point it turned into nerve-frying liquid death. Each one-two squirt, splattering the horrors pursuing them, caused the monsters to slow down until they fell twitching and vomiting (when they possessed something resembling a mouth) among the silent abandoned cars.
Blasto's next few shots missed as Defiant suddenly juked sidways, letting a massively bloated toad of a man-shape awkwardly flail its radially distributed spider limbs as it fell heavily on the asphalt beside them.
Cars whipped by, too fast to resolve outlines into separate vehicles, just a reflective half-darkness broken by horrid pale faces filled with too many teeth, or eyes, or eyes filled with teeth. Screaming echoed all around, dopplering as they made a mad dash through the tunnel.
Blasto half-turned and thrust his arm over Defiant's shoulder, pointing ahead: "There! I can see light!"
Ahead, by tiny degrees, the darkness of the tunnel lightened to faint gloaming and further still to watery daylight. After what felt like months in the tunnel, Blasto had to shield his eyes against even that weak shine. Defiant, eyes safe behind polarized trivex lenses, simply pedaled harder.
The rickshaw emerged from the mouth of the tunnel, the oppressive echoing darkness of it fading behind them. They emerged onto the lower section of the Tobin Memorial Bridge, the metal struts of the upper level forming a ceiling over them, while the cityscapes on either side of the Mystic rolled out away from them.
The relative silence of the bridge, compared to the echoing chaos of the tunnel, let them hear the slopping of the river distant below them and the humming of their tires on pavement.
There were fewer cars on this part of the bridge, allowing Defiant to open up with the throttle, zipping neatly between SUVs and broken concrete dividers. Orange traffic cones, made matte with dust and debris were scattered here and there among signs of unfinished construction.
Defiant leaned backwards, eyes kept on the road to avoid the myriad obstacles on the road ahead; "Blasto, keep your eyes on our rear. We're not out of this yet."
Absorbed in the welcome sight of open air, Blasto shook himself and spun around, setting his ankle to throbbing again. Behind them, the tunnel faded back into blackness, obscured behind cars and trucks. Something fairly important was missing. Blasto checked several times, unbelieving.
"Uh, Defiant… I'm not sure if this is good news or not… they're gone."
"Gone?"
"Gone."
"What does that mean. I need a detailed sitrep not vague descriptors," Defiant barked.
"It means, 'hey, where did they go? I ask that because they are not there!' and if there were a more concise word than 'gone' I would have used it!" Blasto replied, voice high and shaking with tension.
Engaging the flywheel, Defiant slowly allowed the bike to coast to a stop. The storage system hummed in place, the promise of motion a simple flick of a switch away. Defiant uneasily rested his thumb against it as he scanned behind them.
Behind them, other than cars, the road was empty. The wind gusted over the river below them and caused weeds and caution tape to flutter softly.
Nothing else moved.
Defiant was uneasy; "Why would they give up so easily?"
Blasto scoffed, "Fuck easily, they probably got sick of me squirting nerve-death on them…. Or your shitty personality."
Defiant ignored the jibe. Everything we know about them indicates they do not stop behaviors simply because they are unpleasant. Their behaviors are alien but implacable. There is no reason to have given up chase simply because we are formidable opponents. What am I missing here? "Blasto, you are a biologist. Why would a predator species cease pursuit?"
"Okay, I may be a biologist, but this is clearly a case of xenobiology, which I did not know was a real field of study until now." Defiant leveled a much-practiced over-the-shoulder glare at Blasto's flippant remark; "Okay, okay. If a predator broke off pursuit… " Blasto stretched his back, his fists against his lumbar, "I'd assume one of several things: One, the cost of pursuit was higher than the resulting resources gained by continuing. I'm inclined to believe this is the case. We've been fucking them up pretty reliably since we were able to arm up. Two, other behavioral instincts were taking priority; either protecting their shelter, protecting young, or protecting a mate. What do you think, they going back to make sure Mrs. Monster isn't fucking the monster mailman?"
"Take this seriously," Defiant growled.
"Man, fuck you. You're asking me to classify the behavior of predators when we don't even know if they are predators! They could be cliché monsters! Or psychotic mutants! Or in it for the lulz! I mean, even if they are predators, there's dozens of different hunting paradigms! They could be stalking hunters, or use bait to lure us, or just pursue us until we collapse, or even…."
"What?"
Blasto began whipping his head all around, squirt bottles tracking his gaze.
"Blasto, what?!"
"They could be driving us to a killing ground."
Suddenly the wide open road was very narrow.
Defiant glanced all around, "We're trapped. Tunnel behind us. Possible ambush ahead. River to either side;" Defiant tried to suppress the excitement in his voice, "Get ready."
"Oh shit oh shit oh shit." The squirt bottles in Blasto's hands made gurgling noises as they shook in his trembling adrenaline soaked hands.
Silence. Wind on asphalt.
Defiant swiveled his head around slowly, scanning, the rebar held ready along one arm, the other grasping a handlebar pedal. He glanced up, and stopped.
There, hanging upside down from the side of the upper level: a pale face, surprisingly human; brown hair, blue eyes, male. They locked eyes. Suddenly, it's head split open lengthwise, a tooth lined maw opening down to its neck, and four tongues lashed obscenely as it howled like an air raid siren.
Bodies, endless alien bodies climbed and squirmed up and over the sides of the guardrails, dropped from the sides of the upper level, a swarm engulfing them from all sides and above.
Hissing, screaming, gnashing, the horde approached on misshapen and improbable limbs.
Blasto trembled.
Defiant smiled a beatific smile beneath his helmet and whispered: "Bring it."
I love the dialogue between them. The two tinkers on a mission from god to get the fuck outta dodge. Its a dimension away from Bet, they've got radiation poisoning, no cigarettes, its bright, and Armsmaster is wearing some polarized trivex lenses.
I love the dialogue between them. The two tinkers on a mission from god to get the fuck outta dodge. Its a dimension away from Bet, they've got radiation poisoning, no cigarettes, its bright, and Armsmaster is wearing some polarized trivex lenses.
The flood of monsters constricted in on the rickshaw, hands, mouths, and other less identifiable appendages grasping and clawing as they scrambled forward.
Defiant, still seated on the Frankenbike, used one hand at the end of the rebar pike to whip it around overhead in a wide, dangerous circle. Collectively the Blairs leaned back to avoid its jagged tip, breaking their converging charge before they could overwhelm and dogpile him and Blasto.
Using the momentum from that swing, Defiant stepped one foot up into the bikes frame, pushing up and off into the space where two cars forced the mob to clump together. With a half spin continuing off his first swing to generate more angular momentum, Defiant speared forward in a one handed strike, hydraulic reserve pressure in the elbow and shoulder joints giving more oomph as he stabbed through the head of a mantis-armed humanoid and into the torso of the creature behind it. Then, before they could react or drag the point down with their dead weight, he whipped the pike free to spin overhead again; a whirling threat keeping a circle clear around the bike.
Blasto shrank back into the bucket of his chariot-perch as a mass of monstrosity began inching towards him, a long limb coated in spiny waving legs like a millipede ending in waxy fingers snaking through the air towards his face. He tried to bring up the nerve-toxin and catalyst, but found he could not focus on a target; as he tried to bring his focus to bear his world spun around him, the nightmare-face in front of him smeared into discolored patches.
Near blind, Blasto fired several cone-shaped squirts over the rim of the bucket, the crossed streams working their deadly chemical magic as the millipede arm began to seize and convulse like a dying snake. Before its spastic motion could do any damage, Defiant's rebar-spear sheared through it, leaving a dull black arc of afterimage in Blasto's blurry vision.
Moving back from disarming his foe, Defiant took two hopping steps backwards and took a half spin to bring his pole up and around like a massive claymore, crushing arms and faces as monsters tried to claim space in the circle.
Defiant was a whirlwind; when pressed in close he slid his grip down to quarterstaff position, wielding the rebar like a jabbing spear to attack eyes and mouths or sweeping it back and forth to dissuade approach or knock grasping claws away; when he had room, he wielded the pole from the butt of it, swinging it like a massive sword to smash heads into pulp or clear room from the bike; no motion was wasted, each movement turned into the pivot for the next, each swing acting as the lead-in to a counter or a block. Days of training for mastered mobs or mundane riots now put to use as the monsters fought to gain entry to the circle of space Defiant was unwilling to concede.
But the battle was in effect a siege; the monsters seemed to have no morale to break, no leadership to disrupt. A single slip, a single mistake and they would be able to close in and pin the spear against their bodies.
And then they would eat.
Defiant could feel the sweat on his upper lip.
"Blasto! Get up front and drive us out of here! I'll clear a path!"
Blasto struggled up to his feet, swallowing against bile and a spinning head. He tiredly fired off another spray of toxin as he clambered laboriously out of the bucket, his ankle screaming in pain as he caught himself on it as he landed. Staggering forward and squirting the catalyst to dissuade the previously tagged group near him, he gingerly lifted his leg up and over the bike. Gasping with head pain, he placed his feet in the stirrups and strapped the toxin bottles against the steering column.
"Defiant… I'm… I'm on. I'm good!"
With a lunge, Defiant charged into the mass of enemies in front of the bike, startling them backwards and knocking several backwards with the sheer weight of his armor. Pressing the advantage, he thrust forward staccato-rapidly with the spear like a pool-cue, knocking monsters backwards or ruining sight or crushing warped sternums. His charge used their own numbers against them as the front frow began falling back into the Blairs behind them, causing a small domino effect.
Defiant shouted without glancing back: "Now! The thumb switch!"
Blasto hit the switch, letting the flywheel catch and unspool on the drive chain, the sudden lurching acceleration whipping his head back and making him spit bile up into his mouth.
When the bike hit the bodies between cars through which Defiant had carved a bloody path, Defiant was ready; grabbing at the handlebars and using brute force to heave its wheels across the uneven fleshy terrain, guiding it as it rattled and clattered.
The rickshaw pushed fitfully through as Defiant ran alongside, using a free hand to jab with the rebar pike, making momentary weaknesses in the crush in front of them and using the momentum of the bike and the mass of his armor to push them through.
Finally, the bike burst through, clear road ahead of them with only a few straggler beasts in sight. Defiant made a leap aided by the last of his hydraulic assistance into the chariot bucket, spinning around to face the horde behind them. His rebar-pike snapped left and right to repel a creature whose face was composed of tumors and eyes and jab at another whose melted-wax arms attempted to catch at his arms.
The bikes wheels caught on solid asphalt, and with proper traction began to zip away, spending hard earned potential energy to drive them up towards the peak of the bridge incline. Defiant watched as the horde came charging after them, bodies like polished chitin, arms of ropy wet exposed muscle, teeth too wild and broken for the mouth they belonged to. Their numbers, once their entire attack strategy, became a liability as they fought each other to get out of the crowd and give chase. Their infighting gained them precious seconds of distance across the bridge.
Fortunately, there were fewer cars there, letting Blasto focus his attentions on holding on for dear life and not falling over as the acceleration played hell with the terrible vertigo spinning his head around.
After the third sideswipe of a parked car, however, Defiant reached forward to flick off the flywheel and Blasto gratefully brought the bike to a jarring stop.
With quick, businesslike motions, Defiant roughly dragged the limp Blasto off the bike seat and hauled him up and over the lip of the basket, depositing him quickly but carefully in the bucket before taking the driver's seat again. The whole operation took nearly ten seconds, and in that time the screaming was nearly on them again.
With a scream of his own, Defiant's powerful arms drove the pedals of the bike on again, building speed as the monsters inched closer behind them.
Blasto propped his cheek up against the rim of the bucket and watched as one Blair began to outpace the others. Its body seemed built for speed: its body, roughly man-shaped, used oversized thigh muscles to propel itself forward as its ape-like forearms kept it stable as it leaned its upper body parallel to the road; its head was a nearly smooth dome of exposed bone, only a tiny slit on each side for some kind of eye analogue and a jagged maw of bony knives for a mouth. The wet green of its skin made it look mossy and the fused bones of its feet made rasping noises as they pounded on the asphalt.
It kept pace with the bike, and began to gain precious inches as it adjusted its gait to run using three limbs, leaving its arm free to stretch out, wicked nails caked with who-knows-what creeping towards Blasto's masked face.
Blasto watched as the nails moved towards his eyes; despite the monsters furious pace its hand barely tremored, a smooth motion he couldn't move away from, too spent and too sick to even flinch back or call out to Defiant.
Maybe if I just let it take me. It can't hurt worse than melting apart from the inside out. Can it? Blasto closed his eyes and waited for the inevitable.
At that moment, Defiant felt the leveling off of the bridge before it began its downward run, and hit the flywheel.
Blasto's eyes flew open at the sudden acceleration and watched as the cruel nailed hand, a mere centimeter from his face, suddenly receded as they dashed away, Defiant's sure hands guiding them between wrecks and down the clear slope of the bridge.
The howling quieted as cars moved between them and the bike gained ground. The slope was not particularly steep, but it allowed Defiant to alternate between the flywheel and hand pedaling, saving energy where he could, building it back up in the storage device when the ground was clear enough to go all out and pedal hard.
Blasto sighed as he watched the pack, despite loping after them, disappear behind a crashed Jeep. His head throbbed and his hands shook as he turned away from their rear view and looked forward to wherever they were going.
"You okay back there?" Defiant took a break from pedaling to hand the spray bottles back to Blasto.
Blasto took them and stuffed them between a car battery and Bonesaw's severed head, "Fine."
Defiant grunted and went back to driving.
The river passed behind them. Industrial areas and commercial malls stretched out to either side of the covered road, interspersed with more residential areas; townhouses and the like crowded together on side streets. Trees reaching up to their lower level road cut the visibility down in some places and surface roads crisscrossed around and beneath them.
The wind still carried the decay smell of the river but also a smell of plant life and fresh breezes; a welcome change after the tepid and foul air of the tunnel, a smell they had become so used to it only registered when they left.
The sun had begun to set when they were coming up out of the tunnel and was now headed toward twilight. The golden sunlight smoothed out the radiation induced visual distortions, making everything seem indistinct in Blasto and Defiant's peripheral vision. Only the occasional glimpse of some thingscuttling from house to house or from underneath a car ruined the effect. That and the occasional high whistling call coming from behind them on the bridge, their pursuers still on their tail, though the distant lead gave them both a sense of relative security.
The road over them began to grade downwards and to the side, joining their road to make an extra wide six lane highway. The cars here were stalled further apart and the wider lanes gave them a sense of greater openness. The road, still elevated above the level of surface streets, let them keep a watchful eye all around.
They drove in silence.
Defiant, under his helmet, smiled broadly. In his mind's eye he was already planning their survival; The alternator connected to several improved flywheel designs (graphene plates for decreasing waste heat) powered by building mounted windmills. If we work closer to the Mystic River or the Charles we can use Salter's ducks as a secondary power source. His mind hummed along with possibilities for infrastructure and industry, sustainable power and better armaments to improve foraging chances.
Blasto propped his head up as the bike began following the curve of the road to the north. Cars whipped by as he stared listlessly at the grey and heavy clouds up above. He lolled his head to one side, his mask squelching against the rim of the bucket. He looked down to earth just in time to see watch a set of train tracks pass by off to his right.
Suddenly, he sat upright and whipped his head around to the left, following the train tracks past the other side of the highway. His hands gripped the bucket edge. Carefully, slowly, he crawled forward over the front of the chariot, holding himself up behind Defiant's back. He held one hand out, tense and shaking.
There!
He snapped his hand out and grabbed Defiant's left hand, dragging it back towards himself and pulling the bike handlebars with it. The bike swerved left, bumping over a smashed concrete divider and through the opposite lanes, careening wildly as Defiant fought for control. Blasto heaved his whole weight against the Tinker, using the bucket edge as leverage to keep them veering towards the edge of the road.
"Damn you! Let go! Let go!" Defiant pulled his hand free of the bike pedal and backhanded Blasto, his gauntlet thudding heavily against the Bio-Tinker's face, throwing him back against the plastic wall of the janitor bucket. The bike wobbled at the impact, and Defiant snapped back around to regain control of the bike.
With all the built up speed from the bridge, the bike fairly flew over a downed chain link fence, sliding and scraping down a dirt hill, throwing up massive clouds of red dust as Defiant leaned into the slide, brakes pumping and flywheel groaning as it attempted to slow their pell mell descent.
The bike rattled and shook as it careened over two sidewalks and nearly clipped a sickly tree, broken glass and pebbles scattering and scratching as the bike scattered them.
Finally, Defiant steered their mad dash down a broken and weed choked road. Ahead, a train track cut through the road. Beyond that, a wide open parking lot populated by the corpses of Fords and Nissans. Stores surrounded the empty lot, including one, on the far side, with a red R in a circle. He brought the bike to a shuddering halt.
Defiant's breath heaved in rage as he stared at the RadioShack not three blocks away, "I… I fucking told you: there is no ToyBox outpost! Dodge cannot travel dimensionally. You are going to get us killed! What is wrong with you?!" He turned his upper body around abruptly, looming over Blasto, still huddled in the chariot seat.
For a minute, Blasto didn't answer. He sat still, arms folded on top of knees, head hung down between them.
"You weren't even going to check."
"Blasto, I told-"
"You weren't even going to fucking check!" Blasto screamed, head down, muffling his voice, "Defiant, I am dying! Dying! You tricked me to get what you fucking wanted and you didn't even have the decency to just check?! Just as a last wish to a dying man?! What the fuck is wrong with you?!"
Defiant slowly turned back around and stared down at his hands. After a few moments, he began pedaling toward the parking lot. Blasto lifted his head with some undefinable emotion on his face, along with a red welt from where Defiant hit him, before glaring at his unasked for partner's back.
The bike clattered and clanked over the train tracks and into the parking lot, past rusted shopping carts and bare trees with plastic bags pinned in their branches. The shattered windows of a Burger King reflected them in kaleidoscope as they passed it. A few street lamps had toppled over and weeds grew thick in the dusty islands between parking sections.
One section of the parking lot near their destination had been piled high with two massive piles of junk; thick slabs of concrete stacked against each other to make unsightly piles, dull pieces of warped metal and car parts all jammed against each other. Big pieces of junk littering the area and dozens of potholes made their ride slower than it would have been otherwise.
Soon, they pulled up to the RadioShack, its windows thick with grime, the glass door kicked in and shattered. Gingerly, Blasto lifted himself up and over the rim of the basket, still favoring his injured ankle, and pushed the door out of his way.
The place had been looted. The shelves were scattered around, the display cases caved in, the fluorescent bulbs hung from the ceiling like bare bones. Glass was strewn across the floor and weedy vines had been growing up and over one of the empty window frames into the register area.
"Hello?!" Blasto hobbled into the store, "Anyone?!"
He came to the manager's door and tried the handle. It opened easily enough, but led only to a small break room, barely visible in the dim light from the front of the store, getting dimmer as the sun began to set in earnest behind the building itself.
Defiant sat by the bike and watched, silently, as Blasto shuffled back out of the electronics store, head hung low. Blasto lowered himself down to the curb, hissing in pain as his bruised hand took his weight. He kicked both feet out, carefully arranged his hurt ankle so it rested more easily, and sighed.
"So… Now can we get going?" Defiant nodded to the bike.
Blasto rolled his head back to look at him; "That is the most fucking passive aggressive 'I told you so,' ever."
Defiant huffed, "It's not passive aggressive. You wanted to check and you did. Now we should go."
"No," Blasto shook his head, "I'm staying."
Defiant stared down at him, "There is no ToyBox site here. Staying is pointless if not dangerous. Explain."
Blasto shrugged, "I wasn't kidding about the dying. I wasn't trying to manipulate you. It's just a fact. There's no way to get myself set up with a lab quickly enough to not die or have significant brain damage," Blasto lay down on the concrete, "I just give up. I can probably whip up something painless with what we liberated from the janitor's closet. Maybe just use that nerve paralytic on my CNS or something. Anyway, I'm done now."
Defiant shook his head, "No."
"What do you mean, 'No'?"
"You are not going to kill yourself. You are going to come with me and we are going to work together to find a solution to this problem."
Blasto narrowed his eyes, his mask wrinkling and flaking at the edges, "Uh, no. I'm not going with you. I can't fucking walk, I feel like I'm going to puke out my own pancreas, and I'm tired of fighting monsters. I'm fucking done."
Defiant leaned down into Blasto's face, "You're not done. You're done when I say you are."
Blasto met his gaze for a moment before bursting into laughter, "PfffttHahahaha! Seriously? What does that even mean?"
Defiant grabbed Blasto roughly by the arm, "You are Not quitting! You are Not just giving up! And you are Not leaving me here to do this on my own!"
By the end of his outburst, Defiant was screaming in Blasto's face, his careful veneer of control falling away into something like panic. Blasto stared at him, pity warring with anger playing out under his mask.
That was when they heard the howling.
"Shit"
"Shit"
Blasto frantically tried to hop back up, "Okay, look, when I said I was done, I'm reasonably sure that being eaten alive was not what I meant. Let's proceed with the getting the fuck outta here so we can resume the debate on my right to die in a more secluded venue, yeah?"
Defiant grabbed his forearms and heaved him to his feet, looping one arm around Blasto's waist, "Agreed." The two awkwardly hobbled back to the Frankenbike. Defiant helped Blasto get a leg up and over the basket rim. They froze mid movement.
From their position, they were both facing the beast. Standing well over seven feet tall, its flesh gleamed in the dim light, patches of ivory yellow bone rising to the surface in places, its face was little more than a bare skull. Its arms were monstrous in size, easily dwarfing its own torso with thick corded muscle, interspersed with more bone plating, the plating forming bony nodules on its massive knuckles. Its legs were comically undersized, twisted shrunken things dangling from its thickly muscled core as though everything about it had gone into making the massive upper body, which it used to support itself like an ape.
Gathered around it were a menagerie of smaller creatures, some with heads splitting into fungus-like petals, some with open gnashing mouths set in their sternums, others with too many arms and with faces set into their backs. They were eerily silent, their wet flesh and lolling tongues slick and oily and glistening.
The thing leading them splayed one massive hand open against the ground, sending a faint tremor through the asphalt, before using its other hand to grab a rusting moped. It palmed it casually, the way a person might pluck a fruit from a low hanging branch. With deceptive slowness, it cocked it back.
"Blasto, MOVE!" Defiant hauled the other Tinker backward. Before he was yanked out of the bucket, Blasto snagged the bloody t-shirt holding Bonesaw's head and pulled it out with him.
The moped came in on a low flat arc, it made a quiet whoosh as it cut through the night air. It tore through the Frankenbike without even slowing down, shattering the hastily constructed struts and snapping apart bike chains like paper garlands, before bouncing away across the parking lot like a skipped stone.
Defiant and Blasto were already off and running, or run-hobbling, Blasto's ankle unable to support much weight. Defiant pulled the Bio-Tinker's arm over his shoulder and half-lifted him up as they ran.
From ahead, a skittering and a wailing announced the other pack, misshapen legs bringing horrors around the corner of the Starbucks ahead of them. More and more of the Blairs, the monsters, came around the bend, claws skidding in their haste.
The two Tinkers skipped to a stop. Behind them, the beast let out a sound that started as a mere pressure on the eardrums and ramped up into a bowel-loosening bellow that shook the few plate glass windows that remained intact.
Defiant looked back and forth between the two groups, Scylla and Charybdis.
"Hey Defiant."
"Yes, Blasto?"
"It's been… weird knowing you."
Beneath his facemask, Defiant's lip quirked into a smile, "That's accurate."
The monsters advanced.
The piles of junk just behind them shuddered.
Before either man had a chance to move, the concrete and metal scrap heaps raised themselves up, scraping and clanging, before unfolding segmented limbs from underneath.
In general body plan, they resembled hermit crabs; hermit crabs whose shells were old construction material. They were, however, fifteen foot tall hermit crabs made of matte gray metal, each with a single orange optic glowing brightly from a downwards facing sensor array. Their limbs, eight in total, were clearly designed for different functions: the outermost limbs were heavy, nearly as thick as the arms of the monstrosity that chucked bikes around like nerf balls, tipped with heavy crushing toothed chelae. The next limbs were more specialized, with four digit grasping fingers set radially around a swivel joint and various cutting tools folded down against the main limb, hydraulic cables snaking back into the main body. Finally, the innermost arms were delicate, relatively speaking, with small plasma cutters mounted at each 'wrist.' The things brought themselves up to full height, planting their rear legs down with a thunderous clang, hydraulics hissing and servos humming. Defiant was looking them up and down and would furiously refuse to admit he whistled when later confronted.
The monsters charged.
The machines were like… well, machines. They always used three limbs at any time to maintain balance, ofting opting for the larger crushing claw to stab through the asphalt and hold their ground. The other five limbs were whirlwinds of activity: one limb could grab a creature, crush it to lifelessness, and then swing it as a flail through the crowd of monsters, a wide angle deterrent, until the body smashed to pieces and a new flail was plucked from the bunch. Meanwhile, the smaller limbs jabbed like sewing machine needles, punching through sternums and freakish heads with unstoppable speed.
Every once in awhile, the machines would adjust their footing, forcing the crowd back, or closer between them, or twisting to react to something only the other machine could see, or set up a maneuver for the other to act on only to immediately abandon it as the second machine 'saw' a better opportunity as the crowd dynamic brought new threats into play. Defiant saw tell tale elements of an advanced reaction algorithm, letting each machine act as part of a whole. He thought it was sexy.
Finally, its lower body swinging between its massive arms, the beast entered the fray. With a mighty swing, its entire body balanced on one arm as the other descended like a meteor, it smashed into the first bot, knocking it off balance and spraying metal scrap from its shell. Immediately, the other machine darted forward, its massive size belying its speed, and used its massive pincers to catch the thing's wrist.
The metal groaned and thrummed. The other machine regained its footing and lifted one massive metal armature, its pincer dripping various colored fluids, and speared down into the things forearm.
The creature howled in impotent rage, letting itself fall to the ground to bring its other arm into play. Before it could gain any leverage, the machines simply smashed their massive manipulators over the beast's head. A few heavy thwacks and it was small pieces of bone fragment and runny liquids.
The whole encounter couldn't have taken more than a minute. The sidewalk was slick with juices and the wheezing bodies of mutants.
Defiant and Blasto stared at their unlikely saviors.
Before they could even begin working on the list of expletives and idiomatic expressions of surprise, industrial warning sirens went off, their repeating blat accompanied by swirling amber lights emerging from the RadioShack storefront.
With the whine of heavy hydraulics, the entire storefront began to rise, powdered concrete and dirt falling from it as it trembled and heaved upward. Dim light spilled out from the widening gap between the bottom of the store and the space growing beneath it.
The massive freight elevator kept rising, the amber flashes of warning lights and dim fluorescent bulbs revealing a single figure standing in the middle, arms akimbo, wearing a heavy black radiation suit and mask. The elevator came to a smooth stop, the sirens cut out, and the figure took several steps forward so as to be backlit. The figure coughed as if clearing their throat.
The distortion of the respirator made it difficult to discern the gender of the voice, but the words were clear enough:
"Gentlemen. Welcome to the ToyBox."
A/N: I'm not one hundred percent happy with this. I feel like the pacing was a little too choppy and the chapter is too long. I would have broken it up, but it didn't feel natural and I want to move on to the next arc.
Any suggestions for an interlude, or should I just move on?
Also, suggestions for soundtrack? I've been listening to "The Last of Us" for some of the wandering around in desolation vibe.
I thought it was pretty good. I can see what you're talking about, but I can't think of any suggestions that would help.
As far as interludes go, I'm kind of curious about what's going on back on Earth Bet, but I don't think shifting the focus would serve the story at the current juncture.
Well, this chapter surprised me. Like Defiant, I had assumed that they were there forever, or at least until they figured out a way to send a dimensional signal back to Bet. I never expected Toybox to actually be there.
Well, this chapter surprised me. Like Defiant, I had assumed that they were there forever, or at least until they figured out a way to send a dimensional signal back to Bet. I never expected Toybox to actually be there.
Defiant: Blasto.
Blasto: Yeah, D?
Defiant: PRT files say that Cranial has a brain shaped birthmark on the left inner thigh.
Blasto: So?
Defiant: So, that's not Cranial.
BUM BUM BUMMMMMMM
Blasto: Wait, how do you know....
Defiant:
Blasto: ......... I'm telling Dragon.
Yeah I kind of expected they'd find a group of surviving parahumans or something. Blasto was certain to die of radiation poisoning without some sort of help, and that would be too dark for the tone of this story.
I doubt it's the same Toybox though, but a group of tinkers with pre-existing infrastructure would probably have been able to survive whatever disaster happened here. So if this was originally a copy close to Earth Bet, then their Toybox would have survived.
Though I suppose it's possible that this is Earth Bet. And they were tossed into the future not another dimension (or just frozen in time for a while).
Hopefully we get some answers soon.
Either way I doubt Blasto is going to let Armsmaster forget that he was right to try.
