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Colin Wallis wasn't tired, yet. It was late night by now and he was going to be getting there, but hopefully he could finish this project early enough he could get to sleep at a decent time.
Colin generally resented sleep as a concept. There were never enough hours in the day, and he had to waste almost a third of them doing effectively nothing. But he still made sure to get what his body needed - like all his other tools, his body needed maintenance, and Colin would not be one of the top heroes in the Protectorate if he let his tools go to pot for lack of care.
Assuming he didn't get so caught up in whatever he was working on that he lost track of time. Frustratingly common when he was collaborating with Dragon, she always made the work even more fascinating than it usually was.
This wasn't on that level of focus, but it was interesting. Dennis Johnson - 'Clockblocker', unfortunately - had joined the Wards last year, and his testing and duties had given Colin an exceptional amount of useful data regarding what his powers did. Cut an object off from time, freezing it in a single eternal moment. That hadn't taken long to figure out, but more interesting still was working out the principles behind that effect, replicating it.
Colin had already incorporated systems along those lines into his workshop, there were uses for all kinds of esoteric powerlike effects in fabrication - Vista's spatial expansion was a particular treat, it allowed truly incredible fine-detail construction when a centimeter of space on the final product was five meters wide while he was working on it. But the real trick was getting a combat-useful effect on something of a size and weight that it could be comfortably and effectively brought into a fight.
If he could timefreeze his own halberd, he'd have an impermeable, immovable weapon, which could have all sorts of possibilities. If he could timefreeze an organic subject on contact the way Clockblocker did, he'd have a one-hit capture and wouldn't have to beat his opposition into submission or unconsciousness. Externalizing the temporal severance was still beyond his capabilities, but building a machine with the ability to freeze itself was entirely possible, and he was fairly sure he could get it down to halberd size by the end of tonight.
Unfortunately, his rhythm was disturbed by a ringing of his shop phone, and he sighed and moved over to answer it. "Armsmaster here."
"Uh, sir, this is the PRT Tip Desk, there's a girl here that wants to meet with you."
Colin exhaled heavily. "Is there a reason for me to do that? Can't you handle whatever she has for you?" Wasn't that their job?
"Yeah, uh. She says her tip is too hot to enter into the main system and should be delivered personally to someone high up. She also says she's fairly sure she's a Tinker and wants to join the Wards."
Well, that could be interesting. It could also be a crock of shit and he'd be seriously annoyed if it was, but if she wasn't making it up, it did merit his attention. "Waiting room at PRT HQ?"
"WR 4, sir." Highest one in the building, best access from the rooftop.
So Armsmaster pulled one of his blue powersuits on, tabbing the Protectorate HQ's force field system to produce a bridge across the bay, from the converted oil rig in the middle of it to the PRT headquarters.
It didn't take too long for him to make his way to the PHQ's garage and start up his issue motorcycle. He did have a tinkered-up cycle for dealing with high-mobility issues - Squealer's road tanks and whenever Uber & Leet decided to defile a racing game like Mario Kart or F-Zero - but the majority of Brockton Bay's villain gallery didn't merit it. Most of the time he just needed to get around with road-legal alacrity, so he just used one from the PRT's motor pool, leaving his supercycle in the garage to save on maintenance, repair, and replacement efforts.
It was a straight shot out of the PHQ, into the brightly-lit night sky of Brockton Bay. Armsmaster cranked the accelerator, peeling out of the garage, and onto the bridge of glimmering light leading out of it over the bay. He didn't tend to take his time to appreciate the things he saw, but riding the solidified force field at night, over the water… it was fairly spectacular, and it was a straight run, so it left most of his attention free to appreciate.
Soon enough, he was over land, and he had to slow down from top speed. He passed over the Boardwalk to the gasps and cheers of tourists, and he spared a moment to wave, looking down at the crowd. The cheers intensified. He appreciated the sound.
It was easier to interact with fans at a distance like this. Uncomplicated adulation. Not that he minded the attention, not at all. He just wasn't good with it. It wasn't something he was used to or all that skilled with. And like sleep and gym time, it was absolutely vital. To be a top hero, you had to have a clean, powerful, and popular public image. And you needed to be in the top to do the interesting, important work, and get the resources to push his limits and achieve the things he knew he could achieve.
He was better at dazzling the fans with his actions than his words.
Then he was over the Boardwalk, and the PRT Headquarters was approaching fast. The force field road ended at the roof - normally for helicopter access, but occasionally motorcycle, the roof was the best connection point from the PHQ so it was the main route Protectorate heroes used to access the building. (Supplies required the bridge to dip lower, to street level, allowing trucks over and into the PHQ garage)
His tires hit the helipad, and he pulled to a stop, resting his bike in an out-of-the-way corner just in case an actual helicopter or VTOL needed to land.
He passed the helipad security without issue, and made his way into Waiting Room 4.
The girl sitting down in one of the chairs looked anxious, as his first impression. On the short side, sixteen-ish, and practically swimming in clothes that seemed a few sizes too large, black hooded sweatshirt and jeans that were almost falling off. Wavy brown hair a rich earthy brown cut short around her jawline, just a bit too long and getting in her eyes. Eyes were a light red-brown. Mole on the left cheek.
She was taking up three seats. One to sit in, a heavily-loaded backpack on her left, and a metal briefcase on her right. Body language indicated nervousness or anxiety - hunched in on herself, shoulders high, hands clasped together and tensing/relaxing in a rapid pulsating pattern, as if to try and vent her nervous energy through her hands.
She looked up at his arrival, and her eyes widened, lips parting slightly. Awe? There was a spike in nervousness, though, her eyes flickered around, and she tried to smooth out the disaster that was her clothes. "Uh. H-hi." She licked her lips awkwardly.
Armsmaster nodded, taking up a standing position with his halberd in the center of the room. "I was told you wanted to see me. Who are you, and what do you have to tell me?"
She looked up at him. "Uh, so, my name is Alex Masaryk, and that's a really long story."
And there was the first snag right there. Armsmaster - Colin Wallis, rather - knew Alex Masaryk. They attended the same martial arts club, Bay HEMA. Alex was one of his brighter pollax students and definitely the most dedicated.
The problem was Alex Masaryk was male. This girl really did look like him, though. And his body language reader didn't detect any signs of a lie, just a general background nervousness. Hmn.
The girl went silent at the frown twisting his lips - the only part visible under the armour - looking down at her intertwined fingers. A spike in nervousness according to the reader.
'File search,' Armsmaster subvocalized. 'Alex Masaryk. Possibly Alexander, Alexandra, or Alexandria.' Computer came back with only one result. Masaryk was a very rare name, there were only about a thousand people globally that had it, and only one living Alex Masaryk in the United States. Pseudonym - the legal name was Aleš, the Czech form of Alex. But people called him Alex because America - and Brockton Bay especially - was never a good place to have a distinctly foreign name.
Reading the file in a subwindow in his visor via eyetracking, Armsmaster confirmed it was the Alex he knew - substandard student at Arcadia High with a long disciplinary record and an academic record marked with attentional issues, frequent class-skipping, low assignment completion rates, and periodic bursts of anomalously high performance in tests. Indicated either periodic cheating to maintain a passing grade, or a natural brilliance that was rarely engaged with the class but occasionally managed to focus. The latter was more in line with what he knew of the boy.
He closed the window and looked at the girl, still frowning in thought. His reader certainly suggested she thought she was Alex Masaryk, and she did look like a female version of him. Armsmaster was fairly sure that was the same sweatshirt Alex usually drowned his body in.
She'd self-reported as a Tinker. It was possible she'd had a metamorphic trigger - they were rare, more common in Case 53s than the general parahuman population, but it was possible. Possibly indicative of gender or identity issues - trigger events usually produced power results that were solutions to or expressions of the issues the parahuman had faced, by a somewhat-demented chain of reasoning. Causation was secondary, though. He could think about that later, if at all.
So, eventually, he spoke. "You do not match our records of any individuals with that name."
The girl squirmed, averting her eyes with a redness in her cheeks. "I… yeah, uh. I was a guy a couple hours ago, this happened when my powers manifested." Truth, and substantial embarrassment. That was a confirmation on the metamorphic trigger, though the causation bore further investigation by the Power Lab.
"You said your powers were as a Tinker?" A parahuman coming to join the Wards within hours of their trigger was a wonderful exception to the norm. Usually they went independent and had to be approached directly with the offer.
Alex nodded. "I'd read up on the literature before. Extremely detailed, highly vivid mental imagery focused on design and engineering is the Tinker hallmark, right?" She looked up at him for approval, and if nothing else had convinced him she was the same Alex, that would have. The earnest body language, desire to impress with her knowledge and skills, it was all an exact match.
Though looking at it through his reader suite… well, that was either quite a revelation about how his student had viewed him all this time, or he still had some kinks to work out of the software. He decided ignoring that conclusion entirely was probably his best option whether it was right or wrong.
"It sounds textbook," he said with a nod. "We'll have to see what you can make. But for now, you said you had a tip?"
She swallowed, nodding. "I… yeah." She pulled open the briefcase to her side, revealing five metal canisters embedded in black foam, and four sheafs of paperwork. She passed one of the paperwork packets to him as she started to explain. "There's a secret organization out there that can give their agents superpowers in a vial. I tried one, and can confirm it's for real." She tapped the leftmost canister with a nail. "As soon as I was done drinking this, I was a girl, and I had Tinker visions. I was always a gearhead, but it really jumped up."
"... That's a bit farfetched," Armsmaster said in what was quite possibly the largest understatement of his life as he glanced through the paperwork. It wasn't as if power granters weren't the holy grail of research, often unethical. And since the methodology was so unethical, they often attempted to maintain secrecy. Groups like Die Gesellschaft, the KGB's 17th Directorate, the CIA's MKChapel, and many more. But powers in a can was far beyond anything the known researchers had ever produced. Trigger generation was possible, but nothing so convenient as a vial, it relied on a long stay at a nightmare factory. And that still required a preexisting corona pollentia. Creating one of those was beyond basically anyone. And yet, his reader said she was telling the absolute truth as she understood it. There was less wavering in her body language than ever before as the tone had grown more serious, less and less room for error.
Possibly a power-granting Trump like Teacher and Pastor, or a chemtinker with Trump elements. He'd definitely have to keep a close eye on Alex to see what in hell was going on with that. Especially whether there were mental effects like Teacher.
"How did you come across this information?" Armsmaster asked.
Alex winced. "... found out today my father works for them. They're… not good people. He murdered a woman. It… seemed to be something from them." Honestly, it sounded like she'd had a triggerworthy day whether or not the canister did anything.
"Your father is Richard Masaryk, correct?" He brought up the man's file, giving it a quick skim. Immigrated to the United States in the late 80s from the Czech Republic with his wife Amalie. Listed occupation had him as a contractor for Stansfield Enterprises.
Alex nodded miserably.
Simple enough to confirm the reported crime. "Who did he kill? Where?"
"I… don't know her name, other than 'Perrine'. Surname, I… think it might have been a maiden name. I do have her address though." The girl rattled off an address in the eastern area of downtown, and Armsmaster committed it to logs.
'Perrine' was a much harder search. There were six thousand Perrines in the United States, and without a first name it was going to be a lot harder to narrow that down. The address, though… residence of Richard, Rosemary, and Persephone Duensing. Rosemary's maiden name was Perrine, so that seemed like the hit. Rosemary was a homemaker, their daughter Persephone was a student at Brockton University, studying Material Engineering. The name commonality caught his attention enough that he looked into a bit more detail on Richard Duensing, but the Richards seemed unrelated. American by birth, worked in construction at VeritCon, the company responsible for Brockton Bay's Endbringer shelters.
He checked the driver's license photo just to be sure - different man, thickly built and dark-haired.
Armsmaster nodded. "I'll send an investigation team to the address and see what we find." More precisely, he'd talk to the Director and she would send said team. Her shift should have given way by now but Director Piggot always worked longer. "This will have to take priority over your induction into the Wards, so we'll do that in the morning."
Alex nodded. "I-yeah, of course. Can I… ask to be involved in this? I need to stop him."
"You can ask. I'll register the request. Whether the situation merits or allows your involvement is yet to be seen. It's still developing."
She sighed, nodding again. "... okay."
"For the rest of the night, you have free time. We'll have a cot for you somewhere to stay the night in here." With a subvocalized command, he had his visor and back-mounted sensor unit do a quick scan of her body, constructing a three-dimensional model he paid as little attention to as he could manage and stored as a file. "And a change of clothes."
Alex looked down at herself, shaking her head. "Yeah, I… guess I need that. Please nothing too girly?"
He added 'Preferably androgynous' to the interdepartmental request and sent it off. "Done." He held out his halberd, haft-first.
Alex blinked owlishly down at it.
"Since you're a tinker, use some of that free time to show me what you can do. We can't get you a tinker-grade workshop tonight," it'd take longer to get her her own, and without clearing her he shouldn't grant her access to his or Kid Win's. "but I can get you access to one of the PRT's internal workshops. Play a bit." Every parahuman enjoyed using their powers. Tinkers were especially strong on that, and Alex was most likely even moreso - she'd been a shop class type long before she'd had powers. Tinkering was fun.
Alex shook her head. "I- I can't disassemble one of your halberds!"
"It's fine. I have a rack full of them. This one isn't special in any way." He could replace it with a newer, better model with a few hours of shop time. "You can learn more from another Tinker's work than you can by working clean sheet, and this is the best set of parts available for you to work from tonight." He could also learn from what she did, possibly. Tinkers could usually learn from one another and collaborate well, but there were exceptions - Kid Win had yet to show anything interesting. There were enough anomalies about her trigger that her power might be weak, or just have nothing for him to look at. Better not to promise that he'd have value in looking at her work if he wasn't sure he would. "Use it."
"I… y-yes sir!" She took it, hugging the halberd to her chest. "I'll make good use of it!" The starry look in her eyes prompted his reader to tell him something he had already elected to ignore. He needed to add in a function to filter his reader's conclusions so he could maintain some degree of ignorance when it was necessary. Like now. Now it was very necessary.
Armsmaster nodded. "May I take the evidence?"
"Y-yeah, of course!"
He packed up the briefcase, and exited the room, heading for the Director's office. Alex had been right, this tip was too hot to commit to the main system. An organization the PRT was completely blind to might well have agents within it. This needed to stay to as few people as possible.
He definitely wasn't finishing that timestop system tonight.
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As a note to those who are starting reading the thread after this. I reshuffled the release order after realizing this was the best hook. Initially, this was posted after 1.4. So it's going to look a bit odd if you're reading through the comments - they're actually commenting on the next chapter which was originally in this post. The offset will persist until we finish 1.4.
