So; while coping with personal issues; I binge-watched all of Macross Frontier and Delta. And...
Skydance (Worm/Macross AU/C53)
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1.1: Rough Landing
Taliserian
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So; while coping with personal issues; I binge-watched all of Macross Frontier and Delta. And while there's been a couple Worm / Macross crossovers; they've all missed my favorite part: The awesome transforming robot jets. And while reading Yet Another Fic I had a funny idea for how a Case 53 would perceive Brockton Bay if they landed in the Graveyard.
Not sure if I'm going to continue this; but I needed to write it to get it out of my head so it would stop bugging me.
I hit the solid mass of metal face first hard enough to knock me right out of the air and on my ass. I couldn't really seem to remember anything before I hit my head so I had no idea why I'd been flying; just that I could. Though, apparently not through this massive wall of rusted metal that I'd apparently decided to stress-test with my face.
The next surprise came when I went to check if my nose was bleeding. My hand was... different. I couldn't remember what it'd looked like before; but I was certain it wasn't this robotic grey... thing. My forearm was a rectangular structure, mostly white with magenta trim, some sort of streamlined pod slung along the underside of my forearm protruding past my elbow and a blocky multifaceted plate on the outside. Looking down, my legs continued the theme, though with large areas, particularly my knees and sides of my calves, that had a pale lilac paint; and a set of brass... nozzles? Thrusters maybe. I tapped one, cautiously, with a finger and got a solid metal-on-metal sound. Below the ankle my foot seemed to consist of a single pointed metal hoof, with a separate heel that I could move independently. And the only reason I hadn't fallen flat out into the mud I now pulled myself up from was because there was something on my back.
I needed a mirror. Somehow, I'd been turned into some sort of purple robot; and while I honestly couldn't remember who I'd been yesterday, I'm at least 90% certain I'd been human. I needed to know where I was. I needed to know who I was, what had happened to me. ...I needed to find my way out of this maze of rusted out hulks if I was going to get any answers.
But getting out of the labyrinth of beached and half-sunken ships just made things worse. I was in a shipyard; but like the ships, it had seen better days. Equipment smashed, a crane toppled, buildings burned, trash everywhere. Worse, it didn't seem to be even remotely recent. Everything was rusted and filthy like it'd been sitting for decades. Had the world ended? Something happened to destroy civilization; and I awaken to wander the ruins in a robotic body? That sounded like an awesome idea for a video game; or a slightly crappy low-budget sci-fi series that'd get canceled after one season. Less if it was on Fox. I mean, not direct-to-dvd bad, but...
My mind was wandering. That was good and bad. Good because it helped reassure me that I was still actually human. Sort of. Bad because it wasn't helping me solve my problem. Problems. I probably had more than just 'having an existential crisis in a post-apocalyptic wasteland' to worry about. If I was a machine, and I still wasn't entirely willing to accept that, then I was eventually going to need power and repairs. And since my mechanical knowledge wouldn't fill a matchbook; that meant finding people and hoping the fur-wearing survivors of this hellscape could somehow keep me running.
As night began to fall; I found a mostly intact factory building to huddle in. I didn't know if I had any kind of night vision and I wasn't about to wander the ruins of human civilization in the dark. Besides, it gave me a chance to wonder what kind of place this city had been, before the world fell.
In my defense, the dockyards are an industrial maze and what windows are left are really, really grimy. Which is why it wasn't until full dark that I realized that there was an illumination to the scattered high clouds. The kind you only get from civilization. The modern type; with electric lights.
So sue me, I'd had kind of a stressful day. I stood back up; glad that I didn't seem to get physically tired even if all this walking was making me mentally weary. Working my way towards the light took time; but along the way I found a shop window intact enough to give me an idea of what I looked like. Pretty much what I had determined, like someone couldn't decide if they were doing mecha-barbie or a linebacker bot; and had mixed the two. My upper arms and waist were spindly, my shoulders, forearms and legs bulky. I had two big, complicated structures jutting from my back supporting some sort of jetpack-looking things.
My face was as unexpressive as I'd dreaded, nothing more than a glowing emerald visor and a white plate covering where my nose and mouth would be; with a pair of long antennas coming back from the sides of my head. The only distinguishing mark I could make out was on my left shoulder pauldron. Some kind of foreign letter, like a capital A without the crossbar, followed by the numbers 06.
My first contact with the locals came while I was still exploring my reflection. A sound my admittedly holey memory identified as 'camera' drew my attention. I don't know, maybe I turned too quickly, because the guy with the phone screamed and ran. I tried to ask him to wait a second; but I couldn't speak. I had no mouth, and wanted to scream. Instead, I kept walking.
It looked like I was getting closer to something like a boardwalk area; more shops and even foot traffic, when I had my next encounter: A sudden, stabbing pain in the shoulder. If I'd had eyelids -or eyes- I would have blinked in surprise. Instead I just turned my head to stare at the stubby arrow jutting out of my right shoulder. What. The hell? Looking up in the direction it had come from, I saw a woman in black body armor and a metal mask under an urban camouflage cloak reloading a crossbow. As soon as she realized I noticed her, she jumped off the roof towards the alley and turned into black smoke.
I followed to the mouth of the alley. I don't know what I was trying to do. Communicate? Demand an explanation? What I got was a second arrow, this one clean through my hand as I tried to block it. The shadow bolt turned solid as soon as it was inside me. The pain made me ignore the loud rumble my brain dismissed as 'motorcycle' behind me. I heard a whine, increasing in pitch, and realized that had been a mistake; but before I could turn around something hit me from behind with a flash of blue and a CRACK. Everything went black.
Initiating emergency reboot diagnostic...
Reactor 1: Online, caution: fuel state critical, reserve power only.
Reactor 2: Offline, nonresponsive.
Engine 1: Offline, propellant exhausted.
Engine 2: Offline, nonresponsive.
Auxiliary Engines: Offline, propellant exhausted.
RCS: Offline, propellant exhausted.
SWAG: Offline, power unavailable.
PPBS: Offline, power unavailable.
Polling tactical systems:
ROV-127s: Offline, power unavaliable
LU-18As: Offline, power unavaliable
-Stowed
LM-25s: Offline, power unavaliable.
-Ammunition 100%
-Stowed
CIMM-3B: Targeting data unavaliable.
-Bay 1: Ammunition: 36/36
-Bay 2: Offline, Nonresponsive
MPD-001R: Uplink offline
-Bay 1: Docked: 8/8, Charge: 0%
-Bay 2: Offline, nonresponsive.
Aux MM: Targeting data unavaliable
-Bays 1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8: Ammunition 100%
-Bays 3, 5: Offline, nonresponsive.
"Well, that's entirely unnecessary." The man seemed... irked by my scream; he was ignoring me and talking to the woman that I couldn't see.
"Unnecessary?" I'm not ashamed to admit I screeched. "You've hacked my arm and leg off you psycho! When I bust out of here I'm calling the cops!" I'm honestly not sure what my plan of escape was. Hop?
"I'm not a fucking drone, you kidnapping butcher! I swear I'm gonna call the cops-"
"Not a drone, you freak; I'm a person!"
"Armsmaster?" The woman's voice again. I risked turning my head away from the blue-clad guy, but still couldn't see her. "I just found an omega marking on the plating behind the neck. My scans of the torso show something that looks a bit like a miniaturized life support unit. I'm also detecting neural tissue. I... think it's human."
I turned my face back to the man in blue armor; a look of abject horror on his face as he dropped the tool he'd cut my arm off with and sat down heavily on the chair behind him. I didn't take my gaze off him as I spoke. "Dragon, I think your name was? This guy said you're with something called the Protectorate. Is that anything like a police force?"
"I... yes. Oh god, we're so sorry-"
"-And since you're both speaking english, I take it we're somewhere in america; or something like it?"
"What? Yes, we're on the east-"
"I want a lawyer. NOW."
"Short version? A few decades ago, people started getting super powers like in comic books. So the government put together a team to organize the good guys, and an agency to deal with the bad guys. Protectorate and the Parahuman Response Teams, respectively. Then some giant city-destroying monsters showed up and made everything start sliding even more downhill than supervillians were managing on their own."
"Superheros? Pull the other one. Oh, wait, you can't. Somebody cut it off."
"I can reassemble-" Armsmaster started to stand and turn towards my leg.
"SIDDOWN!" He sat, surprisingly. I forced myself up into a sitting position on the shop table. "You're some sort of law enforcer; you wanna go tampering with evidence?" Oh great, and now my personal Torquemada is pouting too. "Ok, Dragon, now where do I come in to this?" I tapped my chest with a finger. Tong, tong.
"We thought you were some Tinker's robot drone, possibly telepresence. You're too spindly to be a suit of power armor. So when we captured you; we brought you in to analyze your construction, see if we can figure out who built you. But, that was before-"
"Before I rebooted in the middle of your vivisection?"
I could almost hear her wince. "There's a group, we refer to them as Case 53's; they're... like you. Parahumans with radical physical changes and complete autobiographical amnesia. You've got... some organic brain left, anyways; but I think most of you is running on the computer systems of your chassis."
I was about to ask a question when the door to the workshop slid open unannounced. In strode an obese woman with either a scowl or the worst resting bitch face in history. She was flanked by a couple troops in full body armor, with face-concealing helmets and assault rifles. "Armsmaster. Dragon."
"Are you my lawyer?" I doubted it; but it was worth asking.
"No, I'm-"
"I want a lawyer."
"-Director Emily Piggot, head of this PRT division." She continued talking like I hadn't said anything. And scowled at me for trying to interupt. So it was just resting bitch face. "Dragon, you're the expert in drones; can you please tell me why it's so rudely demanding a lawyer?"
"Because, Director, she's a Case 53."
Piggot blinked, looked at my missing limbs, looked at Armsmaster, and sighed. "Fuck."
"No, no fuck. Lawyer."
"Armsmaster, explain."
"We received a report of a tinkertech robot near Lords' Market. Shadow Stalker was nearby and proceeded to investigate-"
"Was that the shadow-bitch with the crossbow?" I fingered a hole in my shoulder plate where one of the bolts had hit. Armsmaster ignored me and plowed ahead.
"Shadow Stalker reported the robot was attacking a pedestrian and engaged. I arrived on scene and delivered a sufficient shock to disable..." He waved a hand at me.
I butted in. "I was trying to get help, I couldn't fucking talk. Shadow-bitch shot me unprovoked, then Harm-master here tased me, kidnapped me, and; oh yes, cut two of my limbs off. You're his boss, right? Some sort of top cop?"
"Something like that." Miss Piggy was glaring at both myself and the idiot in blue.
"Great. Kidnapping, unlawful imprisonment, TORTURE. I. Want. A. Lawyer." I was totally not expecting her to walk over and slap me. I wasn't expecting to feel it, either; but I'm pretty sure in the fight between my face and her hand, I came out the winner.
"Now listen here you whiny little brat." She looked like she was trying to melt me down into slag with just her glare. "I have thirteen capes, half of them children, and a company of PRT field troopers to try and defend this city. Against that, there's over a dozen literal Nazis with superpowers leading one massive gang; a fire-breathing rage dragon that can wrestle Endbringers and walk away leading another. I just got a report this morning that a super-powered meth-head and his crackwhore girlfriend robbed an armored car and used an invisible rocket tank to escape. I do not have the luxury to bench my best because of a fucking internal affairs investigation over a misunderstanding."
She took an angry breath and continued. "Here are your options. One. You take a swing at me and get shot attempting to escape federal custody. How tragic. Two. You push ahead with this bullshit and we throw you out on the street; Armsmaster keeps the leg and arm. Three. You shut up, get your limbs back, and we go our separate ways." She sighed heavily. "Or four. You grow the fuck up. Let Armsmaster apologize and fix his mistake; maybe learn something in the process. The PRT has procedures in place to help people like you. And hell, if you can take loosing a couple limbs and still clench a fist at the woman who just threatened to have you shot... well; like I said, my city's in the shit and I can use every hand I can get."
"...fuck. That's your recruitment pitch? What about, I dunno, turning me back human?"
It was Dragon who replied. "We've never found a way to return a 53 to normal."
"Water." The helpful woman's voice was, I finally realized, coming from a desktop computer.
"What? Water?"
"Apparently. Your lower leg contains what looks like a fusion-fired nuclear hybrid thermal turbojet engine. The fusion fuel feeds are clearly labeled for hydrogen, while the reaction mass feed lines are LOx. It wouldn't surprise me to learn you've got an electrolosis system for cracking water."
"Wait, hybrid? Like, a combined cycle engine?"
Armsmaster hopped to his feet and went to pick up my leg. "Precisely. You seem to be wearing a sort of body armor; or perhaps bolt-on armor pack would be a better term. Judging by the number of RCS jets and tankage, it would appear to be optimized for exoatmospheric operations; which is why it actually covers up the air intake at the hip..." None of us even noticed Director Piggot leaving with a disgusted sigh about 'Bloody oblivious Tinkers'. Too busy discussing aerospace engineering.
A/N: So, that's what I've got. Never even came up with a name for the OC; but her power would be Aerospace Tinker/Thinker (Innate understanding of performance envelope and operation of any flight-capable vehicle she's in; Tinker specialty Things That Fly), with a permanent Changer mode that's a 1/10th scale VF-31E(lectronic Warfare) Siegfreid. But painted in the canon colors of the VF-31C because I like purple better than bright yellow.
I can kinda see her being branded as something like "Pilot" or "Ace" by PR; and keeping the Changer aspect of her powers a secret. Pass her changer state off as being a telepresence unit.
And yeah, Piggot's somewhat out of character; but I can see Dragon contacting her, interrupting something equally important... Poor woman has a lot of stressful work that needs to be done; she doesn't have time for this.
Not sure if I'm going to continue this; but I needed to write it to get it out of my head so it would stop bugging me.
I hit the solid mass of metal face first hard enough to knock me right out of the air and on my ass. I couldn't really seem to remember anything before I hit my head so I had no idea why I'd been flying; just that I could. Though, apparently not through this massive wall of rusted metal that I'd apparently decided to stress-test with my face.
The next surprise came when I went to check if my nose was bleeding. My hand was... different. I couldn't remember what it'd looked like before; but I was certain it wasn't this robotic grey... thing. My forearm was a rectangular structure, mostly white with magenta trim, some sort of streamlined pod slung along the underside of my forearm protruding past my elbow and a blocky multifaceted plate on the outside. Looking down, my legs continued the theme, though with large areas, particularly my knees and sides of my calves, that had a pale lilac paint; and a set of brass... nozzles? Thrusters maybe. I tapped one, cautiously, with a finger and got a solid metal-on-metal sound. Below the ankle my foot seemed to consist of a single pointed metal hoof, with a separate heel that I could move independently. And the only reason I hadn't fallen flat out into the mud I now pulled myself up from was because there was something on my back.
I needed a mirror. Somehow, I'd been turned into some sort of purple robot; and while I honestly couldn't remember who I'd been yesterday, I'm at least 90% certain I'd been human. I needed to know where I was. I needed to know who I was, what had happened to me. ...I needed to find my way out of this maze of rusted out hulks if I was going to get any answers.
But getting out of the labyrinth of beached and half-sunken ships just made things worse. I was in a shipyard; but like the ships, it had seen better days. Equipment smashed, a crane toppled, buildings burned, trash everywhere. Worse, it didn't seem to be even remotely recent. Everything was rusted and filthy like it'd been sitting for decades. Had the world ended? Something happened to destroy civilization; and I awaken to wander the ruins in a robotic body? That sounded like an awesome idea for a video game; or a slightly crappy low-budget sci-fi series that'd get canceled after one season. Less if it was on Fox. I mean, not direct-to-dvd bad, but...
My mind was wandering. That was good and bad. Good because it helped reassure me that I was still actually human. Sort of. Bad because it wasn't helping me solve my problem. Problems. I probably had more than just 'having an existential crisis in a post-apocalyptic wasteland' to worry about. If I was a machine, and I still wasn't entirely willing to accept that, then I was eventually going to need power and repairs. And since my mechanical knowledge wouldn't fill a matchbook; that meant finding people and hoping the fur-wearing survivors of this hellscape could somehow keep me running.
As night began to fall; I found a mostly intact factory building to huddle in. I didn't know if I had any kind of night vision and I wasn't about to wander the ruins of human civilization in the dark. Besides, it gave me a chance to wonder what kind of place this city had been, before the world fell.
In my defense, the dockyards are an industrial maze and what windows are left are really, really grimy. Which is why it wasn't until full dark that I realized that there was an illumination to the scattered high clouds. The kind you only get from civilization. The modern type; with electric lights.
So sue me, I'd had kind of a stressful day. I stood back up; glad that I didn't seem to get physically tired even if all this walking was making me mentally weary. Working my way towards the light took time; but along the way I found a shop window intact enough to give me an idea of what I looked like. Pretty much what I had determined, like someone couldn't decide if they were doing mecha-barbie or a linebacker bot; and had mixed the two. My upper arms and waist were spindly, my shoulders, forearms and legs bulky. I had two big, complicated structures jutting from my back supporting some sort of jetpack-looking things.
My face was as unexpressive as I'd dreaded, nothing more than a glowing emerald visor and a white plate covering where my nose and mouth would be; with a pair of long antennas coming back from the sides of my head. The only distinguishing mark I could make out was on my left shoulder pauldron. Some kind of foreign letter, like a capital A without the crossbar, followed by the numbers 06.
My first contact with the locals came while I was still exploring my reflection. A sound my admittedly holey memory identified as 'camera' drew my attention. I don't know, maybe I turned too quickly, because the guy with the phone screamed and ran. I tried to ask him to wait a second; but I couldn't speak. I had no mouth, and wanted to scream. Instead, I kept walking.
It looked like I was getting closer to something like a boardwalk area; more shops and even foot traffic, when I had my next encounter: A sudden, stabbing pain in the shoulder. If I'd had eyelids -or eyes- I would have blinked in surprise. Instead I just turned my head to stare at the stubby arrow jutting out of my right shoulder. What. The hell? Looking up in the direction it had come from, I saw a woman in black body armor and a metal mask under an urban camouflage cloak reloading a crossbow. As soon as she realized I noticed her, she jumped off the roof towards the alley and turned into black smoke.
I followed to the mouth of the alley. I don't know what I was trying to do. Communicate? Demand an explanation? What I got was a second arrow, this one clean through my hand as I tried to block it. The shadow bolt turned solid as soon as it was inside me. The pain made me ignore the loud rumble my brain dismissed as 'motorcycle' behind me. I heard a whine, increasing in pitch, and realized that had been a mistake; but before I could turn around something hit me from behind with a flash of blue and a CRACK. Everything went black.
Initiating emergency reboot diagnostic...
Reactor 1: Online, caution: fuel state critical, reserve power only.
Reactor 2: Offline, nonresponsive.
Engine 1: Offline, propellant exhausted.
Engine 2: Offline, nonresponsive.
Auxiliary Engines: Offline, propellant exhausted.
RCS: Offline, propellant exhausted.
SWAG: Offline, power unavailable.
PPBS: Offline, power unavailable.
Polling tactical systems:
ROV-127s: Offline, power unavaliable
LU-18As: Offline, power unavaliable
-Stowed
LM-25s: Offline, power unavaliable.
-Ammunition 100%
-Stowed
CIMM-3B: Targeting data unavaliable.
-Bay 1: Ammunition: 36/36
-Bay 2: Offline, Nonresponsive
MPD-001R: Uplink offline
-Bay 1: Docked: 8/8, Charge: 0%
-Bay 2: Offline, nonresponsive.
Aux MM: Targeting data unavaliable
-Bays 1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8: Ammunition 100%
-Bays 3, 5: Offline, nonresponsive.
"-lin, I think it's reactivating." A woman's voice. Unfamiliar, no surprise there. When my vision came back, I was staring up at a blinding overhead light, then slowly turned my head to the right. A man in blue armor, with a severe case of hat head and a short goatee was currently focused on removing my right arm with some sort of tool while in the background a pair of what looked like robotic waldos were disassembling one of my legs on a work bench.Infobox said:
"-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!" I must have startled the blue-clad butcher because he twitched with the tool and severed my arm completely.Aerial said:Hiya! It looks like you're trying to let out a horrified scream of abject terror! Would you like me to turn on external speakers?
"Well, that's entirely unnecessary." The man seemed... irked by my scream; he was ignoring me and talking to the woman that I couldn't see.
"Unnecessary?" I'm not ashamed to admit I screeched. "You've hacked my arm and leg off you psycho! When I bust out of here I'm calling the cops!" I'm honestly not sure what my plan of escape was. Hop?
"I'm Armsmaster, you may have also heard my associate, Dragon. Your drone was captured accosting pedestrians on the boardwalk and taken to my lab for analysis.'Aerial said:
"I'm not a fucking drone, you kidnapping butcher! I swear I'm gonna call the cops-"
He actually managed to look exasperated. "We are with the Protectorate. Your drone was reportedly attacking-"Aerial said:I'm sorry, I was unable to connect to the local telecommunications grid at this time. Please, try again later.
"Not a drone, you freak; I'm a person!"
"Armsmaster?" The woman's voice again. I risked turning my head away from the blue-clad guy, but still couldn't see her. "I just found an omega marking on the plating behind the neck. My scans of the torso show something that looks a bit like a miniaturized life support unit. I'm also detecting neural tissue. I... think it's human."
I turned my face back to the man in blue armor; a look of abject horror on his face as he dropped the tool he'd cut my arm off with and sat down heavily on the chair behind him. I didn't take my gaze off him as I spoke. "Dragon, I think your name was? This guy said you're with something called the Protectorate. Is that anything like a police force?"
"I... yes. Oh god, we're so sorry-"
"-And since you're both speaking english, I take it we're somewhere in america; or something like it?"
"What? Yes, we're on the east-"
"I want a lawyer. NOW."
'Shut up Aerial.'Aerial said:
Oh great, and now my helpful infobox is pouting. "So, Dragon; while we're waiting for a lawyer, why don't you explain what's going on here. Use broad terms, like you're talking to someone who whacked their head and can't remember having breakfast this morning. OI! And you; just sit right there. I'm not sure if I have eyes, but I'm keeping them on you if I do."Aerial said:
"Short version? A few decades ago, people started getting super powers like in comic books. So the government put together a team to organize the good guys, and an agency to deal with the bad guys. Protectorate and the Parahuman Response Teams, respectively. Then some giant city-destroying monsters showed up and made everything start sliding even more downhill than supervillians were managing on their own."
"Superheros? Pull the other one. Oh, wait, you can't. Somebody cut it off."
"I can reassemble-" Armsmaster started to stand and turn towards my leg.
"SIDDOWN!" He sat, surprisingly. I forced myself up into a sitting position on the shop table. "You're some sort of law enforcer; you wanna go tampering with evidence?" Oh great, and now my personal Torquemada is pouting too. "Ok, Dragon, now where do I come in to this?" I tapped my chest with a finger. Tong, tong.
"We thought you were some Tinker's robot drone, possibly telepresence. You're too spindly to be a suit of power armor. So when we captured you; we brought you in to analyze your construction, see if we can figure out who built you. But, that was before-"
"Before I rebooted in the middle of your vivisection?"
I could almost hear her wince. "There's a group, we refer to them as Case 53's; they're... like you. Parahumans with radical physical changes and complete autobiographical amnesia. You've got... some organic brain left, anyways; but I think most of you is running on the computer systems of your chassis."
I was about to ask a question when the door to the workshop slid open unannounced. In strode an obese woman with either a scowl or the worst resting bitch face in history. She was flanked by a couple troops in full body armor, with face-concealing helmets and assault rifles. "Armsmaster. Dragon."
"Are you my lawyer?" I doubted it; but it was worth asking.
"No, I'm-"
"I want a lawyer."
"-Director Emily Piggot, head of this PRT division." She continued talking like I hadn't said anything. And scowled at me for trying to interupt. So it was just resting bitch face. "Dragon, you're the expert in drones; can you please tell me why it's so rudely demanding a lawyer?"
"Because, Director, she's a Case 53."
Piggot blinked, looked at my missing limbs, looked at Armsmaster, and sighed. "Fuck."
"No, no fuck. Lawyer."
"Armsmaster, explain."
"We received a report of a tinkertech robot near Lords' Market. Shadow Stalker was nearby and proceeded to investigate-"
"Was that the shadow-bitch with the crossbow?" I fingered a hole in my shoulder plate where one of the bolts had hit. Armsmaster ignored me and plowed ahead.
"Shadow Stalker reported the robot was attacking a pedestrian and engaged. I arrived on scene and delivered a sufficient shock to disable..." He waved a hand at me.
I butted in. "I was trying to get help, I couldn't fucking talk. Shadow-bitch shot me unprovoked, then Harm-master here tased me, kidnapped me, and; oh yes, cut two of my limbs off. You're his boss, right? Some sort of top cop?"
"Something like that." Miss Piggy was glaring at both myself and the idiot in blue.
"Great. Kidnapping, unlawful imprisonment, TORTURE. I. Want. A. Lawyer." I was totally not expecting her to walk over and slap me. I wasn't expecting to feel it, either; but I'm pretty sure in the fight between my face and her hand, I came out the winner.
"Now listen here you whiny little brat." She looked like she was trying to melt me down into slag with just her glare. "I have thirteen capes, half of them children, and a company of PRT field troopers to try and defend this city. Against that, there's over a dozen literal Nazis with superpowers leading one massive gang; a fire-breathing rage dragon that can wrestle Endbringers and walk away leading another. I just got a report this morning that a super-powered meth-head and his crackwhore girlfriend robbed an armored car and used an invisible rocket tank to escape. I do not have the luxury to bench my best because of a fucking internal affairs investigation over a misunderstanding."
She took an angry breath and continued. "Here are your options. One. You take a swing at me and get shot attempting to escape federal custody. How tragic. Two. You push ahead with this bullshit and we throw you out on the street; Armsmaster keeps the leg and arm. Three. You shut up, get your limbs back, and we go our separate ways." She sighed heavily. "Or four. You grow the fuck up. Let Armsmaster apologize and fix his mistake; maybe learn something in the process. The PRT has procedures in place to help people like you. And hell, if you can take loosing a couple limbs and still clench a fist at the woman who just threatened to have you shot... well; like I said, my city's in the shit and I can use every hand I can get."
"...fuck. That's your recruitment pitch? What about, I dunno, turning me back human?"
It was Dragon who replied. "We've never found a way to return a 53 to normal."
"I... huh. Ok, still not sure if I'm gonna take three or four; but either way, I'd like to be put back together. And, maybe if Dragon could help me figure out what I run on?"Aerial said:Hey! It looks like you're trying to get back to organic form. That's great! However, I'd strongly advise you not do that while your arm's on the floor and your leg's across the room.
"Water." The helpful woman's voice was, I finally realized, coming from a desktop computer.
"What? Water?"
"Apparently. Your lower leg contains what looks like a fusion-fired nuclear hybrid thermal turbojet engine. The fusion fuel feeds are clearly labeled for hydrogen, while the reaction mass feed lines are LOx. It wouldn't surprise me to learn you've got an electrolosis system for cracking water."
"Wait, hybrid? Like, a combined cycle engine?"
Armsmaster hopped to his feet and went to pick up my leg. "Precisely. You seem to be wearing a sort of body armor; or perhaps bolt-on armor pack would be a better term. Judging by the number of RCS jets and tankage, it would appear to be optimized for exoatmospheric operations; which is why it actually covers up the air intake at the hip..." None of us even noticed Director Piggot leaving with a disgusted sigh about 'Bloody oblivious Tinkers'. Too busy discussing aerospace engineering.
A/N: So, that's what I've got. Never even came up with a name for the OC; but her power would be Aerospace Tinker/Thinker (Innate understanding of performance envelope and operation of any flight-capable vehicle she's in; Tinker specialty Things That Fly), with a permanent Changer mode that's a 1/10th scale VF-31E(lectronic Warfare) Siegfreid. But painted in the canon colors of the VF-31C because I like purple better than bright yellow.
I can kinda see her being branded as something like "Pilot" or "Ace" by PR; and keeping the Changer aspect of her powers a secret. Pass her changer state off as being a telepresence unit.
And yeah, Piggot's somewhat out of character; but I can see Dragon contacting her, interrupting something equally important... Poor woman has a lot of stressful work that needs to be done; she doesn't have time for this.
1.2: Hangar
Taliserian
(Unverified Verifiable)
- Location
- ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha
- Pronouns
- They/Them
A/N: Everyone who didn't like what I'm doing with Piggot is probably going to hate what I'm doing with Carol Dallon as well. Canon Brockton Bay isn't a shithole because of the gangs or the capes. Those are symptoms. Brockton Bay is a shithole because the people in authority positions let the economy collapse, which lead to the increase in crime and trigger events.
"It's not enough to bash in heads, you have to bash in minds." - Captain Hammer
The defense of "Oh, Piggot's too good at her job for that"? Doesn't fly when she was chosen for the position by RCB to further the Cauldron experiment in having an American city go all African Para-Warlord. Piggot is an anti-parahuman biggot with PTSD and severe health issues. She was chosen for the job because she would fail at it; and she hates capes to the point of being willing to die a slow, painful death rather than feel like she was beholden to a selfless, dedicated healer who never demanded anything for her services. If you're looking for happy fun land; I'd suggest Taylor Varga or Totally Winging It. (Eye is hillarious)
"Dewey, Chetham, and Howe; Carol Dallon's office, how may I help you?" Ahh, the professionally cheerful chirp of the secretary.
"Hello, sorry; I got this number from an internet search. I'm a Case 53, don't even have a name yet; is Ms. Dallon available for a consultation?"
"Is this a civil matter? Criminal complaints should be directed towards the PRT-"
I cut her off. "Criminal, but I can't take it to the PRT; they're the perpetrators."
There was an awkward silence, then: "Hold please." I started tapping my foot to the beat of the hold music, ignoring the dark looks from the PRT troopers. They'd probably be reporting my call to their boss just as soon as I was feet-dry. Nope, one was already on the radio. Interesting.
"This is Carol Dallon, how can I help you?" The lawyer's voice sounded stressed. Probably a lot work to do.
"Ms. Dallon, thank you for your time. I know you're busy so I'll keep this brief. I'm a robotic-appearing Case 53 who was recently assaulted by two Protectorate members near the boardwalk, knocked unconcious for an unknown period of time; kidnapped by the Protectorate and experimented on until they realized I'm not just some bloody drone. Then I met the Director of the local PRT and she threatened to have me shot or just dumped in the street sans the literal arm and leg that Armsmaster had already cut off."
There was a pregnant silence. I was about to ask Aerial to confirm we were still connected when she finally responded. "All right, at first glance, there are a couple of issues I can see with pursuing criminal complaint against the PRT in this situation. First, you say you appear robotic?"
"Yes ma'am, I'm a five foot purple and white robot, except for some brain tissue; according to Dragon."
"Well then, assuming you didn't identify yourself as a person prior to regaining consciousness in Armsmaster's lab; he's fully justified in assuming that you were a piece of unknown tinker tech and thus likey a threat to persons or property. Disabling you and taking you in for study, under those circumstances, is a reasonable procedure."
I sighed. "What about the Director's threats?"
"Do you have any evidence to back the accusation? Bear in mind, please, that this is a two-party consent state, so any recordings you made in a private place without the explicit consent of all involved parties are not just inadmissible as evidence, but potentially constitute a crime in and of themselves if the recording took place in a Federal Secure Facility. Which, I'm almost certain, Armsmaster's lab is."
"I... shit."
"And then there's the public perception issue. The PRT and Protectorate are the good guys. That buys them the benefit of a doubt that, for instance, independent heroes don't have. I'm sorry, but with just a surface read, it doesn't look like you have a leg to stand on."
"Armsmaster actually put that back." I deadpanned. "Thank you for taking the time to speak with me, Ms. Dallon; I'll let you get back to paying work."
"Have a nice day." A perfunctory dismissal before hanging up.
I gave the troopers with me on the ferry a look that managed to convey some of my weariness. I was just done with this. Already. "So... now what?"
The trooper shrugged. "You're a cape; go beat up some crooks?"
"You can't see it; but I'm giving you a dirty look right now."
"Noted, ma'am." The trooper chuckled as the boat arrived at the dock. "I believe this is your stop?"
"No, you're wrong. This isn't my stop. This is my start."
Aerial, locate an abandoned warehouse that'll be a secure enough place to stash this add-on armor and research procedures for independent flight-capable capes to test their performance.
Very funny, Aerial. Designate PRT and Protectorate forces and allies as 'Green', not 'Red'. The icons on the troopers behind me on the boat and the distant Rig switched instantly from the red of known hostiles to a steady amber glow of potential hostiles. Green, Aerial. The icons switched again to green for 'potential combatant, affiliation unknown'.
The walk to the not-totally-trashed Docks neighborhood was uneventful; though at Aerial's insistence I did take some side streets and double-back a couple times to make sure I wasn't being followed. The Dockworkers Union yard was impressively secured, a tall chain-link fence with razor wire top, backed by outward-facing floodlights and security cameras. I honestly wouldn't be surprised to see guards roving the fence line at sunset.
The building Aerial had dug out of city hall records for me was, in better days, a heavy-duty mechanic shop. The ground floor was split; one side had three large garage bays each able to take a full-length semi, with ceilings my lidar placed at 20 feet. The other half of the building was a combination of storefront and office space, a workshop, and a second floor storage facility. All of the windows had been busted, anything useful even as scrap long ago stripped out. But there was only one back door that was easily blocked by a rusted out dumpster after much pushing; so the only entrances faced the street and the DWU compound.
I went to the upstairs storage room and with Aerial's help I took off most of the add-on armor packs. The wraparound shin guards and inlet-obstructing hip/thigh packs, shoulder pads, and the big drop-tank/strap-on boosters were just too much dead weight in atmosphere; even if the additional missile systems were tempting. I opted to keep the buckler packs on my forearms. They were low-profile, might be useful in blocking attacks, and each held a dozen missiles.
Mission accomplished, I sat down facing the stairwell for some serious thinking. As much as its overly cheerful tone iritated me, I had to admit that Aerial was right. From everything I'd seen in my brief life since face-planting a shipwreck, this city simply didn't work. A quick search online showed that the crime rate in the city was as absurdly high as its parahuman population. And the agency responsible for policing had gone for the primary strategy of: 'Have people dress up in costumes and wander around looking for criminals to punch in the face'.
It was stupid. You can't break poverty's nose or kick unemployment in the balls. You could do more to reduce the crime rate by turning that fancy floating fortress in the middle of the bay into low-income housing and offering a job-training program. People with jobs were less likely to rob a gas station for quick cash. Turning Piggot's office into a safe injection site would reduce overdose deaths drastically.
The economic turbine that kept Brockton Bay from crashing hadn't just stalled, it had flamed out. Someone was going to have to relight it. But I wasn't going to be able to start pushing that rock uphill until I had a better feel for my own capabilities and the city.
"It's not enough to bash in heads, you have to bash in minds." - Captain Hammer
The defense of "Oh, Piggot's too good at her job for that"? Doesn't fly when she was chosen for the position by RCB to further the Cauldron experiment in having an American city go all African Para-Warlord. Piggot is an anti-parahuman biggot with PTSD and severe health issues. She was chosen for the job because she would fail at it; and she hates capes to the point of being willing to die a slow, painful death rather than feel like she was beholden to a selfless, dedicated healer who never demanded anything for her services. If you're looking for happy fun land; I'd suggest Taylor Varga or Totally Winging It. (Eye is hillarious)
"Thanks Aerial, go ahead and connect me, please." I ignored the weird looks from the crew of the ferry that were bringing me back to shore from the Rig. Something about restricted airspace; they wouldn't just let me fly off once Armsmaster and Dragon got me back together and tanked up in exchange for some noncommittal platitudes about needing time to consider my options.Aerial said:
"Dewey, Chetham, and Howe; Carol Dallon's office, how may I help you?" Ahh, the professionally cheerful chirp of the secretary.
"Hello, sorry; I got this number from an internet search. I'm a Case 53, don't even have a name yet; is Ms. Dallon available for a consultation?"
"Is this a civil matter? Criminal complaints should be directed towards the PRT-"
I cut her off. "Criminal, but I can't take it to the PRT; they're the perpetrators."
There was an awkward silence, then: "Hold please." I started tapping my foot to the beat of the hold music, ignoring the dark looks from the PRT troopers. They'd probably be reporting my call to their boss just as soon as I was feet-dry. Nope, one was already on the radio. Interesting.
"This is Carol Dallon, how can I help you?" The lawyer's voice sounded stressed. Probably a lot work to do.
"Ms. Dallon, thank you for your time. I know you're busy so I'll keep this brief. I'm a robotic-appearing Case 53 who was recently assaulted by two Protectorate members near the boardwalk, knocked unconcious for an unknown period of time; kidnapped by the Protectorate and experimented on until they realized I'm not just some bloody drone. Then I met the Director of the local PRT and she threatened to have me shot or just dumped in the street sans the literal arm and leg that Armsmaster had already cut off."
There was a pregnant silence. I was about to ask Aerial to confirm we were still connected when she finally responded. "All right, at first glance, there are a couple of issues I can see with pursuing criminal complaint against the PRT in this situation. First, you say you appear robotic?"
"Yes ma'am, I'm a five foot purple and white robot, except for some brain tissue; according to Dragon."
"Well then, assuming you didn't identify yourself as a person prior to regaining consciousness in Armsmaster's lab; he's fully justified in assuming that you were a piece of unknown tinker tech and thus likey a threat to persons or property. Disabling you and taking you in for study, under those circumstances, is a reasonable procedure."
I sighed. "What about the Director's threats?"
"Do you have any evidence to back the accusation? Bear in mind, please, that this is a two-party consent state, so any recordings you made in a private place without the explicit consent of all involved parties are not just inadmissible as evidence, but potentially constitute a crime in and of themselves if the recording took place in a Federal Secure Facility. Which, I'm almost certain, Armsmaster's lab is."
"I... shit."
-Thank you Aerial, maybe later?Aerial said:
"And then there's the public perception issue. The PRT and Protectorate are the good guys. That buys them the benefit of a doubt that, for instance, independent heroes don't have. I'm sorry, but with just a surface read, it doesn't look like you have a leg to stand on."
"Armsmaster actually put that back." I deadpanned. "Thank you for taking the time to speak with me, Ms. Dallon; I'll let you get back to paying work."
"Have a nice day." A perfunctory dismissal before hanging up.
I gave the troopers with me on the ferry a look that managed to convey some of my weariness. I was just done with this. Already. "So... now what?"
The trooper shrugged. "You're a cape; go beat up some crooks?"
"You can't see it; but I'm giving you a dirty look right now."
"Noted, ma'am." The trooper chuckled as the boat arrived at the dock. "I believe this is your stop?"
"No, you're wrong. This isn't my stop. This is my start."
Aerial, locate an abandoned warehouse that'll be a secure enough place to stash this add-on armor and research procedures for independent flight-capable capes to test their performance.
Prioritize security, secondary priority industrial capability. Something like an abandoned machine shop or shipyard where there's a possibility of scrounging some tools; but I cannot risk loosing this armor right now.Aerial said:
Yes please.Aerial said:
The rush of data overlaying my field of view was instantly, instinctively comprehensible. Pitch ladder, velocity vector, speed, altitude, artificial horizon, fuel state. Then the tactical portion. Acquisition mode, sensor select, weapon select. Sensor focal vector. Threat warning receiver, active electronic warfare mode; countermeasures inventory. It was almost blindly complicated; but it was entirely second nature to me. Every one of the hundred plus HUD elements now in my vision made perfect sense.Aerial said:
Very funny, Aerial. Designate PRT and Protectorate forces and allies as 'Green', not 'Red'. The icons on the troopers behind me on the boat and the distant Rig switched instantly from the red of known hostiles to a steady amber glow of potential hostiles. Green, Aerial. The icons switched again to green for 'potential combatant, affiliation unknown'.
I gave the PRT trooper a little wave and jumped from the boat to the dock; following the navigation prompts on my visual overlay almost automatically. Surprisingly, most of the people in the boardwalk area simply stepped aside or snapped pictures with their phone. Very few actually freaked out. So Aerial, why the Dockworkers?Aerial said:
Interesting. Who are the other major players?Aerial said:
How does a city run like this?Aerial said:
Ok, my head-Clippy actually had a point there.Aerial said:It doesn't.
The walk to the not-totally-trashed Docks neighborhood was uneventful; though at Aerial's insistence I did take some side streets and double-back a couple times to make sure I wasn't being followed. The Dockworkers Union yard was impressively secured, a tall chain-link fence with razor wire top, backed by outward-facing floodlights and security cameras. I honestly wouldn't be surprised to see guards roving the fence line at sunset.
The building Aerial had dug out of city hall records for me was, in better days, a heavy-duty mechanic shop. The ground floor was split; one side had three large garage bays each able to take a full-length semi, with ceilings my lidar placed at 20 feet. The other half of the building was a combination of storefront and office space, a workshop, and a second floor storage facility. All of the windows had been busted, anything useful even as scrap long ago stripped out. But there was only one back door that was easily blocked by a rusted out dumpster after much pushing; so the only entrances faced the street and the DWU compound.
I went to the upstairs storage room and with Aerial's help I took off most of the add-on armor packs. The wraparound shin guards and inlet-obstructing hip/thigh packs, shoulder pads, and the big drop-tank/strap-on boosters were just too much dead weight in atmosphere; even if the additional missile systems were tempting. I opted to keep the buckler packs on my forearms. They were low-profile, might be useful in blocking attacks, and each held a dozen missiles.
Mission accomplished, I sat down facing the stairwell for some serious thinking. As much as its overly cheerful tone iritated me, I had to admit that Aerial was right. From everything I'd seen in my brief life since face-planting a shipwreck, this city simply didn't work. A quick search online showed that the crime rate in the city was as absurdly high as its parahuman population. And the agency responsible for policing had gone for the primary strategy of: 'Have people dress up in costumes and wander around looking for criminals to punch in the face'.
It was stupid. You can't break poverty's nose or kick unemployment in the balls. You could do more to reduce the crime rate by turning that fancy floating fortress in the middle of the bay into low-income housing and offering a job-training program. People with jobs were less likely to rob a gas station for quick cash. Turning Piggot's office into a safe injection site would reduce overdose deaths drastically.
The economic turbine that kept Brockton Bay from crashing hadn't just stalled, it had flamed out. Someone was going to have to relight it. But I wasn't going to be able to start pushing that rock uphill until I had a better feel for my own capabilities and the city.
Last edited:
Launch 1.3
Taliserian
(Unverified Verifiable)
- Location
- ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha
- Pronouns
- They/Them
After mulling over my options to the point that I was doing mental loop de loops I decided my best course was to get a fresh start in the morning. Thankfully it turned out that I could actually sleep if I wanted to; and I left as clear instructions as I could for Aerial to wake me up if it detected any potential threat to myself, my gear, or the structure. Then I settled back into a corner with my rifle in my lap facing the stairwell, and-
-woke up with some hazy reccolection of dreaming about fighting tank-sized bugs while listening to J-pop. It was like someone edited a jump-cut into my life and left me with an ear worm. I collapsed my rifle back into its gunpod configuration and stowed it over my shoulder and stood up. Good morning Aerial.
Once I hit the street I finally satisfied an itch that had been bothering me. With my inlets no longer covered by FASTPacks, I could finally use my engines. And it was going to be another long walk around the perimeter fence to get to the DWU compound main gate; according to the map Aerial found me. So I flipped the little mental switch in my head from S to H and transformed into my hybrid configuration in less than a second of mechanical origami.
I'm not sure what was weirder; the feeling of having my former pelvis three feet in front of my now conjoined shoulder-hips, butt an equal distance behind; or my knees suddenly bending the wrong way. Halfway between humanoid robot and jet fighter, my hybrid configuration mixed both with some unique performance characteristics. Like the ability to 'skate' on vectored thrust and my four and a half foot wingspan; which drastically cut down my travel time; even limiting myself to 30 miles an hour in case a cop felt like giving me a speeding ticket.
Who was I kidding? This wasn't a neighborhood with cops.
The gate guard eyed me cautiously as I slowed, then flipped back to humanoid shape. I wasn't sure if he was keeping his hand on an alarm button or a shotgun under the desk. Possibly both. I held my hands out to the sides, open in a pacifying gesture. "Just here to talk, sir."
"What do you want?" Still suspicious, still keeping a hand under the desk in his little shack. Across the yard I could see a number of people starting to gather.
"If I said something like 'A brighter tomorrow for all of Brockton Bay'; you'd probably assume I was some mastermind supervillian and shoot me." I missed being able to smile to show I was joking, I hope I conveyed enough with my tone. "What I'm looking for in the more immediate terms is an honest wage for an honest day's work."
"You want a job." It wasn't a question, more a statement of stunned disbelief.
"I believe that's what I said, sir."
"One moment." He picked up a walkie talkie. Civilian model, unencrypted; as soon as he started transmitting I locked in on the frequency with my own radio equipment. "Boss, there's a five-foot white and purple robot girl at the main gate... looking for work."
"Very funny Mark."
"I'm not joking, Danny."
Aerial, who's he talking to?
An hour of the most akward job interview I could remember later (hah!), the DWU had a new member; a general laborer by the name 'Skye Danzig'. Names? Not really my strong suit it turns out. Still, it was a legitimate source of income; and I was going to need legal title to my flop before I could start bringing in the sort of equipment I'd need to make the tools to make the tools... Listen, Tinker bootstrapping is hard. You can't just make a suit of power armor in a cave with a box of scrap.
Just before noon, I decided to take the next big step. Well, one small step for transforming jet-fighter robot-woman-kind anyways. "Boston ATC, Spartan Zero-Six."
"Spartan, Boston, Go."
"Boston, Spartan Zero-Six, parahuman requesting vectors from Brockton Bay to clear airspace for flight envelope testing."
"Spartan, Boston ATC. Have you on my radar, one eight zero from my Kilo marker at eighty miles. Come right, course two seven nine and climb to flight level three five; maintain speed four eight zero. On behalf of ATC everywhere, thank you for investing in a radar transponder and radio."
"Right course two seven nine, angels three five at four eight zero knots, Spartan zero six." Six and a half miles in the air, moving just under three quarters the speed of sound. I was up in the commercial routes, with Aerial looking up the radio frequencies for each regional air traffic center. Which was fun for the first few minutes. Then I got bored. "Boston center, Spartan zero six; requesting clearance unrestricted climb to flight level eight five zero plus. Additional: I handle more like a Blackbird than a Boeing."
"Spartan zero six, Boston Center; cleared unlimited climb VFR; handoff to Cheyenne Control."
I pulled my nose up and opened my inlets; sucking more air through my engines. Forty five degrees nose up, I kept my speed subsonic until I was clear of traffic. As I breached the sound barrier I smiled. "Cheyenne Control, Spartan zero six departing Boston Center; climbing to flight level eight zero zero, speed mach one decimal one and rising."
I was high enough that the horizon was curved; the sky black above me. Passing Mach 2, the forward-swept outer panels of my wings began to droop, offsetting the rearward drift of my center of lift. It also helped capture the supersonic shock wave beneath my fuselage, increasing overall lift as the air thinned and giving me more lateral stability.
"Spartan, Cheyenne, Boston Center handoff confirmed. Request clarification as to nature of your flight power."
"Cheyenne, Spartan zero six is an aerospace changer. Think of me as a six foot tinkertech fighter jet, and you won't be far wrong. Say, what's the record for the Blackbird?"
"Speed or altitude?"
"Both."
"Absolute altitude record of eighty five thousand sustained flight level, speed mach 3.3; officially."
Aerospace engineering is full of all sorts of conditional terms. 'Mach 1', famously, is the speed of sound. But that varies depending on the density of the air you're flying through, and thus altitude. Similarly, the boundary between 'supersonic' and 'hypersonic' flight is conditional on the medium. Specifically, when you stop flying through air and are instead dealing with plasma, you're hypersonic. I was leaving a trail of fire a mile long as I continued climbing.
"Spartan, Cheyenne. Not sure if you can hear us. Your speed now mach five point four, flight level two six two and still climbing. Be advised, you are sub-orbital at this time."
"Cheyenne, Spartan; I hear Hawaii's nice this time of year." I was into the thermosphere; above where meteors became visible. Earth looked... very round from up here. I had shut my engines down before they became too air-starved on their own despite the ram effect of my vast speed. At somewhere around three hundred twenty eight thousand feet, more than sixty two miles up; I crossed the so-called Karman line. The boundary where the speed necessary to achieve aerodynamic lift exceeded the orbital velocity. I was, officially, in space.
I could have run my engines in closed-cycle mode. I had enough delta-V for a lunar flyby; let alone circularization burns, even without my FASTPacks. If the Simurgh hadn't been lurking out in geosynch. Instead... Aerial, open a livestream please; feed from my camera starting from handoff to Cheyenne control. Play Professor Sagan's 'Pale Blue Dot' speech as a voiceover centered on apoapsis, and continue feed through to plasma blackout.
-woke up with some hazy reccolection of dreaming about fighting tank-sized bugs while listening to J-pop. It was like someone edited a jump-cut into my life and left me with an ear worm. I collapsed my rifle back into its gunpod configuration and stowed it over my shoulder and stood up. Good morning Aerial.
Spartan doesn't sound like a bad cape name.Aerial said:
Slipstream? Air Raid? Thrust? Jetfire?Aerial said:
I thought back to the dream I'd been having; fighters weaving and dodging through the void trailing ionized particle exhaust plumes, slipping around plasma bolts to the beat of the music filling space. What about Skydancer?Aerial said:
Go ahead, and then I think it's time I go introduce myself to the neighbors.Aerial said:
Once I hit the street I finally satisfied an itch that had been bothering me. With my inlets no longer covered by FASTPacks, I could finally use my engines. And it was going to be another long walk around the perimeter fence to get to the DWU compound main gate; according to the map Aerial found me. So I flipped the little mental switch in my head from S to H and transformed into my hybrid configuration in less than a second of mechanical origami.
I'm not sure what was weirder; the feeling of having my former pelvis three feet in front of my now conjoined shoulder-hips, butt an equal distance behind; or my knees suddenly bending the wrong way. Halfway between humanoid robot and jet fighter, my hybrid configuration mixed both with some unique performance characteristics. Like the ability to 'skate' on vectored thrust and my four and a half foot wingspan; which drastically cut down my travel time; even limiting myself to 30 miles an hour in case a cop felt like giving me a speeding ticket.
Who was I kidding? This wasn't a neighborhood with cops.
The gate guard eyed me cautiously as I slowed, then flipped back to humanoid shape. I wasn't sure if he was keeping his hand on an alarm button or a shotgun under the desk. Possibly both. I held my hands out to the sides, open in a pacifying gesture. "Just here to talk, sir."
"What do you want?" Still suspicious, still keeping a hand under the desk in his little shack. Across the yard I could see a number of people starting to gather.
"If I said something like 'A brighter tomorrow for all of Brockton Bay'; you'd probably assume I was some mastermind supervillian and shoot me." I missed being able to smile to show I was joking, I hope I conveyed enough with my tone. "What I'm looking for in the more immediate terms is an honest wage for an honest day's work."
"You want a job." It wasn't a question, more a statement of stunned disbelief.
"I believe that's what I said, sir."
"One moment." He picked up a walkie talkie. Civilian model, unencrypted; as soon as he started transmitting I locked in on the frequency with my own radio equipment. "Boss, there's a five-foot white and purple robot girl at the main gate... looking for work."
"Very funny Mark."
"I'm not joking, Danny."
Aerial, who's he talking to?
"Mr. Hebert? He's not joking, and I would, in fact, like an interview. Though for the record, I'm a parahuman; not an actual robot. But I do have a radio in my head." I gave Mark the gate guard my best apologetic shrug.Aerial said:
An hour of the most akward job interview I could remember later (hah!), the DWU had a new member; a general laborer by the name 'Skye Danzig'. Names? Not really my strong suit it turns out. Still, it was a legitimate source of income; and I was going to need legal title to my flop before I could start bringing in the sort of equipment I'd need to make the tools to make the tools... Listen, Tinker bootstrapping is hard. You can't just make a suit of power armor in a cave with a box of scrap.
Just before noon, I decided to take the next big step. Well, one small step for transforming jet-fighter robot-woman-kind anyways. "Boston ATC, Spartan Zero-Six."
"Spartan, Boston, Go."
"Boston, Spartan Zero-Six, parahuman requesting vectors from Brockton Bay to clear airspace for flight envelope testing."
"Spartan, Boston ATC. Have you on my radar, one eight zero from my Kilo marker at eighty miles. Come right, course two seven nine and climb to flight level three five; maintain speed four eight zero. On behalf of ATC everywhere, thank you for investing in a radar transponder and radio."
"Right course two seven nine, angels three five at four eight zero knots, Spartan zero six." Six and a half miles in the air, moving just under three quarters the speed of sound. I was up in the commercial routes, with Aerial looking up the radio frequencies for each regional air traffic center. Which was fun for the first few minutes. Then I got bored. "Boston center, Spartan zero six; requesting clearance unrestricted climb to flight level eight five zero plus. Additional: I handle more like a Blackbird than a Boeing."
"Spartan zero six, Boston Center; cleared unlimited climb VFR; handoff to Cheyenne Control."
I pulled my nose up and opened my inlets; sucking more air through my engines. Forty five degrees nose up, I kept my speed subsonic until I was clear of traffic. As I breached the sound barrier I smiled. "Cheyenne Control, Spartan zero six departing Boston Center; climbing to flight level eight zero zero, speed mach one decimal one and rising."
I was high enough that the horizon was curved; the sky black above me. Passing Mach 2, the forward-swept outer panels of my wings began to droop, offsetting the rearward drift of my center of lift. It also helped capture the supersonic shock wave beneath my fuselage, increasing overall lift as the air thinned and giving me more lateral stability.
"Spartan, Cheyenne, Boston Center handoff confirmed. Request clarification as to nature of your flight power."
"Cheyenne, Spartan zero six is an aerospace changer. Think of me as a six foot tinkertech fighter jet, and you won't be far wrong. Say, what's the record for the Blackbird?"
"Speed or altitude?"
"Both."
"Absolute altitude record of eighty five thousand sustained flight level, speed mach 3.3; officially."
Aerospace engineering is full of all sorts of conditional terms. 'Mach 1', famously, is the speed of sound. But that varies depending on the density of the air you're flying through, and thus altitude. Similarly, the boundary between 'supersonic' and 'hypersonic' flight is conditional on the medium. Specifically, when you stop flying through air and are instead dealing with plasma, you're hypersonic. I was leaving a trail of fire a mile long as I continued climbing.
"Spartan, Cheyenne. Not sure if you can hear us. Your speed now mach five point four, flight level two six two and still climbing. Be advised, you are sub-orbital at this time."
"Cheyenne, Spartan; I hear Hawaii's nice this time of year." I was into the thermosphere; above where meteors became visible. Earth looked... very round from up here. I had shut my engines down before they became too air-starved on their own despite the ram effect of my vast speed. At somewhere around three hundred twenty eight thousand feet, more than sixty two miles up; I crossed the so-called Karman line. The boundary where the speed necessary to achieve aerodynamic lift exceeded the orbital velocity. I was, officially, in space.
I could have run my engines in closed-cycle mode. I had enough delta-V for a lunar flyby; let alone circularization burns, even without my FASTPacks. If the Simurgh hadn't been lurking out in geosynch. Instead... Aerial, open a livestream please; feed from my camera starting from handoff to Cheyenne control. Play Professor Sagan's 'Pale Blue Dot' speech as a voiceover centered on apoapsis, and continue feed through to plasma blackout.
Good. Once we're back in communication, I want you to mirror the video to youtube and PHO; then e-mail the video url to Piggot, Armsmaster, Dragon, and Carol Dallon. Subject line: 'I record everything'. I think... I think I've got a plan.Aerial said:
Aerial said:Operation Panopticon? Are you trying to piss off everyone? This is a good plan. A great plan! I'm happy to be a part of it!
Going Rogue 2.1
Taliserian
(Unverified Verifiable)
- Location
- ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha
- Pronouns
- They/Them
A/N: So, apologies in advance, this one got very monologuey on me. Who knew a C53 with no mouth would be so chatty?
The plan was simple in concept, horrendously difficult in execution. And it definitely wasn't going to get me on the PRT's good side. Hovering at five hundred feet over the geographic center of the city, I started launching my drone plates. Antigrav units with limited speed, they could operate in pairs to generate holograms, force fields, they had speakers, cameras, and data-links. I carried sixteen units, and dispatched all but two every forty five degrees of the compass. The last pair I brought around in front of me to record what I was about to say.
Aerial, are we live?
"Hello, people of Brockton Bay and the wide Internet beyond. My name is Skydancer, I'm a Case 53 and a new arrival to this city. Perhaps it's naivete from my lack of memory; perhaps it's just chronic hero syndrome, but what I have seen in the forty eight hours since I first awakened in the Ship Graveyard has appalled me. Your city, and the systems that are supposed to protect and serve its citizens, are fundamentally broken at the highest levels.
"The cause is fundamentally economic. This was a port city that abruptly lost its port. Unemployment spiked. Riots ensued as frustrations boiled over, and were suppressed. Low employment lead to increases in crime as people were forced to make ends meet. Drug and alcohol use increase as a perceived release from the depression and despair. From this fertile soil, tended by the hands of able gardeners as Lung, Kaiser, and Skidmark, gangs grew and a harvest of hatred, racism, and systematic abuse were reaped.
"Who then, was to step in and set things right? The Brockton Bay Police Department are able enforcers of the law in conventional circumstances. But it must be conceded that attempting to pull the likes of Lung over for a speeding ticket is an act of suicide-by-dragon. Understandably, special circumstances call for special weapons and tactics. It is to deal with these exceptional individuals that the Parahuman Response Team was initially founded to combat.
"They have, frankly, failed their mandate. They are not an adequate response to parahuman crime. Their ability to contain parahuman criminals is doubtful; their holding cells have revolving doors. Their ability to secure convictions is laughable. The PRT was created to enforce the laws of the nation when broken by persons who had extraordinary abilities. But just because someone has superhuman strength; that does not make them beyond the law. The argument that, for example, Lung is capable of fighting off an attack by Levithan DOES NOT EXCUSE his crimes. Playing catch-and-release with parahuman criminals simply because they are parahuman is a racist bias as foul and rotting to society as any of the filth espoused by the Empire 88.
"It was once written that all it takes for evil to triumph is for men of good conscience to do nothing. I have met with members of the Protectorate and PRT; spoken with local leaders of both organizations. I bear them little personal malice; but for Armsmaster and Director Piggot, I ask this: Can you even recall the day you decided to sacrifice your honor and duty in the name of pragmatism?
"I cannot, in good conscience, stand by and let this city continue to suffer because of their corruption and complicity in every crime perpetrated by those they have released or failed to prosecute fully. I have looked at what they have permitted to happen to this city and I will not bear it. I will not be complicit in my actions, I will not be silent in my criticism.
"This, then, I have termed Operation Panopticon. Named for Panoptes, the all-seeing hundred-eyed giant of Greek myth. I don't have a hundred eyes; but I had something infinitely more dangerous: I had an internet connection. I have deployed across Brockton Bay a number of small drones; such as the one hovering above my hand here; and the one currently filming this. In addition, I have my own rather extensive surveillance capabilities. It is not a crime to record events occurring in a public place. It is not against the law to record public officials, such as police officers or members of the PRT, in the performance of their duties while in a public place. It is not a crime to broadcast or transmit any such recordings, nor to comment upon them. Such is the constitutional right of any citizen, protected by freedom of speech and of the press."
"I have alerted the PRT hotline and sent them a link to my video feeds, including the audio of what Hookwolf was threatening to do to this citizen. Response time to this location from PRT HQ, allowing for traffic and road conditions, should be no more than seven minutes. Signifigantly less for someone like Velocity, Assault, or Battery." Aerial helpfully put up a countdown clock in the corner of the feed while Hookwolf tried to claw through my shield.
I had Aerial switch to a two picture-in-picture format. The main view showed the perspective of the two drones keeping the enraged nazi knife-nut out of the dead end alley; the two smaller feeds were my face cam as I switched to hybrid configuration and re-positioned, the other continuing to show the aerial view of the crime in progress. I spoke through my on-scene drones. "Hookwolf, the PRT has been alerted to your activity; you are being broadcast live on the internet. Please withdraw. If necessary, I will use potentially lethal force in the defense of others."
"Fuck you too you cowardly fairy tinker. Once I gut this nigger I'm gonna beat you to death with these stupid fucking-" The countdown clock for expected PRT response hit zero; there was still no sign of them anywhere in the neighborhood. The 00:00 switched to ??:?? as I deployed my main gun in its dorsal turret and brought up my targeting system.
The lance of energy hit Hookwolf in the left knee; arriving an instant before the thunder-crack of shock-heated air. Metal hooks flash-boiled to vapor and shrapnel with an effect similar to a small grenade going off and throwing the screaming nazi cape into one wall of the alley. I descended in humanoid mode, beam cannon in hand and leveled at the Empire Changer while continuing my monologue for my camera and retrieving the alley-blocking pair to recharge in their launch bay.
"The PRT failed to respond to an active, known homicidal parahuman in the middle of a crime they were being shown happening in real time. My drones have a finite energy supply, I was forced to fire in the defense of an innocent life and did so in an attempt to incapacitate rather than kill. Vigilante murders are no more justice than the farce of the PRT. That said, I will use lethal force if I have no alternative." I put a foot on Hookwolf's chest and leveled my gunpod at his head as he retained consciousness. He got the message and went very still.
"And here's the feed from the PRT HQ, where a response team van is finally leaving the garage, accompanied by Armsmaster on his motorcycle." The clock returned, this time helpfully labeled as 'Total response time' and counting upwards.
"As I said, I am not Panoptes; I cannot see everything that goes on within this city. What I do see, I will not hesitate to share. I will not be a silent witness. Where I must, where the failures of the PRT and Protectorate to do their job force me to, I will act. Just as I will act to help overcome the fundamental economic causes of this citys' downward spiral; starting with the wreck blocking the shipping channel. But I am only one person, however extraordinary my capabilities. So I ask you, fellow residents of Brockton Bay: Help me. If you see something, contact me after reporting it to the relevant authorities. Be my hundred eyes.
"Perhaps, working together, we can accomplish with shame and humiliation what responsibility and morality have failed to do: Get the PRT to actually enforce the law. And be sure to come back after this short commercial break to watch a Robocop cosplayer carrying a pointy stick try to weasel out of this one live on camera. Oh. Wait, I don't have sponsors. Anyways, you've got a minute or so before he gets here, grab a drink. This should be good; if he doesn't just taze me unconscious again."
The plan was simple in concept, horrendously difficult in execution. And it definitely wasn't going to get me on the PRT's good side. Hovering at five hundred feet over the geographic center of the city, I started launching my drone plates. Antigrav units with limited speed, they could operate in pairs to generate holograms, force fields, they had speakers, cameras, and data-links. I carried sixteen units, and dispatched all but two every forty five degrees of the compass. The last pair I brought around in front of me to record what I was about to say.
Aerial, are we live?
Just start the stream and tweet out a link.Aerial said:
"Hello, people of Brockton Bay and the wide Internet beyond. My name is Skydancer, I'm a Case 53 and a new arrival to this city. Perhaps it's naivete from my lack of memory; perhaps it's just chronic hero syndrome, but what I have seen in the forty eight hours since I first awakened in the Ship Graveyard has appalled me. Your city, and the systems that are supposed to protect and serve its citizens, are fundamentally broken at the highest levels.
"The cause is fundamentally economic. This was a port city that abruptly lost its port. Unemployment spiked. Riots ensued as frustrations boiled over, and were suppressed. Low employment lead to increases in crime as people were forced to make ends meet. Drug and alcohol use increase as a perceived release from the depression and despair. From this fertile soil, tended by the hands of able gardeners as Lung, Kaiser, and Skidmark, gangs grew and a harvest of hatred, racism, and systematic abuse were reaped.
"Who then, was to step in and set things right? The Brockton Bay Police Department are able enforcers of the law in conventional circumstances. But it must be conceded that attempting to pull the likes of Lung over for a speeding ticket is an act of suicide-by-dragon. Understandably, special circumstances call for special weapons and tactics. It is to deal with these exceptional individuals that the Parahuman Response Team was initially founded to combat.
"They have, frankly, failed their mandate. They are not an adequate response to parahuman crime. Their ability to contain parahuman criminals is doubtful; their holding cells have revolving doors. Their ability to secure convictions is laughable. The PRT was created to enforce the laws of the nation when broken by persons who had extraordinary abilities. But just because someone has superhuman strength; that does not make them beyond the law. The argument that, for example, Lung is capable of fighting off an attack by Levithan DOES NOT EXCUSE his crimes. Playing catch-and-release with parahuman criminals simply because they are parahuman is a racist bias as foul and rotting to society as any of the filth espoused by the Empire 88.
"It was once written that all it takes for evil to triumph is for men of good conscience to do nothing. I have met with members of the Protectorate and PRT; spoken with local leaders of both organizations. I bear them little personal malice; but for Armsmaster and Director Piggot, I ask this: Can you even recall the day you decided to sacrifice your honor and duty in the name of pragmatism?
"I cannot, in good conscience, stand by and let this city continue to suffer because of their corruption and complicity in every crime perpetrated by those they have released or failed to prosecute fully. I have looked at what they have permitted to happen to this city and I will not bear it. I will not be complicit in my actions, I will not be silent in my criticism.
"This, then, I have termed Operation Panopticon. Named for Panoptes, the all-seeing hundred-eyed giant of Greek myth. I don't have a hundred eyes; but I had something infinitely more dangerous: I had an internet connection. I have deployed across Brockton Bay a number of small drones; such as the one hovering above my hand here; and the one currently filming this. In addition, I have my own rather extensive surveillance capabilities. It is not a crime to record events occurring in a public place. It is not against the law to record public officials, such as police officers or members of the PRT, in the performance of their duties while in a public place. It is not a crime to broadcast or transmit any such recordings, nor to comment upon them. Such is the constitutional right of any citizen, protected by freedom of speech and of the press."
"As an example; this is live footage of the multiple murderer Hookwolf and three accomplices, threatening a citizen with what appears to be several knives as well as parahuman powers known to be lethal." I vectored drone pair two to dive in and generate a forcefield across the alley between the black man and the nazis, while another drone continued overhead recording for the stream.Aerial said:
"I have alerted the PRT hotline and sent them a link to my video feeds, including the audio of what Hookwolf was threatening to do to this citizen. Response time to this location from PRT HQ, allowing for traffic and road conditions, should be no more than seven minutes. Signifigantly less for someone like Velocity, Assault, or Battery." Aerial helpfully put up a countdown clock in the corner of the feed while Hookwolf tried to claw through my shield.
I had Aerial switch to a two picture-in-picture format. The main view showed the perspective of the two drones keeping the enraged nazi knife-nut out of the dead end alley; the two smaller feeds were my face cam as I switched to hybrid configuration and re-positioned, the other continuing to show the aerial view of the crime in progress. I spoke through my on-scene drones. "Hookwolf, the PRT has been alerted to your activity; you are being broadcast live on the internet. Please withdraw. If necessary, I will use potentially lethal force in the defense of others."
"Fuck you too you cowardly fairy tinker. Once I gut this nigger I'm gonna beat you to death with these stupid fucking-" The countdown clock for expected PRT response hit zero; there was still no sign of them anywhere in the neighborhood. The 00:00 switched to ??:?? as I deployed my main gun in its dorsal turret and brought up my targeting system.
The lance of energy hit Hookwolf in the left knee; arriving an instant before the thunder-crack of shock-heated air. Metal hooks flash-boiled to vapor and shrapnel with an effect similar to a small grenade going off and throwing the screaming nazi cape into one wall of the alley. I descended in humanoid mode, beam cannon in hand and leveled at the Empire Changer while continuing my monologue for my camera and retrieving the alley-blocking pair to recharge in their launch bay.
"The PRT failed to respond to an active, known homicidal parahuman in the middle of a crime they were being shown happening in real time. My drones have a finite energy supply, I was forced to fire in the defense of an innocent life and did so in an attempt to incapacitate rather than kill. Vigilante murders are no more justice than the farce of the PRT. That said, I will use lethal force if I have no alternative." I put a foot on Hookwolf's chest and leveled my gunpod at his head as he retained consciousness. He got the message and went very still.
"And here's the feed from the PRT HQ, where a response team van is finally leaving the garage, accompanied by Armsmaster on his motorcycle." The clock returned, this time helpfully labeled as 'Total response time' and counting upwards.
"As I said, I am not Panoptes; I cannot see everything that goes on within this city. What I do see, I will not hesitate to share. I will not be a silent witness. Where I must, where the failures of the PRT and Protectorate to do their job force me to, I will act. Just as I will act to help overcome the fundamental economic causes of this citys' downward spiral; starting with the wreck blocking the shipping channel. But I am only one person, however extraordinary my capabilities. So I ask you, fellow residents of Brockton Bay: Help me. If you see something, contact me after reporting it to the relevant authorities. Be my hundred eyes.
"Perhaps, working together, we can accomplish with shame and humiliation what responsibility and morality have failed to do: Get the PRT to actually enforce the law. And be sure to come back after this short commercial break to watch a Robocop cosplayer carrying a pointy stick try to weasel out of this one live on camera. Oh. Wait, I don't have sponsors. Anyways, you've got a minute or so before he gets here, grab a drink. This should be good; if he doesn't just taze me unconscious again."
Going Rogue 2.2
Taliserian
(Unverified Verifiable)
- Location
- ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha
- Pronouns
- They/Them
"Armsmaster" I waved with my left hand; my right currently occupied by holding a beam rifle steady, muzzle pointed right at Hookwolf's face.
"Skydancer. Glad to see you've chosen a name; it makes conversation awkward otherwise." Did he just try to smile? Man needs more practice at it. "I don't suppose you'd consider-"
"I will not stop recording." I interupted. "We both know why. So I suggest you consider what you say carefully; my stream currently has five hundred and ten viewers. Five twelve. Five sixty. ...I'm sure you get the point." I cocked my head slightly to one side. "Shall I assume that Dragon is telepresent as well?"
"You would be correct in that." He looked down at my captive. "Hookwolf-"
"Brad." I interrupted.
"Pardon me?"
"Brad Meadows. Convicted of premeditated murder in the first degree, multiple hate crimes, et cetera. Sentanced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Escaped from PRT custody while being transfered to the Birdcage. Twice." I shook my head and bent over, pressing the muzzle of my cannon firmly to his chest as I removed the steel wolf mask. As I straightened back up, I looked Armsmaster straight in the visor and spoke aloud. "Aerial, please contact the United States Federal Marshal Service and inform them I have custody of an escaped convict. Ask them how soon they can pick up Mr. Meadows."
"The PRT can-" One of the troopers from the response team. I cut him off immediately.
"The PRT demonsterably cannot. And it is, in fact, the mandate of the Federal Marshals to deal with precisely this sort of thing. Even by the standards of your own lassaie-faire subculture what this man has been convicted of doing is beyond the pale." I closed my fist, crumpling the stainless steel wolf mask, then tossed it aside. "A mask and a nickname don't allow you to sidestep a murder conviction."
Armsmaster visibly winced as I unmasked Hookwolf. "Skydancer; I don't believe you understand the nuances of what you're doing." He actually had the courtesy to sound slightly concerned. Possibly for my well being; more likely because I'd seen him without his helmet and knew his face.
"And I believe you don't quite get it either, Armsmaster. This is about public accountability. Showing the world what's really going on and letting them make informed decisions about how effective, or should I say ineffective, your organization really is. ...Huh, and we're now being hosted by Uber & Leet."
"The issues of parahuman gang politics are complex; I'm not sure you've got an adequate grasp on how carefully the PRT has to tread." Armsmaster tried lecture mode, it wasn't very effective.
"And that, right there, is the core of the problem. This is not politics, this is law enforcement. Lung is not a politician, The Empire is not an actual empire. These are american citizens who have violated the laws of this state and country. Treating the leaders of gangs as foreign powers is a fucking farce. Kaiser is not an emperor; he's a racist shithead who has commited crimes numerous and foul; given aid and comfort to escaped convicts, encouraged others to emulate his own misdeeds."
Armsmaster finally lost his temper. "We cannot engage in open warfare against the gangs in the streets. We don't have the corralation of forces needed to win; and the collateral damage would hurt thousands."
"You're right." I swear he did a double take. "You're also smart enough to know that attacking head on and openly would be the worst possible plan. Target infrastructure, reduce morale. Do you really think the Merchants would be as big a threat if we reduced poverty, offered free rehab, and made Brockton Bay a better place to live when you aren't high as a kite?"
"The Merchants are the least worry." Armsmaster glared at me.
"You're wrong there. The Empire is. Actually getting this city's economy back on its feet is going to be a nightmare. Dealing with a couple dozen nazi ringleaders is just a matter of paperwork." I poked my captive with the muzzle of my beam cannon again. "Quit squirming or I'll shoot you where it doesn't grow back." I looked right at Armsmaster. "There's a legal process for this. You try them in absentia; and if convicted, you start printing up posters. Wanted: Dead or Alive."
"And Lung?" One of the PRT troopers spoke up before Armsmaster could give him a glare. "I'm pretty sure he's made someone angry enough with him to try the 'high powered sniper rifle before he can ramp up' approach. He's still here."
"Dealing with Lung does present an interesting engineering challenge; but your own contact with Earth Aleph indicates that parallel realities are a real thing."
Armsmaster frowned. "Drop him on another Earth?"
I shook my head; knowing full well this was going out to over ten thousand people. "Lung had a choice, once. He was an unknown; a minor player... Then, Kyushu. The man stood up and fought an Endbringer to a standstill. Drove it off, single handedly. He could have been a hero on par with the Triumvirate. But he thought too small; could only see his own immediate gratification, his own comforts and desires. John Greenleaf Whittier put it better than I. 'For all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: It might have been'."
"That's not an answer to the question I asked."
"No, it isn't. But you might want to contact your dispatcher and let them know that I'm picking up a thermal bloom down by the docks consistent with a certain rage dragon getting furious at someone. You can be there in... twelve minutes from here; assuming your bike can handle the potholes. Stay off of tenth street south of Walsh avenue."
Armsmaster glared but went for his bike immediately, directing the PRT team to stay and keep an eye on my prisoner. "Oh, and Armsmaster? Tell the kid in black to pick their fights better. And don't forget; first impressions have consequences."
A/N: Next up? Lung looses a fight, PHO looses its shit, Piggot looses her marbles.
"Skydancer. Glad to see you've chosen a name; it makes conversation awkward otherwise." Did he just try to smile? Man needs more practice at it. "I don't suppose you'd consider-"
"I will not stop recording." I interupted. "We both know why. So I suggest you consider what you say carefully; my stream currently has five hundred and ten viewers. Five twelve. Five sixty. ...I'm sure you get the point." I cocked my head slightly to one side. "Shall I assume that Dragon is telepresent as well?"
"You would be correct in that." He looked down at my captive. "Hookwolf-"
"Brad." I interrupted.
"Pardon me?"
"Brad Meadows. Convicted of premeditated murder in the first degree, multiple hate crimes, et cetera. Sentanced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Escaped from PRT custody while being transfered to the Birdcage. Twice." I shook my head and bent over, pressing the muzzle of my cannon firmly to his chest as I removed the steel wolf mask. As I straightened back up, I looked Armsmaster straight in the visor and spoke aloud. "Aerial, please contact the United States Federal Marshal Service and inform them I have custody of an escaped convict. Ask them how soon they can pick up Mr. Meadows."
"The PRT can-" One of the troopers from the response team. I cut him off immediately.
"The PRT demonsterably cannot. And it is, in fact, the mandate of the Federal Marshals to deal with precisely this sort of thing. Even by the standards of your own lassaie-faire subculture what this man has been convicted of doing is beyond the pale." I closed my fist, crumpling the stainless steel wolf mask, then tossed it aside. "A mask and a nickname don't allow you to sidestep a murder conviction."
Armsmaster visibly winced as I unmasked Hookwolf. "Skydancer; I don't believe you understand the nuances of what you're doing." He actually had the courtesy to sound slightly concerned. Possibly for my well being; more likely because I'd seen him without his helmet and knew his face.
"And I believe you don't quite get it either, Armsmaster. This is about public accountability. Showing the world what's really going on and letting them make informed decisions about how effective, or should I say ineffective, your organization really is. ...Huh, and we're now being hosted by Uber & Leet."
"The issues of parahuman gang politics are complex; I'm not sure you've got an adequate grasp on how carefully the PRT has to tread." Armsmaster tried lecture mode, it wasn't very effective.
"And that, right there, is the core of the problem. This is not politics, this is law enforcement. Lung is not a politician, The Empire is not an actual empire. These are american citizens who have violated the laws of this state and country. Treating the leaders of gangs as foreign powers is a fucking farce. Kaiser is not an emperor; he's a racist shithead who has commited crimes numerous and foul; given aid and comfort to escaped convicts, encouraged others to emulate his own misdeeds."
Armsmaster finally lost his temper. "We cannot engage in open warfare against the gangs in the streets. We don't have the corralation of forces needed to win; and the collateral damage would hurt thousands."
"You're right." I swear he did a double take. "You're also smart enough to know that attacking head on and openly would be the worst possible plan. Target infrastructure, reduce morale. Do you really think the Merchants would be as big a threat if we reduced poverty, offered free rehab, and made Brockton Bay a better place to live when you aren't high as a kite?"
"The Merchants are the least worry." Armsmaster glared at me.
"You're wrong there. The Empire is. Actually getting this city's economy back on its feet is going to be a nightmare. Dealing with a couple dozen nazi ringleaders is just a matter of paperwork." I poked my captive with the muzzle of my beam cannon again. "Quit squirming or I'll shoot you where it doesn't grow back." I looked right at Armsmaster. "There's a legal process for this. You try them in absentia; and if convicted, you start printing up posters. Wanted: Dead or Alive."
"And Lung?" One of the PRT troopers spoke up before Armsmaster could give him a glare. "I'm pretty sure he's made someone angry enough with him to try the 'high powered sniper rifle before he can ramp up' approach. He's still here."
"Dealing with Lung does present an interesting engineering challenge; but your own contact with Earth Aleph indicates that parallel realities are a real thing."
Armsmaster frowned. "Drop him on another Earth?"
I shook my head; knowing full well this was going out to over ten thousand people. "Lung had a choice, once. He was an unknown; a minor player... Then, Kyushu. The man stood up and fought an Endbringer to a standstill. Drove it off, single handedly. He could have been a hero on par with the Triumvirate. But he thought too small; could only see his own immediate gratification, his own comforts and desires. John Greenleaf Whittier put it better than I. 'For all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: It might have been'."
"That's not an answer to the question I asked."
"No, it isn't. But you might want to contact your dispatcher and let them know that I'm picking up a thermal bloom down by the docks consistent with a certain rage dragon getting furious at someone. You can be there in... twelve minutes from here; assuming your bike can handle the potholes. Stay off of tenth street south of Walsh avenue."
Armsmaster glared but went for his bike immediately, directing the PRT team to stay and keep an eye on my prisoner. "Oh, and Armsmaster? Tell the kid in black to pick their fights better. And don't forget; first impressions have consequences."
No Aerial; I'm not going to tell the public about my plans for fold weaponry. At least, not until I've got at least one ordinance fabber up and a full combat load of MDWs. I'm idealistic, not stupid. I may not remember my mother; but I'm pretty sure she didn't raise the kind of fool who'd be Bond Villian Dumb enough to announce their plan to smear a dragon across twenty or thirty thousand parallel realities months before they were ready to actually do it.Aerial said:
A/N: Next up? Lung looses a fight, PHO looses its shit, Piggot looses her marbles.
Not dead yet
Taliserian
(Unverified Verifiable)
- Location
- ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I'd like to thank everyone for their support. Neither this nor Northern Light are officially dead yet. I've been excessively busy with real life that's seen me doing 16+ hour days on a tight deadline. I've still managed some work on this, however I don't consider a 600-word snippet sufficient for posting; and PHO is going to be difficult to get all the viewpoints in that I want. AllSeeingEye is probably just going to fill her character count with 'bahahaha'. Armsmaster's being surprisingly sensitive, though. Give the man credit, when he sets his sights on doing something, he goes all out.
On the subject: This is the VF-31C with its full set of FAST packs. That's her appearance when she first arrived in Brockton Bay, but she stripped off most of the additional armor, excepting the additional shield plate / missile pack on the outside of the forearm.
This is the VF-31E showing the deployed rotodome. And you can see why I have concerns about the mounting of the rotodome replacing the gunpod / mission pod pack that forms the dorsal turret in hybrid mode. Also, not a fan of the yellow; so I stuck with the C's purple color scheme. Though there is one episode that shows them having the ability to change the color of the craft in a couple seconds while already on the catapult and ready to launch.
Edit: Full specs on the VF-31. Note that at 1/10th scale, that 15m height works out to a hair over 5'. She's actually kinda tiny; but it's a nice round factor and makes my math easier.
On the subject: This is the VF-31C with its full set of FAST packs. That's her appearance when she first arrived in Brockton Bay, but she stripped off most of the additional armor, excepting the additional shield plate / missile pack on the outside of the forearm.
This is the VF-31E showing the deployed rotodome. And you can see why I have concerns about the mounting of the rotodome replacing the gunpod / mission pod pack that forms the dorsal turret in hybrid mode. Also, not a fan of the yellow; so I stuck with the C's purple color scheme. Though there is one episode that shows them having the ability to change the color of the craft in a couple seconds while already on the catapult and ready to launch.
Edit: Full specs on the VF-31. Note that at 1/10th scale, that 15m height works out to a hair over 5'. She's actually kinda tiny; but it's a nice round factor and makes my math easier.
Last edited:
Going Rogue 2.3
Taliserian
(Unverified Verifiable)
- Location
- ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Piggot threw the tablet on the conference table and scowled at the armored hero. "Report."
Armsmaster sighed slightly and gestured to the large flatscreen on the wall. "You watched it live, Director. I don't see what else I can add. A child with what appears to be arthropod control powers took down the single most dangerous villain this side of the Mississippi. On her first night out."
"Live on that damned robots' youtube stream in front of eleven thousand people. Which is raising some serious questions about our effectiveness. More questions, that is, than were already crawling across the internet since it started broadcasting."
"She."
"Excuse me?" The director's voice was the studied calm of someone barely controlling their fury.
"Skydancer is female, Director. She may look mechanical, she may lack what we'd generally consider female anatomy; but she is a human being who refers to themself as female and it is not our place to disrespect her self-identification as such. She is not just a machine; and using objectifying pronouns treads perilously close to the sort of dehumanizing rhetoric that Kaiser's followers espouse." Armsmaster was adamant.
Emily Piggot rocked back in her chair slightly. Never mind the insubordination implicit in Armsmaster's defense of the robot; that had been far more insightful than the tin soldier was famously thought incapable of. "But we have Lung in custody."
"Yes ma'am; with Panacea monitoring to ensure that he remains safely sedated; which is fortunate because I underestimated the volume of insect venom in his system when dosing him with tranquilizers. We're coordinating with the US Marshals' service and Dragon to arrange secure air transport for he and Mr. Meadows to the Birdcage. The Air National Guard and Skydancer have offered their services as escorts to ensure delivery."
"Any indication of who these 'children' are that our as-yet-unnamed bug Master claims Lung was going after are?"
"No ma'am. I cannot personally think of anything a group of children could do to infuriate Lung to the point of infanticide. The man is many things; but killing children is beneath him."
"I see. And how are you going to stop Skydancer?" Piggot steepled her fingers.
"Stop her from what, Ma'am?" Armsmaster managed to convey a look of confusion. "She's providing valuable real-time reconnaissance and coordinated dispatch services for the entire city, captured one villain on her own and enabled myself to arrive in time to save a new hero who'd overreached, assist them in capturing Lung, and make a favorable first impression in the process. She is not, as she pointed out and our legal team confirms, breaking any laws."
"Meanwhile making us look like a bunch of corrupt, ineffective frauds in front of the entire world!"
Armsmaster hesitated. He knew, without Dragon's prompting for once, that what he was about to say was the wrong thing, socially. But he'd had a very pointed lesson already this evening that sometimes... "Ma'am, that concern about optics over effectiveness is exactly the point that Skydancer's been hammering us with in her broadcast."
Director Piggot stood up abruptly; hand twitching at her hip for a sidearm that wasn't there as the chair toppled to the floor behind her. Instead, she reached for the phone in the middle of the conference table and punched the speaker and a speed-dial button. "This is Director Piggot, authorization code zulu four six alpha. Security to conference room two immediately to escort Armsmaster to Master/Stranger isolation."
"At once Director." The operator on the other end hit the security alert button on her terminal. "We have Chief Director Costa-Brown holding on line one, ma'am. Shall I tell her you'll be a few minutes? She sounded... upset."
"FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-"
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♦ Topic: New Tinker in BB?
In: Boards ► Places ► America ► Brockton Bay
FineGrind (Original Poster) (Veteran Member)
Posted on April 8, 2011
So I was browsing through the market earlier looking for a replacement pot for my coffee maker when I caught sight of a new face for the Bay's diverse and colorful cape scene. What's so special? Well, from everything I've gathered it's rather rare for a Tinker's first efforts to look this good. If this isn't a first outing; then someone's rebranded themselves radically because I couldn't find a match anywhere on the internet.
Needless to say, I kept my distance. When most of your experience is with Leet and Squealer; you kind of grow to expect tinkertech to just explode randomly. Can't say it exploded; but next thing I knew it had a crossbow bolt lodged in its shoulder courtesy of our local teenage anti-hero. Stalker may have shot it again; because it didn't seem to notice Armsmaster coming up behind with his bike in that stupid-quiet electric drive mode. He hit it with a big flash of electricity from his halberd and the bot went down.
PRT roped the area off and hauled it away. Anyone got more details?
Edit: Thanks to our friendly neighborhood community relations agent, Reave, we now know this is actually a Case 53; not a robot or power armor. That's one of the most radical changes I can think of offhand for a 53; that we've seen, anyways.
(Showing page 9 of 12)
Victoria flipped ahead to the end of the thread and clicked the minute-old livestream link she found there; apparently this new cape was starting a webseries called Panopticon and wanted to share the first episode. After a minute, she lowered the tablet and raised her voice. "Mooooom! I think you'd better see this!"
Armsmaster sighed slightly and gestured to the large flatscreen on the wall. "You watched it live, Director. I don't see what else I can add. A child with what appears to be arthropod control powers took down the single most dangerous villain this side of the Mississippi. On her first night out."
"Live on that damned robots' youtube stream in front of eleven thousand people. Which is raising some serious questions about our effectiveness. More questions, that is, than were already crawling across the internet since it started broadcasting."
"She."
"Excuse me?" The director's voice was the studied calm of someone barely controlling their fury.
"Skydancer is female, Director. She may look mechanical, she may lack what we'd generally consider female anatomy; but she is a human being who refers to themself as female and it is not our place to disrespect her self-identification as such. She is not just a machine; and using objectifying pronouns treads perilously close to the sort of dehumanizing rhetoric that Kaiser's followers espouse." Armsmaster was adamant.
Emily Piggot rocked back in her chair slightly. Never mind the insubordination implicit in Armsmaster's defense of the robot; that had been far more insightful than the tin soldier was famously thought incapable of. "But we have Lung in custody."
"Yes ma'am; with Panacea monitoring to ensure that he remains safely sedated; which is fortunate because I underestimated the volume of insect venom in his system when dosing him with tranquilizers. We're coordinating with the US Marshals' service and Dragon to arrange secure air transport for he and Mr. Meadows to the Birdcage. The Air National Guard and Skydancer have offered their services as escorts to ensure delivery."
"Any indication of who these 'children' are that our as-yet-unnamed bug Master claims Lung was going after are?"
"No ma'am. I cannot personally think of anything a group of children could do to infuriate Lung to the point of infanticide. The man is many things; but killing children is beneath him."
"I see. And how are you going to stop Skydancer?" Piggot steepled her fingers.
"Stop her from what, Ma'am?" Armsmaster managed to convey a look of confusion. "She's providing valuable real-time reconnaissance and coordinated dispatch services for the entire city, captured one villain on her own and enabled myself to arrive in time to save a new hero who'd overreached, assist them in capturing Lung, and make a favorable first impression in the process. She is not, as she pointed out and our legal team confirms, breaking any laws."
"Meanwhile making us look like a bunch of corrupt, ineffective frauds in front of the entire world!"
Armsmaster hesitated. He knew, without Dragon's prompting for once, that what he was about to say was the wrong thing, socially. But he'd had a very pointed lesson already this evening that sometimes... "Ma'am, that concern about optics over effectiveness is exactly the point that Skydancer's been hammering us with in her broadcast."
Director Piggot stood up abruptly; hand twitching at her hip for a sidearm that wasn't there as the chair toppled to the floor behind her. Instead, she reached for the phone in the middle of the conference table and punched the speaker and a speed-dial button. "This is Director Piggot, authorization code zulu four six alpha. Security to conference room two immediately to escort Armsmaster to Master/Stranger isolation."
"At once Director." The operator on the other end hit the security alert button on her terminal. "We have Chief Director Costa-Brown holding on line one, ma'am. Shall I tell her you'll be a few minutes? She sounded... upset."
"FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-"
Activate active stealth systems. I could feel the energy conversion armor start to feast on the radio waves painting my skin. Just to make my point absolutely clear, I used the primary phased-array in my rotodome to paint a pencil thin beam down a reciprocal bearing at the same frequency and a couple orders of magnitude more signal strength. Either they got the hint or I burned out their antenna; but the lock broke without a launch.Aerial said:
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♦ Topic: New Tinker in BB?
In: Boards ► Places ► America ► Brockton Bay
FineGrind (Original Poster) (Veteran Member)
Posted on April 8, 2011
So I was browsing through the market earlier looking for a replacement pot for my coffee maker when I caught sight of a new face for the Bay's diverse and colorful cape scene. What's so special? Well, from everything I've gathered it's rather rare for a Tinker's first efforts to look this good. If this isn't a first outing; then someone's rebranded themselves radically because I couldn't find a match anywhere on the internet.
Needless to say, I kept my distance. When most of your experience is with Leet and Squealer; you kind of grow to expect tinkertech to just explode randomly. Can't say it exploded; but next thing I knew it had a crossbow bolt lodged in its shoulder courtesy of our local teenage anti-hero. Stalker may have shot it again; because it didn't seem to notice Armsmaster coming up behind with his bike in that stupid-quiet electric drive mode. He hit it with a big flash of electricity from his halberd and the bot went down.
PRT roped the area off and hauled it away. Anyone got more details?
Edit: Thanks to our friendly neighborhood community relations agent, Reave, we now know this is actually a Case 53; not a robot or power armor. That's one of the most radical changes I can think of offhand for a 53; that we've seen, anyways.
►XxVoid_CowboyxX
Replied On April 9, 2011:
I mean, it could be a hybrid. We've seen tinkers build prosthetic arms before, why not just build a couple into your power armor if you couldn't beat a three-year old at a game of patty-cake?
►Sean_Knot_Herd
Replied On April 9, 2011:
That still doesn't explain the waistline, Cowboy. I'm telling you, there's no way there's enough interal volume to fit a person. Remote control makes the most sense; but that's , like, Dragon level tech and I can't see a Tinker developing the infrastructure to deploy something like this without making a public showing beforehand.
►Pushing_Tin
Replied On April 9, 2011:
I work in Cheyanne Mountain. Back in the day it was all hush-hush, watch-for-nukes Norad stuff. These days, with the manned space programs ended, we really don't have a lot to do but keep an eye on a certain Endbringer. Then I get a handoff from Boston area; a new parahuman with a transponder (I wish more would carry them!) doing flight envelope testing. Described themself as being a 'six foot tinkertech jet'. When they were handed off to me they were already up in the speedbird routes reserved for the Concorde and military fast movers.
in a 45-degree climb, this new parahuman broke mach five and got outside the atmosphere. Retrograde. While in space, they changed their orbital inclination enough to decend towards Hawaii. On her return trip, she kept it to a much more sedate mach 3.5 atmospheric flight.
I'm pretty sure that makes them one of the fastest fliers short of Legend that I can find record of.
►Skydancer (Unverified Cape)(Case 53)
Replied On April 9, 2011:
Aloha Tin; did you see the video I uploaded of that flight? Should have thought to pop out a drone for an external shot or two. That'd make for a hell of a verification pic; wouldn't it? Instead I sent in a couple shots of me flying around Haleakala. Nobody up there but astronomers; and they're not known for daytime photography.
►BrocktonBayMod (Verified Moderator)
Replied On April 9, 2011:
Welcome Skydancer; we'll accept your photos, considering you livestreamed your suborbital flight (O.O) and I've personally seen you down by the DWU.
►Skydancer (Verified Cape)(Case 53)
Replied On April 9 2011:
Thank you BBM. So; hello PHO. As you can guess by the above, I'm a Case 53 who happens to look like a totally awesome purple transforming robot jet. Which has its ups and downs.
Getting some things out of the way first: Yes, I am almost entirely mechanical. Think about it kinda like having a really advanced prosthetic arm, except for your entire body. According to Dragon, only parts of my organic brain haven't been replaced as well.
That would probably keep me up at night but thankfully I can switch myself off.
As Pushing_Tin has described, in my fighter shape I'm faster than anything air-breathing that's ever flown; though I won't confirm or deny any guesses as to my actual top atmospheric speed. I was going fast enough when I throttled back that flight; I didn't want to end up in China. I am capable of exoatmospheric maneuvering; but I won't disclose my total delta-V capabilities. I will say that they're high enough for me to consider the Simurgh a navigational hazard and I have no desire to get anywhere close to that feathery menace.
My other capabilities also make the poor, aborted F-22 Raptor program wish they could have copied me. I have reconnaissance, ecm/eccm, elint and infowar capabilities Lockmart only fantasized about. I am also armed (No; I'm not describing my weapons for you) and carry a small number of deployable utility drones. They're slow, but versatile.
So, that's the brief description, anyone have any questions? Other than the obviously pointless ones to ask a C53?
►Dreadnought (Verified Cape)(Verified Shipwright)
Replied On April 10, 2011:
Skydancer, you had said that you're a c53, but does your robotic body heal or do you need to actually repair damage done to you? If you have to repair yourself, are you a Tinker beyond said self-repair? If so, do you have any interest in potential collaboration projects?
►Skydancer (Verified Cape)(Case 53)
Replied On April 10, 2011:
Dreadnought, I do heal at about the same pace as a normal person; but a patch of titanium and a welder fixed the hole Shadow Stalker shot in my starboard canard a lot faster. (I also feel pain, Shadow Stalker. Just an FYI) I don't know if I'd call myself a Tinker, per say; but I do understand my own systems well enough to fabricate replacement parts, given the right tools and resources. Or provide blueprints detailed enough for any competent aerospace engineer to fab them. I've checked out some of your work on here and I have to say, I'm impressed. I'll shoot you a PM and we can discuss collaboration. Stars know I could use a hand getting my ow shop off the ground.
►Faultline (Verified Cape)
Replied On April 10, 2011:
I might be able to help with some startup capitol as well, if you're interested in some paying work. But as you say, that's the sort of thing best discussed in PM.
►XxVoid_CowboyxX
Replied On April 10, 2011:
Wait, when you say you want a hand getting your shop off the ground; do you mean literally strapping jet engines to it and having it hover over the city? Because that'd be pretty cool!
Replied On April 9, 2011:
I mean, it could be a hybrid. We've seen tinkers build prosthetic arms before, why not just build a couple into your power armor if you couldn't beat a three-year old at a game of patty-cake?
►Sean_Knot_Herd
Replied On April 9, 2011:
That still doesn't explain the waistline, Cowboy. I'm telling you, there's no way there's enough interal volume to fit a person. Remote control makes the most sense; but that's , like, Dragon level tech and I can't see a Tinker developing the infrastructure to deploy something like this without making a public showing beforehand.
►Pushing_Tin
Replied On April 9, 2011:
I work in Cheyanne Mountain. Back in the day it was all hush-hush, watch-for-nukes Norad stuff. These days, with the manned space programs ended, we really don't have a lot to do but keep an eye on a certain Endbringer. Then I get a handoff from Boston area; a new parahuman with a transponder (I wish more would carry them!) doing flight envelope testing. Described themself as being a 'six foot tinkertech jet'. When they were handed off to me they were already up in the speedbird routes reserved for the Concorde and military fast movers.
in a 45-degree climb, this new parahuman broke mach five and got outside the atmosphere. Retrograde. While in space, they changed their orbital inclination enough to decend towards Hawaii. On her return trip, she kept it to a much more sedate mach 3.5 atmospheric flight.
I'm pretty sure that makes them one of the fastest fliers short of Legend that I can find record of.
►Skydancer (Unverified Cape)(Case 53)
Replied On April 9, 2011:
Aloha Tin; did you see the video I uploaded of that flight? Should have thought to pop out a drone for an external shot or two. That'd make for a hell of a verification pic; wouldn't it? Instead I sent in a couple shots of me flying around Haleakala. Nobody up there but astronomers; and they're not known for daytime photography.
►BrocktonBayMod (Verified Moderator)
Replied On April 9, 2011:
Welcome Skydancer; we'll accept your photos, considering you livestreamed your suborbital flight (O.O) and I've personally seen you down by the DWU.
►Skydancer (Verified Cape)(Case 53)
Replied On April 9 2011:
Thank you BBM. So; hello PHO. As you can guess by the above, I'm a Case 53 who happens to look like a totally awesome purple transforming robot jet. Which has its ups and downs.
Getting some things out of the way first: Yes, I am almost entirely mechanical. Think about it kinda like having a really advanced prosthetic arm, except for your entire body. According to Dragon, only parts of my organic brain haven't been replaced as well.
That would probably keep me up at night but thankfully I can switch myself off.
As Pushing_Tin has described, in my fighter shape I'm faster than anything air-breathing that's ever flown; though I won't confirm or deny any guesses as to my actual top atmospheric speed. I was going fast enough when I throttled back that flight; I didn't want to end up in China. I am capable of exoatmospheric maneuvering; but I won't disclose my total delta-V capabilities. I will say that they're high enough for me to consider the Simurgh a navigational hazard and I have no desire to get anywhere close to that feathery menace.
My other capabilities also make the poor, aborted F-22 Raptor program wish they could have copied me. I have reconnaissance, ecm/eccm, elint and infowar capabilities Lockmart only fantasized about. I am also armed (No; I'm not describing my weapons for you) and carry a small number of deployable utility drones. They're slow, but versatile.
So, that's the brief description, anyone have any questions? Other than the obviously pointless ones to ask a C53?
►Dreadnought (Verified Cape)(Verified Shipwright)
Replied On April 10, 2011:
Skydancer, you had said that you're a c53, but does your robotic body heal or do you need to actually repair damage done to you? If you have to repair yourself, are you a Tinker beyond said self-repair? If so, do you have any interest in potential collaboration projects?
►Skydancer (Verified Cape)(Case 53)
Replied On April 10, 2011:
Dreadnought, I do heal at about the same pace as a normal person; but a patch of titanium and a welder fixed the hole Shadow Stalker shot in my starboard canard a lot faster. (I also feel pain, Shadow Stalker. Just an FYI) I don't know if I'd call myself a Tinker, per say; but I do understand my own systems well enough to fabricate replacement parts, given the right tools and resources. Or provide blueprints detailed enough for any competent aerospace engineer to fab them. I've checked out some of your work on here and I have to say, I'm impressed. I'll shoot you a PM and we can discuss collaboration. Stars know I could use a hand getting my ow shop off the ground.
►Faultline (Verified Cape)
Replied On April 10, 2011:
I might be able to help with some startup capitol as well, if you're interested in some paying work. But as you say, that's the sort of thing best discussed in PM.
►XxVoid_CowboyxX
Replied On April 10, 2011:
Wait, when you say you want a hand getting your shop off the ground; do you mean literally strapping jet engines to it and having it hover over the city? Because that'd be pretty cool!
Victoria flipped ahead to the end of the thread and clicked the minute-old livestream link she found there; apparently this new cape was starting a webseries called Panopticon and wanted to share the first episode. After a minute, she lowered the tablet and raised her voice. "Mooooom! I think you'd better see this!"
Last edited:
Going Rogue 2.4
Taliserian
(Unverified Verifiable)
- Location
- ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha
- Pronouns
- They/Them
The rest of that first night stayed pretty much true to the format the first hour had established. I kept my drones cycling to maintain charge, letting Aerial randomize their patrol sweeps. Even I couldn't cover the entire city with only sixteen drone plates though. Aerial; could we build something bigger; about the size of my main space boosters, that contained an engine, a drone plate dock, and enough AI not to crash into a building?
"Really? Rune? I take down Hookwolf for good and I don't even rate Purity? That hurts more than these bricks aren't." And that's when she threw the car at me.
I wasn't particularly worried about getting hit; there was no way in hell Runes' objects could match my acceleration numbers. The problem, as always, was simple physics. Say it with me now 'An object in motion remains in motion unless acted upon by an outside force.' If the car didn't hit me; it was going to keep going and hit a building. I had no idea what was in the building, but my name isn't Victoria Dallon; so I actually cared.
I used the fraction of a second I had to put as much delta-v as I could along the car's vector, minimizing its impact force, then grabbed hold of the A and B pillars and burned hard retrograde. Keeping it from hitting the building behind me was one thing; managing not to drop it onto the other cars parked in the street? I'm an engineer, not a priest; I don't do miracles.
I had to get out of the coffin corner; low, slow, and defensive is not a winning trifecta. I flipped to fighter configuration, balancing on the thrust from my engines for a moment before shooting upwards. At three thousand feet I pitched back, looking up at the city floating above me, and reacquired my target. Zooming in, I could see her looking around, trying to figure out where I'd gone.
The issue was weapon selection. The least lethal thing in my arsenal was my combat knives. My missiles were limited, my railguns and beam cannon were both massive overkill and an overpenetration risk. Aerial, advise?
I'll give her this, for a squishy meatbag with no wings she moved well. The power-augmented snowboard she was riding couldn't match my flight envelope, but she could maneuver in ways that would make a helicopter jealous. Unfortunately for her, I wasn't a helicopter; but after one close call when she nearly got me to run into a building, I stayed hybrid. I had the speed, sensor, and endurance advantages. A block from the Medhall building, I finally caught her.
I flipped to humanoid mode and grabbed her from behind, kicking the board off her feet. Then, I poured power into my engines and went vertical. Slowly, since I had a passenger that I didn't want to give a terminal case of whiplash.
"Kaiser's going to gut you for this."
"Really? I'd be surprised if he could, considering I don't actually have intestines. Why'd you attack me, Rune?"
"It's a metaphor; and Kaiser's pissed at you for taking out Hookwolf."
"So you paid attention in English class, but not History, I see. Really kid, the 'I was only following orders' defense doesn't work."
"Home schooled." Her reply made a surprising amount of sense.
"I've gotta ask... why'd you hook up with the Empire?"
"'Cause someone's gotta stop the spics and nig-" I nearly dropped her right there.
"Please, I'm trying to be polite, there's no need for racial slurs." I paused for a second. "Rune, do me a favor. We're at three thousand, two hundred eighty seven feet above sea level. I'm just going to hover here for a moment, and I want you to look down." I continued letting my altitude tick up slowly.
"What?"
"I'm not going to ask twice. Look down and tell me what you see."
"A long fucking fall?"
"You have my word, in front of fifteen thousand livestream viewers, that I will not deliberately drop you. Tell me what you see."
"Uhh... Brockton Bay?"
"Very good. Now, tell me: from here, can you see white people?"
"What?"
"How about brown? Yellow? We're just over a half mile above the city, can you tell anyone's ethnicity from here? Can you tell anyones' religion? Sexual orientation?"
"...no. I can just sort of barely make out people."
"Mmhmm." I nodded, like this was some sort of grand revelation.
"What, that's it?" She sounded indignant.
"Yup. That's all I've got. By the Four Winds, you're a flyer like myself, Rune. Like Legend, Eidolon, and Alexandria. Look around you. From up here there's no state borders, there's no neighborhoods, no skin color, no religion. It's just us. A civilization of s-"
"Yer tellin me to think like a hero 'cause I can fly?" Hypoxia and hypothermia were starting to have an effect on the unprotected teen. We weren't that high, really; but we had been ascending steadily, and it doesn't take that much to have an effect on an unadapted human.
"No, Rune; I don't want to tell you what to think. Anyone who tells you what to think really doesn't want you to think at all. I just want you to think for yourself. Now let's get you down where you can actually breathe." I throttled back into a steady descent and switched to my radio. "Spartan Zero Six on Guard; declaring an emergency. Descending immediately to Brockton General." Aerial, get me a phone link to Brockton General's emergency department; and let the PRT know they can have her after the hospital visit.
One hour later: A supercomputer cluster in Vancouver.
Dragon was stretching her multitasking abilities to keep PHO from completely imploding; both in her official persona and the myriad moderator sock puppets she maintained. Her attention was diverted by a private message from Skydancer, the spanner in the works de jour.
The design was... magnificent. She ran through it part by part, step by step. It was better than even Masamune could produce. There were none of the hallmarks of tinker work. No jury rigging around impossible physics, no black boxes whos process was: 1) Steal Underpants, 2)??? 3) Profit. Everything made sense, everything could be built with modern technology. It was robust enough to be rugged and simple enough that a child could figure out how to use it. If it broke, it was about as difficult to repair as a desktop computer crossed with a washing machine.
Right, so that's a down-the-road project. Suggestions for a more immediate goal?Aerial said:
I examined the blueprints she was providing me. Can we make it bigger? I don't necessarily mean a larger working volume; just make it too bulky to be easily stolen.Aerial said:
We'll call that a feature.Aerial said:
I immediately cut my engines and tipped my nose up; falling backwards and throwing my arms up to take the hit on my pinpoint barriers. A brick slammed into my forcefield-reinforced forearm shield hard enough to powder itself. I back-flipped into humanoid mode, relit my engines to arrest my fall, and engaged my point defenses.Aerial said:
The two 'antennae' on the sides of my head flipped forward, revealing their true purpose as they rapidly tracked with my head movements, spitting coherent photons and shattering the next volley of bricks into gravel before they got within fifty feet of me.Aerial said:
"Really? Rune? I take down Hookwolf for good and I don't even rate Purity? That hurts more than these bricks aren't." And that's when she threw the car at me.
I wasn't particularly worried about getting hit; there was no way in hell Runes' objects could match my acceleration numbers. The problem, as always, was simple physics. Say it with me now 'An object in motion remains in motion unless acted upon by an outside force.' If the car didn't hit me; it was going to keep going and hit a building. I had no idea what was in the building, but my name isn't Victoria Dallon; so I actually cared.
I used the fraction of a second I had to put as much delta-v as I could along the car's vector, minimizing its impact force, then grabbed hold of the A and B pillars and burned hard retrograde. Keeping it from hitting the building behind me was one thing; managing not to drop it onto the other cars parked in the street? I'm an engineer, not a priest; I don't do miracles.
I had to get out of the coffin corner; low, slow, and defensive is not a winning trifecta. I flipped to fighter configuration, balancing on the thrust from my engines for a moment before shooting upwards. At three thousand feet I pitched back, looking up at the city floating above me, and reacquired my target. Zooming in, I could see her looking around, trying to figure out where I'd gone.
The issue was weapon selection. The least lethal thing in my arsenal was my combat knives. My missiles were limited, my railguns and beam cannon were both massive overkill and an overpenetration risk. Aerial, advise?
Open cycl.... air breather. Aerial, I could kiss you. If you weren't a voice in my head and I had lips.Aerial said:
Not now, Aerial; bit busy dogfighting teenage goth nazi telekinetic. I pitched my nose 'up' and rolled, putting myself on a descending trajectory right side up and headed away from Rune. Once into the canyons between the buildings I flipped through an Immelman and accelerated towards her. She saw me coming and the chase was on.Aerial said:
I'll give her this, for a squishy meatbag with no wings she moved well. The power-augmented snowboard she was riding couldn't match my flight envelope, but she could maneuver in ways that would make a helicopter jealous. Unfortunately for her, I wasn't a helicopter; but after one close call when she nearly got me to run into a building, I stayed hybrid. I had the speed, sensor, and endurance advantages. A block from the Medhall building, I finally caught her.
I flipped to humanoid mode and grabbed her from behind, kicking the board off her feet. Then, I poured power into my engines and went vertical. Slowly, since I had a passenger that I didn't want to give a terminal case of whiplash.
"Kaiser's going to gut you for this."
"Really? I'd be surprised if he could, considering I don't actually have intestines. Why'd you attack me, Rune?"
"It's a metaphor; and Kaiser's pissed at you for taking out Hookwolf."
"So you paid attention in English class, but not History, I see. Really kid, the 'I was only following orders' defense doesn't work."
"Home schooled." Her reply made a surprising amount of sense.
"I've gotta ask... why'd you hook up with the Empire?"
"'Cause someone's gotta stop the spics and nig-" I nearly dropped her right there.
"Please, I'm trying to be polite, there's no need for racial slurs." I paused for a second. "Rune, do me a favor. We're at three thousand, two hundred eighty seven feet above sea level. I'm just going to hover here for a moment, and I want you to look down." I continued letting my altitude tick up slowly.
"What?"
"I'm not going to ask twice. Look down and tell me what you see."
"A long fucking fall?"
"You have my word, in front of fifteen thousand livestream viewers, that I will not deliberately drop you. Tell me what you see."
"Uhh... Brockton Bay?"
"Very good. Now, tell me: from here, can you see white people?"
"What?"
"How about brown? Yellow? We're just over a half mile above the city, can you tell anyone's ethnicity from here? Can you tell anyones' religion? Sexual orientation?"
"...no. I can just sort of barely make out people."
"Mmhmm." I nodded, like this was some sort of grand revelation.
"What, that's it?" She sounded indignant.
"Yup. That's all I've got. By the Four Winds, you're a flyer like myself, Rune. Like Legend, Eidolon, and Alexandria. Look around you. From up here there's no state borders, there's no neighborhoods, no skin color, no religion. It's just us. A civilization of s-"
"-five billion mutant monkies on tiny little blue rock circling one average star among billions."Aerial said:
"Yer tellin me to think like a hero 'cause I can fly?" Hypoxia and hypothermia were starting to have an effect on the unprotected teen. We weren't that high, really; but we had been ascending steadily, and it doesn't take that much to have an effect on an unadapted human.
"No, Rune; I don't want to tell you what to think. Anyone who tells you what to think really doesn't want you to think at all. I just want you to think for yourself. Now let's get you down where you can actually breathe." I throttled back into a steady descent and switched to my radio. "Spartan Zero Six on Guard; declaring an emergency. Descending immediately to Brockton General." Aerial, get me a phone link to Brockton General's emergency department; and let the PRT know they can have her after the hospital visit.
One hour later: A supercomputer cluster in Vancouver.
Dragon was stretching her multitasking abilities to keep PHO from completely imploding; both in her official persona and the myriad moderator sock puppets she maintained. Her attention was diverted by a private message from Skydancer, the spanner in the works de jour.
Dragon metaphorically blinked and ran the attachment through every virus check she knew; just in case this was another trick by Saint. Once it scanned clean, she opened it in a secure partition.Skydancer said:
The design was... magnificent. She ran through it part by part, step by step. It was better than even Masamune could produce. There were none of the hallmarks of tinker work. No jury rigging around impossible physics, no black boxes whos process was: 1) Steal Underpants, 2)??? 3) Profit. Everything made sense, everything could be built with modern technology. It was robust enough to be rugged and simple enough that a child could figure out how to use it. If it broke, it was about as difficult to repair as a desktop computer crossed with a washing machine.
Dragon said:
Skydancer said:
Dragon said:
Dragon thought for nearly a tenth of a second, then brought up a graphic program. After waiting an appropriate length of time to maintain her cover, she sent the Case 53 a concept design for a logo. It depicted a simplified galaxy rising over a curved horizon and, in a font lifted directly from Star Trek, proclaimed 'Dawn' as 'A division of Dracotech Industries'.Skydancer said:
So, this isn't what I intended to come next; but Kaiser just refused to take Brad's defeat live on candid camera laying down. With Purity unavailable and Cricket for some reason refusing to climb into a over sized water-balloon slingshot held by the Twins, my options for Luftwaffe were pretty slim. Rune will probably be happy her fight with the cape who blew off Hooky's leg off ended with a philosophy lecture rather than gunfire. Or not; she was stupid enough to rejoin the Herren clan after her parents had made a break.
As for the second half; Sky's starting to dig into her bootstrap database and share what she knows. Her shards' influence is going to keep her from thinking of just mass-mailing the whole database to every major university, industry, and government in the world; but Sky's still trying to make a difference with what she can share. I wanted a device that would be helpful in a humanitarian sense, with no obvious way to weaponize; and would demonstrate what her technology is capable of.
But this is exactly the sort of thing that got Mannequin Ziz'd. I'm looking for insight as to what the community feels our friendly neighborhood Featherbringer will do. I'll admit that part of me is screaming to have her break the attack pattern and go hunting a certain pint-sized Variable Fighter immediately, before Sky can build dimension-eater weaponry.
I guess that's the problem when you start something as a one-off intended to clear a plotbunny clogging your muse-tube and it just refuses to die. Zombie plotbunnies are known for aimless shambling from scene to scene. I've got some ideas for future scenes; but I'm finding it difficult to get from where I am now to the President interrupting regularly scheduled programming to solemnly intone "My fellow Americans..." As always, constructive feedback will be appreciated, and frothing e-hate will be met with a sense of smug satisfaction.
As for the second half; Sky's starting to dig into her bootstrap database and share what she knows. Her shards' influence is going to keep her from thinking of just mass-mailing the whole database to every major university, industry, and government in the world; but Sky's still trying to make a difference with what she can share. I wanted a device that would be helpful in a humanitarian sense, with no obvious way to weaponize; and would demonstrate what her technology is capable of.
But this is exactly the sort of thing that got Mannequin Ziz'd. I'm looking for insight as to what the community feels our friendly neighborhood Featherbringer will do. I'll admit that part of me is screaming to have her break the attack pattern and go hunting a certain pint-sized Variable Fighter immediately, before Sky can build dimension-eater weaponry.
I guess that's the problem when you start something as a one-off intended to clear a plotbunny clogging your muse-tube and it just refuses to die. Zombie plotbunnies are known for aimless shambling from scene to scene. I've got some ideas for future scenes; but I'm finding it difficult to get from where I am now to the President interrupting regularly scheduled programming to solemnly intone "My fellow Americans..." As always, constructive feedback will be appreciated, and frothing e-hate will be met with a sense of smug satisfaction.