Rather sure Mystic Cure won't remove desease, although "restoring HP" may mean restoring deterioration effects caused by cancer, and by so giving additional time. To cure it MC will need Remove Affliction, the same case with curing clinical depression and it lvl3 spell (lvl 7 character), he is not here yet.
Also, Biohacker's abilities will sure shine here, however it while open still totally new path MC is currently reluctant to step onto.
LOL, between possible low-level upgrades this one
Doppleganger Morphic Skin is one that worth being the only power of decent middle-level Stranger. Although would be much more valuable if this fic was written on QQ.
There are Serums that allow him to shapeshift.
No biological upgrades necessary.
"All right, let's get on with it." the Director stated bluntly
Let's.
COMMENTARY
1) Clockblocker is covering for Sophia?
Might or might not buy him brownie points with the girl. Especially since his hormones have decided she's hot.
2)The offhand comment about a bike...he can build her a hoverbike now, can't he? I assume John can go shopping in a local junkyard or secondhand dealer for a motorbike chassis. Unfortunately Sophia is too young to own a motorcycle permit in her civilian ID, so it's gonna be a PRT only ride.
I assume he could build two and leave the second for whichever Ward is on duty patrolling. Assuming Piggot would let him that is.
3)Okay, the scene with Dennis in his lab gives some idea of John's production capacity, and why it matters.
A Healing Ampoule is an ounce of liquid, which comes to roughly 30ml of liquid; a little under a tenth of a soda can. There's 128 ounces in a gallon. 1280 in ten gallons. A 50 gallon drum would be 12,800 ounces.
If he cooks up a single 55 gallon drum a week, the sort you buy at Home Depot for less than a hundred dollars, thats almost 13,000 doses. Doses that can be administered by anyone, shipped across country, and stored indefinitely. Panspecific doses that address physical injury safely and can be handed out as a precaution at S-class events.
That's both a significant bargaining chip for PRT ENE when negotiating with HQ and other departments, and something that has significant utility in mundane hospitals.
And that's me being conservative. The brewing vat he was using in this update was ten feet wide, not ten inches wide. Assuming that when John was talking about industrial-sized containers, he was referring to a 500-gallon vat or larger? That's 130,000 doses at a time. Congratulations, he just became a strategic asset, with
many people invested in his welfare. So much for a low profile.
Expect a lot more attempts to wrap him in cotton wool and away from danger. Much to his own frustration.
4)Worth noting that John doesnt have to wait till he's Caster Level 3 to intervene in Dennis father's health. He can craft an Analeptic Tablet(Level 6 item, price 600 ) instead to purge an affliction. Its slower and might require multiple treatments, but should be able to fix him over a month.
5)Sophia is about due to get a younger sister, isn't she? Her mother had a third child in canon; Regent thought the kid looked four, but she remained small enough to carry so might have been as young as two. And the picture in which her mother was pregnant made Regent think Sophia was around 12 at the time, which means she could have been as old as 14 when the child was born.
Basically, they are about due for an additional household addition. More drama
6)The video by Stitches is hilarious.
Very on brand for the Merchants.
The van spun around twice quickly, like we were inside a dry cycle in a laundry machine.
COMMENTARY
1)Vicky getting hit is probably coincidental.
There is no reason for a teen member of New Wave to get targeted, and what happened to Fleur guarantees that New Wave's reaction will be guaranteed to be...robust. Atrocious luck though. Dean is going to freak. Her family is going to freak. John is going to freak. And insist she start carrying an Ampoule with her. Or maybe a protectivering.
2)Interesting trigger with Amy.
Manton-limited Changer-Striker with a biokinesis specialty I'm assuming? That would leave the foundation of her canon power intact while tweaking the functions she found problematical in canon. More likely to use her power if she's comfortable with it, while leaving a loophole to tinker up tools to affect human biology if she wants.
3)The Merchants are about to become the focus of Sophia's attentions arent they?
Assuming the PRT dont lock her down to avoid precisely this scenario.
4)This incident is probably going to draw Youth Guard review. Not every day a new Ward gets swarmed by essentially 3x armed APCs mounting heavy weapons and the equivalent of 3x squads of infantry backing up a Shaker/Brute. Even for BB this is atypical; any other serving Ward in his position with the possible exception of Aegis, and most of the Protectorate, would have died.
5)John established himself as a serious heavy hitter here. Ward or not. Look at what happened: He got hit from ambush. He has to carry six ineffectives, seven if you include the driver. And it's just him against 30x armed normals, a Brute/Shaker and 3x APCs with turreted weapons before receiving receiving reinforcement.
He won. He disabled at least one of the APCs, he put down most of the looks, he stalled Mush until Armsy showed up.And he did so without killing anyone. He kept everyone on his side alive. He kept the normals off Armsmasters back. And he played battlefield medic in the middle of that situation, first to his troopers mid-combat and once Armsmaster arrived, took over getting civilians out. Without his doing so, this encounter would have been a bloodbath.
Consider how it looks to the nerds on PHO, to the PRT troopers, to other capes in BB and beyond, and the public at large. Especially if video footage of this gets out from shop security cameras.
For all the trauma bait, thats solid R reputation right there.
6)There is still the question of whether this had anything to do with John personally in the first place. An all-out offensive like this has objectives, even when launched by the Merchants, who usually have no reason to draw heat like this. If this was aimed at John, it raises the question of how the Merchants were able to locate the vehicle he was in. Points at a major intelligence leak from inside the PRT, whether HUMINT or ELINT. They do have Squealer, so bugs and hacking and cracking PRT comm encryption is all possible. Or just bribing an agent with money or blow.
Also possible is that the Merchants have acquired a precog somehow. Or a Thinker of some sort. We saw them trying to grab Whirlygig/Dervish, so it's not impossible.
7) This is a nontrivial investment of resources by the Merchants. Just the three armored school buses that attacked John's van represents significant work by Squeaker and funds by the Merchants.
WHY?
I can see the Merchants wanting to get their hands on a drug Tinker, but the chances of successfully grabbing a Ward is zero.
He lost his old suit when the Empire stripped him out of it several chapters ago. He never got it back.
Okay, the Empire 88 may be a bunch of neoNazi scumbags, but they are competent, and successful enough to be the biggest, longest lived gang in BB for over a decade. They didnt get that way by taking stupid risks.
Only a moron would intentionally wear the equipment of a hostile Tinker out on an operation. A hostile Tinker you know is still in the same city. And the E88 have no Tinkers.
That rules out the E88. Also rules out Coil, who is no fool himself; both he and the E88 are rich enough to buy their tinketech from reliable sources anyway. The ABB might be willing to make some poor mook risk it, but even they would be wary of unforseen complications.
Only faction that has Tinkers that can repurpose the work of others, or who are reckless enough to risk it anyway, are the Merchants. Squealer specifically, since
Trainwreck should not be in the Bay as of 2009.
So it could be them.
How did they get a hold of the gear though?
Betting the E88 dumped it in the trash, some hobo went dumpster diving and sold it to the Merchants . The E88 are evil, not stupid, and like I said, you have to be either a Tinker or suicidal to use the gear of a hostile Tinker who is still alive.
Alternatively, and disturbingly plausible?
They dumped it in the trash and some random crackhead civilian who found it looted it in order to play parahuman. Victoria recognizes the suit, accosts the perp and they panic and shoot her.
Tbh I'm expecting Amy to have the opposite of her usual power, instead of biological control of others she can alter her own biology. Making herself grow a set of wings would be child's play in that case and it still would leave her as an incredibly powerful Cape as fitting a Shaper bud.
Also Jesus what is going on. The merchants couldn't find their own arse with two hands and a map, what's the end goal here? Coil is the usual suspect, but with the old armor being used I'm almost tempted to say it's Kaiser trying to fuck with him on the quiet after screwing with him last time.
Coil does not have the motive or the leverage to make the Merchants stage an all-out offensive against the PRT. Neither does the E88. And even if the E88 could confirm that John was the dude who fucked up Hookwolf, that wouldnt lead them to attack Glory Girl.
At the moment, my WAG is that they got Mastered by a third party. Maybe the Fallen are in town and using them as patsies.
