Chapter 214: In the Lair of the Tinker
- Location
- france
- Pronouns
- He
[X] Bakuda: She's a force multiplier, better remove her first.
[X] Creature
Creature Roll: (290 points)
Category Roll D50=41 Kingdom Hearts/Disney; Entry Roll D249=211
100 Card Soldier, 400 Caves of Wonder Guardian, 500 Chernabog
Category Roll D50=50 Various; Entry Roll D400=92
300 Warp Aci (DMFA), 200 Nimbus Cloud (Dragon Ball), 200 Senzu Bean (Dragon Ball)
Sub-vote results: 400 Caves of Wonder Guardian + 200 Senzu Bean (Dragon Ball) (Use Debt) + Micro Bonus
Banked: -310
[X] Creature
Creature Roll: (290 points)
Category Roll D50=41 Kingdom Hearts/Disney; Entry Roll D249=211
100 Card Soldier, 400 Caves of Wonder Guardian, 500 Chernabog
Category Roll D50=50 Various; Entry Roll D400=92
300 Warp Aci (DMFA), 200 Nimbus Cloud (Dragon Ball), 200 Senzu Bean (Dragon Ball)
Sub-vote results: 400 Caves of Wonder Guardian + 200 Senzu Bean (Dragon Ball) (Use Debt) + Micro Bonus
Banked: -310
Here we are the assault on Bakuda's lab, what surprise does she have in store for us?
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Wednesday, 05/18/2011 (8:00 PM)
As much as I would like to go after Lung first, strategically it was smarter to start with the Bomb Tinker.
I stationed Bruce right above the building that she was occupying. By now it was crawling with Harvest's units. I discovered that in the past it was the headquarters for a journal called the Brockton Globe. Some research on Clank's part revealed that contrary to my expectation it didn't go bankrupt but simply moved elsewhere, closer to the Boardwalk.
It made for an excellent location for a Tinker. The basement where the printing press was once stored made for a perfect lab space. Work had been done on it, it had been soundproofed to some extent by applying a thick coating of isolating foam to the walls and ceiling. There was now only one entrance that was preceded by a short corridor, the other two having been bricked off. And that remaining entrance was trapped to hell and back in both obvious and subtle ways.
It appears that Lungs took the installation of his Tinker seriously.
Too bad for him, that I could bypass all that so easily. Still I wouldn't rush, I learned my lessons. Ideally, I wouldn't even need to enter the lab myself.
Bakuda wasn't alone in that building; several ABB gang members were also present, acting as both guards and goofers for the Tinker. During my period of observation, none of them dared enter the lab itself. When Bakuda needed their service they called them and even then they only deposited whatever she requested in front of the door. This forced the woman to go fetch it herself, but she appeared to prefer that to allowing them into her lab. The rest of the time they remained idle, with the occasional check through the windows to see if anyone was paying any specific attention to the building.
This was good for me, it meant that I could take Bakuda with no one the wiser. At least for a time. I didn't witness any contact with either Lung or Oni-Lee but Bakuda was never far from her phone.
I expected a mess but her lab was surprisingly clean and well-organized. Though considering that she was playing with explosives I could understand the logic. A whole wall was covered by racks full of grenades that looked identical except for tiny details that only Bakuda could decipher. Her armored suit, not quite power armor, stood on a mannequin in a corner. Power tools of all sorts were scattered on a bench. And a whole row of microscopes and precision instruments were aligned against another wall. And in the center of the room stood three rows of shelves and crates with the raw materials to build grenades and bombs by the bucketload.
It must have cost a pretty penny to the ABB to afford all that.
My scouting session was interrupted by the Menagerie. Three new partners at the same time. Far from the most I've ever gotten but still an uncommon occurrence.
Well, we found a friend for Nimue./It's a mix between a creature and a location. There's the Guardian, a giant tiger head made of sand that protects an underground temple full of treasure called the Cave of Wonders that can be accessed through his mouth./We're already rich, but I won't complain about more.
I shake my head. Two months ago I was skirting the edge of poverty and now I had more gold than I knew what to do with. I would really need to mention it to someone at some point. But now was not the time. I returned my attention to my Minds, because it didn't stop there.
Once summoned somewhere the Guardian is root at that location. However, its eyes are the two halves of an animated scarab medallion./So at any time, we can recall the medallion, dismissing the Guardian and the cave for ease of transport.
That was certainly very interesting but as of now, I wasn't sure what I could do with it. As a Fusion with Nimue perhaps? It's made of sand, maybe a fusion with Gobimon instead? I put the matter to the side and focus on the second creature.
Again calling it a creature would be an exaggeration, Senzu Beans are basically just magic beans./The magical thing is that eating just one bean feeds a normal human for ten days, and heals them from any kind of trauma./It also replenishes the body's energy reserve, not magical reserve but it should apply to Chakra perfectly well./Material Extraction is restricted to once per week with it, so stockpiling it may be tricky even with creative use of Substitute Summoning./But a Swarm of beans is possible in case of emergencies, so there's that.
More healing options were always welcome, even if I already had multiple. I'll need to see if I could give one or two away the next time I distribute some partners.
And lastly, we have a Heliogrub. It's a fist-size cross between a slug and a beetle that can emit light./Nothing extraordinary about it.
Satisfied that none of those new partners were immediately useful to fulfill my self-imposed mission, I returned my attention to Bakuda. She was currently working on something much bigger than her usual grenades. It was roughly cubic, except for the top which was rounded, and the size of a washing machine.
I really wanted to know what this thing was because it couldn't be anything good. Probably not nuclear, I didn't doubt that Bakuda would love to play with radioactive materials and Lung would be all too happy to encourage her, but simply because getting their hands on such things would be extremely complicated. However, Tinker could do some insane things even with scraps.
There was one sense that could almost certainly answer my questions. Sadly I couldn't use it through the eyes of my partners. I would need to personally enter the lab. The sense granted by the Machine Spirit, that I gained more than a month ago, allows me to perceive the function of a machine within my sight. I rarely needed to call upon it but this time it was warranted. The understanding it granted took a few seconds of focused observation to kick in, so even during my previous fight with Bakuda, it saw little use. In addition, Tinkertech was tricky to identify, sometimes the object only served as an anchor for the Shard to manifest an effect in the world while the internal mechanism was just for show.
My decision was taken, but I didn't rush. Caution was the name of the game. I started by transforming into Cujo, his intangibility would come in handy and I used Invisible Summoning at the same time. I applied both Miniaturization and Size Reduction to my canine body, which was reduced to five centimeters in length. Equip Trait came into play with Clear natural invisibility. And I threw in Adaptive Camouflage on the off chance Bakuda's sensors could pierce through all that, a mouse was nothing to be worried about after all. Was it too much? Almost certainly. She didn't detect Harvest after all. But I decided to err on the side of caution.
Teleporting next to a Harvest unit in an empty room right above the lab I wait for a bit, checking to see if anything was triggered by my arrival. Once I was satisfied that I was undiscovered I phased through the floor until only my doggy's muzzle and my eyes protuberated from the ceiling. Again this action didn't appear to be detected so I focused on Bakuda's machine.
After a few seconds, I had my answer and withdrew from the room. An Electromagnetic Pulse Generator Bomb, was at the same time better and worse than I feared. It wasn't biological or nanomachines, so there was that. I had no idea how much area would be affected, at least the whole Brockton Bay area considering the size of that thing, perhaps more, and I didn't want to find out. It wouldn't be killing people directly, however, the initial activation alone would certainly cause numerous car accidents, disrupt machines that kept some people alive, and cause panic that could be even worse. And in the long term, the destroyed infrastructures would wreck lives by the thousands.
Just as I was about to return to Bruce and start planning Bakuda's takedown, her phone rang. I poke back my muzzle through the ceiling to listen in.
I watched as the woman put her tools away with visible reluctance and irritation. I heard her grumbling under her breath. "This better not be this fucking nitwit that can't make the difference between titanium and steel! If so, he'll be the next one to be implanted, no matter what Lung says."
The mention of implantation caught my attention but I put the matter to the side as she picked up the phone. I couldn't see the screen from this angle but I didn't need to, my Harvest's units that were keeping an eye on Lung already reported that he was the one on the other side. That was a nice surprise, I'll be able to listen to both sides of the exchange at the same time.
"Yes?" I never expected to hear Bakuda being so deferential.
There was no politeness or pleasantries. "Have you finished?"
"Nearly so, I'm currently putting on the finishing touch. Give me fifteen minutes to check everything and my greatest masterpiece will be completed." She sounded exceedingly proud of herself as she spoke.
Lung remained silent for a beat before responding with a grunt. "Acceptable." And he hung up.
Bakuda drew a sigh of relief at that before putting her phone down. As she returned to her work I teleported back to Bruce. I need to hurry. Lung would expect a call when she was finished, I need to capture Bakuda before that.
A short brainstorming session with my Minds later, I settled on a simple but workable plan. I would use the fact that Bakuda wasn't wearing her costume, just some simple work clothes and no mask, only thick welding goggles.
Right as she stepped back from her EMP Bomb to grab a wrench by her side I simultaneously summoned Star, right on her face, and Hug all around her body. The starfish-like alien takes complete control of her body and the friendly smile immobilizes her and disorients her.
The appearance of my two partners provoked an immediate response from the security system that Bakuda installed in her lab, an alarm began ringing through the whole building, though not loud enough to be heard from outside, and red lights began flashing in multiple rooms where the members of the gang were stationed. A metal panel slammed down in front of the lab's entrance.
Thankfully this appears only to be a local alarm because nothing happened in the vicinity of Lung or Oni-Lee.
The reaction from the Asian gangers varied greatly from panic and fear to surprise and anger. In the majority of the cases they either rushed for their weapons, or their phones or ran toward the nearest exit. The response on my part was universal. One or two partners dropped into the room to neutralize them before they could alert anyone. Malcom, Buoy, Thorne, R.O.B, and Gobimon with a little assistance from Harvest were largely up to the task.
In a few minutes, I was the proud owner of nine ABB gang members secured with multiple handcuffs each, locked in the most secure room of buildings, the toilet on the second floor. And for good measure, they were all dosed with some sleeping agents. Once I finished dealing with the ABB as a whole, someone would come to pick them up. Thankfully none of them were implanted with bombs.
As for Bakuda herself, she was swiftly teleported into one of Bruce's cars. Trimmau was tasked with stripping her down, obviously, I didn't look, and then dressed in clothes provided by Olky, including a domino mask.
The most interesting thing we found on her was a toe-ring system that allowed her to control her bombs in association with an interface in her mask. I must admit that this was an ingenious system.
And then I pulled out an experimental sealing scroll that was given to me by Sifu. It was so far above my level that it wasn't even funny. I couldn't even begin to grasp how it worked. But I knew just barely enough to trigger it. From what I could grasp of Sifu's explanation, there was little difference between this scroll and one designated for non-parahumans. The only thing that he changed was the inclusion of a micro-hole in the matrix that should, in theory, allow the Shard of the parahuman to remain connected to them.
Just in case, I would have a Phoenix Down on hand when I unseal her.
I unrolled the scroll and laid it on the ground. Under Star's control, Bakuda lay down on it and I crouched down to put my hand on the activation symbol. At my mental command, Star leaped away from Bakuda a millisecond before I triggered the scroll. The woman disappeared in a burst of smoke.
With that, I rolled up the scroll again and gave it to Baggage for safekeeping.
Just in case, I sent Clank to sabotage the big bomb, removing the remote trigger system and disconnecting as many wires as he could. This should prevent any incident.
All in all, I was more than satisfied with the outcome of this operation. Now I only had ten minutes before Bakuda was scheduled to call Lung.
Who was next?
[] Lung. The boss himself.
[] Oni-Lee: He would come to Lung's help anyway.
[] Both: Let's end this.
Wordcount: 2291
Excess words: 6
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And there we go, I hope you like how Alex handled things. The gloves are off and it shows.
For the roll, -310 (Banked) + 240 (Chapter) + 120 (Excess words) = 50 points.
Did we ever roll with so few points? Maybe a 0-point entry if we're lucky. (if that's the case I won't reroll, however.)
[] Creature
[] Power
Voting will be closed Tuesday at 3 PM GMT
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