Foxy Boxes
[Verified Box]
- Location
- England
For being about crafting!
The Eldritch One (Celestial Forge)
- Thread starter Optimal Robotics
- Start date
Not if you put some effort into it.
By showing up at the dead drop, Danny knows full well that they will be coming after him. His wife is dead and he's a liability to his daughter so in the game of Blood Feud he has no reason whatsoever to restrain himself. How many enemy capes can a genuinely thoughtful fellow with lots of pals violently disassemble given the time to prepare a proper welcome?
Foxy Boxes
[Verified Box]
- Location
- England
Most capes can't survive a concrete bath.
A lot less then one could with something like Taylor's Build Gun.
Chapter 26: This Street Has Too Many Sides
New
I sip on my bedtime tea before turning the TV on to get one last look at the news tonight. Only to do a spit take as I see the Undersiders just murdered the local McCormicks without informing me. There goes a perfectly serviceable night, straight down the crapper. Even if I'm not called in tonight, I'll most likely have to waste the entirety of tomorrow at the PRT headquarters doing absolutely nothing of substance. A quick call to headquarters does confirm that I'm not needed in tonight though.
The morning after confirms my suspicions. I'm called into work to work on this problem. And by work on this problem, I mean get shuffled to the side because Piggot still hates me while other people draw up plans for various scenarios. Fine by me.
This morning before I went to work I spun up a disposable timeline and assumed my supervillain identity. When I was in my secure limo, flanked by my mercenaries I called Tattletale.
"Yes boss?"
"Tattletale what the fuck."
"Boss I can explain-"
"And you will. In person. Where are you now?"
"I'm at the loft."
"I'll be there shortly." I signal to the driver where to go. True to my word we arrived there not fifteen minutes later. Once I stop at the building I exit the limo, flanked by my bodyguards, and heedless of the homeless and poor gawking at me. They won't matter once I close the timeline. Tattletale exits the building shortly and almost meekly walks up to me.
"Yes boss?" One of my guards steps up and opens a small faraday caged box.
"I need you to give up your phone so we can go to my base. It's a security measure you see."
"Uh, boss, I gotta tell you, you do not want me to give up my phone right now." Hmm, usually she's either more afraid or cautious than this. No matter. I signal my man. "How about we just discuss this upst-Hey!!" As her grabs her, wrenches the phone from her grasp, and shoves her in the limo. I follow them in and signal the driver to gun it. Personal confrontations with the Undersiders rarely ever go well whenever I make such a poor first impression.
"So Tattletale-"
"Fuck you boss." How rude. She should really know better than this. I backhand her to shut her up.
"So as I was saying, how could you possibly think killing the McCormicks was a good idea?"
"I'm surprised you know their names." She winces at her own speech, blood dribbling down the corner of her mouth. "You don't seem the type to care about people who stuck to the background like they did."
"Tattletale you made the news. And beyond that I at least know the names of everybody who donates at the local police ball. Now answer the question."
"Fine. You remember when I called about the enforcers screwing with Taylor?"
"Vaguely."
"Well that was the McCormicks. They did it in retaliation to her killing their precious little boy in self defence, and they hired Faultline's crew to kidnap her once I undid all their hard work on that end. We couldn't very well let something like that go, could we?"
I groan in irritation. "You realize you could've called me to help with this, right? This is the exact type of thing I'm equipped to handle."
"What, and have any of the team any more indebted to you than they already are?" She sneers. "Fuck that noise." The car jolts as she finishes talking, and she gives me a huge shit eating grin. I pay neither of those things any mind. The roads in this town are hot fucking garbage, and Tattletale won't be smiling for long once I get her back to my base. I let the conversation drop from there. She only gets smug like this once she thinks she got something over on me, and I won't be getting anything else out of her with polite conversation. It's going to be fun dragging the truth out from her.
When we get to the entrance the mercenaries perform their usual security checks on my car to make sure I don't have a bomb on me or something. Not so pointless-
"EEEAUGH!!" From one of my outside mercenaries. What the fuck? My confusion turns to horror once I turn to look, and see Taylor in her slime form take out three more goons in two seconds.
"I told you not to take my phone away, didn't I?" Tattletale says over the clatter of impotent gunfire.
"You little bitch!" As I punch her in the head. The gunfire has all but stopped by now, and the guards in here have their guns pointed at the door. That speed is far too quick for comfort.
"I wondurr," she slurs. Taylor has her hand on the door now. "Since you're so surprised by this, does that make me the better thinker?" I take my gun out and shoot her in the fucking head as Taylor wrenches the door open. I catch the barest instant of my mercenaries opening fire before the timeline ends with a flash of blue in front of my eyes.
Well that's not good.
The one bright spot in Tattletale having more leverage on Taylor than I do is that She doesn't know that I know that. This means I can go looking for more than she does without her realizing what's going on. Hopefully she doesn't try anything while I can't torture anything out of her. I did try again during the weekend, but all that did was get the timeline cancelled even faster.
I got my chance on Monday. Danny screwed up that infuriatingly effective dead drop by attending himself. I got to listen in on the most interesting of conversations regarding the McCormicks. Good to know I'm not the only one agonizing over the Undersider's stupidity. I spin up a disposable timeline.
"Move in and abduct Danny Hebert."
"Yes boss." Unfortunately they all die depressingly quickly, and impressively violently. They even managed to hit her with tinker tech weapons, but they did all of fuck and all against her. The hell am I even paying for those things for? And things aren't going much better in the other timeline.
"We're being watched again. By Coil's people. I recognize the stupid radio crackling."
"Oh heellll naw!" And the feed cuts out.
"Report. What's going on?"
"I'm sorry boss, but I'm not staying here. Feel free to fire us or whatever, but we're not gonna die like George and the others did." As I hear their truck turn on, and the feed cut out altogether shortly afterwards. Hmm. Unfortunate that I only had one team on scene. I maybe could have kept one team in the dark, and then had them take over once the other one ran away. Unfortunately I didn't anticipate such an opportunity presenting itself tonight, and any other team would've taken too long to get there. And now they're all probably going to be inconveniently skittish about spying on her. At least Tattletale was telling the truth about her minor thinker power that identified my wire when she recruited her.
About an hour later one of my informants called. Apparently there are some mercenaries searching for the Undersiders uncomfortably close to their base. Hmm, is it worth it to save them? Well they could still be useful in the future. I spin up a disposable timeline and send some of my mercenaries out. If they fail I'll close it, and if they succeed I'll keep it. And hey, apparently my men need a confidence boost in me.
A short time later my mercenaries contact me. Two injuries and the enemy team eradicated. Good enough for me.
The morning after confirms my suspicions. I'm called into work to work on this problem. And by work on this problem, I mean get shuffled to the side because Piggot still hates me while other people draw up plans for various scenarios. Fine by me.
This morning before I went to work I spun up a disposable timeline and assumed my supervillain identity. When I was in my secure limo, flanked by my mercenaries I called Tattletale.
"Yes boss?"
"Tattletale what the fuck."
"Boss I can explain-"
"And you will. In person. Where are you now?"
"I'm at the loft."
"I'll be there shortly." I signal to the driver where to go. True to my word we arrived there not fifteen minutes later. Once I stop at the building I exit the limo, flanked by my bodyguards, and heedless of the homeless and poor gawking at me. They won't matter once I close the timeline. Tattletale exits the building shortly and almost meekly walks up to me.
"Yes boss?" One of my guards steps up and opens a small faraday caged box.
"I need you to give up your phone so we can go to my base. It's a security measure you see."
"Uh, boss, I gotta tell you, you do not want me to give up my phone right now." Hmm, usually she's either more afraid or cautious than this. No matter. I signal my man. "How about we just discuss this upst-Hey!!" As her grabs her, wrenches the phone from her grasp, and shoves her in the limo. I follow them in and signal the driver to gun it. Personal confrontations with the Undersiders rarely ever go well whenever I make such a poor first impression.
"So Tattletale-"
"Fuck you boss." How rude. She should really know better than this. I backhand her to shut her up.
"So as I was saying, how could you possibly think killing the McCormicks was a good idea?"
"I'm surprised you know their names." She winces at her own speech, blood dribbling down the corner of her mouth. "You don't seem the type to care about people who stuck to the background like they did."
"Tattletale you made the news. And beyond that I at least know the names of everybody who donates at the local police ball. Now answer the question."
"Fine. You remember when I called about the enforcers screwing with Taylor?"
"Vaguely."
"Well that was the McCormicks. They did it in retaliation to her killing their precious little boy in self defence, and they hired Faultline's crew to kidnap her once I undid all their hard work on that end. We couldn't very well let something like that go, could we?"
I groan in irritation. "You realize you could've called me to help with this, right? This is the exact type of thing I'm equipped to handle."
"What, and have any of the team any more indebted to you than they already are?" She sneers. "Fuck that noise." The car jolts as she finishes talking, and she gives me a huge shit eating grin. I pay neither of those things any mind. The roads in this town are hot fucking garbage, and Tattletale won't be smiling for long once I get her back to my base. I let the conversation drop from there. She only gets smug like this once she thinks she got something over on me, and I won't be getting anything else out of her with polite conversation. It's going to be fun dragging the truth out from her.
When we get to the entrance the mercenaries perform their usual security checks on my car to make sure I don't have a bomb on me or something. Not so pointless-
"EEEAUGH!!" From one of my outside mercenaries. What the fuck? My confusion turns to horror once I turn to look, and see Taylor in her slime form take out three more goons in two seconds.
"I told you not to take my phone away, didn't I?" Tattletale says over the clatter of impotent gunfire.
"You little bitch!" As I punch her in the head. The gunfire has all but stopped by now, and the guards in here have their guns pointed at the door. That speed is far too quick for comfort.
"I wondurr," she slurs. Taylor has her hand on the door now. "Since you're so surprised by this, does that make me the better thinker?" I take my gun out and shoot her in the fucking head as Taylor wrenches the door open. I catch the barest instant of my mercenaries opening fire before the timeline ends with a flash of blue in front of my eyes.
Well that's not good.
The one bright spot in Tattletale having more leverage on Taylor than I do is that She doesn't know that I know that. This means I can go looking for more than she does without her realizing what's going on. Hopefully she doesn't try anything while I can't torture anything out of her. I did try again during the weekend, but all that did was get the timeline cancelled even faster.
I got my chance on Monday. Danny screwed up that infuriatingly effective dead drop by attending himself. I got to listen in on the most interesting of conversations regarding the McCormicks. Good to know I'm not the only one agonizing over the Undersider's stupidity. I spin up a disposable timeline.
"Move in and abduct Danny Hebert."
"Yes boss." Unfortunately they all die depressingly quickly, and impressively violently. They even managed to hit her with tinker tech weapons, but they did all of fuck and all against her. The hell am I even paying for those things for? And things aren't going much better in the other timeline.
"We're being watched again. By Coil's people. I recognize the stupid radio crackling."
"Oh heellll naw!" And the feed cuts out.
"Report. What's going on?"
"I'm sorry boss, but I'm not staying here. Feel free to fire us or whatever, but we're not gonna die like George and the others did." As I hear their truck turn on, and the feed cut out altogether shortly afterwards. Hmm. Unfortunate that I only had one team on scene. I maybe could have kept one team in the dark, and then had them take over once the other one ran away. Unfortunately I didn't anticipate such an opportunity presenting itself tonight, and any other team would've taken too long to get there. And now they're all probably going to be inconveniently skittish about spying on her. At least Tattletale was telling the truth about her minor thinker power that identified my wire when she recruited her.
About an hour later one of my informants called. Apparently there are some mercenaries searching for the Undersiders uncomfortably close to their base. Hmm, is it worth it to save them? Well they could still be useful in the future. I spin up a disposable timeline and send some of my mercenaries out. If they fail I'll close it, and if they succeed I'll keep it. And hey, apparently my men need a confidence boost in me.
A short time later my mercenaries contact me. Two injuries and the enemy team eradicated. Good enough for me.
Last edited:
- Location
- Missouri
Always good to see a writer remember that minions are actual people with a sense of self-preservation.
- Location
- Israel
He relies on reports from subordinates, he thinks he's acting like a hydra but in truth he's just an amoeba. Subvert the group or mimic their voices after taking them down.
Stone-Age Otaku should help with vocal imitation.
Chapter 27: Back To Taylor
New
"But then he said he's gonna treat me like a monogamous girlfriend, and if I want anything more or less than that I'm gonna have to tell him! I mean what the hell do I even say to all that!!"
"Tell him what you want?"
"It's not that simple!"
"Uh, yes it is?" I glare at her. "Hey, don't give me that. I tried to warn you off of him, but you just had to go for the bad boy. Why are we even talking about this anyways? Didn't we agree not to talk about romance with each other?"
"You're the only one I can talk to. Alec is the source of my problems, I'm not talking with Dad or Brian about this, and Bitch just looked at me like I was a moron."
"Do you not have any friends at school to talk to about this?"
"Not anybody I trust with my love life. And Amy stopped talking to me after I killed the McCormick kid."
"Amy Dallon?"
"Yeah?"
"You were on speaking terms with-no. No that's not important right now. Get your key out, nobody should bother us here."
"Are you sure you want to go back in there? You looked pretty spooked last time."
"Yes I'm sure! There's nothing I can do about your incredibly stupid stockpile except blow it up early. So I'm ignoring it. What I would like to do is check back every ten days to see if we can find a pattern on how and when you get stuff. But we can't afford to be that laid back about things." Well when she puts it like that I'm surprised she even waited six days. It's still Monday right now, just a couple hours after my Dad chewed me out for killing the rich people. Then all of a sudden she brightened up, came out of her room, and dragged me away to check on my key dimension.
Enough stalling. I take out my key and open up the chosen door with it. Nothing much looks like it changed in the entryway.
"I'll check up on the facilities portion real quick." I tell her.
"Wait-" And I'm gone. Nothing changed on that section of the complex. Thank God. "-up!"
"I'm done."
"Oh come on Taylor! You could at least let me look through there at least once."
"It's not all that interesting, trust me. At least not after looking at the stockpile. Come on, let's go cataloguing things." I walk us down the storage corridor. First up is the futuristic gun thing room. Labeled Buildy Gun. Opening the door I see a big change. The back of the room now has a bunch of interlocking steel plates stacked side by side.
"Hey, uh, Lisa. Any idea what this is?"
"Not really no. I can tell it's designed to be able to be compacted like this, and it can be assembled into another shape. Sort of like a tent. But I couldn't tell you what the final shape is supposed to be, and I don't see any way to get it out of this room intact with how tightly it fits in here."
"Let's table that as a mystery for now then. Onwards." The next item on the list is the living crystal. Labeled Taydenite Crystal.
"Well I can tell you it hasn't grown." Lisa tells me.
"All I needed to know. Moving on." Next door was not labeled Antimatter Storage, surprisingly, but Glove Of The East. Which means this place rearranged itself when I wasn't looking again. Joy. The item in question is actually a pair of pink fingerless gloves with a heart pattern on the backs.
"Lisa?"
"I'm not sure. Some sort of improperly configured energy transference device?"
"Lisa they're cloth gloves. You know what? No, that's not the issue. If you're right and these are tinkertech, then that means these gloves were custom made for a purpose. Probably one you're not familiar with. How reliable is your power when evaluating other technology?"
She frowns. "Usually pretty reliable. Though you're right that I don't have the first clue what I'm looking at here. I just thought these were some well made gloves before I used my power."
"Could be an issue if I keep getting really off the wall stuff."
"We'll deal with it if it comes up. Next item?" She clips out. The next door is labeled Comm Link. The room has a pedastle with a box on it. In that box are two Bluetooth looking things. You know, like the ones assholes wear.
"Definitely tinkertech." Well no shit Lisa. Wouldn't be much of a windfall if it wasn't. I don't think my power really does unimpressive. I pointedly don't say that though. She sounded a little irritated right after I questioned her power.
"And now comes the testing. I think I'll only go for the futuristic gun thing, and the communicator. The other items are either useless, too specialized, or too dangerous." We're both ignoring the fifth and final door here. The label is what I expected it to be, and that's all I need to know about it.
"You going to go to the ship graveyard to test this?"
"Nope! My legs are powerful and fast. I'm going out of town a few miles for this. I don't want any homeless butting in and selling any information about me." She nods and I give her one of the earbuds. I start running out of town with the two devices inside my slime. I'm less worried about getting them wet than I am losing them to air resistance at the speeds I'm going. I'm also not letting them touch each other, remembering the experiments with the phones and banana. After about five minutes I'm a decent ways out of town. I'm in the middle of a field right now. A little bit of fumbling with unfamiliar buttons on my ear later and Lisa picks up.
"Testing, one two three. Is it working?"
"Yeah I can hear you. Incredibly clearly really. I'm not getting any of the quality loss I would on a phone call." It is then that I hear the telling noise of
*RATATATATA*
Automatic gunfire. I've had far too much experience with it these past two months to mistake it for anything else.
"What the fuck?! Tattletale are you all right?"
"Yeah I am. It looks like a dustup between some out of towners and Coil's men. I don't think they know I'm here yet."
"Oh hell. You think this has anything to do with my house blowing up?"
"Maybe? I don't know. Taylor that could have been literally anybody. Good chance it was Coil given the games he was playing with us over the weekend."
"No I don't buy that. Everything he did was completely deniable. Even right now this isn't even happening in the other timeline. Did you need me to come back there?"
"No, I'm fine. I ducked inside a building, and none of these guys are after any civilians. I'll be all right."
"If you're sure, but call me immediately if anything changes."
"Will do." And she hangs up. Next up is the buildy gun. The wacky thing has three triggers and seven buttons. After a few minutes of fiddling with it all a hologram popped up. Also Coil chose this timeline to keep. A couple more seconds has me find the use for the third trigger. It locks the gun in place and starts building the hologram with a strangely satisfying sound. Not using this in any kind of fight then. That lockdown effect could be deadly in a fight.
The structure itself is very familiar. I can recognize a good portion of the metal plates used in the construction. This was the tent thing in the buildy gun room. There's what looks like two generators on one end, an industrial workbench and storage chest on the other, some sort of scaffolding all along the top, and an efficiency apartment in the middle. In the apartment is what looks like a very small bathroom, two bunks built into the wall, various storage spaces also built into the wall, an office space, and a holographic computer. This is all really futuristic looking too. The whole setup is raised up from the ground on a rugged metal grating, and just a metal floor in the apartment. There aren't any amenities in here. For example, no bedding in the bunk beds, but I assume that can be added later. I could just live off the grid like this, couldn't I?
Can I undo this? I'm not going to be able to use this right here. I'm in the middle of what I assume to be a farmer's field. Private property. That's liable to get me shot, even if it won't do much to me. About a minute of fiddling I figure it out, and the gun sucks the building up just the same as it built it. Weird.
After all that I run at top speed back to town. I haven't heard back from Lisa and I'm kind of worried. Once I'm back in the city I slow down a lot. And I mean I slow down a whole lot, far more than is reasonable for just avoiding traffic and pedestrians. I'll have to test this later. See if I'm finally cycling out powers or something. I am able to find Lisa speedily enough though. There's a bunch of dead and unfamiliar mercenaries littered in the streets in the general area where we were taking stock of my new stuff. She waves me down after a couple seconds searching.
"Taylor. Why didn't you call?"
"Didn't want to get you caught. And if you were already caught they would've had the headset."
"Ah. Well I'm fine. I'm guessing he kept the timeline?"
I nod. "Any idea what this was about? These guys were racially diverse so they don't belong to any of the local gangs."
"Not directly anyways. We do have direct access to one of the participants though. Let's ask." She takes out her telephone and dials a number. I lean in close to listen
"Hey boss. I couldn't help but notice your mercenaries shooting some other mercenaries concerningly close to the base. Do I get to know what that's about?"
"Ah Tattletale. You should be thanking me right now. Those mercenaries were from out of town. Asking about the Undersiders. Probably about those rich people you killed a few days back." Oh boy.
"Ah. Any idea how long that's going to take to shake out?"
"No. I'll let you know when I have something for you to do."
"One last thing. If you protect us too obviously that could give away that we work for you, and I find myself concerned how that would work out for me."
"Oh, rest assured Tattletale. I have plenty use for your team no matter how all this turns out. I am a flexible man." And he hangs up.
"Slimy fucker." She says.
"Agreed. Now give me that headset. I'm going to give it to my Dad so we can talk without risking leaving a trail to him." She gives it over. Nice. I can test it more thoroughly later.
"Tell him what you want?"
"It's not that simple!"
"Uh, yes it is?" I glare at her. "Hey, don't give me that. I tried to warn you off of him, but you just had to go for the bad boy. Why are we even talking about this anyways? Didn't we agree not to talk about romance with each other?"
"You're the only one I can talk to. Alec is the source of my problems, I'm not talking with Dad or Brian about this, and Bitch just looked at me like I was a moron."
"Do you not have any friends at school to talk to about this?"
"Not anybody I trust with my love life. And Amy stopped talking to me after I killed the McCormick kid."
"Amy Dallon?"
"Yeah?"
"You were on speaking terms with-no. No that's not important right now. Get your key out, nobody should bother us here."
"Are you sure you want to go back in there? You looked pretty spooked last time."
"Yes I'm sure! There's nothing I can do about your incredibly stupid stockpile except blow it up early. So I'm ignoring it. What I would like to do is check back every ten days to see if we can find a pattern on how and when you get stuff. But we can't afford to be that laid back about things." Well when she puts it like that I'm surprised she even waited six days. It's still Monday right now, just a couple hours after my Dad chewed me out for killing the rich people. Then all of a sudden she brightened up, came out of her room, and dragged me away to check on my key dimension.
Enough stalling. I take out my key and open up the chosen door with it. Nothing much looks like it changed in the entryway.
"I'll check up on the facilities portion real quick." I tell her.
"Wait-" And I'm gone. Nothing changed on that section of the complex. Thank God. "-up!"
"I'm done."
"Oh come on Taylor! You could at least let me look through there at least once."
"It's not all that interesting, trust me. At least not after looking at the stockpile. Come on, let's go cataloguing things." I walk us down the storage corridor. First up is the futuristic gun thing room. Labeled Buildy Gun. Opening the door I see a big change. The back of the room now has a bunch of interlocking steel plates stacked side by side.
"Hey, uh, Lisa. Any idea what this is?"
"Not really no. I can tell it's designed to be able to be compacted like this, and it can be assembled into another shape. Sort of like a tent. But I couldn't tell you what the final shape is supposed to be, and I don't see any way to get it out of this room intact with how tightly it fits in here."
"Let's table that as a mystery for now then. Onwards." The next item on the list is the living crystal. Labeled Taydenite Crystal.
"Well I can tell you it hasn't grown." Lisa tells me.
"All I needed to know. Moving on." Next door was not labeled Antimatter Storage, surprisingly, but Glove Of The East. Which means this place rearranged itself when I wasn't looking again. Joy. The item in question is actually a pair of pink fingerless gloves with a heart pattern on the backs.
"Lisa?"
"I'm not sure. Some sort of improperly configured energy transference device?"
"Lisa they're cloth gloves. You know what? No, that's not the issue. If you're right and these are tinkertech, then that means these gloves were custom made for a purpose. Probably one you're not familiar with. How reliable is your power when evaluating other technology?"
She frowns. "Usually pretty reliable. Though you're right that I don't have the first clue what I'm looking at here. I just thought these were some well made gloves before I used my power."
"Could be an issue if I keep getting really off the wall stuff."
"We'll deal with it if it comes up. Next item?" She clips out. The next door is labeled Comm Link. The room has a pedastle with a box on it. In that box are two Bluetooth looking things. You know, like the ones assholes wear.
"Definitely tinkertech." Well no shit Lisa. Wouldn't be much of a windfall if it wasn't. I don't think my power really does unimpressive. I pointedly don't say that though. She sounded a little irritated right after I questioned her power.
"And now comes the testing. I think I'll only go for the futuristic gun thing, and the communicator. The other items are either useless, too specialized, or too dangerous." We're both ignoring the fifth and final door here. The label is what I expected it to be, and that's all I need to know about it.
"You going to go to the ship graveyard to test this?"
"Nope! My legs are powerful and fast. I'm going out of town a few miles for this. I don't want any homeless butting in and selling any information about me." She nods and I give her one of the earbuds. I start running out of town with the two devices inside my slime. I'm less worried about getting them wet than I am losing them to air resistance at the speeds I'm going. I'm also not letting them touch each other, remembering the experiments with the phones and banana. After about five minutes I'm a decent ways out of town. I'm in the middle of a field right now. A little bit of fumbling with unfamiliar buttons on my ear later and Lisa picks up.
"Testing, one two three. Is it working?"
"Yeah I can hear you. Incredibly clearly really. I'm not getting any of the quality loss I would on a phone call." It is then that I hear the telling noise of
*RATATATATA*
Automatic gunfire. I've had far too much experience with it these past two months to mistake it for anything else.
"What the fuck?! Tattletale are you all right?"
"Yeah I am. It looks like a dustup between some out of towners and Coil's men. I don't think they know I'm here yet."
"Oh hell. You think this has anything to do with my house blowing up?"
"Maybe? I don't know. Taylor that could have been literally anybody. Good chance it was Coil given the games he was playing with us over the weekend."
"No I don't buy that. Everything he did was completely deniable. Even right now this isn't even happening in the other timeline. Did you need me to come back there?"
"No, I'm fine. I ducked inside a building, and none of these guys are after any civilians. I'll be all right."
"If you're sure, but call me immediately if anything changes."
"Will do." And she hangs up. Next up is the buildy gun. The wacky thing has three triggers and seven buttons. After a few minutes of fiddling with it all a hologram popped up. Also Coil chose this timeline to keep. A couple more seconds has me find the use for the third trigger. It locks the gun in place and starts building the hologram with a strangely satisfying sound. Not using this in any kind of fight then. That lockdown effect could be deadly in a fight.
The structure itself is very familiar. I can recognize a good portion of the metal plates used in the construction. This was the tent thing in the buildy gun room. There's what looks like two generators on one end, an industrial workbench and storage chest on the other, some sort of scaffolding all along the top, and an efficiency apartment in the middle. In the apartment is what looks like a very small bathroom, two bunks built into the wall, various storage spaces also built into the wall, an office space, and a holographic computer. This is all really futuristic looking too. The whole setup is raised up from the ground on a rugged metal grating, and just a metal floor in the apartment. There aren't any amenities in here. For example, no bedding in the bunk beds, but I assume that can be added later. I could just live off the grid like this, couldn't I?
Can I undo this? I'm not going to be able to use this right here. I'm in the middle of what I assume to be a farmer's field. Private property. That's liable to get me shot, even if it won't do much to me. About a minute of fiddling I figure it out, and the gun sucks the building up just the same as it built it. Weird.
After all that I run at top speed back to town. I haven't heard back from Lisa and I'm kind of worried. Once I'm back in the city I slow down a lot. And I mean I slow down a whole lot, far more than is reasonable for just avoiding traffic and pedestrians. I'll have to test this later. See if I'm finally cycling out powers or something. I am able to find Lisa speedily enough though. There's a bunch of dead and unfamiliar mercenaries littered in the streets in the general area where we were taking stock of my new stuff. She waves me down after a couple seconds searching.
"Taylor. Why didn't you call?"
"Didn't want to get you caught. And if you were already caught they would've had the headset."
"Ah. Well I'm fine. I'm guessing he kept the timeline?"
I nod. "Any idea what this was about? These guys were racially diverse so they don't belong to any of the local gangs."
"Not directly anyways. We do have direct access to one of the participants though. Let's ask." She takes out her telephone and dials a number. I lean in close to listen
"Hey boss. I couldn't help but notice your mercenaries shooting some other mercenaries concerningly close to the base. Do I get to know what that's about?"
"Ah Tattletale. You should be thanking me right now. Those mercenaries were from out of town. Asking about the Undersiders. Probably about those rich people you killed a few days back." Oh boy.
"Ah. Any idea how long that's going to take to shake out?"
"No. I'll let you know when I have something for you to do."
"One last thing. If you protect us too obviously that could give away that we work for you, and I find myself concerned how that would work out for me."
"Oh, rest assured Tattletale. I have plenty use for your team no matter how all this turns out. I am a flexible man." And he hangs up.
"Slimy fucker." She says.
"Agreed. Now give me that headset. I'm going to give it to my Dad so we can talk without risking leaving a trail to him." She gives it over. Nice. I can test it more thoroughly later.
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- Location
- Livin' in the Land of the LOST! *roar*
It's not like she's going to stockpile the 30 trillion tons of antimatter needed to overcome the Earth's gravitational binding energy, right?
Mr. Cloak
Orchestrator of Paradoxical Apocalypse
- Pronouns
- I
Well, there are perks that increase material accumulation speed, so... Maybe?
30 trillion tons is roughly the same mass as all of human manufactured goods so far... With the forge, it is possible.
Maybe she can force Zion to swallow it?
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And let Zion eat a snack and build up his energy levels he is the 1 guy alive other then Taylor who could survive and be fine eatiing it.
Well that was a haphazard and seemingly artificially restricted analysis of events.
Also a rather poor depiction of both the Warehouse, as it's not as if each and every fucking thing that she gets needs to have a specifically dedicated fucking room in it, and the Q-Bit Communicator; wouldn't have expected that thing to come pre-installed into a speaker and microphone; would have expected it to just have a fiber-optic connection-port or something since that's the throughput-rate it was said to have.
Also a rather poor depiction of both the Warehouse, as it's not as if each and every fucking thing that she gets needs to have a specifically dedicated fucking room in it, and the Q-Bit Communicator; wouldn't have expected that thing to come pre-installed into a speaker and microphone; would have expected it to just have a fiber-optic connection-port or something since that's the throughput-rate it was said to have.
If they really want to expend it that badly they could easily just dump it off-world; even just interplanetarily instead of interdimensionally would probably do it.