Connection

Universe T

"You should just talk to her," Dennis said, "I mean, you fought Leviathan together right? You were really cool driving her around on your hoverboard like that, she isn't going to just shut you down."

"She's just so ... intense. I really like her but I'm kind of afraid of her," Chris hedged. "I'm not sure how to get her to notice me as a guy and not just like, 'Kid Win, Tinker 4, specialties lasers and antigravity'."

"That's kind of a good point." Dennis didn't have his costume on, but Chris could imagine the little clocks all circling around as he paused, thinking about the issue. "Maybe you could make her something? Like, a present? Use the intenseness in your favor."

"Would I make her lasers for her bugs? I don't think I could shrink them down enough, and Armsmaster probably isn't going to help just to help me get a girlfriend, and even if he did then it would mostly be Armsmaster making the present and not me, and eww, and -"

"Bad chain of thought there Mr. Win. You're an inventive guy, I'm sure you'll think of something cool you can make soon enough. I mean, she's Taylor right? I'm sure she could turn the shittiest thing you could possibly give her into a weapon of mass destruction or something anyway."

Universe S

"You should just talk to her," Dennis said, "I mean, you fought Leviathan together right? You distracted him with your giant gun when she was darting around getting some shots in, she had to think that was cool."

"She's just so ... intense. I really like her but I'm kind of afraid of her," Chris hedged. "I'm not sure how to get her to notice me as a guy and not simultaneously decide to stomp on me like a bug." For some reason, in hindsight, that seemed like a weird analogy to Chris, but Dennis didn't notice the momentary look on his face and moved on.

"That's kind of a good point. Maybe you could show her how tough you are again? I'm setting up the patrol schedules for this week, I could switch things around so you had both of yours with her? You're one of the only ones who can keep up with her anyway."

Chris was simultaneously excited and afraid. Sophia seemed to provoke that reaction in him a lot. "That's a great idea Dennis!" Second thoughts were quick in coming though, "How could I impress Shadow Stalker though? She's a total badass, and I can't use the Alternator Cannon on a normal patrol."

"I'm sure you'll think of something Kid. You're an inventive guy, you just have to keep that in mind and look for opportunities." Dennis paused and then continued, "At least she'll be in a good mood. Streets filled with this post-Leviathan chaos are like a jungle safari for her."

For the past two days, Kid Win had been spending lots of time training in the gym. Today, perhaps not coincidentally, he was the only person there. He pulled another tight turn on his hoverboard, juking through the rafters of the gym and letting three laser bolts loose at the targets lined up on the wall. They all missed the targets, but at least hit the correct wall, so he counted that as improvement.

Kid Win didn't think he would be able to impress Shadow Stalker with more Tinker devices. First, he didn't think he could come up with anything very useful on short notice. Second, did he really need more than his laser guns and his hoverboard anyway? Shadow Stalker got by with speed and phasing and a trusty ranged weapon, and he didn't think he'd be able to come up with any impressive defenses to round out his style, especially not in time for the first patrol.

But you didn't need great defenses if you didn't get hit. He'd souped up his hoverboard a little before Leviathan, giving him better speed and general performance than before; he was half convinced that it had saved his life. If Kid Win could become a good enough flier, not getting hit could be his thing. Also, Clockblocker assured him the stunt shooting looked really cool.

Just as he was lining up for another go, he heard a cough behind him. Armsmaster. The miniaturization Tinker had been moody (well, moodier than usual) ever since losing his solo confrontation with Leviathan, but Kid Win was actually a little amazed that he survived it at all. Granted, he didn't survive it by very much, but that was what Panacea was for.

"You've been training hard lately," Armsmaster said. "Any specific reason? Your style up until this point was to spend most of your time in the workshop."

Kid Win paused at that, and briefly wondered how best to twist preparing to show off for Shadow Stalker into good work ethic. "When I was up against Leviathan I think I realized all the gear in the world is no good if you don't know how to use it. My aim with the Alternator Canon was sloppy and I didn't land enough square hits, and I don't think I'm getting the most I can get out of the improved maneuverability on my hoverboard yet."

Armsmaster nodded, seemingly satisfied. "Being able to use your gear well in the field is the difference between a hero and a lab tech. I don't fight in the same style as you do, but I've seen similar setups before. You need to use a different shooting grip when you aren't mostly vertical; come down and I'll show you."

Universe T

Even if Clockblocker was confident that Weaver would be able to put just about anything to use, Kid Win was still worried he was so bad a Tinker that he might well produce something below the level of 'just about anything.' He'd spent so much time on the project's moddability features (which weren't even useful yet) and at the same time he wasn't even sure how to get the basic triggering mechanism to work properly.

The idea of the stun net had actually been pretty good, he thought. Weaver had been constantly fighting a battle against the PR department since she became a hero, and even though she had frighteningly many ways of incapacitating a villain herself, most of them were at least as gruesome as swarming a guy with hornets and stinging him into submission, or involved using up a supply of silk ropes that weren't quite infinite even for her. The stun net was to be a lightweight (slightly antigravity assisted, at that), recyclable tool that didn't get her screamed at every time she used it.

Even from a more tactical perspective, the lasers directed through the net's fiber optics were a mode of attack she didn't currently have, letting her take down Brutes and Breakers that might ordinarily be resistant to her bugs. Breakers like Shadow Stalker, specifically. He knew Weaver was still quietly furious about being taken down so easily by the umbral Undersider at the Fundraiser, and that her current powerset was more or less hard countered by Shadow Stalker's phasing tricks. Really, it was Weaver's stubborn unwillingness to lose in any situation that he was counting on with his present for her.

Of course, a stunning net had to be triggered, and for Weaver it only made sense for the ultra-lightweight net to be delivered by bugs and triggered by bugs. But how do you build a trigger only a bug can use exactly? How strong was a housefly, what sort of space could it fit into, and what kind of mechanism was best for it to push? Kid Win knew he could get all the answers from Weaver herself, but if he had to ask her about it that would ruin the surprise, which was a crucial part of the plan he and Clockblocker had talked about for getting her to agree to the date.

"Working on something?" A monitor to his left lit up with Dragon's avatar, an innocent look on her face and a mischievous cast to her voice.

"Hi Dragon! Actually I am, but it's just a minor project really, nothing important." Kid Win was pretty surprised at Dragon showing up unexpectedly; he'd gotten a little bit of help for her ironing out one or two issues on previous projects, but those had been more like official appointments than her just dropping in to say hello.

"Don't short sell your work. The things we make for others are more important than what we make for ourselves, in a lot of ways. I noticed you were having some trouble with your trigger setup there and sent you an email with some specifications you might find useful."

"Wow! Thanks." Kid Win quickly loaded it up, and it was way more than he would have ever expected. It didn't just have the physical properties he needed, but already had some design suggestions for integrating them right into his work, even with variable outputs and backup features. "This is so much Dragon ... Armsmaster is probably going to be annoyed you didn't spend the time on his gear instead."

Dragon laughed.

Taylor was nominally watching TV in the rec room with Missy, but she was mostly zoning out, probably paying attention to the spiders weaving upstairs or a patrol of flies three blocks away or crabs digging for buried treasure at the beach. Missy was stubbornly enjoying girl time with Taylor in spite of this. Chris was about to back away and try again later, but Missy noticed him standing around awkwardly out of the corner of her eye and excitedly waved him over.

Chris wasn't sure if he regretted Dennis bringing Missy in on the conspiracy or not. He supposed he would find out soon enough. He walked over as a commercial blared annoyingly about Fugly Bob's grand reopening this week. "Hi Taylor! What's going on?"

Taylor looked up sharply, and seemed a little at a loss for how to respond. "Things are good, I guess. Vista and I were watching television, did you want to join us?"

Chris froze up too for a second, but then felt something bump on his back (even though Missy was too-innocently half-watching the commercial in front of him) and started, "I actually finished a project recently in my workshop. I wasn't sure where it was going for a while, but-"

"Vista, real quick, can I get 15 extra feet Northeast? Thanks. Sorry Kid Win, you were saying?" Missy's facade of watching the TV faded further as she multitasked between using her power and fixating on vicarious love drama. The rec room bent into something like an Escher diagram in the background.

"So, anyways Taylor, I-really-like-you-like-you-and-I-made-you-this-net," Chris forgot his speech and spat out the main points quickly, brandishing the net from behind his back. Taylor was silent. Behind her, Missy quietly face-palmed.

After a long pause, Taylor quietly stated "It's a very shiny net."

"It's for your bugs! Well, not to catch bugs, because obviously you don't need that, but to catch people! It's really lightweight and made out of fiber optic so it can diffuse a stun laser through it and knockout anyone you get it around." This was ten times more stressful than getting stuff past PRT review (the net had finally passed this morning. Chris wasn't quite dumb enough to give a girl a gift she couldn't even use.)

"Oh." Flies, spiders, and other miscellaneous insects seemed to almost materialize from nowhere. And also Taylor's hair. Chris wasn't sure how he felt about that. They crawled over the net, spazzing about wildly, seemingly inspecting its every fiber as Taylor sort of blankly looked at Chris. "Yeah, the switching mechanism is built in here right?" She indicated a solid spot with a crevice just big enough for a fly. "Ooh, and these links are detachable?"

"Yeah, I built in some places where you could snap it onto another one, or maybe attach something different to it. I couldn't really think of anything different to put there yet though and I don't have the materials for more segments yet so-" Chris felt another bump in the back, courtesy of folded space and good aim. He figured that was a sign to get to the point, even though Taylor seemed to be paying the net more attention than him now. "So, do you want to go out somewhere this weekend? I wasn't sure when you would be free, but ..." Chris trailed off.

Taylor had the blank look again, and the bugs seemed to rile up a little bit, but then she flinched as if poked. "Umm ... I'd love to. That big movie theater is reopening today isn't it? We could go out on Friday night."

"That'd be great!" Chris was on top of the world.

Missy grinned.

Universe S

The dusk patrol with Shadow Stalker was going both better and worse than expected. On the plus side, she hadn't insulted him yet. On the minus side, she hadn't talked to him yet. Their respective methods of mobility actually made talking pretty difficult.

Kid Win had been practicing on his hoverboard for the past three days nonstop, but it was still pretty difficult to follow Shadow Stalker's odd mix of rooftop running, limited parkour, and high speed moon jumps at anything like conversation distance, especially in a reasonably unobtrusive manner. He settled for a moderately winding path following her lead and descending close behind her on the flatter stretches. He decided to delude himself into thinking that it was a companionable silence.

After one of her long, high jumps, Shadow Stalker stopped on the roof ahead and signaled to Kid Win just before stealthily creeping forward. Usually she didn't bother interacting with her partner at all, so he took the signal as a good sign. Just as he was catching up to her position again, she sprung down aggressively around the roof towards the scene in the alley below. Without knowing quite what was going on yet, he followed her over the edge, corkscrewing through a 90 degree turn for a surprise entrance, guns akimbo.

The scene they burst in on was composed of more than a dozen miscellaneously armed thugs surrounding two girls who looked barely into their teens, one of them wildly swinging a baseball bat and the other cowering on the ground in fear. While Shadow Stalker's policy of shooting everyone first and asking questions possibly never had gotten her in trouble a few times, it seemed appropriate here.

Shadow Stalker managed two efficient shots on the way down and Kid Win got off four with his two guns, but both of her tranq bolts connected and he only brought one target down, wary of hitting the victims and mostly missing wide. Twelve or so gangers were left vs. the two wards, and it should have been easy from there. Unfortunately, at that point what seemed like all the accumulated debris, junk, and soaked trash of the alley sort of imploded on one of the thugs as jumped up to face his attackers.

Mush, which meant these were Merchants; what a surprise. Luckily, Mush was an idiot, and a garbage propelled jump sent him straight through Shadow Stalker and into the alley wall. As she momentarily dropped out of shadow state to skip up off the same wall and engage, Kid Win dropped to street level to deal with the thugs and help the girls.

He managed to knock out another minion as he finished his dive, but at that point half of the remaining Merchants had their guns out and Kid Win had to use all the tricks he learned in the gym to dodge out of their lines of fire. He couldn't focus on much more than keeping alive and shooting back as he weaved around the alley's fire escapes and other obstacles, but he noticed one of the thugs had run off and another was doing surprisingly poorly in his personal battle against the girl with the baseball bat. His hoverboard took one bullet seemingly without being damaged, and another grazed his side without doing much more than damaging his costume (he hoped that wouldn't come out of his stipend.) The ward realized this couldn't last forever and acted quickly.

Kid Win got some momentary cover as he dodged behind a dumpster Mush's activating power had knocked over, and pulled every last bit he could out of his hoverboard to 180 and come out upside down on the same side he entered, which was the opposite side the Merchant thugs were expecting. Another four shots took another one of them down this time, leaving six left engaging him. Before they could get their bearings though, Sophia blitzed through their ranks from above, knocking one out with a brutal backhand to the temple as she passed by them and then Kid Win.

"SWITCH, his stupid biology is ignoring the knockout drugs!" Shadow Stalker sounded pissed as she flashed out of and back into shadow state to convey that information, and just as she jumped off again Mush barreled down from above in her wake, knocking over one of his minions that hadn't gotten out of the way in time.

Where Shadow Stalker had retreated back, Kid Win went up and over, peppering Mush with stun lasers to distract him from Shadow Stalker. The shots didn't do much but knock off tiny bits of trash from his disgusting and amorphous form, but they did get his attention and Kid Win was rapidly dodging tentacles of unspeakable grossness. Some of the remaining thugs tried to support their boss with more gunfire, but sniper shots from Shadow Stalker diverted their attention and left Kid Win one on one.

Kid Win was able to stay mostly clear of Mush's attacks, but he could see why Shadow Stalker was so frustrated; his lasers weren't doing much of anything either. He could land twenty hits to Mush's one, but if his twenty hits barely did anything and Mush's tentacle slam took him out of the fight he would still lose. After dodging below another of Mush's wild leaps, Kid Win had an idea and quickly used his thumbs to adjust both of the selectors on his laser pistols.

Mush came at him again, expecting to tank the next volley of shots as easily as he'd tanked the last, but met an unpleasant surprise as huge chunks of his wet garbage dried up and flaked away with every shot. The ultra-dehydration setting (which did practically nothing to living things) on his lasers had been a failed experiment against Leviathan's torrents of water, but Mush lacked the same sheer volume of wetness to bring to bear and the esoteric setting now worked as intended.

After a few more desperate swings and lunges by Mush, more than half of his accumulated waste was gone, and he seemed pretty woozy to boot. Kid Win momentarily wondered if taking this many shots from the dehydrators was still safe for a person, but his thoughts ended up irrelevant as Mush passed out and his power disengaged, leaving the villain unconscious in a pile of inert trash.

Shadow Stalker brutally finished off the last of the thugs at the same time, and the baseball bat girl was cheerily kicking her fallen assailant in the ribs. Shadow Stalker gave her an opaque look, and a moment later nodded and proceeded to brutally secure the downed thugs with plastic cuffs. Kid Win figured he might as well just secure Mush and not ask questions.

After the ugly process of picking him up, cuffing him, and dragging him out of his trash pile over to the opposite wall, Kid Win opened up on the remaining wet garbage with his dehydrators until it was bone dry and hopefully useless for Mush. Shadow Stalker was just finishing up at this point, and turned his way.

Sometimes, Kid Win didn't think things through. He trusted his instincts and decided to give Mush's prone body a kick of his own. Sophia's face couldn't be seen behind the mask, but somehow he could tell she was smiling by the look in her eyes.