Hatch 1.4
I waited at the door of school for Kira, silently wishing that she'd give up on making me tell her about everything, even though I knew she wouldn't. She'd do her best to share the emotional burdens of her friends, even when said friends really wanted to keep them private. I could understand why, though. If you saw a person in trouble, if you were at least a decent person, you'd try to help them, unless the trouble had the potential to physically harm you. I supposed that that was the main disadvantage of being an empathetic person: you'd get involved in things that could harm you in order to help others. Granted, I'm not much better, I thought derisively.
My contemplation was interrupted by Kira clearing her throat in front of me. I looked up. "Are you done with your brooding?" She asked.
"I do not brood, but yes."
"So, where are we going? Your room, my room, or somewhere else?"
"I choose answer D: A & C."
"Lead on, then." She implored, and I did just that.
We got onto a bus, sat down, and waited for it to reach the Boardwalk.
Thankfully, my dad's class for people of high-school age had yet to begin, in order to accommodate people that came from schools farther away in Brockton Bay, such as Immaculata. This meant that he was more or less on break when we got to the Dojo. Of course, from another perspective, this could be a disadvantage, as he would probably notice if we weren't in my room eventually, which in turn would lead to some questions that I'd rather not answer - for his own good, of course. Therefore, we probably-
"Hi, Mr. Gushiken!" Kira said, completely oblivious to my plans. I really should've talked to her about that while on the bus, but what was done was done, now I needed to come up with a believable excuse for us to go into my room, yet not make any noise... Well, I could construct a sensor-activated speaker that makes it seem like we're doing something that he wouldn't look in on... perfect.
"Hello, Kira. It seems that you've gotten Yuri to bring you over. Has your family been... obstructive, lately? Or is it about... that other thing?" Dad greeted, walking past the threshold of the main part of the Dojo into what amounted to the "waiting room". He was wearing his black karate gi, making his short - albeit built - stature less apparent. He still seemed - was - short, but a short person in a gi was substantially more intimidating than a short person in business casual.
Kira was about to answer with an affirmation of the second, so I nudged her quickly, before pursing my lips and saying "The former, you know how it is with them." Both of their eyes widened in understanding of what were most likely two very different things, respectively.
"Well, I won't disturb you two, then." Dad said, chuckling as he walked back into the dojo. When he was out of earshot, Kira rounded on me.
"You haven't told your family?" She said.
"Well, I've told them some, but nothing that rates a 9.5, so to speak. You could tell that he knew something about... it."
"Well, that's true. So, shall we?"
I grinned, "Follow me." We went up the stairs into my room, and I pulled down the shades to make sure nobody from the outside looking in could tell what we were doing, then I locked the door. At the same time, I thought, "Interface, show live feed from SecCam-12." With that, a live feed from my lab began being transmitted to my visual cortex, showing that it was just as I had left it. I turned back to Kira, and held out my hand, prompting her to raise an eyebrow in amusement.
"You're being much less moody now than you were before." She observed.
"What can I say? Your good mood is infectious."
"I can't argue with that. On a related note, why are you holding out your hand?"
"Just take it, then you'll see why." I sighed.
She shrugged, and grasped my hand. Right after she did so, I found that non-existent, invisible distortion, focused it, and pulled. From Kira's and my unaugmented view, it looked like another setting was dragged over us from the direction that I was looking in, even though my lab had been to my right, southeast from my room. As the trippiness that thankfully wasn't on par with that of the Non-Euclidian Horror, Vista, ended, Kira shook her head, seeming to be trying to shake said trippiness from her mind.
"So, you have powers now," she said in a monotone before lighting up, "that is so cool! What can you do?"
"It is cool, and I can also tinker with Surveillance and Implants."
"Those seem completely unrelated."
"You would be correct in that assessment, though, speaking of Surveillance, I'll need to quickly create a device. I'll explain some things while I'm building, drop the device back into my room, then I'll finish when I return."
Her face turned serious again, "This isn't everything?"
"It isn't," I agreed, "When I got my powers, I also received knowledge about what would happen if I don't interfere..."
"Well, shit." Kira said when I'd finished.
"Yeah, I know," I concurred, "but since I can't trust Cauldron any farther than I can throw them, and alerting people who triggered naturally may cause their Shards to inform Scion, well, you understand."
"So I do. Now, I have a few questions."
"Go ahead and ask."
She looked at me in the eyes, bemused, and said, "About the earlier stages of your plan, how exactly do you plan on managing to stick Lung with your Neural Restraint before anybody reacts?"
"Well, I... uh..." I faltered, before thinking of something that would actually work, "I could make a couple and ask Skitter to use her bugs to carry them! Yeah, that'll work."
"And do you think a bug would be strong enough to reliably stab him with one of those?"
She was really good at pointing out flaws in my logic, not that that was anything new. "I could design them so that they automatically latch onto something, then pull themselves in."
"Okay, and how do you plan on finding the location of this fight?"
I already had an answer to that one. "I'll make a Radar that would, among other things, be disrupted by Grue's power, and that will allow me to learn the general vicinity of them. From there, I'll monitor an area of about a klick in radius around said disruptions. Once that's done, finding a lone figure on a rooftop will be relatively easy."
"Good. You may be able to do long-term planning fairly well, but you do have a bad habit of forgetting the little things."
"I think we've already talked about this, before."
"True, that. Now, we probably should get back before your family gets suspicious."
I sighed. "Yeah, you're right." I made to take her hand, but she held up a finger.
"However, seeing as you don't need to sleep, can you teleport me here at night so you can apply really convenient upgrades to me, such as not needing to sleep?"
"Sure, just send me a picture of your room when you want to." I said, chuckling. I then put my had on her shoulder, called up an image of my room, and teleported us back.
