Chapter 8

AUTHORS NOTE:

Wildbow Owns Worm. Others own Other things. If I miss a disclaimer I will try and rectify that. I own nothing.


**The Library of Alexandria**

The itching was driving me insane. Whoever had done this, should I ever find them, would be thanked and beaten at the same time. The first feeling of physical irritation I had felt in 26 years, and it was continuing to drive me mad. Whoever had managed to grow my eye back, and yet not give it any of my powers, was a cruel genius. I listened silently as the President outlined the plan to stabilize the economy. He had to walk the fine line between the "lessening of human suffering" good and the "sudden lack of hundreds of thousands of jobs due to the crashing pharmaceuticals market" bad. Health Insurance companies were becoming a far different animal, no longer having any need to cover any illnesses or small injuries, and were now focusing almost solely on pregnancy and emergency room costs.

That was the President's job. Her job was to explain the phenomena behind the surge of recent parahumans. She had assumed it was caused by the entity, but Contessa smiled and said it was part of the new Path. That she, as the Director of the PRT, needed to be on TV at this news conference and to thank the Tinker responsible. And to tell them that the fines were far less than the rewards they would be getting. The D.C. Thinkers had determined that unless a Shaker 40 had triggered (which probably would have solved more than half of the Plan), that it was most likely a Tinker of some sort. Especially given the pandemic modeling that the cures had shown. The Thinkers had then determined that it had a self-terminating implement that ensured the cure only functioned inside the human body. With the rise of parahumans, mostly minor but with a few notable powerhouses, the Thinkers, then PRT doctors, found that every person they observed had grown a Corona Pollentia. Everyone was now a potential trigger. Two PRT agents had triggered. Then four police officers across the country. Two Firefighters. A Paramedic. Any high stress situation seemed to be a potential trigger now. It was changing her day job into chaos, and alleviating a lot of her Cauldron stress.

There were a lot of specific issues that needed to be addressed. The ENE Director would need to be convinced to keep her new powers under wraps. Several Protectorate members were experiencing major changes in their powersets. Though there were some great boons in that, the downsides were becoming glaringly obvious. Campanile, the leader of the Chicago Wards, had lost the ability to return to his original size. He had lost the ability to have a secret identity.

Gillcrest was winding down. I stepped forward as he introduced me in my Director persona, the crowd clapping as they always did during Presidential speeches.

"Thank you, President Gillcrest." I drew my eyes slowly across the crowd as they quieted down, following my every word. "My fellow Americans. All of the best minds in these United States have determined that this massive change in our world was not done out of malice. Therefore the Parahuman Response Taskforce would like to speak directly to the Tinker responsible."

I took a breath and looked directly into the camera.

"Come forward. The fines you face are far lower than the accumulated rewards money we have been receiving in your stead. Come forward. The good you could do the world could be amplified a thousand-fold with the help we could provide each other. Come forward. The PRT is very interested in establishing a working relationship with you."

Now to finish quickly and concisely, as my public persona demands.

"That is all I have at the moment. Legend will now speak on the greater effects the Tinker's Cure have had on the Parahuman community. Legend?"

I took a step back, and moved back next to President Gillcrest while Legend applied his true strength and greatest power: Public Speaking.

For the first time in a long time, I had real faith in the continuation of the human species.

**Miss Militia**

Walking into the Protectorate's private gym, I mulled over the implications of the press conference. I had assembled binders of mine and Armsmaster's research, so I knew that something was going to be reported sooner rather than later.

Everyone was here. Even Colin. Recently he had made time for more team activities. Team workouts were his idea. He said it was the most efficient way for us to bond. The World Cure had improved Colin's outlook a great deal.

"Hey Hann, we're taking bets on who the Tinker is. Rich and Robin put down on Blasto. Puppy bet on a new Tinker. I bet that it's secretly Armsy. Armsy bet that it's the brand new Cape in Faultline's crew, some guy named Facture. Who do you want to put your money on?"

"I'll put my money down on Leet," I said after a moment of consideration.

The response from my team members was strangely unanimous. Incredulity.

Colin scoffed. Richard and Robin each smiled slightly and cocked an eyebrow. Jaimi hid a giggle behind her hand and Ethan shook his head at me slack jawed.

Colin spoke first. "Highly unlikely. It fits neither his gimmick nor his level of skill."

"Armsy is right," Ethan spoke up. "I love a good joke, but he seems to be the butt of most of them."

"If you say so," I replied. "Their channel has been quiet the last few months. They have to be up to something. Besides, maybe he figured out his specialty. Maybe it's healing."

Everyone stared at me, considering it before all playfully booing. I just smiled and walked over to the chin up bar.

As I went through my workout routine, I thought more on the few times I had met Leet and Über. Leet had always been awkward, but he seemed funny and kind of cute. I hope it was him. I wanted to work more with him in the future.

**Purity**

I had to remind myself that this was a courtesy meeting. I still liked a few of the Empire's heroes. Othella and Rune at the very least.

Max's ranting made me search the room for the nearest window to fly out of. Medhall was going under. With it went almost all of the Empire's legal businesses. The so-called World Cure had devastated the Pharmaceutical industry, though it had healed up all of my stretching and aches from Aster's birth.

I looked around the room at everyone assembled. At all the anger about inferior races being helped and how the Cure was a deliberate attack against their interests.

If I had funding, I would try to convince the girls to join me to form an actual hero team. The craven ranting at the "inferiors" for stealing what was theirs was getting tiresome.

Max had clearly been listening to Brad's own vicious convictions, which was a real bad sign. They're not far from declaring war on everyone. I needed to get out of here. I needed to take Aster and Teddy and find some place to hide from the madness that Max was going to release on the city.

I leaned over to Othala. "I need to go breastfeed Aster. Tell Max to get ahold of me when I can do something."

She nodded and I snuck out the door. I needed to find a patron and fast.

**Leet**

I did some quick mental math and realized that it was most definitely me. Pizza Sneeze was most definitely the origin. I couldn't help the "Oops" that escaped my lips.

Everyone turned towards me. Rob spoke up first. "It's the nanites you talked about isn't it? Why didn't you tell me you were releasing them?!"

"In my defense," I said carefully, "I didn't release them. I had an inkling that they may have escaped. Second," I spoke up a little over the quiet sounds of scoffing, "I didn't realize this had happened. We both know my knowledge on current events is limited to you telling me about them."

"You really missed this?" Newt spoke up.

"The only news I know of is that there is a new Elder Scrolls game coming out next year." I paused and thought for a second. "Oh, and every interesting science and tech advance that I've heard about through the colleges."

Rob stood up quickly and stepped towards me. I was worried, just for a moment. A smile broke his face as he reached out to grasp my hand. "Nerd life!"

"Nerd life!" I agreed loudly, with a smile. A quick look around the room confirmed that nobody was upset with me. I turned and patted Elle on the head, gave Greg and Newt respect knuckle bumps with my Gauntleted right fist, then finally walked back over to Rob and hugged him. After that, I waved at the crew and made my way towards the door.

"Where you going, dude?" Rob asked.

"Off grid for a bit. I want to throw the Thinkers off and set up for the fallout. Healthy people means better living, so this has to piss off some villain or another." I smiled. "I promise to drop in at random every once in a while, probably in the usual place." I flicked my eyes and nodded toward a spot through the walls, and got a few smiles and nods.

Elle even stood up and gave me a hug goodbye.

With that I walked out of the room and down toward Mel's office. I needed to give her instructions on how to communicate with me for our new business venture.

And that I was responsible for… a lot, as it turned out.

Knocking on the door frame into her office, I stepped inside. Seeing her rewatching the news conference, I motioned towards it when she looked at me.

"It was me. I'm going underground for a while. Write orders on the whiteboard," I motioned towards the board on her wall, "and I'll make every effort to complete them. I'll leave marked packages over there," I motioned to the corner.

"Cool. See me when you get back." She said. I don't know if she'd been expecting world-changing things for me or if it was just her regular monotone attitude, but she didn't otherwise react.

"Can do. Later Mel."

"Later."

I stepped into my workshop. I needed to up my game a ton. I'd just made waves on a global scale. The only other global Tinker had an entire group of villains hunting her, especially with how much she helped the world.

No. I needed to risk my sanity and get ready to defend my new family from our violent home.

"Pro, it's time to Tinker hard. Let's start on Project AniMan. It's the one that gets the most results the more time we spend with it already in place."

"Excellent Sir!" Pro almost shouted in my mind. He'd been waiting for us to start this one for ages. "I take it that we will be doing project catalog and project Baby Clones as well?"

"Let's rename project Baby Clones. I'm thinking we rename it project Populace. Less creepy and more confusing. My favorite combination."

"Very good, Sir. Shall we start crafting the Cloning Chambers? We can go slowly so as to explain what we're doing to you. That should do extra work in providing more levels in some of your science and crafting skills, like we discussed before."

"You read my mind, buddy!" Checking the time dilation field generator, I noticed that the power requirements for the time dilation to reach a compression rate of 8100 to 1 were being met by the Dyson sphere. Setting the field to Max, I moved to the workbench to start the project. It was going to take a lot of time and a lot of hard work, but it was going to give me a huge leap toward making myself stronger and therefore my friends safer.


I had my Gauntleted hand through the Ring and in a tiger's mouth at the Franklin Park Zoo, the time dilation field temporarily suspended. I needed to get a good saliva sample for the cloning process to work. Gathering a swab's worth from the sleeping giant, I began to carefully pull my hand back when the sound of my phone made me jump. I bumped the roof of the tiger's mouth and her eyes shot open. Scrambling back, I shut the Ring off the second my fingertips were clear of the event horizon.

Looking at the PipBoy on my left arm, I saw that I had a message from the first Vet I'd visited; funding had just fallen through from a lot of their long-term donors, and they were going to have to put down almost a fourth of their residents. The shop was going to be locked up for at least twelve hours, and if a bunch of cages were gone by the time they got back, they would appreciate it.

I flipped the Ring back on and set the coordinates for the animal control building, then spun the rings until the opening was wide enough to walk through. I stopped to double check the new add-on I had made for the ring. While I'd previously been dropping temporary anchors and triangulating positions using Mel's place, my glove, and a tiny satellite to make small, temporary doorways to my workshop, it had irked me that I wasn't just stepping through the Ring for personal travel. Of course, the Ring's original purpose had only been to reach the connection point between me and Pro; it wasn't normally all that kind to organic matter that passed through it if you weren't careful. The Pipboy and Gauntlet were designed to keep my arms and anything I carried safe, but still, I'd been prevented from just using it as a Stargate.

The add-on changed that, finally. It was the only thing keeping me from being atomized by the temporal and dimensional shear. Once I was sure it was working I stepped back into reality. It had been a long while since I had stepped back, and I blinked at how bright it was and at the overwhelming scent of all the animals who lived here.

The sounds of animals crying out and shuffling around in their undersized cages slowed me down, just for a moment. There were a lot of them in the "retiring residents" section I'd gotten the cats from. I shook it off and quickly grabbed some of the cages, then stepped back into the workshop and set them down in my large receiving area. It didn't take long to repeat the process half a dozen times, clearing out the section completely.

When I was done, I wrote a quick note and left it on one of the counters in a visible spot. It read, If that's not enough, send me another message. I have plenty more room.

I checked the cages. I'd gotten several species of snakes, an iguana, a bird, 13 cats and 7 dogs. All of them were from species I already remotely taken samples of for the catalog, so I used a dropper to dose them all with nanites, which would take care of both their hunger and any murderous instincts. Walking over to a wall, I plucked a doorway receiver out of my Inventory. I reached up to place it on the wall above head height, then activated it.

A bright rainbow of colors coelesed below it, and slowly formed into a 6 foot tall archway; even with the Ring acting as my Stargate, I kept backup systems to get to the places I really cared about. Beyond the rainbow-doorframe I could see the rocky surface of L33T's Planet Paradise (no relation to Planet L33t Land). As the light on the receiver blinked green, I started walking the cages through the arch.

I stepped through with the last cage and looked around. I'd never actually been here. Some lion cubs were wrestling to the left, I could make out a giraffe calf chasing an elephant calf off in the distance. The landscape looked kind of bleak.

The grey ground still had an ashy quality. While it had looked like the surface of the moon before I started the terraforming process, for some reason I imagined it changing once I gave the planet an atmosphere with the Terraforming Engine. It still just looked like a field after a volcano eruption. A ton of ash and rock, with tiny green sprouts coming out of the ground. I thought they would grow faster.

Staring out, it occured to me that the planet hadn't been accelerated in time, like I had. My Speed Seeds may grow far faster than mother nature's, but they still took time. It only had been a few days real time.

"Pro. What is our progress on project Game Master?" I asked my constant companion as I opened the cages, allowing the creatures to leave them at their own pace.

"Sir, we are still waiting on their compiling. The collective hasn't expressed consciousness yet, but it seems to be close to emerging," Pros said, sounding pleased.

"We're going to be fathers, buddy!" I exclaimed, half jokingly.

"I am so proud, Sir."

I was really hoping the synthetic intelligence would fulfill the role I had planned for him. I wanted someone who could interface with the hard light projectors I had based off the designs for the seekers. I wanted to see if I could transform some of the landscape into an actual video game, with environments and monsters and everything. Maybe not taste or smell (yet), but sight and sound and touch.

Thinking on it, I made a decision. Maybe giving him sensory input would help move along the emergence process.

"Give GM access to the Game Piece Fabricator. I want the world filled out as soon as possible, even if it's just with constructs and hard light. The biological flora can catch up after."

"Alright, Sir. Game Master has been given access to the Game Piece Fabricator." Pro paused. "GM has already begun to produce Pieces with the Fabricator, Sir."

"I thought his consciousness was still coelessing?" I asked, not sure how the infant AI had managed to pull together so quickly.

"It is, Sir. This occurrence should not be possible," Pro replied, sounding worried.

"Any clue on what the issue is or what he's doing?"

"He is creating pieces as fast as the Fabricator can produce them, Sir. Now he has directed them through the doorway."

I looked behind me, to see a steady stream of translucent orbs, all identical in size, pouring through the rainbow doorway. I braced myself for anything. GM was untethered. If a synthetic intelligence killed me, I would at least die knowing I had never compromised my morals.

The wave of orbs passed me and a sound like an air compressor drew my attention over my shoulder. Standing three feet behind me was a towering oak tree.

Another pop-hiss and a 20 foot pine materialized a couple of yards to my right. Another pop and a knee high section of moss-covered cobblestone wall sprang forth down the road by the elephant and giraffe calves, both of which looked mildly annoyed at having their game interrupted. As more and more orbs moved on the world around me began forming into a sparse forest. It was crude, and some of the grass or trees were placed in random or illogical places, but nothing clipped into anything else and if you didn't know what to look for, it all would have seemed artificially planted. Not artificially made, just placed in a way that nature hadn't intended.

As I stood looking on, confused, I realized that I could make out the sound of music softly coming out of the oak tree by my side. Listening carefully, it sounded like the relaxing exploration music from one of Bethesda's games.

"What am I witnessing here, buddy?" I whispered to Pro.

"It seems that Game Master is fulfilling his purpose, Sir. Though his programming is not performing in any way I had predicted. We will have to wait and see what happens."

"Well, hopefully this goes fine. We'll just wait and see," I said with a touch of hopefulness. Watching trees popping up across my now vastly improved eyesight made the whole world feel more habitable. I knew the hard light constructs were just facsimiles of the real thing, but they were hyper realistic and allowed me to suspend my disbelief easily. The tremorsense I now happily benefited from told me the hard light constructs included roots and everything the natural structure of a tree would need. GM was making the environment almost precisely anatomically correct.

"GM? Could you give me an enemy to fight? A clear one?" I asked into the ether. Music seemed to began to emanate from the oak next to me. Godzilla's theme, by Blue Oyster Cult reverberated across the landscape. Fuck. "Something more manageable, ya goof?"

The music shifted, and the Imperial March started to resonate from all around me. "Beware the innocents," I spoke out as a stormtrooper stood up from behind the mossy wall. The animals, sensing danger, either took off or backed up warily. I dove to the side as a red laser sailed through the spot I had, a brief moment before, inhabited. Turning the dive into a roll, I sprung up and sprinted to the Pine to my right. Crouching behind the tree I reached out forward into my inventory and drew out the Super Rifle as another red laser scorched the limb above my head. GM was already talented.

Flipping the setting to lethal, I waited for a volley of blaster fire to end before darting around the tree and lining up a shot with the stormtrooper's helmet. Pulling the trigger, I was rewarded with a dark black scoring in the stormtrooper's forehead, and the figure crumpling over the mossy wall.

"Thank you, Game Master, that was awesome! Pro, show me the stats I asked for from before the Docks fight again?"

[Strength: 207]
[Constitution: 212]
[Dexterity: 190]
[Intelligence: 241]
[Wisdom: 156]

[Detect Ambush](Lvl. 155/1000)(77% to Next Level)

[Intelligence](Lvl. 179/1000)(0% to Next Level)

[Perception](Lvl. 209/1000)(19% to Next Level)

[Sniper](Lvl. 214/1000)(03% to Next Level)

[First Aid](Lvl. 101/1000)(62% to Next Level)

[Athletics](Lvl. 411/1000)(18% to Next Level)

[Boxing](Lvl. 799/1000)(34% to Next Level)

[Climbing](Lvl. 124/1000)(05%2 to Next Level)

[Hand to Hand Combat: Basic](Lvl. 273/1000)(55% to Next Level)

[Judo](Lvl. 179/1000)(91% to Next Level)

[Marathon](Lvl. 259/1000)(92% to Next Level)

[Prowl](Lvl. 230/1000)(36% to Next Level)

[Running](Lvl. 476/1000)(78% to Next Level)

[Tumbling](Lvl. 187/1000)(02% to Next Level)

Not a huge leap since I'd last checked them, but it was time to cease Tinkering and sciencing, and to start training. I had a lot of new animalistic improvements to test out. This whole hiatus I was taking from the real world was in order to protect my family. I hadn't actually made a lot of strides on the protection side of things, but I had Tinkered plenty. Now was the time to level up so I could become the defender that Newt and Elle and Rob needed.

"GM, a mile to the west of the door, could you please set up Serious Sam: The First Encounter? Make sure to protect the biologicals."

The circus music that opened the Serious Sam games played around me. I took that as confirmation. Jogging towards the pyramid that had appeared off in the distance, I grinned. It was time to game.


AN: Edited by jgjemmett