"I did do that, yes," she said, nodding slowly. "Though I go by Manhattan Project now."

"Ostentatious," I replied, tuning my power between us. "So you are a bomb tinker, then?"

A grating hissing noise issued out of Manhattan's gas mask.

"Nihil supernum," she gestured grandly with her free arm. "Better than all the rest. I can do shit that makes Dragon look like a scrub."

"Learned Latin in college, huh?" I muttered, trying to get a proper handle on the readings I was getting from her.

She was definitely new to the city, and had no connections to anyone I could think of. This meant she didn't know who I was, and while she was quite pleased I knew about her past bomb threats, she thought I was a rival villain and was considering something violent. She also thought I was a tinker, and she didn't like that one bit.

"But where are my manners?" I asked before she could answer. "I have the pleasure of being the first to greet you to this city. I'm Psychonaut, half of the independent hero duo Team Satisfaction. My partner is indisposed today, I'm afraid, but I'd be happy to answer any questions you have about Brockton Bay."

"You're a hero?" Manhattan hissed flatly. Her leather glove creaked slightly as her grip tightened on her grenade launcher. "I'm not buying it."

Shit. She thought I was making fun of her. Shit, damage control.

"I wear no mask. If you'll allow, I have a card-" I flicked my left wrist and produced a card. It was gonna be great when the PRT searched her pockets after they arrested her and found that. "If you'd like to take it?"

She didn't move.

"Oh," I said. "Well, I'll throw it over."

I'd gotten quite good at throwing playing cards when I was practicing my sleight of hand, and now with the ice steadily creeping up my arm I had no doubts I could do it right. I let it fly, and it flew true, bouncing off Manhattan's gas mask and falling into the bowl her collar made.

All at once the two in the car reacted at the same time Manhattan jerked back, levelling her grenade launcher at me. I squeezed the grip of my gun as hard as I could, activating the menacing glow and hum function.

The sound, a bit like a shrill electric engine with a steady bass undertone, stopped the action dead.

"There's no need to panic, I did just say I was throwing it to her," I spoke as confidently as it was possible to do when trapped between two people with handguns sitting in a van and having a grenade launcher pointed at you by someone who wanted to kill you for embarrassing her. "I'm sorry it got you in the face."

A chill that was as much power as well as fear ran up my spine as Manhattan slowly reached into her collar and read the card, bending it out of shape between clenched, trembling fingers.

I swallowed and tried to get my stiff fingers to unclench on the pistol grip. The foreboding hum slowly died and the red light dimmed.

A fraught silence followed as Manhattan stared at the card, her body language somewhere between rage and incredulity. Finally she relaxed and I realised she had just counted to ten to avoid blowing me and her henchmen up. With a cold finality she slowly put the card into a pocket and re-shouldered the grenade launcher.

I licked my dry lips: Phase one complete.

"Cute trick," she said, "what kind of tinker are you?"

As expected, she didn't want the heat for killing a hero so early in the game, so it was time to go with Plan A.

"Jack of all trades, more or less. Can't build a clock though, never tried to make a bomb before."

Helpfully, my power started supplying me with schematics for bombs.

"Figures," Manhattan managed to scoff despite having all inflection and tone filtered out of her voice by that freakish gas mask.

"Yeah," I shrugged at length, trying to distract from the burning pain that was starting up in my right shoulder from having that arm raised for so long. "So what are you doing in Brockton Bay anyway, we're not exactly close to New York."

"Yessss…" Manhattan hissed. "You will bear witness to what happens here today, and you will tell of it later. I make it no secret, I've been called here to hunt Nazi's. I will reduce the Empire to ashes and stand upon them as the new power in this rotten little shithole of a city, ruling it with my gang, The Bakudan."

I clicked my tongue, "hey, uh, Manhattan? You haven't actually hurt anyone though, have you? I mean, I know bomb threats are super illegal but you still don't have the police after you that hard, right? If you want to hunt Nazi's we should team up, if you go straight edge from now on and show the PRT all the good you can do I'm sure they'll cut you some slack. I think it'd be good."

And it'd mean I'd get my hands on that sweet, sweet bomb tech.

"You fucking idiot, when I said you're gonna tell of this later I meant that you also get to tell the story of getting to choose which of your limbs I turn to fucking glass!"

My breath caught in my throat as I sucked in great lungfulls of air. Ok, so Plan A hadn't worked. Good news was I wasn't sure if she was bluffing or not and hey, with a power like mine that meant she was just being indecisive and that was actually good in this situation.

I chuckled like she'd told a funny joke and mentally marked her down as being the Tinker version of Tattletale. I still wasn't worried, terrified out of my goddamn mind, but not worried. I mean, I still had Plan B.

I lowered my sonic pistol, "You know what, Manhattan? You're a real straight shooter, I like that. How about we make a little wager. You get your goons to gather up as much scrap as they can, we each make a bomb and the first one to die loses."

I could feel it, my power leaping up in a great juddering jolt. This was going perfectly.

"You're insane," she said.

"I don't feel insane."

"I am the fucking bomb tinker. You think you can get away with saying that shit to me? You're fucking dead, bitch."

I turned to the two in the van who were both pointing their guns at me, faces warped into a perfect trifecta of fear, confusion and awe.

"Can you believe this chump?" I asked them, jabbing my thumb at Manhattan.

Manhattan screamed, a harsh discordant sound that ripped right through whatever confidence I had left, and kicked the side of the van hard enough to warp the metal.

"Get the fuck out of the van!" she shrieked, kicking it again. "And find all the shit you can! Then we're going to sit down and I'm going to make this cunt wish I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream was a fucking nursery rhyme."

I understood that reference, and it did nothing to make me feel better about this. Could I have made a mistake in challenging Manhattan Project to a bomb making contest? Only time would tell, but for now this satisfied the requirements for the completion of phase two.

The henchmen scrambled out of the van and ran into the abandoned looking house it was parked at. Manhattan followed them, shoving me with her shoulder as she walked past me. It was a strangely petty move coming from a gang leader, enough so that it reminded me of Sophia bumping me in school back when she was still in town.

I took a deep breath and let it out. Time to get this show on the road.

I followed Manhattan up the back steps and into the house. It was musty inside, with faded, peeling green wallpaper and sickly orange carpeting. Inside the living room Manhattan's henchmen were piling all the appliances they could find onto the moth eaten couch. So far this amounted to three standing lamps and a wind up clock.

I needed more than this, maybe some chemicals. I doubted even Manhattan could build a bomb with a spring, a light filament and whatever inert gas was inside the bulb.

"Go and search the house next door when you've stripped this place clean," Manhattan worked a grenade out of her bandoleers and tossed it to the man. "Use this if anyone's home."

God I hoped that was only knockout gas.

I crossed my arms for lack of things to do with them, I was becoming increasingly sure this wasn't my greatest idea. All the parts of my brain that weren't supplying bomb schematics, telling me Manhattan wanted to kill me if it was the last thing she ever did or proving the freezing surety that I was unbeatable were thinking unsettling things; like what would my father say?

I frowned and moved to the free seat on the couch, making sure I didn't sit on my cape and sprawling in a perfect facsimile of confidence upon it.

One of Cassie's Cape Rules, always act like you're in complete control of the situation unless you gain an advantage by not.

"What made you want to kill off the Nazis?" I asked, hefting my left ankle up on my other knee. "Not that anyone would really complain about that."

She threw me what seemed to be a disgusted glare.

"Lotta rich people hate them. So when they heard of me they naturally thought I was the only one who could actually ever get the job done, something that has never been done before."

That made sense. If I was a hair trigger narcissist who could only make bombs I'd probably accept money to blow up Nazis too.

As the two henchmen trooped into the room and unloaded armfuls of assorted electrical and household cleaning goods I made a mental note to check next door after I'd dismantled The Bakudan, and call an ambulance for whoever was living there.

"So!" I bounced to my feet and clapped my hands. "I was thinking a fifteen minute time limit, then we both stand in the middle of the room and trade at the same time so the bomb has to kill the other without any collateral to ourselves."

Manhattan hissed wheezingly, "Yeah that might be hard for you."

I reached into my pouch and felt around for my tinkertech multi-tool, bringing it out and flipping it like a butterfly knife, "Alright, someone start the timer."

I grabbed a blender and sat down next to the pile of goods, flipping it over I started unscrewing the base. I had no idea whether or not I could use it but I needed the time to figure out my next move, namely what sort of bomb I was going to make.

Everything I could think of was not a single target explosive, my bombs were brutal and built for annihilating vast swathes of the enemy. A sickly feeling arose in my gut as I truly realised for the first time that this was a mistake. I could feel my power escalate steadily, trying to compensate, to give me something to get out of this mess but the bombs just got bigger and more vicious, the anti-grav pack I'd wanted for so long was impractical and I had no idea where I would get the fuel source for that kind of laser.

I glanced at Manhattan, smoothly building a detonator, her relationship to me was clearer than ever but that did no good either; there was nothing I could use there. Nothing about her motives would help now, all of them would just serve to further lock us into this death game.

My mind was working faster and faster, but it could only spit out so many useless ideas at once.

I reached for an old deodorant can that had been swept up with the rest when the realisation hit me like a hammer. I was a fucking idiot. What the fuck was I doing playing into this little wager like I had some kind of moral imperative to be honourable?

All of my confidence swept back in like a tidal wave of frost, I didn't have to make a bomb because I could make other things.

I whipped out my phone and started trawling through the data collected from my scanner.

"Oi!" Manhattan barked. "What're you doing with that?"

"I," I drawled. "Am checking some research data. Prepare to be amazed, you've never seen a bomb like this."

To my surprise, she nodded understandingly.

"I modelled some of my earlier work after Tesla's research into vibrations. Turn anything to mush they can. Solid concrete, wood, people, vehicles. I was originally going to go with one for this, but you deserve something more painful than just bleeding out via dismemberment."

"Kickass. Did you know you can study powers and incorporate your findings into your tech?" I asked, my hands now a blur of movement. A well-oiled machine of treachery. "I won't tell you what my partner's is, but you should look into that if you ever wake up from this."

"Nice," she replied, the lenses of her mask extending to magnify the delicate circuitry she was fiddling with. "Ties in nicely with my side project of getting control of Squealer. A Skidmark force direction power bomb would be flashy if nothing else."

I couldn't help but laugh. "I had that same idea about Squealer, though of course I was a sociopath at the time." I punctured the deodorant can and let the old fumes hiss out before sawing it in half and jamming the Jump-Field Battery down into the bottom as hard as I could.

The bulk of the emitter was going to be the most complex thing I had ever made by far, a real thing of beauty. And I was going to name it after Manhattan Project.

I was going to call it The Dumbass.

I bound the Function Control circuit board to the Exotic Wave Emission Package with a scrap of aging scotch tape and merged the wiring to the battery connector with my Vibro-Solder, taking care not to shred the metal and screw the whole thing up.

I slid the taped together parts into the half an aerosol can, which just fit, and started to work on the ignition switch. At thirteen minutes in that bit would be easier than easy, mostly because I could just take it wholesale out of a desk lamp.

There was no time to build a lid so I just wound the scotch tape over the top to seal it up and around the sides to keep the switch from getting torn off as it dangled out awkwardly.

"Done yet?"

I looked up at Manhattan who was sitting like she'd been watching me work for a while.

I held up my ugly looking, yet incomparable in function 'bomb' and shrugged, "I'll make it pretty later."

She stood up and I followed suit, tucking my great creation under my armpit and picking my phone up off the ground.

"If you don't mind," I started typing out a text to Cassie. "I'm going to tell my partner where to pick up my corpse."

"Whatever," said Manhattan. "We'll be out of here in less than a minute anyway."

I hit send and stuffed it back into my pouch as we stepped to the center of the room, me on my own, Manhattan Project flanked by her two henchmen. I eyeballed the distance, we were all well within range, and flicked the switch.

I was dimly aware of four bodies hitting the floor.