Chapter 6.1
Hard drives, car exhausts, dinosaurs, fire alarms, jewelry stores, coloured glass. Most of those should be easy to gather, and there wasn't any school today.

First, however, I needed a place to stash my supplies. Which is why I was looking around the boat graveyard. Trying to find a nice empty ship to stash my shit in.

Problem was, like half of them were stuck in the water, and not all that easy to reach. Especially not if I had to bring stuff. Maybe it'd be better to just find an abandoned building somewhere, in a place no-one ever noticed.

Eventually, wandering around the shitty part of town, I found a building I could use. The area of town it was located in was called the docks, the building I had my eyes on looked like it had been abandoned for a while, and there was a window on the second floor I could climb up to without entering through the front door. It was hard, but I managed to stack a few dumpsters and somehow climb up. It didn't even hurt too much, my limbs were almost healed. Once inside, I looked around. It seemed to have been some sort of office once, given the dust-covered cubicles. No-one had even attempted to clean it out, there were old chairs, paper, lots of stuff. No computers though, not on this floor. I wasn't sure whether that was because they had been removed, or because the place was so old they didn't have computers when it was made.

No typewriters either. That was too bad, I'd always wanted to know how to make that little ding sound.

Sneaking through the dust, I eventually found the stairs down, and figured out why no-one had entered the building. The entire bottom floor was covered in old police tape, there were a lot of gouges in the ground, what looked like acid had eaten away part of the floor, and the wallpaper was shredded and torn everywhere. Part of the room looked like it had been burned. Whatever had happened here, it'd been a long time ago. It was probably older than I was, although it looked like there'd been a cape-fight. One horrifying enough that no-one had returned here after the corpses had been removed.

I could probably safely ignore this room. Plus, if I made noise, people would just think it was an angry spirit or something, and let me be. It was the perfect place for a secret base.

I made my way back up the stairs, and explored further. There was a bathroom, that might have been sort of working, I could try, but, if I tried and it turned out it didn't work, the entire base would be ruined. Instead, I looked further, seeing what I could find.

There was an office with a big couch, a place I could sleep if I needed to. You know, after I built a black-light and checked the room. It also had an old computer. Maybe old enough to have one of those hard-drives the people on the internet had told me about. Should I try to fix it? Or just scrap it for parts? I could always bring my laptop if I needed to calculate or program something.

That was about it for the second floor, so there was only one more to go.

The third floor contained a few more cubicles, a big office with a massive desk chair, probably leather or something, and a small kitchen place. I checked, it wasn't stocked, unless you counted the cobwebs

I decided it would do, and grabbed one of my power tools, it was time to transform those cubicles into a workspace.

*** Gadget ***

It had been a lot of exhausting work, but I was done by the time dad called, asking when I was coming home for dinner. I informed him I'd start on my way home, and would be there in half an hour.

I looked back at my new workshop, an array of tables making a massive workbench, I'd fixed up this shitty place enough to make sure I could get started on the materials, I even cleaned the massive chair, on which I could sit, twirling around and stroking my evil goatee, you know, if I had one of those.

I went back to the broken window I'd used to enter, and worked my way down. It was slightly harder than getting up, but whatevs. My journey out of the docks was uneventful. It was still light out, and the drug dealers weren't even around yet.

I'd need something to protect myself, or maybe just put on my helmet the next time I went to my new secret base.

Eventually, I caught the bus back, and realized that I'd completely wasted my day without getting any tinkering done.

Sure, I"d managed to set up a base… but I really wanted to start working.

Well, tomorrow would be Saturday, so I could get shit done then.

The Boston zoo was nice, I had to admit, the meerkats were utterly adorable, the lions were properly ferocious but also lazy, the penguins had amazing little suits, and the monkeys were very good at throwing shit at the other guests.

It wasn't the same as getting my tinker on, but I had something better. I had my dad in the insect department.

"Dad, look, tarantulas!"

He averted his eyes a bit, and stepped forward slowly, trying to overcome his fear.

"Why is it fuzzy? I thought only mammals had hair, that's what the biology book said."

"They're not really hairs, they're a defence mechanism. Those hairs are called urticating hairs, they irritate the skin of whatever touches them."

"So, like cactuses?"

"Yeah, although the proper word to use in this situation is cacti"

"Cuz its Latin?"

"I think so, yes."

I ran on to the next room of the terrarium. The tarantulas, and dad overcoming his fear, had been fun, but they weren't as cool as the snakes. I absently wondered if I should ask for a snake for my next birthday. It'd be really cool, and I could spam Emma with snake pictures which would freak her out, but having to feed it mice all the time didn't seem like a good idea. Although, maybe I could sneak one into my gadgetspace, although… what if it didn't work? Or it'd be the same every time it came out? It seemed like something horrible to do with an animal, especially a cute little snake in front of me, licking at the glass in front of my face.

Still, they had a python here, behind the thick glass. Just lounging around. Dad was walking even slower now. Was he more afraid of snakes than insects?

*** Armsmaster ***

Colin could only wish he'd thought about this before taking Sely on a road-trip to the zoo.

Sure, he'd gotten the entire day off, and Sely probably needed something to cheer her up after what had happened at school, but snakes…

When he saw how tired she'd been after coming home yesterday, he'd decided to bring her here. He'd always like the zoo as a kid, and Sely looked to be enjoying herself.

The problem was that the spiders reminded him of a villain he'd once fought. A biokinetic striker that could greatly increase the size of any animal he touched, and gained a slight amount of control over them.

One giant spider had been okay, a hundred of them though…

The snakes were worse, they just reminded him of the massive worm Blasto had brought the one time he'd visited Brockton Bay for a trip. He'd had to fight his way out from the inside, which, while making for a great story, had also gotten him to be absolutely covered in slime and worm guts. It'd taken him a day to get all the gunk out of his armour.

But, it looked like Sely was happy, so remembering the bad stuff was a small price to pay. And he'd won those battles, he could make his way through the terrarium.

"So, Sely, do you want to talk about what happened Thursday?"

She looked at him, her grey-green eyes showing his reflection in them.

"Dunno…" she went silent.

He put his hand on her head, and messed up her hair a bit. "c'mon you little whippersnapper, let's get something to eat."

They left the terrarium, and made their way to the restaurant, which had an aquarium wall. It was nice, watching the fish while eating their kin. It'd be better if he replaced the glass with a forcefield that stopped water and fish, while letting people through. It'd mean there was more of a possibility for interaction, but not everyone could build tinker-tech of that calibre.

"I hate being injured…" Sely said.

"Well you know what the doctor said, just a week and they'll remove the cast on your leg."

She sighed. She was obviously not very happy about the time-frame. He wondered again whether or not he should've asked Panacea for help, but knowing how Sely had reacted to the notion of parahumans…

They sat in silence for a few minutes, neither of them knowing what to talk about.

Until he noticed someone in the crowd that he recognized. A woman he'd known for quite some time, almost since he'd joined the protectorate.

Mouse Protector was on the prowl, and it'd only be a matter of seconds until she-

"Hey Colin, long time no see!" her voice echoed through the lunch restaurant. Kate had no idea about the concept of indoor voices, in or out of costume.

Sely looked in her direction, "Who's that?"

"Someone I used to work with, we went to college together for a while." He replied. Not telling her that, unlike the others, he'd decided not to pursue a full college education while hero-ing. None it actually helped him with his powers, and the engineering classes had been rather boring.

"Hey now beardsley, who's this little squirt?" Kate said, pretending not to know about Sely.

"I'm not a squirt!" she replied.

Kate had grabbed a chair from somewhere. And had started stealing his fries.

Sely, determined not to be out-done, had decided to go for his food as well.

This was why he never visited Boston…

"So, how'd you find us anyway?" he asked. It couldn't be a coincidence, but then again, he hadn't informed anyone in Brockton where he was going, except that he'd be in Boston.

He'd need to have a word with Assault…

"You know, I guess I just had a hunch!"

Her thinker, that explained a lot.

"So, squirt, what do you think about elephants?"

"They're okay, I gotta say I prefer giraffes though."

"Yeah, giraffes are pretty cool. Didya know a local villain named Blasto made a giant giraffe once?"

"A giant giraffe? How'd that work?"

"Not all that well, there's a reason he only ever made the one. It kept falling over, with legs taller than most buildings. Its neck was cool though, it could twist it into all kinds of shapes, kind of like a balloon animal!"

Collin suddenly remembered the attack, and the subsequent backlash against Mouse Protector from animal rights groups. It had been one of Blasto's less effective plans. Also plants, the giraffe, like almost everything else Blast made, had been at least partly plant.

"So, why'd you ask about the elephants?" Sely asked, being the one to bring a conversation back on-topic for once.

"Well, I happen to know one of the zookeepers, and I just might be able to con him into letting you help feed them!"

Colin wasn't sure what to think. The girls, that is, Sely, Mouse Protector, and the twenty something zookeeper, were all busy playing with a baby elephant in the middle of the inside enclosure, a place normally forbidden to guests. He was leaning against a large iron bar, checking his mail on his phone.

There was another complaint from the youth guard about Argenta's behavior, a status report from Battery, stating that she thought Rachel would be ready for her first patrol tonight, a quick overview of the current status of the gangs, a request for Iridium and Cobalt by Kid Win, who had gotten some ideas about anti-gravity and mass-cancellation and wanted to test them, and a memo from Dragon about upcoming Endbringer attacks.

Behemoth had struck the C.U.I. in January, and been driven back after Scion interfered. That meant the next attack would be the Simmurgh, or perhaps Leviathan. Dragon speculated that the next strike would be somewhere in Europe, and he agreed, based on his prediction program. It had been a simple time-wasting project, nothing serious, but he'd correlated atmospheric data, seismic activity, and crime statistics, and been able to come relatively close to predicting Endbringer attacks in retrospect.

He still wasn't sure on what to do. Everything he believed him screamed at him to fight the beasts, to drive them back for the sake of humanity. But, when he looked at his daughter.

If he died. It'd be like failing her all over again. Leaving her all alone in the world, with nothing but a brain-damaged mother that hated her, blaming her for all that had gone wrong.

But would Sely want a father that was too afraid to do what needed to be done? If he died fighting an Endbringer, at least she could be proud of him. And he knew what the survival rates were like. Sure, they were low, for first-timers. Experienced people, capes that had fought all of them before, they tended to do better.

Plus, he'd have an excuse to see dragon again, not over a computer, but in the flesh, or steel in her case. Sure, it was still remote-control, but it was somehow more real.

… Except he'd made a promise to Sely, about what he'd do the next time he met her. He could file her virtual presence away as not being real, but her mech-suits…

How the hell did you ask a twelve-feet-tall robot out for coffee?

His thought process was interrupted by a trunk sniffing at his ears. He looked behind him, and saw a rather large elephant bull at the other side of the massive iron bars, that had taken an interest in him. He looked at the beasts eyes, and saw that it was looking at Sely and the elephant puppy, who were now almost rolling over the floor.

"Kids huh." He said. The beast snorted in agreement

When they left, it was nearing closing time, the zookeeper told them to go ahead, she'd lost the keys somewhere and needed to close up. Colin looked at Sely, she didn't have anything in her pockets she hadn't had before, and there were no outlines visible in her sling either. Hannah had probably just been paranoid, and perhaps slightly annoyed at Sely's apparent dislike of her.

Kate left them on the way back to the car, stating work issues. Colin checked his phone a final time, and noticed a report flagged important. He skimmed through the message. It turned out that some of the small players in the city had united. Trainwreck, Grue, Circus, and two unidentified figures had struck a jewelry store, taking both what was on display, and the more valuable things in the safe. Strange, that they had gotten access to it so easily. Luck? An applicable power? Or was it an inside job?

No-one had gotten hurt though, so it could wait until tomorrow.

"Dad?" Sely mumbled, she was getting sleepy

"Yes?"

"Today was fun."