Chapter 8.1
Rose was taking her sweet time, catching up to me. It had to have been, like, an hour or something like that already.
Plus, she refused to actually pick up her phone.
Suddenly, a horrible thought came up. What if she was still seeing everything from my eyes, but somehow my blinking didn't work anymore? I knew that her power only worked when I blinked. At that moment she could choose to either do nothing, teleport me, return to her body, or move towards someone who's eyes I could see. Before meeting me, she'd been using that to case the joint, as she called it. I wasn't quite sure why weed was involved, but whatever.
Slowly, I tried blinking a couple more times, giving her a chance to either teleport me or make her way out. Nothing happened though. Why wouldn't she do anything? Quickly, I grabbed a piece of paper, and used Accord's pen to write a message.
If you can read this, teleport me one meter forwards
Then, I blinked.
Nothing. So it was an actual problem, not me looking in the wrong directions.
For just a sec, I wondered about calling Accord. Rose had told me he disliked speaking to people he hadn't vetted before, but could it really be that bad? Maybe I should go through my options first.
I could, of course, go home the normal way. Either get on a bus, or hotwire a car or something. Sure, my last car ride hadn't gone great, but I'd gotten a lot of life experience in the meantime, and also played a few racing games, so it'd probably go a lot better this time.
But that wouldn't stop Rose's problem. No, I needed to move towards Boston instead. Maybe I could do something to help Rose when I saw the problem.
Okay, so I'd need to get to Boston. First step, find a car. I was in the middle of nowhere right now, but I was pretty sure there was a highway nearby, which meant cars.
*** Gadget ***
About five minutes, and twelve grappling hooks, later, I'd found my highway. Which was really a misnomer, because it was actually placed in a hollow between two foresty hills, and not high at all. The other option, of course, was that the high in highway was related to drugs. I thought that unlikely, but it would explain the average person's driving habits.
Now, I just needed to find a car I could steal. Preferably without walking too far.
With that, I got lucky. There was a small gas station not too far away, just a mile or so. Which, now that I thought about it, was actually quite far when walking. That was the problem with cars, you just forgot how fucking far everything was.
There were two things I could do. Or actually, three things. I could walk, which wasn't really an option. I could use my remaining grappling hooks to launch myself off of trees to increase my travelling speed. Or, I could use my grappling hooks to attach myself to a car, which sounded like an amazing idea. Sure, it also sounded like something that could kill me, but that was just a small detail. After all, space-travel was also dangerous, and astronauts were hailed as national heroes. Or at least, they were in the past. There weren't really any astronauts these days. Which was ridiculous, because tinker-tech probably meant astronauting was a lot simpler. Even normal powers helped. For example, instead of using boosters and shit, NASA could just ask Alexandria to throw rocket into space.
Having decided on my, completely safe, course of action, I waited for a slow-moving truck to drive by, and launched my hookshot. It latched on with a clunk, and pulled me forward like crazy, almost removing my arm from my torso.
I'd need to figure out some way to distribute that load, maybe use my braking cable instead? That would take out some of the strain… but I also needed to get closer to the car afterwards, so it'd probably mean I needed to make a new one just for getting a free ride.
The device managed to reel me in before burning out, and before I dropped to the ground and got shredded into minced meat. Now, I was just barely holding on to the back of a truck that, hopefully, didn't know I was there. Problem was, the car behind it had just started honking like a maniac, since there was a fourteen year old supervillain with an awesome helmet hanging on to the truck in front of it.
I grabbed another hookshot, and used it to get to the roof. Maybe once I was up there, I would be more or less invisible. For just a second, I debated using the sleeper on the car following us, but that would probably lead to some horrifying accident, which Rose would classify as 'Drawing unnecessary attention.' Also, it would be unethical, even though the constant honking was really, really annoying.
The trucker however, was happy to completely ignore the crazy driver behind him.
Sadly, the truck didn't stop anywhere where I could steal a car. Luckily, it did go to Boston.
On another flipside, a lot of people were watching the teenager standing on top of a truck.
Eventually, it looked like the truck was going to stop, so I jumped off, using one of my recently regenerated hookshots to dismount it. The ride had taken a while, and the wind had been cold, but for the rest, I was okay.
I grabbed my phone and tried calling Rose again. Maybe she'd figured out what the problem was in the meantime. Although, if she had, why hadn't she called me.
I waited for her to pick up, one, two…
On precisely the third tone, someone picked up the line. It wasn't Rose.
"Well well well, if it isn't our little thief." Accord's voice came out over the line. Weird. Why was Accord answering Rose's phone? Had she fallen unconscious, was that why he was answering for her?
"Yup, it's me." I answered.
"You stole something." He said.
"Yeah, that's why you hired us ya dummy." I replied. Of course we stole something. How else would we have gotten our hands on all those paintings? Seriously, high-class supervillains just weren't as smart as they used to be.
"No young lady, you stole something that belonged to me," he said calmly, the anger just barely hidden behind a silky voice. He sounded like someone desperately trying to control his anger.
Also… he was probably talking about the pen, not the paintings. That… that did make a lot more sense.
"Hey, I thought it was complementary. You know, like the towels in a hotel."
"I… what… Young lady those are NOT Complementary!" Accord replied. Now shouting over the phone.
"Anyway, you mind giving me Ocean for a sec? I need to talk to her" I said. This was going nowhere, Accord didn't even know anything about hotels.
Also, why was he so angry about a fucking pen. If everyone got that angry whenever they lost something so petty, well, a lot of people would be really angry at me.
Wasn't my fault anyway, and it was just a fucking pen. If he didn't want me to take it he shouldn't have put it there.
And it was just a fucking pen anyway…
"I don't think you quite understand the situation you are in," Accord replied, suddenly calm again.
"And I don't think you understand how much an asshole you are. Give Ocean her phone back." I said.
"You know what? Let's play a game. If you can guess just how completely out of your depth you are, I'll show you where your colleague is," Accord replied.
"Well, if you can guess how much of a fucking asshole you are-" I replied, before being cut off by an invisible hand punching my phone out of my hand.
The f? I looked around, trying to figure out what had happened, but there wasn't anyone around.
Then, something hit me over the head, cracking the glass of my helmet. Before I could react to it, something invisible kicked me in the chest, and half a second later I felt a needle in my arm.
Well fuck… putting someone to sleep against their will was my shtick.
*** Armsmaster ***
"Nothing. One second, she's calling someone in Boston. The next, her phone disappears, as if she destroyed it," Dragon said, worry apparent in her tone.
"Can't you track the person who called her?" Chevalier suggested.
"That's one of the first things I did, but it was a burner, only four calls made on it, all of them to Sely." Dragon replied
"And you're sure you don't know who could've called her?" Armsmaster asked Argenta.
"No, I mean, I don't really know any of her friends outside of school, since, you know, work." the girl replied.
Colin tried to hide his anger. Emma had known. She'd known since the very beginning and she hadn't told him. He was Sely's father, he had a right to know she was a cape. A Tinker even.
The very Tinker that the PRT guy in Westlake had speculated about.
At the same time, he couldn't really blame the girl. After all, he'd asked Emma to keep his own identity a secret as well.
Sure, it had been with the best of intentions, to try and give Sely a life without all the cape bullshit, but it had still backfired.
And now she was somewhere in Boston. How she'd gotten there, what she'd been doing there, he had absolutely no idea.
Except for the part where there'd been a robbery at the Forsberg gallery, apparently using tinkertech. Sure, some of it was just stolen containment foam, but there was the strange effect on the security cameras, as well as the fact that two professional security guards had decided to fall asleep at the exact same moment, without any known chemicals being present.
Combine that with whatever had happened Arcadia with the fake supervillain attack, and it became clear that his daughter was very, very versatile.
Tinker/Stranger, just what they needed. And now she was missing.
"Hmm, that's interesting," Dragon said.
"What is it?" he asked immediately.
"It seems like someone accessed the same records I did, regarding the location of Sely's phone."
"Who?" he replied.
"I'm not sure, it's done through several proxies that eventually link back to the local police department."
"Mouse Protector, do you know who could be responsible for this?"
"In Boston?" Kate asked. "Not the Teeth, they're not very subtle. Also not Night and Fog, so… probably Accord."
"Accord…" Chevalier said. "That, combined with the art theft, would go together."
"What, she stole something from him, but then Accord backstabbed her?" Emma asked.
"Maybe, maybe not. I don't know, but I think it's more probable than not that it's Accord. Which is bad, really bad," MP answered.
"Well, we need to get over there then," Chevalier said.
"Already on my way," Dragon replied over the computer screen, obviously having rerouted her fast response unit.
"In the meantime," Armsmaster responded. "I'm going to call in an old favour."
At that, he took out his phone and called someone he hadn't fought in quite a while.
"Hello?" the modulated voice on the other end of the line said.
"Hello Blasto. It's me. I'm calling in my favour."
*** Gadget ***
My hands were bound behind my back in what seemed to be a costum-made set of manacles. Costum-made because they weren't too big. I also had a gag in my mouth, a rope binding my legs to the chair, headphones with white noise on my ears, and a blindfold in front of my eyes
The only one of those that was a problem was the blindfold, mostly because I didn't know if anyone was standing guard.
I didn't want to break out only to see someone was standing just besides me to stop that exact thing from happening.
Thus, I waited, trying to figure out if there was anyone around. Also, I hoped that if someone was around, they wouldn't have figured out I was awake.
They probably would though, as I'd panicked for a few seconds after waking up.
Not anymore though. I wasn't the same little girl that had gotten kidnapped by both Horn and Hallucca in the span of two days.
My Gadget-Space was nearly filled up again, just missing the hookshot I'd used to dismount the truck.
I wondered where Rose was, although, if I really thought about it… She was probably in the same shape I was in. Or worse... If Accord caught her after figuring out I'd stolen his pen.
Fuck.
FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK.
I'd…
I'd gotten my partner killed. Probably. Maybe not though. I mean, Accord hadn't killed me yet.
But the internet said Tinkers were valuable. Like, really valuable. Movers, fun as they were, weren't that valuable.
So yeah…
Fuck.
…
…
Suddenly, the white noise in my ears stopped, and I heard someone breathing in front of me, just a few meters.
"You know, I almost feel bad for you," a woman said. The woman in the yellow mask, I think. Not sure, hard to tell, she didn't speak much.
"I mean, you're what, fourteen? Tricked into a life of crime by someone using you for your powers, then fucked over by your mental hang-ups," she said.
Wait, tricked into what now? What was she on about? Rose and I had been partners. She'd bring the expertise, I'd bring the tech.
Although… Tinkers were valuable according to the internet. If I were Rose, and I were evil… impressing a teenager to get some sweet loot…
She said she liked me, but did this mean she only liked me for my brain?
"Well, I'm guessing the Yangban wouldn't put you on field-duty, so you'll probably get a nice, well-equipped lab. Maybe that'll dull the pain of how utterly stupid you've been. I mean, seriously, what were you thinking, stealing from Accord of all people."
I hated her, this swanky classy dressed-up bullshit bitch. Pretending she gave a shit, even though she'd bound me up here.
Still, she'd made a mistake. I know knew she was the only person here, and I knew she wasn't going to kill me.
Sure, she was going to sell me to the Chinese, which was probably worse, but that meant I was worth a lot of money. Which meant she wasn't going to kill me the second she suspected I was up to something.
I blueprinted the cuffs around my arms, making them disappear.
"Wait, what's? No, you're a Tinker, that doesn't make any sense," the woman said. Had she noticed something?
I chose to act quickly, and absorbed the blindfold at the same time I grabbed the hookshot that fired at the highest velocity. Within half a second, I'd found her location, and aimed the hookshot at her.
Suddenly, the world seemed to get a weird tint, and I felt a strange pressure at the back of my head, where my blueprinted stuff was located. Not wanting to figure out what the woman was doing, I fired.
The forcefield generator at the front of the hook hit her mask, and went straight through, burrowing halfway into her eyeball before activating and lodging itself in there. As the woman clutched her bleeding face, I quickly absorbed all the stuff they'd used to tie me up.
Good quality rope, I noticed, reminded me of the pen.
Then, I ran past her towards the door. Whatever she'd been doing, it obviously required concentration, which was difficult when something was using a forcefield to attach itself to the middle of your eyeball.
I'd find some time to throw up at that thought later.
The woman had locked the door behind herself, which would've been a problem for everyone that didn't have a custom automated lockpicking device with her at all times.
The door opened, and I found myself in a hallway in what seemed to be the middle of the skyscraper I'd been in earlier today. I wasn't sure, but it had the same kind of architecture.
Testing my luck, I threw up a grenade with invisible foam in one direction, and ran towards the other. Then, for good measure, I threw a normal grenade at dress-bitch. I'd met elegantly dressed supervillain ladies before, and Paige was way more awesome than this poser bitch.
The hallway was, remarkably empty. I'd expected some sort of alarm to start, but no-one had noticed my escape yet. Or maybe Accord was too anal to have an alarm in his secret supervillain base.
That said, I needed to confirm what happened to Rose, and preferably also take down Accord. He's, well, he'd probably killed Rose, and he'd seen my face. That said, or thought as it was, I grabbed my helmet, including the earpieces I used to cancel out the noise of my alarm.
It had been a lot louder than I first expected, so it'd be a good distraction to drop somewhere.
Also, I could probably leverage my power tools somehow. And my grenades, and my…
I looked down, noticing I wasn't wearing my harness anymore. Just the shirt I was wearing under it. That meant I wouldn't be able to properly activate my mass-cancellation orbs. Which sucked.
Although… I could probably rewire them quite easily, which would have an… interesting effect on their environment, at least if I threw them at something intricate like a computer, or one of those ridiculously complicated mechanisms made by Accord. Those probably depended on them having a specific weight that didn't vary every second.
Suddenly, I saw someone leaving an office. A dude, twenty-something, wearing a suit. No mask, so probably not a cape. Good, I could use that.
I took out two hookshots, and aimed them at his torso.
"Hands where I can see them," I said calmly, totally cool, not panicking at all.
He pretended to hold his hands up in surprise, before quickly trying to sidestep my aim and probably take me down or something.
When I shot, he reacted fast enough to try and deflect my hooks with his arms, like he had some sort of martial arts training. However, he hadn't expected them to be tinkertech. Instead of being deflected, the forcefield generators on the tip of the hooks attached themselves to his arm instead, messing up the flesh inside somewhat.
I followed it up by dropping the hookshots from my hands and grabbing the battery-powered chainsaw and a hunting knife I'd found in the cabin last weekend.
"Where's Ocean?" I asked him.
He looked at the tools in my hands, and the blood coming from his hands. Quite obviously deciding that risking a fight with the girl that could summon weapons from nowhere was a bad idea, he decided to make excuses instead.
"I don't know who that is."
Partially because I believed him, partially because I didn't know how to interrogate people, I dropped the chainsaw and chucked a foam grenade at him, leaving him bound to the ground.
This time however, someone had noticed what had happened, as some sort of alarm started blaring.
Well, two could play that game. I grabbed a noise generator, chucking it on the ground near the foamed up asshole in the suit.
Maybe his ears would break, maybe they wouldn't. I didn't give a shit, because maybe he shouldn't have worked for an asshole like Accord.
Although, I'd worked for Accord for a bit. But that wasn't for a salary, and mostly just a one-time thing. That was different for some reason that I hadn't quite decided on yet.
I ran onwards, trying to figure out if I could find some sort of elevator shaft or something, and from there make my way to Accord's office.
Although… it was probably a better idea to just leave. But I needed to figure out what had happened to Rose, and to make sure Accord didn't just try to catch me again.
I also needed to take down that invisible asshole somehow.
One turn around the corner later, I noticed that most of the doors were suddenly locked. Probably the lower-tier dudes having been instructed to do that in case of alarms.
Another corner later, I saw the elevator. Plus a fancy little window on top that told me it was coming towards this floor. Probably carrying parahuman reinforcement.
Which meant I was facing a difficult conundrum. Did I lock the elevator door with visible containment foam, or with invisible containment foam?
Probably invisible, seeing as they hadn't encountered that before unless Dragon had also made it independently of me. Which was perfectly possible, Dragon seemed like the kind of person to do stuff like that.
Eventually, I decided upon the normal foam. I could keep the invisible stuff for later, when I found Accord. After I decided what to do with Accord.
Next to the elevator, I found a sign signalling a fire exit. Next to it was a fire alarm. I looked upwards, noticing the sprinkler system.
Why not? Maybe it was connected to the emergency lines directly, meaning Accord would have hot firemen to deal with.
I activated the fire alarm, and noticed that the emergency escape was still locked. Interesting, that was a fire hazard. You know, just like tying someone up to sell them to the Chinese. So yeah, Accord probably didn't give a shit and the intruder alert locked all the doors.
Luckily, I had another lockpicker up my magical sleeve.
I closed the door behind me, hearing the elevator's arrival and some cursing behind me, quickly followed by what seemed to be the sound of someone's power, and things breaking.
I had two options now. I could go up, find Accord's office, and deal with him. Or I could go down, see if there was a morgue or something down there, and find Rose. And also, you know, escape.
Which I could also do from up here, if I found a window. There were several buildings in range of my long-range hookshots, at least from what I remembered from earlier today.
I just needed to decide quickly, because it seemed like Accord's cape contingent had escaped the elevator.
