Investments 14.3

I'd been doing measurements and calculations for hours when my work was disturbed, and I wasn't upset about it in the slightest. "Karen! How's my favorite rodent of justice doing?"

Mouse Protector hesitated slightly as I called her name, but bounded into the room, closing the door behind her. "Bored out of my mousy mind, V-man! Millie's not sayin' anything, and apparently the city outside is one giant mousetrap, so I can't even go sight-seeing!"

Pushing away the laptop I was working on, gravity well calculations having lost their luster after the first hour, I turned to look at her fully. "If you want to do an exploration run tonight, we can do that. My scouts have turned up some interesting areas that could do with being poked by someone tougher than normal. A creature nest, two anomalous areas, and one possible cognito-hazard. Mentally effecting anomaly," I explained at her raised eyebrow. "Not permanent, but we'd likely be able to get a better read on it than they did."

Her second eyebrow rose to the level of the first. "And you want to go mess with that? Least you aren't as boring as I'd feared, V." She looked around the ballistics lab, focusing in on the monochrome stripes along one wall. "Whatchya doin' here? Learnin' how to blend in with Zebras?"

"Getting hard numbers on powers," I told her, motioning towards the small cannon I'd grown out of the floor, the end of the barrel occasionally shedding mauve sparks. "I've figured out that the growth is actually exponential, but not-"

"Gonna stop ya there, Vejy-tale," Mouse Protector interrupted. "That sounds even more boring than what I was doing before."

I looked at her quizzically, feeling oddly like I'd just been cock-blocked. "What were you doing before?"

She grinned, "Absolutely nothing."

I gave her an unamused look, grabbing one of my metal projectiles, long, thin, and needle shaped, and tossing it at her head. She caught it, easily, and turned it over in her hands. "Okay, length is good, but that isn't everything. Ladies like a little girth, if you know what I mean." She flipped it, catching the projectile, and frowned. "It's. . . hollow? No, just the back is. What gives?"

"Do you know the range of your power?" I asked her instead.

She shrugged. "Mailed one to San Fran once on a lark, worked fine. So. . . far?"

"I can dive deeply into my powers," I told her. "Not sure if it's just me, or if anyone can. Good for information gathering, bad for a lot of other things."

Karen looked at me curiously, then grinned wildly, slowly stalking over to me. "Which means you know exactly how far I can go. So, Mr. V," she practically purred. "Just how far do you think I can go, and what do you want in return?" Moving seductively, practically strutting, she reached past me to put the Mark Dart, as I'd started calling them, back where I'd grabbed it.

She leaned back, still close and gave me a half-lidded smile, going all out with the vamp routine. I looked right back at her, holding back my laughter, and replied in low, gravelly tones, "There is one thing that. . . comes to mind."

"Really?" she smirked. "What is it?"

"Ask," I stated normally, causing her to blink.

"What?" she asked, a little confused trying for another seductive smile, but not quite hitting the mark.

"I don't keep secrets from teammates unless I have to, and helping you helps me," I shrugged, smiling broadly. Doing this with either of the girls and it would be taken so many different ways. With Mouse Protector it was just amusing flirting for the sake of flirting, with no actual sexual intentions behind it, which I hadn't been able to do since I was a teen myself.

"Okay, sure," she laughed. "What's my range, Lee?"

"You were right," I told her, "It's far, though you might've underestimated just how far. The simplest way to understand it is just under point-seven AU."

"Alternate Universes?" she asked skeptically. "I can go between worlds?"

"Astronomical Units," I corrected. "And, technically, yes, though not that way. An Astronomical Unit is the distance between Earth and the Sun."

Karen blinked, processing what I'd just said. "So when you say worlds, you don't mean Aleph, you meant mars?"

"Or Venus," I agreed. "Maybe Mercury, though that'd be iffy. Definitely not the Asteroid belt, at least not in a single jump.

Karen looked at me, at the canon, which obviously had something weird going on, and at the screen full of calculations. "You're trying to go to Mars? That's. . . That's thinkin' big there Veji-mite. I mean, after seein' your shaft, I shoulda guessed, but. . . why?"

"Not Mars, MP. You know how I was meeting with Toybox this morning?" I asked.

She nodded, jumping up and taking a seat on the desk and peering down at me. "How'd that go? I tried to buy a sword from them, but what they were asking was enough to break my poor Mousey-bank, and it was a cat of a time even meetin' them!"

I shrugged, "Good. We've got a supply contract with them, and we'll get a discount on their stuff, if you still want that sword. However. . . Do you want one right now?"

She grinned, leaping to your feet. "Do I want your long, hard sword? I thought you'd never ask!"

I matched her expression, "Fine, but I don't want this one going inside you."

"But then what's the point of having it?" she asked skeptically.

"To stick in other people, of course!" I quipped.

She rolled her eyes, grinning. "Ugh, men. Always thinking of stickin' their swords into things."

I looked at her wryly, "Would you rather I stick it in your sheathe?"

"So forward, what's a woman of virtue to say?" she bemoaned, fanning herself.

I shrugged, "If you see one, you could ask her. So, what style, length, and ornamentation?" I asked, grabbing my laptop, switching to the base's CAD program, and throwing the image up on a wall from a hidden projector.

It took the better part of an hour, but we hammered out what she wanted. The core I'd kept Spiraled Orichalcum, having seen what happened when I messed with changing the striations of platinum deeper than just the surface, and not wanting the sword to randomly explode. Everything else was up for grabs, though. Going back and forth, she finally ended with an amalgamation of a cutlass and cavalry saber. It had a patterned knuckle guard and circular cross guard, with two circular protrusions that'd look like mouse-ears when the sword was pointed at an enemy.

With everything in mind, mentally focusing on the material and shape, I started to pull it out from the ground on the far side of the lab. Karen was back with the computer, behind a wall of hardened air in case something went wrong, despite her reassurances that she'd be fine. Taking my time, I slowly built the sword, pushing it out of the ground, one inch at a time. Finishing with the pommel, I narrowed the bottom to the point that I could remove it, breaking off the filament thick wire and growing out the bottom to cover the break until it was rounded.

I threaded metal underneath my skin in a solid latticework, firming my costume into full armor, before I took hold of the sword. Giving it a few test swings, nothing bad seemed to happen. Growing a steel rod up, I carefully took aim and struck it with the orichalcum blade, the momentum multiplication effect working perfectly as it cut through the rod with ease, blasting right through it. Repeating this three more times, the second time with bare skin on the handle, and the third time after applying a Teleportation Mark on the blade, just to be sure, I was convinced it was as I'd meant it to be and lowered my protections.

"It's safe," I told her, dismissing the air wall and collecting, then burning away, the steel rods.

Mouse Protector seemed to teleport across the distance, and I checked her power to make sure, but I didn't have any Marks on me. "GimmeGimmeGimmeGimme!" she begged.

Having already warned her of the properties the sword should have, I carefully handed it to her and she squeed, turning it over and over in her hands. She leapt backwards, slashing at empty air, and landed, twisting and twirling with it in a frankly impressive display. The only hiccup was when she tossed the blade from one hand to another, the steel handle impacting her waiting hand with a sharp slap that rang across the space.

She winced, but didn't break her Kata, moving through her sword forms, though the next time she transferred hands she caught it gingerly, slowing it down below the speed threshold so she didn't activate the effect I'd warned her about. Finishing up she bound back up to me, a wide grin on her face, a youthful exuberance on her face that I'd only seen before when we'd been sparring for over an hour and she'd started focusing on fighting over teasing me. It was a look that nearly made her look as young as Taylor.

"So, you're happy with it?" I prompted, matching her grin. She grinned wider, and nodded rapidly. "Glad to hear it, give me your hand."

She hesitated, then started to extend the hand holding her sword. I shook my head and motioned towards the other one, which she was much happier to give me. The palm was already bruising, but a burst of healing, which she played up with an almost sexual moan, reversed the damage in seconds.

"Thanks Vejy-table! This is the nicest thing I've gotten in years!" she gushed. "Now the evil that lives in the dark corners shall quake, for the rodent of righteousness shall strike them down with Justice!"

I laughed, "So that's why you wanted me to print 'Justice' on the side of the blade."

"Of course!" she grinned. "I wouldn't want to lie! That'd be such a catty thing to do!"

"My apologies," I chuckled, going back to where I'd been sitting. "Thanks for coming by Karen, you've brightened up my day."

The smile she gave me back was warm, and honest in a way her earlier ones weren't. "No problemo, Lee. Happy to help." Her grin turned wry, and a little faker, as she continued, "But I've forgotten what we were talking about. Why, V-man, you've distracted me with new weapons. You rogue. That'll only work on me another dozen times!"

"Oh no, whatever shall I do? My villainous plans have been foiled!" I mock-cursed. "You want me to explain what I was doing? No is an absolutely acceptable answer, and I promise not to get bogged down in the details this time."

"Sure," she smiled, carefully putting her new sword down and walking over to me, grabbing a chair and dragging it next to mine, taking a seat next to me as I saved the CAD file and reopened my calculations. She leaned slightly into me, and I stiffened slightly. She's thankful I helped her out, I dismissed, paying it no more mind. "So, the cannon uses Speed Zones, which I nabbed from Skidmark-"

"Skidmark?" MP asked, laughing. "Seriously?"

"Skidmark," I reiterated, "Who's about as inventive with his powers as he was with his name. They push objects but also multiply and realign kinetic energy, making them great rail-gun components. They also protect the projectiles from the force of their acceleration, which helps a lot. Without it the barrel length I'd need to make this work would be ridiculous.

"But I thought guys were all about length!" she teased.

Ignoring her, but rolling my eyes, I continued, "The problem is that, once they're no longer in the Speed Zone, that protection is gone. At low-levels that's not a big deal, but at the higher speeds even these things," I explained, picking up one of the Mark Darts with air and wiggling it back and forth, "deform, no matter how structurally sound or aerodynamic I make them."

"Why don't you make them out of the stuff you made my sword from?" she asked, staring at the models I'd been running.

"Because I want these things to be subtle when they hit, and I want them to survive the impact. If I made them like I'd made your sword, it'd be like a small nuke going off when they reached their destination," I explained. "Also, assuming one of these things get intercepted, I don't want it traced back to me. That material?" I stated, motioning toward her sword, "It's only got two sources. The first is the Tinker who came up with it. The second? Is me, and I haven't exactly been subtle about outfitting the PD.

Karen studied the floating Mark Dart, the calculations, the canon, and 'Hmmm'd', bouncing off my shoulder as she did so. "So you've got a power that'll help you keep it together when you launch it?"

"Yep."

"And they'll be strong enough to survive hitting?" she asked.

"Yep," I repeated. "I've already got the design down so that the front'll crumple but the Teleportation Mark inside'll remain intact, at least for long enough for me to pop in and lay down another."

"So ya need to grab a power that'll protect something in flight," she shrugged. "Doesn't even need to be the main thing it does, just as long as it does that too. Seems simple enough. Want me to look around for ya?"

A power that protected something in flight? Who'd have that kind of power? I felt things click together in my head. Who had that power? I had that power! Well, Ballistic had that power, but he'd try to take my head off with a flying chair, so his power was my power now! "Got something?" she grinned, looking up at me.

"Mouse, I could kiss you right now!" I exclaimed, grinning.

"Okay," she shrugged, smiling back.

Rolling my eyes, I grabbed the Mark Dart, pushing a bit of Momentum into it and pointing it down-range. I let it fly, and it impacted perfectly, sticking into the wall at the far end without a scratch. "And the called me mad. Mad, I say!" I cackled.

"Who called you mad, my doctor?" she asked, with an Igor accent.

Laughing, though not as madly, I explained, "We met with Toybox, but they said they were looking for hard to find materials that they'd pay very well for. This is how I'm going to get where I need to in order to collect it, and that'll help pay for all of this!"

She looked at me, puzzling it out. "If it's not Mars, or Venus, or Mercury, then that just leaves. . . no."

"Yes." I grinned, glad it was all coming together. I'd need to do more calculations to see how Momentum Infusion interacted with Speed Zones, but that'd give me enough leeway to speed up the projectiles so that they'd get there in hours, not days, and hold together all the way there!

She grinned back, laughing disbelievingly. "You're seriously telling me you're going. . .?

"To the moon, Karen! To the moon!"

Mouse Protector left me to my devices, measurements, and calculations. She'd gotten why I had to do the same experiment over again and again, isolating variables and power interactions, but as she said 'Hitting the same thing the same way is boring. Girls like a little variety in their banging!' and left to go do something else.

It was several hours later when the rumbling of my own stomach snapped me out of my work, getting hard numbers but nowhere near done with the astrophysics calculations. Popping over to the kitchen to make dinner for everyone I was pleasantly surprised to find that Taylor was already there, the smells of Italian food drifting out from the kitchen.

"Hey!" he greeted, looking up from her laptop as she sat a table. "So, the Arachne ones are yours?" I shot her a quizzical glance. "Mouse Protectors leaves the mouse ear designs when she teleports, but I've been noticing Arachne Assemblages marks here and there."

I nodded, smiling. Of course she'd figure that out. "Guilty," I admitted. "You making dinner?"

She shrugged, looking back down at her computer. "You've been doing it so much, I figured I should help. I went to ask you, but you were busy."

"Thanks," I sighed, sitting down next to her and looking at what she was working on. "Weaving techniques?"

"Yeah!" she said, excitedly. "I was talking with Amy, like you asked, and we were talking about, well, non-combat power uses. Not healing for free either, but making money from it. . . Commercial!" exclaimed before I could chime in. "Commercial power uses, like how you do the plastic surgery thing with your healing power, and how I'd been working on fabrics, and even made my own costume!"

That hadn't really been what I'd meant when I told Taylor to talk to Amelia, but this seemed good too. "And how'd she take it?"

She grimaced behind her mask. "Not that well at first. A lot of 'Did Vejovis put you up to this?' and 'Why don't you use your power just to help people?' and things like that. She didn't believe you actually just wanted to make sure she was okay without upsetting her, which upset her, but that kinda helped her believe me?" Taylor more asked than told. "So we talked about how you're bad with that kind of thing, sorry," she added, but I waved off the apology. It was true.

"We talked about other things for a bit, and she helped me make these!" Taylor announced, and a particularly large trio of spiders crawled out of the air-vent. Feeling them with Arthropod Control, the part that'd tell me what species they were wasn't working correctly. They had iridescent exoskeletons, like beetles, and they're spinnerets were. . . odd. "Aren't they just the cutest!"

"They're very pretty," I agreed as the hand-sized spiders skittered over to us, a few flies being taken from the dormant swarm and being fed to the arachnids. "Not sure I'd say cute, but I'm more interested in what they can do."

Taylor reached into a pocket, pulling out something shimmering as she announced, "They're weavers!"

Taking the swatch of fabric, it was loosely put together, but the strands themselves were unlike anything I'd seen before. Nearly weightless, and almost invisible, they shimmered similarly to the spider's bodies, catching the light and shimmering in scintillating patterns. While the golden spider silk cloth she'd made before was eye-catching and beautiful, this seemingly ethereal fabric could be on a whole nother level.

"It's stronger, more resistant to cutting, less conductive, and more!" she announced. "And with the modifications Amy made means they can produce twenty times as much thread! She's only made these three, but they're enough to get started!"

Her grin was infectious, and I handed the feather-light material back to her. "Sounds great, Taylor. If you want, you can contact Parian to see if she'd be interested in working with you. You could even offer her a place here. Not on the team, but as a place to work, though you'd need to talk to Overwatch about how to do so."

"Thanks!" she said, standing up, the spiders jumping off the table and onto her arms. "Can you tell the others Dinner's almost ready?"

I nodded, laughing to myself as she stopped by the vent on her way back in, the iridescent arachnids returning to their hiding spots. We'd both starting giving the insects in the base the command to hibernate when we didn't need them, reducing their need for food, but maybe it wouldn't be best to tell the others about the controlled cockroach colony in the kitchen.

Dinner was nice. Quinn had left earlier to spend time with his family, and Missy had done the same, though from what I heard she wasn't as nearly happy about it as my lawyer was. Victoria was quiet, not looking at me the entire time. It was only after we were done and starting to clear up that she finally spoke. "Lee?" she asked, still not looking at me.

Panacea, Mouse Protector, and Lady Bug all stopped what they were doing and looked at her, while Dean had a supportive hand on her shoulder. "Yes?" I asked neutrally. I hoped this would be an apology, but given that I'd been wrong about her learning not to mind control me before, I was ready to be wrong again.

"I'm, I'm really sorry about what happened yesterday," she confessed, the distress she was feeling clear in her tone. "I know you don't tell us everything, and I can totes see why you didn't, and I didn't mean to, but I was just surprised, and I didn't think, and I was mad, and I know that doesn't make it okay, so I'm really really sorry about what happened, so please don't kick me off the team!" she begged.

I blinked at that, having not even considered doing so. She took my silence as disagreement, quickly adding, "Whatever punishment you want I'll do, I promise!"

Sighing, I shook my head, "Glory Girl, I'm not going to ask you to leave. You didn't mean to, and that does matter, even if it doesn't excuse what you did. Just don't do it again. I'm not going to punish you, just ask you train it so you get better control." I'd considered what happened, and while this was nowhere near my fault, my actions could've contributed to the situation. "Power repression, for better or worse, doesn't work for Natural Triggers. Also, while I don't want this spread, for those that I trust, they should be read in on some need to know information."

Looking around the table, I figured out a plan of attack for this. "First of all, Mouse Protector, if I said that powers themselves were sentient, thinking things, what would you say?"

The woman blinked, processing that. "You sure about that, V-man?"

I'd expected her to not be able to be included in on this, neither being a Vial Trigger nor having been in range of Abaddon's 'Yo, whazzzup?' moment. It broke the paradigm, but I had a feeling I knew what had happened. When I'd looked deeply into her power, communicated with it and had it respond in turn, I'd very likely done something else as well. The problem was, I didn't know what I did, only that I'd somehow removed the memory blockers.

"Yes," I said slowly. "Yes, I am." I took a moment to carefully look around for anyone else, before sealing the entrances of the mess hall with solidified air. "Okay, real talk time. I'm not going to tell you about the things we can't handle yet, but, to avoid this situation, there's some things that everyone needs to know. I know I've said this before, but you cannot tell anyone about this, not even each other unless you're certain that you're alone, there's no listening devices, and don't do it in any way that leaves a record, like phone calls or text messages. Secrecy is the only reason this location has stayed hidden, the only reason that things are as peaceful as they are, and the only reason we're not hip-deep in CUI right now. Imagine if everyone knew I'd recruited Glaistig Uaine, and realize that's underselling it."

Dean, Vicky, and Karen looked incredulous, but Amelia and Taylor nodded seriously. I proceeded to explain, not everything I knew, but a large portion of it. Some of it, like my ability to copy powers, everyone knew, but my ability to See powers, and the power reinforcement of my ability to 'Teach' came as a shock.

"Wait, that's how you knew what to do!" Victoria interrupted, before frowning "But, how did you help the others? You know, when they locked up Dean. Does it work on videos?"

"No Vicky, that was the one superpower I have that is the rarest of them all," I intoned gravely.

"Long range precognition?" she asked. "Did you know who they were going to bring in, so you left, found out what their powers were, and came back?"

"No. Common sense," I replied, smirking slightly. At her glare I shrugged. "Guy controls air. Does he control only air, or all gasses? Is his control automatic, like Lady Bug's control over insects, is it a set omni-directional range, like Glory Girl's aura, or is does it require some sort of designation like Mouse Protector's teleportation or Gallant's emotional control?"

I held out a hand, spinning up a sun. "This is Sundancer's power, Stellar Creation. The first and simplest use is creating suns, but," I elongated it first into a dart, then to a flaming sword, then into a small bird. Trying to make it flap was still beyond my capabilities, the motion jerky, but it was something I was working on. "It can be so much more. Powers are rarely as limited as they first appear, and have other effects as well."

From there I described the Conflict Drives that Natural Triggers came with, how they wanted to be used in new and different ways, but they spawned from an extraordinarily combative source so linked progress and innovation with desperate, invent or die, scenarios. How they spurred their users to do the wrong thing at the wrong time to start a fight that'd inspire new, deadly uses.

"Is that why you're so. . . you?" Vicky asked. "What?"

"No," I sighed, "Break, Æonic, and I don't have that issue, neither does anyone that got their powers from a vial. I'm me for reasons that are entirely non-power related."

"Oh. . ." Vicky responded, reddening slightly. "Um, vials! How do those work?" she asked instead, changing the topic.

I considered what to say. "It involves the source of all powers, corruption at the highest levels of government, and threats none of us have a hope in hell of fighting yet," I warned. "Knowing won't help you in the slightest, and might make things worse. Are you sure you all want to know? I won't judge you if you don't. These are all the kinds of things that'll get you killed by Alexandria if you're not careful, though to everyone else you'll just disappear without a trace."

"By big A?" Mouse Protector asked, unsure.

"Yes," I nodded seriously. "Rebecca Costa-Brown, head of the PRT, who is also Alexandria, the physically strongest of the Triumvirate, will kill you to keep these secrets safe, and has the power and pull to do so in a manner that no one would ever know what happened to you. Her, or one of the others she works with, which includes the other members of the Triumvirate. Break does contract work for them, but if they knew that I knew what I know, they'd try to recruit or kill me. As I have moral lines I won't cross, it'd be the latter. The question is, do you want to know, with the knowledge that you can't breathe a word of this to others?"

Taylor's nod was as immediate as it was expected. Amelia glanced at her, then nodded as well. Dean looked like he wanted to leave, but after Victoria grabbed his hand, threading her fingers through his, they both nodded as well. Karen, the last one here, looked ready to run, but took a deep, calming breath. "I'm no scaredy cat, Vejovis. Lay it on me."

Hoping I wasn't making a horrible mistake, started to talk. I described the Entities, what they were, and where they came from. I outlined Cauldron, its players, and the flesh garden from which they harvested powers. I described my mission, Cauldron's purpose, and how, eventually, we'd have to kill a god that could dispatch the Endbringers with ease. I'd mentioned these things before, but never in detail, only as isolated concepts. Now? Now I spared no detail.

When I finished, I looked around at the others, all of them pale and worried, but all of them not trying to deny what I'd said, what laid in store for everyone. It was Mouse Protector who finally broke the silence.

"Well. . . fuck."