Investments 14.8
Feeling oddly warm, I woke. I'd been trying to remember the Leviathan fight once more, to see what I'd missed. Instead I'd just watched myself do the research I'd done on the Endbringer in the week before he attacked. Okay, the correct general topic, but not what I wanted.
Karen laid beside, and partially on top of me, holding me tightly enough that I would've bruised if my physique hadn't already been enhanced to superhuman levels. The woman had fallen asleep in the shower, her part in the clearing out of the Deep Ones taking more out of her than she'd let on. I'd finished washing her, dried her off, and clothed her in pajamas before carrying her to bed.
Technically, we did sleep together, I smiled, glad I'd pre-empted her own joke. Trying to pry her off me, she just tightened her grip even more. Working carefully, I hardened air and slipped free. "Nooo," she moaned, and I grabbed a few pillows, putting them where I'd been. Dismissing the hardened air, she clamped down on them, her pained expression smoothing out.
Finishing the shower that'd been interrupted, she was still asleep when I left, and I paused to tuck her back in. Going to get some breakfast, I found Taylor already there, cooking. "Heya!" I greeted with a smile, and she looked over at me, before quickly looking back.
"Hi," she replied neutrally. "So, you and Mouse Protector?"
"We went on a patrol of the city last night, clearing out some anomalies. She's physically tough enough to handle some of the weirdness, which is good, because it got kinda. . . bad," I told her, wincing at the memory. I shouldn't have let that Master power get to me, but Acoustokinesis was useful, and subtle, enough that I could make it work. "She fell asleep on her feet, so, since she kept saying she wanted to sleep with me, I obliged."
Taylor seemed to deflate a little. "Oh. Okay. I. . . wait." She turned around, unsure, and asked carefully, "When you say that did you mean you, ya know, or did you just. . . sleep?"
"Well, she keeps saying how she wants to sleep with me. I have to admit it, it was very restful," I observed, smirking.
She looked at me, before shaking her head, turning back to the scrambled eggs she was making. "You're an asshole," she observed though without heat, perking up. "So what happened?"
I regaled her with what I'd seen, leaving out a few of the more unpleasant, unnecessary details. As we were wrapping up, the others joined us for breakfast. Conversation was light until Mouse Protector popped in. "You!" she accused.
"Me?" I asked.
"You said!" she replied.
"You said," I disagreed.
"You agreed," she countered.
"Technically, I did," I pointed out.
She glared at me for a long moment. "You win this time," she declared, grinning despite her attempts to seem upset, "but this Mouse will get her cheese in the end!"
Striking a pose, she disappeared, and the table went quiet. "Um, what just happened?" Vicky finally asked.
"Don't worry about it. Amelia, are you doing anything today?" I deflected.
The healer looked at me for a long moment, before she shook her head. "No, just working on. . . the thing." Ignoring the tables collective stares, she asked, "Why?"
"Found someone who cryo-froze themselves and is still alive. Mouse and I found her last night," I revealed, the others having joined us about the time I described the Wing-Cutting Egg. "I'll have a hell of a hard time getting to them, Tinkertech's involved, but if I do, can you help unfreeze them without every cell in their body bursting?"
She considered the idea nodding slowly. "I could, probably. No promises," she insisted, "but maybe."
I grinned, "Great. Overwatch, I need your help deactivating some Tinkertech," I called into the air. "You up for it?"
After a moment, where I wondered if he wasn't on base, and thus I was just talking to myself, he coalesced out of the air, holding a monocle, the rim covered in bright blue circuitry. "I believe this would help," he commented, "though more warning in the future would be appreciated."
Taking it, I slid it on over my domino mask, only for it not to do anything. "It needs to be able to see your eye to work, though it can be polarized," he pointed out. Retracting the eye part of my mask, it turned itself on, a gridwork of lines appearing before quickly fading. Looking around, Victoria's cell-phone was outlined, with three entries:
Purpose: Communication (radio)
Activation: Button on upper right
Detail: Password locked
Looking around, it took a second, but the coffee maker was outlined as well, with it's own set of labels.
Purpose: Filtration and heating
Activation: Red Button labeled start
Detail: Makes Coffee
If this worked like I thought it would, this would be amazing. I turned my gaze to Quinn, and three things lit up on him: his watch, a pen, and something in his ear. The entry on all three items was identical.
Purpose: ?
Activation: ?
Detail: Tinkertech
Overwatch met my eye, and the entry for the pen's entry blanked itself out, filling itself out one section at a time.
Purpose: Broadcasting
Activation: Powers
Detail: Tinkertech. The device you are wearing is a work in progress, and I must do these manually by observing the datastream directly.
"Nice," I smiled. "Okay, I'm off then. LB, please help Panacea set up a hospital bed." I pulled a metal plate out of my pocket, emblazoned with a Mark. Focusing on it to try to give it a special meaning, like Karen had suggested. I thought it might've worked, but I wasn't sure, it was hard to pick it out from the dozens I'd already laid down around the underground arcology. "Take this with you and tell me when you're ready. I'll clean up here, and you two," I nodded towards Dean and Victoria, "do whatever it is you want to. This'll be an easy extraction. Mouse and I took out the hostiles nearby, so we don't need you for this."
With a smile I got up and collected everyone's plates, looking forward to saving a life, for once.
With confirmation that everyone was set and ready to go, I stretched my attention out. I could feel the few Marks I'd left out across the city, though it was hard to figure out which one was which. Not wanting to appear outside the Deep One nest, I used the compass on my new phone, the last one a melted ball of slag, to figure out the exact direction I needed to go.
Hoping for the best, I teleported to my chosen Mark, landing in snow that immediately boiled and lifted me upwards slightly as I felt the cold like a physical force, though only intellectually, like I was being politely informed that it was COLD. Taking flight, the cold emanating from the crystal orb in front of me refroze the gasses, causing them to fall as snow once more. Looking at the Tinker, my eyepiece highlighted four separate devices: the orb, a harness that was part of her costume, a sphere on her belt, and a half-buried device by her side. They were all Tinkertech, but as the entry for the sphere started to fill itself out, the ice started creep over the lens.
"Vejovis," Overwatch said over the commpiece. "The eye ca-shhhhh-cold it-shhhh- work!" his voice broke up but I realized what the problem was. Just as I only partially what I wore with my immunity from heat, the reverse was also true. Creating a small star, I tried to limit the heat coming off it so it only encircled my head. However, the power only let me bring things down to what was normal for earth, no less than that. In the near vacuum, the effect was lessened, but not enough, and the snow across the room started to simmer as he heated and boiled, rising up and heating up even more. Creating a small weather system, the orb started to shine more brightly, a low hum starting to emanate from it.
"Shhhhhh-now. If it freezes again, it might break," he warned, the commpiece starting to function again. "That isn't good," he commented, as the Orb's entry filled itself out rapidly.
Purpose: Omnidirectional Cryogenics
Deactivation: Twist top clockwise 240°, lift, twist counterclockwise 180°, press down.
Detail: ABOUT TO DETONATE! MOVE NOW!
With those instructions I darted forward, having to take a second to remember which way was which, before quickly spinning the top, the hum starting to rise in pitch. Slamming it down, the sphere, which had started to vibrate, went still, the outline of it in my monocle disappearing along with the directions.
Breathing a sigh of relief, I looked at the Tinker, trying to figure out how to move her. Without the source of cold, the nitrogen snow that was being heated by my star wasn't refreezing, the pressure in the room slowly increasing. That gave me an additional tool to work with, though. The Tinker was slumped against the wall, and I was worried that, if I tried to move her, I'd be just as likely to break a limb instead of the frozen water that surrounded her. Extending a few metal tendrils, I focused to make them serrated, making ad hoc ice saws. With how wrecked this building already was, as well as the rest of the city, it didn't matter if I took some of the floor and wall with me.
Able to curve the blades, it was the work of a minute to remove her, tweaking them to rotate like a silent chainsaw, though it took too much attention to use in combat. Something for later. Carefully, I picked her up and warned Panacea, "Got her, incoming." Sending my focus back to base, it was a massive cluster of Marks, all indistinguishable from the others. Focusing down on the concept of healing that I'd tried to instill in the Mark I'd given Taylor, it felt like one of them became slightly more prominent. Hoping that it was right, but even if it wasn't I should still get to Panacea in time, I teleported to it.
"Fuck!" Amelia swore as I was back in the infirmary, a few feet away from her.
Had I not done that before in front of her? I wondered, glad that I'd picked the right one, I moved the Tinker to the provided bed, supporting her back with solidified air. I hadn't realized it before I'd picked her up, but for her to lay down she'd need to be completely thawed, frozen through as she was now.
Dismissing the now far-away sun, I made another, bathing the space with warmth as mist started to form from my body, and started to pour off of the Tinker. I motioned for the frozen woman, and Panacea just looked at me incredulously. "You remember I need to touch her, right?" the healer demanded. "I feel like I'm getting frostbite just looking at her."
Holding out a hand, remembering what I'd done under that mountain in Maine, I was confident when I told her to, "Take my hand, heal with the other."
She did so, shuddering with a, "Fuck you're cold," but relaxed as I started to push my 'Get Better' to her, extending my own Immunity to cold through her as well. She stopped shivering and shot me a questioning glance. "Later," she told me, stepping forward and hesitantly placing her free hand on the Tinker's exposed face.
Looking at me once more, Amelia put her hand firmly on the older woman's face, and closed her eyes, getting to the work of healing. With nothing else to do, I looked over the Tinker's equipment, Quinn updating their profiles. I'd had to leave the buried device, but I could always get it later. The sphere was, as I'd thought, a cryo-grenade. The fact that there was space for three more on her belt, told me she'd probably had more at one point.
The costume, specifically the harness she was wearing over a blue-patterned windbreaker, was a cryo-protection device. The longer I looked at it, the more Quinn filled out the description. It didn't protect someone through cryotechnology, it protected them from cryotech and cold-based effects, likely letting her use her very area of effect weapons without fear of being hurt herself. Parts of it had been damaged which let it still work, but only in short bursts before the internal capacitors expended themselves, most of the power lines broken, instead of the complete immunity it was meant to give.
Still frozen to her hand was the persistent Cryotech orb, which had been strained to the point of catastrophic failure by a combination of constant low-level use with the spike of power needed as it tried to freeze my sun. As the Tinker, a villain known as Glacia according to Overwatch, slowly thawed, our own Tinker collected her tech. First the crystalline orb, then the Cryo grenade on her hip, which I noted had room for half a dozen, finally cutting the harness off of her once her clothing had unfrozen and taking that as well.
Panacea had worked carefully, and I was relieved to note that, despite being frozen solid, Glacia had still counted as 'alive' for her power, so we didn't have to try to repair the damage that happened as she unfroze in spots. I toyed with the idea of enhancing Panacea's power, like I half remembered doing so again, but even as I opened my mouth to suggest it something made me stop.
I didn't know why, I didn't know I knew it, but something told me that doing so might not be a good idea. Without any hard intel, I had to try to figure it out without nearly enough info. Doing so could put stress on her power, in ways it wasn't set up to take. It could start messing with her head, slowly Khepri-ing her, but from the other direction. It could do any number of things. I didn't know why I was so hesitant, more so than even the possibility of causing something that Herb, borrowing Panacea's power, should be able to fix, and the fact that I didn't know why I knew it could go bad, based on nothing other than a gut feeling, didn't sit well with me. Instead I just stood there, making sure Amy didn't hurt herself while saving the life of another. That, and it did let me make her just a smidge tougher, and thus less likely to be hurt later, like I'd made Taylor.
Once we'd been at it for a while, and Panacea was working slowly inwards, her patient's skin thawed but the muscles more than an inch down still solid, she'd suggested I try using my general healing power on the Tinker. "If it lets me ignore the cold, it might let her," she suggested.
Going along with that, I reached forward and carefully laid my hand next to Panacea's on the Tinker's now uncovered stomach. I'd barely begun when Amelia had shouted "Stop!" and I snatched my hand away, breaking the connection to the Tinker while maintaining it on Panacea. "Stupid," she muttered to herself, attention distant.
I let her work, and she came out of it, scowling. "She started to unfreeze all at once, but her cells were still damaged. We've been doing okay, but I couldn't keep up."
Considering it, I offered, "I could try it at full blast, see if I can heal her faster than she can unfreeze."
"Or she'll unfreeze even faster, and dissolve," Amelia shot back with an acidity I knew wasn't directed at me. "No, we're doing good this way. That was dumb. We'll keep going, however long it takes. You don't need to keep doing that either, I'll be fine."
"I've got nowhere I need to be, and you're likely to get frostbite if I don't," I pointed out. "I know I could heal you later, but I'd rather not have you hurt at all."
She didn't say anything more, turning back to the healing, and I stayed there with her, spending the time to get better at controlling my Dryad body, putting it through it's paces three floors down.
Several hours later, we were finally done, Glacia asleep and moved to a different bed, the one she'd been on soaked through with melted ice and condensation, sprinkled with wood and plaster. Amelia had the villainess sleeping in an induced coma that would last a full twenty-four hours, letting the healer check in to make sure nothing had happened. Unfortunately, we'd apparently crossed the threshold of bringing in the injured the PRT had set down, so we'd have to process her on our own, or turn her over to the PRT to likely be charged for the low-level robberies she'd committed in Tampa, Florida.
When I'd asked Quinn about it, he'd pointed out that the Endbringer Truce, as informal as it seemed, had actually been codified by legal precedent, and only lasted until five days after the attack for the area in question, starting the moment the Endbringer left.
After a quick, late lunch, I'd asked Panacea if she wanted to see something interesting. After she carefully, asked "Interesting in what way," I'd told her about the deep one I had on ice. Moving to a lab, I'd first grabbed the chilled head, carefully passing it to her.
"What happened to the rest of it?" she asked, looking it over.
"Mouse beheaded it. That was the cleanest kill, and I've got the body in storage too, but it kinda stinks so I didn't want it waiting around, warming up."
The fishy-rot smell was already starting to come off the head, and if I hadn't been around them when they were alive, I'd've assumed it'd been dead for far longer than sixteen hours. Amelia's eyes went distant as she looked over the thing's biology, and I wondered how no one else had noticed she had two separate powers. I mean, I hadn't, but those around her more than a few chapters in a webnovel should've seen enough. Powers, for all their esoteric nature, always had very set rules in how they worked.
The restrictions might seem arbitrary, and they were, but at their core they were immutable. Kaiser's power could not be used inside a living thing, Battery needed to charge her powers, and Trickster had to replace something with something else of equal mass, full stop. How the powers could be used were open to experimentation, and exactly what a power could do was up for debate, most 'new' powers someone found long after they Triggered only 'different' because the original user had mis-identified what the power did in the first place.
The restrictions, though, never changed. Panacea's 'healing' couldn't work on anything not living. At all. Ever. Do not pass go, do not collect extra superpowers. How, then, could she understand the physiology of dead things, the things her 'only' power didn't work on? While the definition of life her power operated under was different than our own, as cells were required for our classification of life, while she could manipulate prions, which were just weirdly shaped proteins, not living themselves at all, she could still see how dead things worked, which meant it needed to be another power. Then again, as both had the limitation of 'touch', maybe it wasn't so odd that they'd been grouped together as one power, and it was easier for me to see all the signs once I knew the conclusion. It was always easier to see the signs of something after you knew it existed, after all.
Panacea was muttering to herself, and I brought myself out of my own ruminations to hear her. "What was that?"
"I said they're almost blind," she repeated. "Their eyes are huge, but they suck. No, their hearing is amazing though. And some of these neural structures. . ."
Glad something good would come out of these thing's existence, I inquired, "So there's stuff you can use there?"
The fleshsculptor frowned. "Yes. No. Maybe? Yeah, but I'll need to tweak it. Interesting, but, like, the hearing? It's almost like a bat's but it takes too much space. Maybe. . ."
I let her work through it, bringing up my projectile shields. Lifting off the ground and punching it, my hand passed right through it. Making a ball of iron and tossing it, I caught it with Aerokinesis when it went through, and trying again harder, I found that, about the speed where it'd actually hurt someone, they started to bounce off.
Trying harder, the discoloration increased more and more, seemingly in direct relation to the amount of kinetic energy that was drained out of the projectile, though I had to switch from throwing the iron balls to using Momentum Infusion to get them moving fast enough.
"What are you doing?" Panacea asked, as I let the ball go with a muted crack as it broke the sound barrier, Acoustokinesis lowering the sound so I didn't bother her. The ball hit, the panel turning a purplish-red, and I overlaid the shield with a new one, the hex instantly turning blue once more, just like I'd seen during the Leviathan fight.
"Power testing," I replied simply. "And finding my limits. You done with the head?"
She nodded, and handed it back. I tossed it into a sun, with one hand, giving her a quick blast of healing to clear out any disease. "You might see why in a sec," was all I told her, teleporting back to cold storage, grabbing the body, and coming back. Creating a platform of air, I laid it down in front of her, so she could easily lay a hand on its torso.
Returning to my task, I'd barely been at it for five minutes when Amelia's distressed call of "Lee!" made me turn, iron ball ready to kill whatever was the problem. Did it get up? Was there some kind of 'that is not dead, which can eternal lie' bullshit? God knows the big one was hard enough to kill.
But my shard-granted senses weren't fooled, there was nothing else in the room, just Panacea, the torso, and I. Placing another shield right behind the projectile shield, in case my overcharged weapon broke through, I found I couldn't. Placing it a full foot back, however, let it form without issue. Letting the ball go, it broke through the first one with a sound like shattering glass, heavily straining the second, the small iron ball dropping with a soft clink.
"What is it?" I asked, as she stared at me seriously.
"These things. What did you do to them?" she demanded, and it took a second to realize she was asking about the Deep Ones.
"Ah, you found that, did you?" I asked grimly instead. "I killed them all, and then I killed the one that was ten times their size. So it was biological, not just powers?"
She hesitated, before she nodded. "I'd have to see one of these things alive to be sure, but the mutagenic glands. . . I'm not doing that. Ever."
I nodded in return, "Good. They resisted your power, by the way. I tried to heal one of the women they captured. She died."
"How many?" Amelia asked. "No, I-"
"Only four," I told her. "Counting the one who I tried to heal. They had cells ready for much more, but they hadn't grabbed that many. Is there anything else you can use from it?"
Her face screwed up in disgust, "I'm not going to use anything that comes from that."
"So, those women's suffering will be for nothing?" I asked her calmly.
"What?"
I motioned towards the torso, "These things are an abomination, and I'll kill any I see, though hopefully I won't, but if you can take something from this to help others, it won't make it worth it, but it'll make it a little less horrible. I'm not asking for you to use those glands, and if there's nothing else to use at all to them, then there isn't, but that's no reason not to look."
Amelia scowled at me, but put her hand back on its chest, focusing back on the creature. Another twenty minutes later, she looked up, and I asked, "So?"
". . . Maybe," she admitted. "You're burning this, right?"
"You done?" I asked in turn, when she nodded, I didn't bother walking over, grabbing it with Aerokinesis and throwing it into another sun. "I'm thinking of doing something special for dinner. Any suggestions?"
Amy looked me dead in the eye and instructed without inflection, "No seafood."
Assuming that birds were the opposite of fish, I went for chicken and dumplings, calling everyone down when they were ready. Quinn had gone home, but Vista was here. Part of me wanted to ask if her parents were okay with her not coming home as often as she was, but it wasn't really my place to say, and there were worse places for her to be.
Dinner was a quiet affair, and I let Panacea handle talking about the parahuman we'd saved. Karen had chimed in, describing the ice-covered building we'd pulled Galacia from, though I wasn't sure the description, of "Cold enough to freeze your balls off. Luckily, I didn't have any!" was really needed.
As we started to finish, Vista stood up, addressing me. "Vejovis, can I ask you something?" she asked, nervous, as all eyes turned to her.
"Sure?" I replied, unsure as to what she wanted.
Taking a deep breath, she stood up straight, and formally requested, "I'd like to join the Penumbral Defenders."
The table went quiet, and I stared at her, surprised. The answer was obvious, though. "No."
She blinked, shocked, before she deflated a little. "But you let Gallant join!"
"No, I didn't," I disagreed, wondering how she'd think that.
I looked at the boy in question, who quickly said, "I didn't say anything."
My gaze slid to his girlfriend. "Sorry," Vicky apologized. "But, I mean, I thought you did."
Turning back to the tween parahuman. "Vista, let me ask you a few questions. First of all, are you telling people what we do here, or the secrets I've shared?"
"I haven't!" she protested. "Honest!"
"Wasn't suggesting you had," I contended, "but I'll take that as a no. I also won't ask you to share the PRT's secrets. If you were ordered to take me in, would you warn me first? And I don't mean ten seconds before."
That caused her to hesitate, but she nodded. "And in turn, if something happened that meant we'd come into conflict," I motioned to the others, "I'd do my best to warn you first as well, not attacking you when you thought you were safe. Finally, if something extreme happened, and someone issued a Kill Order on me, would you try to kill me?"
"I wouldn't!" she declared, horrified.
I nodded, "And if, for some reason, we were in a situation that would normally necessitate lethal force, I'd do everything I could to merely capture you. And, when captured, trust you to give your parole. Ask Gallant," I added, at her confused look, forgetting that she was twelve and lacked the vocabulary necessary. "There you go, the very agreement I have with Gallant."
She looked to the Ward in question, who nodded, looking back at me as I continued talking, "If, when you're old enough to be an adult, you want to join the Penumbral Defenders, short of you doing something completely out of your character, we'll be glad to have you, but you're twelve Vista. We deal with some pretty horrible shit, you can ask Lady Bug or Mouse Protector if you want, even more than most hero teams. If you need help, know I'll be there for you if I can, even if it's just an evac. Okay?"
The little girl sat back down with a faint "Okay,", obviously thinking about what I'd just said.
Sighing, I turned to Taylor, "Lady Bug, after dinner I'm going to need your help."
"What for?" she asked, glancing at Karen. "Are we going out into the city?"
"No, we'll be doing something far, far more difficult," I disagreed.
Visibly gulping, she asked, voice a little tenuous. "What's that?"
"Math."