It's time for some serious work.

Getting back to the building I found wasn't an issue, it was still early enough that most people are still asleep, and those that aren't are too busy going to their jobs to care much about a teenager walking down the road. By the time I make it there the sun has just come up, which is good because I didn't want to work in the dark. I let myself in same as before, re-lock the door behind me, and get to work.

I head up to the conference room and take a better look at the table. The early morning light isn't really enough to see what I'm looking for, so I resort to simply shoving the table to make sure it's not attached to the floor. I takes a decent effort, but it moves some, which is all I need. I put it into my inventory and head back down to the factory floor, pulling it back out down there where I'll have more room to work. I pull out the desk chair from the motel and set it next to the table, don't really want to stand all the time.

This does lead me the question where I should put the bed. I could put it in the old storeroom, giving me a place that can be totally dark, but then again it's not like I've actually slept yet. I could put it up in the conference room, it would let me keep an eye on the rest of the building easy enough, but with my sense earth that's not really necessary. The storeroom is more defensible, but I would be totally trapped in there wit there only being a single door entrance. The conference room has the small windows at the top, but those have bars so they aren't an escape route, however it does have the big glass window overlooking the factory floor, so in a pinch I could jump through it. It is also slightly further away from the main door just by being on the second floor, which might give me a few extra seconds if someone kicks the door in.

Yeah, conference room is now my new bedroom.

I unpack the bed, nightstand and dressers into decent spots, pop the alarm clock down on the nightstand, but leave it unplugged for the moment. There's no power in the building and I don't know the current time even if there was so it's kinda useless right now.

I walk over to the office and move the desk and chair so that if I sit at the desk I'm looking out the window to the factory floor. Not really sure what I'll end up doing in here, but I feel this is the right direction for it to face. I toss the broken filing cabinet into my inventory, it's cheap sheet iron, but I'm sure I'll find a use for it. I head back down to the factory floor and look the place over, it'll do for now, but I really need to get shape earth to fifty if I'm going to get things going. So I pull my dirt clump back out of my inventory and sit down in the chair. I spam shape earth as quick as I can, making the dirt take on any shape I can come up wit at the time. When I start to run low on MP, I stop and meditate. While external stimuli seem to have a problem snapping me out of meditation, I do have an awareness of my internal MP supply, allowing me to rouse myself every time it finishes filling.

The sun has risen high into the sky by the time I'm done, but I did it, I hit level 50 shape earth.

Shape Earth: Level 50 (1%)
Allows user to mentally shape dirt, dust, stone, and other particulate. Effects 1 cubic yard of material per level.
Cost: 10 MP

Dear lord grinding skills is boring, but I'm going to need this if I'm going to get anything done.

I head over to the base of the smoke stack and take a good look at it, making mental note of the shapes and positions of the holes. I cast wall of stone, sapping away a large chunk of mana, and get a one foot cube of what looks like granite. I cast shape earth and change the stone from a block, into a ventilation hood, supported by thin stone columns with the output connected to the largest hole, with a bit of the excess stone I plug the remaining holes, the better to keep a draft out.

That's about all I can do with that until I get some more parts. I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do about a fire for a forge, but I guess I'll figure that out once I see what I can get my hands on. Charcoal and propane seem the most likely options, both have their ups and downs. I may not have forged anything since highschool, but I remember the basics. I'll probably need to sketch out a few designs for the forge before I make it, damn I should have gotten paper.

I need to go out for more supplies.

I'm still not comfortable with my ability to defend myself yet though. Honestly I'm lucky all I've run into so far is just a couple junkies and a minor league villianess who wanted to talk, my luck has to give at some point, and this close to the docks, my luck will give out and I'll run into Skidmark, or just get run over by one of Squealer's junk trucks. Right, I haven't even tried out my one attack spell yet, time for some target practice.

I pull one of the cans of energy drink out of my inventory and head over to the other side of the room. I cast wall of stone again so I have a nice little stone block to put the can on.

No reason to let the drink go to waste though.

I pop up the tab on the can and quickly drink down the contents. It's not as bad as I was expecting, most energy drinks taste like piss, this one still has a bit of an odd aftertaste, but primarily tastes like apple. Not too bad.

When a little +10 pops up next to my MP it shouldn't surprise me, but it does. Right, eating the burrito healed me, drinking an energy drink refilled MP, we seem to be running on MMO logic.

I set the empty can on top of my little stone block and walk to the far side of the room. I raise my hand and point it roughly towards the target and flex my will. Stone Toss.

A pair of pointed stones materialize in front of my hand, each one maybe two inches across, then suddenly rocket away, smashing into the stone block, missing the can. Okay, my aim needs a little work.

My second shot is closer to the can, and my third shot hits, knocking the can off the block and putting a pair of decent sized dents in it. I put the can back and fire twice more, zeroing in my aim. After the third hit the can is little more than an mangled mess, nearly torn in half, but I'm now confident in being able to hit the broad side of a barn, if I'm standing still and have time to aim.

I know I need to go out for supplies, but I really don't want to go out there again. Call me paranoid, but of the two times I went out into public, one had me fight junkies, the other had me clashing wits with a villainess. This kind of escalation continues how long before I'm forced to fight a ramped up Lung? If my scrawny under-powered butt has two hundred hit points, I don't even want to think about how much Lung has. I can't even really train up Stone Toss either since it's damage output is based on my class level, not the skill level. I might be able to do something with move earth now that I can effect stone, but if I do anything like that in public people will assume I'm a Cape, and the risk to myself skyrockets at that point. The unwritten rules won't help me much if I'm publicly 'unmasked'. I'm going to need a Cape persona aren't I?

New Quest!

"Who is that masked man?"
Objective: Establish a Cape Persona
Bonus Objective: Name yourself in a way that sticks
Reward: 500XP, 1 Gacha Token
Bonus Reward: 1000XP, ?

Accept?
[YES][NO]

Great, now the system is referencing the lone ranger... Yes.

Dammit, I wanted to stay mostly out of the public eye, but that XP... I mean all it would really take is registering on the PHO boards and going through whatever process they use to 'verify' capes. Even Villains have verified accounts there so it can't be too bad. That's probably way better than just waiting for the PRT to find out about me and slap a name on me anyway. But if I'm going to do any of that I'm going to need to get the power on in here, which either means somehow reconnecting this place to the grid, or getting a generator.

Which would again mean going out for supplies.

Oh right I have some Gacha tokens to use still, that's a distraction!

Flanged Mace +1

Wait wait wait... is that an Enchanted item? I mean sure I can use magic, but I wasn't expecting item enchantment to be a thing. I pull the Mace out of my inventory. It look like a typical Flanged mace, quite well made, it rests easy in my hand and the balance is as far as I can tell perfect.

Flanged Mace +1
A finely wrought steel mace with viper leather grip. This mace has been further enhanced with a minor enchantment increasing ease of use and striking power.
Inflicts STR x 5(+1) damage per strike.

Well, it's certainly a step up from my beating stick.
Damn, I'm going to need to get stronger.
I put the mace away and pull out the next token.

Rubber Duck

Seriously?

Yup, it's a rubber duck alright. Nothing special at all. Didn't think I would get a troll reward, but there it is. So help me if my last token is another troll reward I might break something.

20% off one (1) item in the Market coupon

Wait, there's a market? Market.

Sure enough a window pops up, a search bar in the top left, categories listed below, a currency selection box under that. A big blank window I'll bet item descriptions show up in. A buy/sell tab at the top center. Is this where the stuff I sold by auto-looting went?

Touching the search bar gives me a keyboard popup like I'm the worlds biggest tablet. It goes away when I touch the top category instead, this is going to take awhile.

I spend some time searching through the various categories, just about anything I can think of is in there, even if some of the items are 'out of stock' they still exist. From magic to mundane it's all here, ancient to futuristic, I could have it all.

For the right price.

And that was a bit of an odd thing as well, the prices defaulted to USD, but nearly any option I could think of was present. The one option that caught my eye however is one that got my mind racing. 'Gold Pressed Latinum'.

That of course got me searching for Star Trek technology. It's here. It's expensive as all hell, but with enough money I could have a replicator. Which by it's self would probably break the system. Even if the market wouldn't let me buy things with replicated money or allow me to sell replicated items to it I could still sell them here and use that money in the market.

I don't have that kind of money right now, even if I sold all my stolen skillbooks I couldn't afford it, and it would need power too so I need to get back on task. What I need right now is power, and an untraceable internet connection. Probably a better attack spell too, that would be nice.

Skills are expensive.

Even the most basic skills, like the ones I have an inventory full of are going for at least a grand. On the up side, that means the market will buy the ones I have for roughly eight hundred a piece, and I'm sitting on enough duplicate skill books to make that worthwhile. Spells aren't 'basic' skills however, and even some of the simple ones like move earth are ten grand, I'll come back to spells once my other problems are sorted.

Generators are available in all shapes sizes and power outputs. Nearly all of them require fuel though, so as cool as it would be to just drop a warp core in here and have nearly infinite power, I would need to provide the anti-matter, so not happening. Same thing goes for all the power sources that require exotic fuels, so no eezo cores, or Dust generators. Even more mundane generators aren't very appealing, since I would need gasoline or propane to run them, and they tend to be loud, which would attract attention.

Maybe I can just reconnect the building to the local grid. I'll need a backup generator before Bakuda's bombing spree, assuming I can't get ahead of that and stop it, but that would leave me with one less problem.

I take a moment to focus a bit more on my Sense Earth, feeling out the power lines in the building and nearby. While I can't tell if there's power in the lines a few basic assumptions and a bit of engineering knowledge can get me a long way. I can see where the line in from the grid comes into the building. And what must be the meter box in the alleyway. The inside of the box is a little harder to make out, since most of it is metal, but I think the power might just be disconnected at the meter.

Dismissing the market window for the moment I head over to the side door and check the alley with my sense earth for any of the telltale metal bits that mean a person is there. Not sensing any I unlock and open the door, looking around to confirm before stepping out. The meter-box is only a few feet from the door, so a couple steps and I'm standing in front of it. There's a metal clip with a red plastic tag holding the box closed, indicating this was shut off by the company. A pair of wire cutters I take from my inventory make quick work of the clip, and a few more moments of work see the box open, and the meter rotated back into the correct position for power to flow. I re-close the box, putting the now broken clip back in place to fool the casual observer, and head back inside. A flip of the nearby light switch confirming that the power is back on.

The lights being on presents a new problem though. As soon as it's dark enough, people will be able to see the lights on through the windows up top. A few castings of Wall of Stone and Shape Earth fix that problem though, a thin layer of stone just inside the glass now blocks all the light. It means I won't have any idea of the time of day, but no light will escape from inside either, and for the moment, staying hidden is the most important thing.

Okay, power is solved for the short to medium term, that just means I need an untraceable internet connection, and all the stuff for forging. It's too bad I can't just turn the gas back on the same way, that would solve most of my forge problems, but I don't really know how that works, even with my engineering skill, I'm not sure how to find the shutoff. And even following pipes around with sense earth it might just be water pipes instead since I can't tell what's inside them.

Not to mention the whole 'could explode the entire city block if I screw it up' thing.

Hell I'm not even sure this building had a gas line to begin with.

So that means I need a fuel source for whatever forge I build. That could get expensive fast.

Opening back up the market I find several full forge set ups, but they start around ten thousand, and I could make most of the parts myself, so I really don't want to spend that much. I buy some drafting paper and a set of mechanical pencils, pull them out of my inventory and get to work designing what I want. It should help my engineering skill at least and give me a better idea of exactly what parts I need to buy to save money.

I spend some time drafting a forge and a small furnace for smelting, 5 iterations each, my design getting more refined each time I give it another go, my engineering skill is in fact gaining experience from the effort. With the windows covered I no longer have any idea what time it is, but it's not like I need sleep anyway, so I just keep working. My final designs needs the internal parts from several gas grills and a pair of small fans. I purchase them from the market and get to work. After disassembly I pull aside the parts I need, mostly the fittings and pipes for the propane, and take a closer look at the burners.

How the hell don't these things melt?

Propane can burn at over three thousand degrees, way more than enough to melt iron and even most steels, but here I am with a chunk of cheap steel in my hands that's supposed to be where the flames come out. I summon a wall of stone, and use shape earth to turn a chunk of the granite from it into a copy of the burner. Sense earth really is useful here since it lets me perfectly copy the shape. I put the stone copy into my inventory for safe keeping, I might need to make replacement burners later if these melt.

A few walls of earth provide the rest of the materials needed, with shape earth and move earth making the job of assembly easy, and gets me my first level up for wall of stone as well, massively increasing the amount of granite I get with the spell. It actually leaves me with a bit too much material, so I use shape earth to reduce the rest to sand, I'm going to need some of that later anyway.

Hmmm... Granite is a high silica stone right? I might see about getting into glassblowing as well, the market had vials and lab-ware in it, so if I have an infinite resource I can turn into sell-able items it might solve my money problems. But that's more a long term goal. I would need to get good enough at it to make the sell-able items first. One thing at a time.

Eventually my forge and smelter are assembled and hooked properly to the smoke stack. Unfortunately I still need a few things.

Like water.

Unfortunately much like the natural gas, I don't really know how the water shutoff works from the main. Sure I can turn on the shutoffs inside the building, but I doubt that will be enough to get the water flowing again. There's a whole mess of pipes all under the ground, but I have no way of knowing what's inside them unless it counts as earth, and even them I'm still only getting a general type out of my sense earth, not specifics. Best I can do it try and follow the pipes in the building to the mains.

I guess I better do that then.

I walk over to the bathroom and start looking around at the pipes, several of them are PVC and therefore a blind spot in my sense earth. In fact I'm not really finding much of a path to follow until I get to the outer edge of the building. There's a round hole in the masonry, and a metal fitting leading to a metal pipe. It's only a couple feet from a nearly identical one though.

One must be the water in, the other sewage out.

All the pipes in the interior walls are PVC so unless I want to tear up the drywall I'm not finding out which is which.

Or maybe I'm overthinking this. The water will be shutoff somewhere down the line, but even if the sewage is as well I would need to open it too, so I can just follow both lines and look for a shutoff. Doing so with my sense earth leads me to a pair of closed butterfly valves in a tunnel under the street. Fortunately there's enough detritus in the tunnel for me to use move earth on so I can wrap it around the handles and force them into the open positions again. I turn to the sink and turn on the faucet. After a minute or so of noise it sputters and starts letting out rusty water. I better let that run for a bit.

I go around and open up what other water lines I find in the building, basically just the toilet and the sink in the break room, before heading back to turn off the now... mostly... clear water in the bathroom sink.

Not water I would want to drink, but I don't need it for that.

What I do need now is some clay.

Seeing as we're in a port town in New England there's several clay layers not far under the ground, pretty much everywhere, the trick is going to be getting it out of the ground without making too much of a mess.

I sit back down in the office chair and meditate, my MP is still low from making the forge and I think I'm going to want it topped up before I try this.

Rousing myself from meditation once my MP is full I walk over to the far corner of the room. If this goes bad I don't want to screw up any of the other things I've been working on. The floor is reinforced concrete, which means it counts as stone, but with metal rebar going through it, I can't effect the metal, but I can sense where it is, so I should have enough room to work around it. I summon a wall of stone nearby so that I'll have the needed extra material ready, and since it's my most MP intensive spell I want to make sure I have it available incase I get too low. I use shape earth to cut a perfect plug in the concrete between the rebar and move earth to lift the plug out of the hole. I repeat this process with the stone, sand and gravel underneath, using shape earth to reinforce the walls of the hole with stone as I go. Eventually I make it down to the clay layer and start the process of slicing hole size chunks out with shape earth and moving it up the hole. This gets set in it's own pile away from the columns of fill material. I occasionally slice chunks off the wall of stone and send them back down the hole, flexing my engineering skill as I shore up the earth down in my hole. I'm literally undermining the foundation of the building here so I need to be very careful if I don't want to cause damage. As my MP starts to get low I decide I have enough clay and I use most of the remaining granite to back fill the hole from the clay. I stop and rest before filling the plug back in though, as my MP is now in the single digits.

Note to self, if I want materials from underground in the future, go somewhere I don't care about, this is too taxing mentally.

A bout of meditation on the floor refills my MP and rests my mind before I force myself to rouse and finish up.

The plugs I pulled out go back in the hole in the order I got them in, shape earth returning them to near their natural state once they're in place. I put the concrete plug back in place and use shape earth to fuse it back into the floor as if nothing had ever happened. A quick scan underground reveals nothing obviously shifted out of place, so I believe that's job done. I now have a decently sized pile of natural clay on my floor.

I'm going to need accurate time soon, so I guess I need to stop putting off the last issue. I need internet access.

Opening the market back up I begin to search. Ideally I want a no upkeep method of connecting to the internet that can't be traced back to my location. I don't know who's toes I'm going to step on, but there's more than enough Tinkers out there that data security is a major concern for me. Dozens of options are considered and discarded, either because I doubt it's ability to connect to modern internet, or no evidence of untraceability. The market is full of things that provide otherwise free access to things though, so that doesn't seem to be much of a factor.

Eventually I find something called a 'D.I.M.M.'

The 'Digital Information Magic Messenger' is listed as a device that's purpose is to ' transfer information between devices via the 'Digital Information Realm', which there isn't more information on, but it is listed as being able to connect to 'any digital information infrastructure' so it sounds like it will work, and I'm hoping that the exotic nature of the connection will work to make it untraceable.

It's expensive though.

I cross reference my inventory and the market for a bit, checking sell prices on my items. If I sell all my duplicate books and use my 20% off coupon I'll have just a little more than enough.

Fuck it, we're doing it live.

I buy the DIMM and head upstairs to the office. I pull out the DIMM from my inventory and place it on the desk. The DIMM is a small black box about a foot wide, half a foot deep, and maybe three or four inches tall. It's not a perfect box though, the edges are beveled and there's some angles on what must be the top corners, as well as a few grooves etched into the surface. It does have little rubber feet on the bottom too so it was obvious which way to set it down.

I'm just not sure how to use it.

There's no obvious buttons or ports, so I'm guessing it's wireless, but there's no power supply either and no obvious way to turn it on.

It does have magic in the name though...

I place my palm on top of the device and sort of 'will' some of my MP into it. The grooves light up under my hand, now emitting a pale blue, nearly white, light. Lifting my hand lets me see the word 'Initializing' on the top surface of the device. Well, I guess that's working then.

I pull the various boxes that contain computer parts out of my inventory and get to work assembling the prebuilt desktop I stole. Keeping my eye on the DIMM for any changes. As I get ready to power on the PC the DIMM changes from 'Initializing' to 'Scanning' so I assume it's making progress. I turn the computer on and start going about the process of setting it up how I want it, removing bloatware, turning off automatic updates, setting the colors and the way the windows will behave. All fairly standard stuff, but it is giving me computer skill so no complaints. I'm playing minesweeper by the time the DIMM changes again. The grooves turn a pale green and a holographic screen appears above the device asking me to select device connections.

This is a long list.

Fortunately there are ways to sort it, including by distance and purpose. Both the 'World Wide Web' and phone service are listed as infrastructure devices, so I set one connection to be the much older name for the internet, and by reducing the distance all the way down it lets me find my new PC to set as another connection point. The standard looking minimize button on the corner of the screen has the holographic screen shut off, but a little glowing square icon appears on the surface of the DIMM which opens it back up again when I touch it.

Now that I have a handle on my new toy, I need to get back to work.

I have the computer sync its clock to internet time, making sure to select GMT -5 as the time zone. Apparently it's 8:37 PM. I pop out of the office, grab the alarm clock from my bedroom, and head back downstairs, setting the alarm clock on the table, plugging it in and setting the time.

Ok, back to crafting for a few minutes, then I can troll the internet.

I use shape earth on some of the remaining bits of the last wall of stone to make a stone cup and go fill it at the breakroom sink. I then grab a chunk of clay and wet it down some. Using shape earth I make the clay into a perfect small bucket shape, taking care to make sure there's no air pockets trapped inside the clay. I use my hands to make a small pour spout on one side and then take it and set it inside my smelter.

The smelter should serve fine as a kiln, and I'm not planning on making enough ceramics to justify making a dedicated kiln anyway so it should do. At least with my sense earth I don't need to worry about any bubbles trapped inside making my soon to be crucible explode. This will also serve as a test of the hardware, I'm going to need to fire the smelter for eight hours before turning it off and letting everything cool down for another eight, at least that's what I remember from my ceramics class back in the day. So this will show me for sure if any of the parts are going to melt under use since that's far longer than I will need for smelting.

I get the smelter fired up and the gas flow adjusted to where I feel it's right, I don't have any way of telling the temperature in there, but I'm letting my skills guide me on this, so I hope they're right. I make note of the time, 8:52, and go wash my hands before heading back to the computer. I set an alarm on the computer for 4:50 so I can shut things off to cool down.

Now to troll through the PHO boards.

I go through the many threads, mostly focusing on things related to Brockton Bay but dipping a little into larger global events as well. I don't create an account yet though, so no posting. I need to come up with a Cape Persona before I register if I want whatever name I pick to stick. I figure that's the best way to do things, if I register on PHO and verify myself as a cape before I 'debut' on the scene, then it's much more likely whatever name I choose will be the one people go with, rather than just letting the PRT slap a dumb designation on me. If a name is out there already they tend to go with it, but changing a name once they assigned one is damn near impossible.

So I go through a bunch of cape profiles while I'm there as well, trying to get ideas. I'm already planning on lying in some manner about my abilities, hell I'm not even technically a Parahuman since I have a totally different source for my 'powers' but only an MRI or Panacea will be able to tell that so I'm going into this whole thing with a lie anyway. But my thoughts of lying are more focused on the tactical, Sun Tzu said that all war is deception, and the situation in Brockton Bay is very much a war. I need some believable lie that will let people think I have a weakness I don't actually have, that way if anyone ever tries to exploit it I can still come out on top.

So what can I do?

Well, at my core I'm a Geokinetic, if you want to classify things. Sure I can pick up skills far faster than normal as well, which might give me a thinker rating like Uber, but that's not going to be the big flashy thing I need to use all the time. My real weakness is that I currently can't effect metal. That might change as I level my skills up more, but that's not guaranteed. So I need a fake weakness that hides that.

I look out the interior window of the office at the factory floor, checking to make sure the smelter is still running.

Wait.

That's it.

I'm not a Geokinetic, I'm a Tinker with a device that lets me manipulate earth. That's the perfect cover! Tinkers all have a presumed set of weaknesses, the biggest of which is that they're just a normal person if you take their tech away, and it even provides cover for any new spells I pick up since that will just be assumed to be a new gadget.

I just need to make some technical looking schizwa's to put on my costume and I'll be good to go.

Now I need a name.

I suck at names...

I spend hours going through Cape profiles, and man have there been a lot of them here since the 80's. Not just that, but history here is basically the same as home up until Scion appeared, so all the older fictional superheroes exist as well. No 'Superman' for me. Add onto that the amount of media that comes over from Earth Alph and it really chews up what can be selected. Especially since I want to keep it simple and easy to remember.

The alarm goes off and I head back downstairs and shut off the smelter, allowing it to cool.

I take a look around my little workshop and smile, things are really starting to take shape.

Wait a minute.

I rush back upstairs and do several searches on the internet before heading back to the PHO boards and registering an account.

For the first time since arriving on Earth Bet I'm satisfied with myself, Brian Wells is a name I was randomly assigned by the system, and while I can't remember my original name, I have just given myself the name I'll use to save myself and the world.

My name, is 'Shaper'.

[AN]: Bit of a long chapter for me, and I still didn't get as far as I wanted, but this was just too good a spot to end the chapter. So we're going to get one more after this of set up before we get more action. Sorry but there's just too much to get done before the main character is ready to 'debut' himself.