Interlude (Armsmaster/?)

Armsmaster stared silently at the MRI x-rays, his helmet resting off to the side of his work table as he peered at the multiple photos of the teen's brain. Each one painting the same picture over and over with no deviations no matter how many times he passed his eyes over them. It was an interesting, if disturbing picture.

"I have the files you asked for Colin." Dragon said as her animated avatar came into existence on the monitor. "And you're right. There aren't any cases like this. For all intents and purposes, aside from the concussion, his brain is fine. Although there is a staggering amount of activity in his Corona Pollentia, his Gemma is larger than normal, and the webbing that connects the organs have spread across the entirety of his brain, going so far as to reach his upper brainstem. That's not something we have a record of. Not to mention his lack of a concussed state once he woke up."

Colin nodded and turned to look at the remains of the armor they had scavenged from where the boy had landed. Sturdy, more akin to a bipedal tank than a suit of armor. It was fascinatingly simple. Yet the forging skill on the plates despite them being low end iron was something that he and Dragon had a discussion about to a length. It gave them both ideas, for Dragon her suits, for him his armor. The only issue had been the weight. Stronger than it should have been, but also heavier. There were...applications in that. One had to wonder if Aluminum could be given that treatment, then layered. Could do wonders for joint protection.

His eyes left the salvaged parts of the suit with some hesitance to go over what the teen had been carrying. A suitcase, a titanium suitcase with an electronic lock that required Dragon's help in cracking. The contents of said suitcase were damning. A credit card without any bank to trace to, no doubt linked to the Numbers Man. A disassembled rifle of the Armalite brand, with three magazines of 5.53 ammunition. two sets of calibration tools, the likes of which are used for very big guns: Artillery cannons. Several sets of casual civilian attire. A single high end laptop without an ounce of memory used beyond the extremely well crafted custom operating system that looked better used for hacking/coding than general internet browsing or schoolwork.

Finally his gaze landed on the last two personal items, something the teen had been carrying in his breast pocket and in the suitcase respectively. What looked to be two casino chips made of platinum with an 8-bit smiley face printed on one side with the word AVA imprinted below the emoticon. Careful observation had revealed both of them to be an intricate microchip and a miniature solid state drive for holding data. It was nothing a new Tinker could make easily, it looked like something that would take quite a while to craft, possibly a year or more. Nevermind the fact that there were two of them. Looking over it had given Colin a few ideas on miniaturizing his combat prediction software hardware requirements. But Dragon had remained rather silent on it.

Colin wasn't good with people. He recognized that fact and had Tinkered around it to a degree. But he didn't need any socializing programs to let him know that something had left Dragon off kilter or worried. They were good friends, and to him she may as well be his only one.

So, even if he wanted to send it off to her for her to pull it apart so they could both study it, Colin kept it squirreled away. He didn't know what it meant to Dragon, but he knew she didn't want to get close to it. "Amnesiac, but total. This would be easier to deal with if he were branded." He murmured. "A Tinker case 53, first of their kind." Of course there were other options, such as the Gesellschaft. But that seemed ultimately unlikely due to the boy's Arabic features. Colin did not think it was the Yangban either, rarely did they ever leave china, and from the trajectory of the first hit on the forcefield had the boy coming in from the upper atmosphere.

Or the crash landing coupled with that slip on that fishing boat's stairs had really destroyed the boy's memories. Now they had a young, powerful Tinker who couldn't remember anything of his past. It was an opportunity, a lot of opportunity. It wasn't a happy thought, using an amnesiac like this, but Colin was a pragmatist and an opportunity such as this would never happen again. Even if the saying was patiently false, the phrase 'Lightning never strikes twice' fit better than many others.

Another hero Tinker, working with Colin, was something Brockton Bay needed desperately. Not to mention it wouldn't hurt Colin's career. "So," Dragon began, a coy warm smile on her digital avatar's face "Mister Armsmaster" Colin groaned softly and chose to interrupt her before she could continue "You pushed me to say that."

Dragon's smile only grew as Colin's voice replayed the awkward joke from her monitor. "Imagine what Assault would think if I showed him this?"

There was a thump as Colin's head hit the wall in exasperation.

"Laas Yah Nir" For a moment her vision shifted as her voice doused the world in red before it faded. All except the three human shaped blots of red lifeforce moving inside the warehouse. The alarms set in place were not very complex, although a few could be described as lethal if she were feeling charitable. But she hardly ever was, and she had important work to get started. Her armor gave a soft whirr as she made her way towards the main doors of the warehouse. Her throat had dealt with the strain of using the voice by the time she reached them.

"Bex!" With a squeal of protest the doors of the warehouse rammed themselves open. She watched with distant satisfaction as one of the red blobs fell out of a bed. The other two snapped up, one drawing what looked like a pistol from the way they held it. The other went running to another section of the warehouse. A moment later the warehouse doors began to shut, and she walked past them justy before they met with a resounding crash of metal on metal. "Saint!" Her voice echoed through the metal warehouse, refurbished to be more homey but the metal still makes the place sound cavernous. Didn't help that her armor amplified the shout as well. "I've come to parley with you, about the mission your organization pursues!"

It took a minute for them to come before her. Saint and his wife Mags wearing their stolen Dragan TinkerSuits. She could already see the flaws inherent to them due to poor maintenance. The other one, the russian wasn't around. Rather he was most likely manning the console attached to Dragon's coding. "Hello. I am a Collector." She stated. "My designation is Avery, and I've come to seek an Alliance with the DragonSlayers. I have no quarrel with you, and our goals align in some areas."

Saint stared at the Tinker armored woman before him, his metal clad arms crossing over his chest. "What are your goals then? Why come to us? How do you know about the DragonSlayers?" He questioned harshly, eyes flickering over her suit and almost devouring the details of it. Avery flipped her hands over, showing her palms. Her voice was utterly devoid of inflection "The World I am from, the Earth has multiple different ways to view other Earths and dimensions. Plenty foolishly think that means that they are just stories for entertainment." She cocked her head to the side, the blank helmet she wore covered her head entirely. "I am one of an organization that knows the truth. One of our own decided to go AWOL, and he did so by leaving us a surprise in the form of a rogue AI he let loose on the internet before he and his accomplice escaped from our Earth and traveled here."

Saint paled. "A code Tinker that released an AI? Here? From another Earth but not Aleph?" He held his chin for a moment as he thought over this information. "You're a Tinker as well?" He asked, looking once more at her armor and the weapon she had slung over her shoulder, and seated on her hip.

Avery nodded "Parahumans from my world rarely exist. But all are akin to the artificial triggers that the Gesellschaft uses. Ours are far more...controlled. Better crafted." Saint frowned at the comparison but motioned for her to continue "My main ability is the use of a Trump ability to spot other parahumans, and to repair and maintain Tinker gear. Not to mention a low brute rating." Saint was now eyeing her more for her powers than her armor, the woman next to him gave Saint her own side eye before speaking up. "And what exactly is your goal here then, why follow them?"

For the first time, an inflection leaked into Avery's voice. "Why, I'm here to collect the two strays." She answered with a smile in her voice.