This is a crossposting from my QuestionableQuesting account.
Chapter 3
Lasers flew over their heads while Ed and Taylor ran across the junk world, Ed had long let go of Taylor's arm as they ran so he could better shoot at their pursuers. Taylor's lack of physical activity and a mildly heavy school bag had come to bite her and she was already starting to breath heavily while her legs burned from all the running. After a long chase the two of them turned a final corner when they managed to get the aliens to lose sight of them.
"Quick, in here Taylor!" Ed called out, pointing at a small and decrepit shack made up of scrap metal sitting between two junk piles.
The second they were inside the empty shack Ed slammed the crappy door closed and Taylor collapsed in an exhausted heap. She shrugged off her bag and leaned against the dirty wall of the shack as she gasped for air.
"Man, you're really out of shape," Ed commented, not breathing too hard in part due to him working out and the cybernetics in his body. "If you want I can whip something up to help you gain a bit of muscle without those annoying side effects if you start, like, jogging or something."
"I'm not," Taylor gasped, "using steroids. But I think I will start to take up jogging."
"Right, well ignoring my generous offer to quickly make you more useful and not die of exhaustion," Ed unslung the laser rifle off his shoulders and shoved it into Taylor's arms. "It's us or them, Taylor. If you want to live then fight."
Taylor gave the laser rifle a distasteful glance but closed her eyes for a moment before taking a deep breath and opening them back up. "Fine, but I refuse to shoot first at people, even aliens. I want to try and get them to back off. Why are they even shooting at us?" she asked.
Ed shrugged his arms to the side, "Why do you think? If they wanted the suitcase I'd have just given it to them if they had asked and weren't part of the Galactic Federation, but instead they probably just wanted to kill us to tie up loose ends. This is obviously some sort of secret government mission. They're part of the Galactic Federation, they want to control everything, it's kinda what they do."
Taylor thought that over and bit her lip, it was frustrating for her to try and figure out what to do since she didn't know anything about the wider galaxy. Hell, she didn't even think aliens existed until recently. "Why don't we just leave then? We have your portal gun so they won't know where we or the suitcase went," Taylor pointed out.
Ed paused and thought about it until he snapped his finger at Taylor, "Ooooh, save ourselves and stick it to the man, I like it!"
Ed reached into his coat and whipped out the portal gun, he pointed it at an empty wall and pulled the trigger. However, the end of the gun sputtered green and nothing happened.
"What? Oh, shit," Ed muttered, bringing the gun closer to his eyes. A small scorch mark was on two separated ends of a now ruined wire connecting different parts of the gun, he grumbled when his gaze went from his gun to another small scorch mark on his lab coat, "I knew I felt an impact earlier, one of their lasers destroyed a wire. God damn it I just made this thing too."
"Can you fix it? Because I see them coming," Taylor asked while slightly looking out of the windowed wall she was using for cover. One of the Gromflomites noticed her heading poking out to see through the window and pointed in their direction while yelling at his comrades.
"Not right now, I don't have any wires," Ed replied, doing one final check over his portal gun. "We'll just have to fight our way to safety. If that suitcase was something important or top secret then they wouldn't want to try and draw more criminal attention to it. This shouldn't be too difficult of a fight for us if we do this carefully."
Ed made sure his laser pistol was fine and then gave Taylor a grin as he took a position next to another window, "After that I should be able to find us something to use, this place is like a treasure trove. You know that old saying right?"
Taylor readied her rifle as the first alien soldiers came into view when they spotted Taylor, "Yeah, one man's trash and all that. Let me talk to these guys first."
Ed kept his weapon ready and his eyes trained on the aliens, "It won't work but sure, go nuts."
"Hey!" Taylor shouted. "We don't have anything to do with whatever you're doing! We don't want to fight you!"
"Oh yeah?" One alien replied with more ornate armor than the others while he readied his rifle. "Then how come the criminal we were chasing was dead and your friend over there sent the object we were chasing away?"
"He was just making sure the stuff he was getting was out of danger! We will happily give you the suitcase! We don't even know what's in it!" Taylor shouted back.
"Wait, we will?" Ed asked, looking at Taylor like she lost her mind. Taylor just shushed him while they waited for the alien's response.
"Looting a junk world is a criminal offense warranting imprisonment for eighty Galactic Federation Years!" The alien commander replied. "Come out with your appendages up and weapons on the ground!"
"That's about 30.77 earth years," Ed told Taylor. "Still want to talk?"
"Shut up," Taylor muttered and raised her rifle. As soon as she fired the battle went chaotic as lasers flew through the air. Most of her shots went wide on account of her never using a laser gun before and a still lingering unwillingness to shoot to kill but it was enough to make the aliens scatter.
Ed joined the fight right after her, sending shots at the aliens much closer than she could. He grinned, happy at the advantages being augmented gave him. "You should really let me give you cybernetics, Taylor! It makes this so much easier!"
Taylor didn't respond for a few moments before replying, "I'll think about it."
"Good enough!" Ed cheered and blew the head off one of the soldiers.
Taylor was busy trying to figure out a way to end this fight as quickly as possible. As she fired her laser rifle a bit too wildly she eyed the weird bug aliens, trying to find any weak spots she could exploit.
Her gaze drifted to one of the non-armored aliens, a fuzzy sack on one part of its lower body. "Probably an acid sack. Insect aliens have acid sacks, right?"
Taylor took careful aim this time as lasers flew across the battlefield and fired, the laser flew from the barrel and struck the alien in the sack and pierced a wide hole through its body. The alien screamed and clutched the hole in its lower body, sobbing while the rifle it dropped fired a single round that struck one of the junk piles causing it to fall over and forcing the alien's friends in the back to rush forward with the rest or be crushed.
"Jesus, Taylor!" Ed yelled, staring at the sobbing alien. "You shot him in the balls!"
"Oh, shit! Ted's been shot in the gonads!" One of the aliens held its head and panicked as another ran over to him.
"What kind of fucked up person does that?!" A second shouted.
"It was pretty hardcore." Ed shook his head while staring at the slowly dying alien, "Honestly, it'd be kinder to just kill him at this point."
"Fuck you! You're trying to kill us!" Taylor angrily shouted at the alien group, her breathing was getting heavier as the battle raged.
"At least we have a code of ethics!" The commander exclaimed with its arms in the air.
"Alright, I'm bored now, enough of this," Ed suddenly interjected before Taylor could continue arguing with the alien. He put a hand into a side pocket of his pants and pulled out a metal ball, he thumbed a button and the ball beeped for a moment before it was thrown out the window at the grouped up aliens.
The Gromflomites only had a moment to process it before screaming in horror and trying to scramble away when the ball exploded with directed lightning-like energy that disintegrated the aliens. Only their weapons were left, landing on the ashes of the insectoids.
Ed put away his laser pistol and grinned, "Alright! Looks like we're good now! Grab the rifles, I'll go look for a wire."
"You couldn't have done that earlier?" Taylor brought her rifle down while she sat on the floor to rest her shaking arms and legs, the adrenaline of combat starting to wear down now that they weren't in immediate danger.
Ed shrugged, "Only had the time to make one. I have a lot of projects I need to do and I need to start making proper tools to continue my research and build stuff faster. Can't focus too much on grenades and guns until I get my shit properly together."
Taylor slowly picked herself up, "Will you ever properly tell me about this research of yours?"
Ed opened the door for Taylor and they stepped out of the shack together, "Maybe, if you let me put that chip I made into you. It keeps thinkers and hopefully masters from affecting you. It's mostly interfering with the power's ability to affect your brain, so it's essential if you want to know anything more than the bare minimum. If you can't accept it then I can't tell you."
"...I'll think about it," Taylor eventually replied after a moment to think about it. The two of them got to work, Taylor grabbed the weapons and Ed began searching for a replacement wire and more goodies. An hour went by of continued looting, Ed getting more excited the more stuff he found. As they finished being magpies the two climbed over a final fallen junk pile to see the remains of the criminal alien's crashed ship and the other Gromflomites landed ships.
"Alright! What a good find!" Ed was giddy. "I'll just mark this spot to come back to later. Aaaaand that's done, let's go Taylor!"
After replacing the wire Ed shot the air in front of them and a portal was formed. Taylor was the first through the portal and Ed wasn't far behind, coming to a stop next to the stuff they had gathered earlier.
"Just put the rifles in that box, let's keep the useful stuff separated from the parts. Other than that just put whatever in whichever box, doesn't matter much," Ed said, Taylor just nodded her head and the two of them got to work.
After they finished a beeping noise suddenly filled the garage and Ed rolled his right sleeve a bit to reveal a futuristic bracer. On the bracer's screen a small light flashed, Ed tapped the device and a clear video feed appeared on it. Taylor saw him roll his eyes in annoyance.
"Seems like Armsmaster is coming up the street, probably heading here" Ed informed.
"...What?" Taylor asked, her voice a little small as one of her favorite heroes in the city was coming to her house.
"I set a bunch of stealthed cameras around the streets surrounding us and the house itself. I have about ten blocks of sight and advanced warnings in every direction. They monitor the streets, underground, and skies for any cape activity or suspicious people using every single kind of scanning type I could fit in them," Ed continued. "I'll have to put my research and development on hold until he's gone, that's sort of annoying but expected."
"What do you mean Armsmaster is coming here?!"
"I used my portal gun to take you from school," Ed raised an eyebrow. "What'd you think would happen?"
"Then why did you do it?"
"Ripping off the bandaid," Ed explained. "Gotta get everyone used to me taking you from school so they'll just ignore it in the future. Besides, I have a plan."
Ed looked at the screen on his bracer and saw that Armsmaster just parked in front of Taylor's house. Ed looked up from his arm and said, "Alright, here's the deal. I'm a rogue tinker that uses portals to go places. I recruited you as my assistant to help me with my research because I thought you looked cute, your dad agreed to it as long as you get paid."
Ed reached into his back pocket and pulled out a small roll of twenties to shove into Taylor's hand, "Here's three hundred dollars. I'll give you some money to spend on yourself for every adventure."
"I-uh, what?" Taylor stuttered, even blushing a bit when what Ed said just a bit earlier caught up with her mind. The money itself barely even registered to her, it was the complete casual ease of which he just gave it to her that struck her when she and her father were mostly scraping by.
"Don't worry about it, just go, he's coming up to your front door now. And as much as it pains me to say, but if he asks you for a-eugh, cape name, then just say Aperture because I couldn't be bothered to come up with something original," Ed grabbed her by the shoulders, turned her around and pushed her through the door to the house as soon as the doorbell rang.
After making sure that nothing was amiss or out of the ordinary for a normal garage Ed turned his portal gun to the spaceship framework and sent it to a safe location. As soon as the portal closed Ed shot another and stepped through it, appearing inside one of the junkyards in the city.
He pulled up his bracer, tapped it a few times, and a new video appeared. Then Ed went to look for some things he could use later while he watched the interaction.
"-here to make sure you were alright," Armsmaster's voice came through. "Reports from your school about a tinker in a lab coat taking a student came in. We've already investigated your school but found nothing in their records about him. We also spoke with your father on the way over. To be honest, we did not expect to actually find you here if you were busy."
"Heh, I mean-uh, right. Yeah," Taylor awkwardly answered. "I wasn't in danger, he brought me back here when he was done. His name is Aperture. We kind of have a thing… uh, I'm his assistant, I mean. He said I looked cute, so I was allowed to help him. Uh, dad said I could help as long as I was being paid to work. I'm not, uh, under arrest am I? I did ditch school…"
"The Protectorate doesn't handle school discipline issues and I would not believe you'd be arrested for something so minor. While this case does include a Parahuman, we're only involved in the parts that are under our jurisdiction such as attempting to make contact with this unknown and making sure you were not under duress," Armsmaster shook his head, his posture seemed relaxed as he spoke to Taylor. "Might I ask what you help him with? Or, what he works with?"
"Something to do with portals, I'm-uh, not a tinker or a cape so I don't know too much."
"And does he seem… villainous? Please understand that the Protectorate and the PRT don't want another dangerous villain tinker in the city," Ed didn't begrudge the heroes for the question while ripping apart a junk car, it was sensible enough to only very mildly annoy him.
"No, he's a bit chaotic but I think that's just his personality. He doesn't like the whole heroes versus villains thing, he prefers to stay out of it," Taylor told the hero. "He, uh, used a lot more... unkind words when talking about Parahumans."
"I see, thank you for your time, Ms. Hebert. Stay safe, even if this tinker known as Aperture wishes to stay out of it others won't necessarily agree with that and may target you and your father. Here," Armsmaster pulled out a card, "This is the business card for Brockton Bay's PHQ. If you're ever in trouble or if Aperture wishes to work with us, give us a call."
Taylor took the card, giving a tiny smile at the hero, "Right! Right, I will."
"That's all I can ask," he smiled back and turned to walk to his motorcycle. After giving it a small rev that was certainly only for show the hero left Taylor's house, sticking to the speed limit.
Once Ed confirmed that the hero was gone he grabbed what useful stuff he was able to find and portaled back into the garage. He dumped the stuff unceremoniously on the workbench, brought back his spaceship-in-progress with another portal and went into the house. Ed found Taylor by the now closed door holding the card to her chest.
"You alright there?" Ed asked.
"Yeah," Taylor breathed. "Just a bit overwhelmed. I can't believe I lied to a hero."
"You didn't lie to that guy," Ed denied. "Everything you said to him was technically true. You just didn't mention that I lived with you, they'll just assume that I have some secret base in the city or outside it. I use portals, Taylor, to them I could be anywhere."
"I guess," Taylor said. "I didn't expect this to be a part of my day."
"You fought a bunch of aliens then met one of your favorite heroes. I'd say that it could at least be considered a good end to your day, eh?" Ed nudged her arm with his elbow.
"I think we need to have a talk about putting me in deadly situations," Taylor narrowed her eyes.
Ed shrugged, "You did well, even if you froze up in the beginning and shot a guy's balls off."
"I was just brought to an alien planet and met actual aliens that tried to kill me! I was in school barely a few minutes before that sci-fi fight for my life without even having any superpowers!" Taylor argued.
Ed put his hands on Taylor's shoulders and stared into her glasses-covered eyes, "Look, Taylor, you did something good today. Something that those morons parading around as heroes thinking that dropping street crime will fix all the shit that's wrong in their lives can't do. Something that puts you above Armsmaster or even Alexandria! You helped me with my research, Taylor. You helped bring me one step closer to saving the world. You're better than everyone at that shitty school of yours and you're better than every hero in the world, remember that. We have something greater than superpowers, Taylor. We have technology, so don't get your panties in a twist."
Taylor was stunned, shifting her feet awkwardly while staring at the floor. Once she finished gathering herself she replied, "I… guess."
"I wouldn't have picked you if I didn't think you'd be a great help to me, Taylor," Ed said, pulling her in a one-armed shoulder hug. "Though, I guess you did still shoot a guy's balls off."
Taylor looked away in embarrassment and mumbled, "I thought it was an acid sack or something."
"Between his legs? Taylor, it was hairy and looked exactly like a pair of balls. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck it's probably a duck. Or an alien."
"Whatever, I'm going to do my homework," she huffed and rolled her eyes. She pushed Ed away and worked her bag into a more comfortable position before storming away to her room.
Ed shook his head and went back to the garage, while working on his next invention and research he could see what those tubes Taylor found were. If they weren't useful then he'll try and find a buyer for them after getting his spaceship up and running, either for alien currency or rare materials. Whatever was more useful.