Saturday, February 5, 2011
Giggling to herself Taylor read the thread on PHO, shaking her head a little. "Raptaur's not bad, actually," she commented out loud.
"It would seem somewhat appropriate," the Varga snickered. "Although it would also seem that we were actually seen when you were experimenting with the tanker. Some of these rumors are… very amusing."
"I'm going to have to keep referring to my big sister now, though," she laughed. "And hinting at the rest of the family wanting to come on shore to play, but everything being too small and fragile. I wonder how long I could keep that going for?"
"Probably some time, although I expect that about the point that your father's plan begins, people may well start to wonder." The Varga thought for a moment then mentally shrugged. "Or perhaps not. It's been my experience that once humans get an idea into their heads they tend to stick with it until real proof of it being wrong is presented to them. Sometimes not even that works."
Grinning, she shook her head, clicking through to the next page. "It'll be some work but it could be really funny." When they'd caught up with the storm of peculiar comments that had built up overnight, she closed the laptop and put it back in her bedside table, yawning widely, before getting up. It was only about half past six in the morning but she wanted to get an early start with practicing distance weapon work in the ships graveyard, then go shopping for a few things.
She wanted to get a good waterproof GPS unit with world maps at decent resolution, for navigation when she went on her little expedition, which she was planning on doing late that night with an eye towards coming back on Sunday some time. Both of them were curious to find out how fast they could actually travel underwater in the larger aquatic combat form variant.
It would be easy to protect her equipment underwater, and keep it dry, with appropriate Varga-provided containers, no matter how deep she went. But she'd still have to surface to use it and it would probably get wet then, so it needed to be waterproof. And have a good battery life.
Hopping out of bed she quickly showered and brushed her teeth, before heading downstairs, to find her father sitting at the kitchen table with some papers and a cup of coffee, drinking the latter while studying the former, a look of concentration on his face. He looked up at her as she came in and smiled.
"You're up early, dear," he noted. "You do know it's the weekend, don't you? No school today." He grinned as she rolled her eyes, sitting down across from him.
"Yes, I know it's Saturday, Dad. Thanks." Picking an apple out of the bowl of them on the table, she bit into it with a crunch, then chewed and swallowed. "I'm going up to the Graveyard for some practice for a couple of hours, then shopping, then I'm not sure what else. Maybe wander around downtown for a while."
"As Saurial or Raptaur?" he asked, an amused look on his face.
"Oh. You saw it," she replied, snickering.
"Yes. You seem to have caused a certain amount of consternation to the good people of PHO, dear," he laughed. "Some of them seemed a bit worked up for some reason."
"They're going to lose it completely when they see me pull that ship," she giggled, making him shake his head, smiling.
"Do you have a name for the really big one yet?" he asked.
She nodded. "That one was easy. Kaiju. The big sister, but not as big as the really big sister."
Laughing, he listened to her thoughts on going along with the PHO theories and gently pushing the idea of a whole family of steadily larger reptilian creatures living in the bay. "And what do you call the ultimate version, then?"
"Varga, of course," she snickered. Looking around carefully, she leaned in. "He's the one the others are worried about. He's dangerous."
"Whereas the others are safe?"
She rocked her hand from side to side. "More or less. Comparatively, at least."
Her mischievous expression made him roar with laughter. "You do realize, of course, that you won't be able to keep it up forever?" he asked when he calmed down. "After all, you can only be in one place at a time. Sooner or later that alone will make people wonder."
Taylor shrugged, still smiling. "They just say that the family doesn't like more than one going out at a time, in case of trouble at home."
Snickering, he watched her with an affectionate look. "Don't overdo it, dear, but I have to admit that's pretty funny." Putting the papers down he stood, moving to start breakfast for both of them.
"Do you think the E88 will cause any more problems for you now?" she asked after a moment or two, while he started mixing some pancake batter. Her father looked at her for a couple of seconds, then sighed with a small shrug.
"I'd love to say I didn't think so, but I can't," he admitted. "Oh, I'm fairly sure we won't see Hookwolf again, he seemed extremely intimidated. Not surprisingly. But we can't guarantee that Kaiser and the rest of his people will listen to your message. I'd expect it will certainly slow them down if they had anything planned, but..." He shrugged again. "Difficult to know for sure."
Just call me if it happens again," she told him after thinking it over. "I meant what I said. I'll do anything I need to to protect you, and to be honest the rest of the DWU as well. I know how much they mean to you, I like them as well. Everyone I've met there seemed nice and I don't want to see them hurt. E88, ABB, Merchants… I don't care, I'll deal with it."
"We have some very good people in the Union," he agreed with a smile, adjusting the stove and putting the pan on it, then adding oil carefully. "I have to say I was both impressed and pleased how much they seem to like you already. Surprised, definitely, but they seem to enjoy having a friendly cape. Even one who looks as terrifying as Raptaur." He grinned over his shoulder at her, while she laughed slightly.
"Mind you, I expect that if the plan goes ahead there may be a certain amount of confusion when… Kaiju… shows up."
"Do you think they'll keep the secret that Saurial and Raptaur are the same person?" she asked curiously.
He nodded, pouring some batter into the pan. "Actually, yes, I do. It's something that I suspect everyone in the Union who knows about it will think is Union business and not something for outsiders to be concerned with. We have our own little secrets like any largeish organization and we tend to keep them. People will find out eventually but I doubt it will come from inside the DWU."
"Good. I'm glad you can trust them." Taylor smiled, accepting the first pancakes he handed her. Soon they were both eating and talking about various things to do over the next week or so.
Moaning a little to herself, Lisa decided that it was already a horrible day and it had only just started. She'd been reading the rest of the unsettling PHO thread about the thing they'd encountered, which the online community was now referring to as Raptaur, while lying on her bed at the Undersider's base. Trying to use her power to extract more information had been a bad mistake. Again.
She waited for the probably unsafe number of ibuprofen tablets she'd just swallowed to do something useful, her eyes shut and her hands massaging her temples. 'What the hell is going on?' she wondered. 'Why does my power have such trouble with Saurial, and this new one, and for that matter that girl I saw in the mall?' The sensation she'd had observing the huge reptile as it smashed Hookwolf around like a golf ball in a blender was the same as the girl had engendered, only worse.
There had been the same mental static, like her power was gaping with an open mouth and possibly dribbling a little, accompanied by a definite feeling of something wildly larger than herself watching with amusement and some disapproval. That last part was the worst thing about it. She'd felt like a bug under a microscope for a moment and had absolutely no idea why.
The obvious conclusion was that the girl she'd seen was somehow connected to the giant lizard in some way. A wild idea crossed her mind, causing her to sit up, then wince. 'A Changer? It… might fit. But why all the interference? And where does Saurial come into the picture?'
She hadn't yet encountered the other reptilian cape but was suddenly wondering if she'd get the same effect. The way that she seemed unable to derive any inferences about the lizard-girl directly tended to point that way, although she was able to get some useful information by thinking around the subject, not right at it. The conclusions she'd come to had made her decide it would be unwise to get involved, the girl was nothing if not very dangerous.
The new one was much, much worse, based on what she and the others had seen.
Her thoughts kept worrying over the concept of that girl in the mall actually being the new reptilian creature, which the more she thought about it the more she thought could possibly be the case. It would explain the more or less identical problems she was encountering.
If Saurial produced the same effect as well… That could show something interesting. Or terrifying. Or both.
A Changer that could go from apparently completely normal human girl through Saurial to end up as that eight foot tall monstrosity, that was bad enough. But she suddenly wondered, paling a little, 'If she can do that… What are her real limits?'
That thought made her shiver again.
She lay back down and draped her arm across her eyes, trying vainly to turn her brain off for a while.
Taylor looked around as she prowled through the far north section of the ship graveyard, inspecting the wrecks surrounding her on the foreshore and extending quite a distance into the shallow water. The sun was beginning to rise and it looked like it would be a nice day, albeit fairly cold since it was still early February.
Lifting one foot she shook mud from her talons, looking down with a frown. This particular area was very sticky and wet, more marshland than beach, with scrubby plants growing up through the scrap metal which was slowly sinking into it. Water gurgled around her other foot, filling in the depression she'd left quite fast. Looking over her shoulder she could see a line of small puddles where she'd walked that were slowly slumping back into the mud.
Deciding that it was too mucky here, she headed off to the right, fastidiously keeping her tail well out of the mud. The eight-foot tall combat form was pretty heavy after all and she was sinking in over a foot, whereas in her base form she'd probably have only left light footprints.
When she arrived on harder, sandy ground near the waterline, she flicked as much mud off her feet as she could, then waded in the shallow water for a few minutes while she looked for a good target. Eventually she decided on the remains of some sort of small cargo ship, probably only about eighty feet long or so, which had sunk stern down into the sea a few hundred feet from shore.
She'd remembered to ask her father what the ends of a ship were called, making him laugh when she told him what she thought of them as.
Grinning at the memory, she inspected the old ship from under the water, seeing it was entirely wrecked. A significant part of the engine room was missing, looking like it was the result of a large explosion, judging by the way the steel hull was peeled open and out like something inside had pushed through it. Tapping it she found the remaining metal was fairly sound, although very rusty.
'This should do nicely,' she commented, peering up through the somewhat cloudy water. It was a falling tide and there was about twenty feet of bow sticking out of the sea.
"Yes, I think so too, Brain. Assuming you can actually hit it, of course." The Varga snickered at her mental snort.
'I'll hit it. Eventually.' Smiling, Taylor swam back to shallow water and waded out onto the beach, shaking herself dry like a dog. She hadn't bothered with the armor at this point, only having a belt with a couple of waterproof pouches containing her Taylor phone, her Saurial one, and a spare burner phone she was going to use for her Raptaur identity.
She'd decided she quite liked that name and was going to use it.
Studying the ship in the distance, she idly juggled the throwing dart that formed in her right hand, then aimed. With a hard heave she released the thing, then watched with embarrassment as it whistled off into the distance, clearing the target by a substantial margin and vanishing into the slight mist rising from the water which eventually became opaque even to her enhanced senses.
"Oops," she mumbled under her breath. "Shut up, you," she added to the Varga, who was laughing like an idiot. "I just need to get my eye in."
"Assuming you don't take someone else's out," he snickered. "We should probably make these with a very short lifetime, Brain, or some poor fisherman will have a nasty surprise. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that went at least a mile."
Shaking her head with a grin, she agreed, then hefted the next one. This shot also missed, but by much less.
It took a dozen more before she finally connected, the scrap hull vibrating madly from the hit, as the dart vanished into it. "I think it went all the way through," she commented, squinting at the ship while moving her head around. "I can see light coming through the hole."
"Not surprising, the darts are very heavy and extremely sharp, not to mention almost frictionless. It will take much more than a couple of inches of rusty steel to slow them very much. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that you can throw them faster than sound even at this size as well."
"Let's see," she laughed, drawing her arm back with the next one in it. Leaning far back on her tail she put her entire spine into the next throw, grunting a little with the effort. There was a loud crack sound and a small shockwave made the water in front of her ripple as the dart vanished on a completely flat trajectory. She missed the wreck, which didn't surprise her, she hadn't been aiming very hard, it was only to see how fast she could throw the thing.
"Wow. I wonder how far that went?"
"We should probably not do that too much, Brain," the Varga cautioned, although he sounded interested. "Without being able to see where they go it's somewhat irresponsible. There are other users of the waters around here, after all."
"True," she mused. "OK. It was an experiment anyway. Let's practice actually hitting what I'm aiming at first, I can work on high speed throws later."
Shortly thereafter, she was amusing herself making gonging sounds from the old hull, which was quickly sprouting a lot of holes and beginning to look somewhat sorry for itself. Her aim improved steadily, although slowly, which pleased both of them.
Eventually, she reached the point she was hitting a small aim point repeatedly, so she switched to the javelin, scaled appropriately, which was much more difficult to use as it turned out. After a while, she began to hear sounds indicative of other people, so armored up for appearance's sake and waited, still practicing.
Spunggg!
Über looked up at the weird sound that echoed throughout the far north end of the Ship Graveyard, where he and his friend and partner were setting up to run a discreet test of a new game-themed weapons system among the old scrap ships that were lying around the foreshore. It was a not uncommon activity and the local Capes tended to mostly ignore each other when they ran across others doing the same. Practically every new cape had come out here at one point or another to see what they or their inventions could do, if they needed a target that no one cared about.
It was an odd, near-truce situation, but it seemed to work. Even Lung had once walked past, nodded politely to them, then continued on his way. For some reason it was only really the Heroes who tended to be trouble, which deeply amused him on some level.
"What the hell was that?" he said out loud. Leet looked over from where he was poking around on his newly created Shrink Ray straight out of Duke Nukem. Or molecular compressor projector, as he tended to call it. As far as Über was concerned it was a shrink ray and he was very interested to see if it worked properly. The effects were only temporary but he could see it being extremely amusing to use in their next operation.
"What?"
Spunggg!
"That."
Leet listened as the echoes died away again, a puzzled expression on his face. "I have no idea."
Spunggg!
Intrigued, the duo exchanged glances, then Über came over and helped his colleague put the tripod-mounted weapon back in the non-descript van they were using to transport Leet's equipment. Locking it and arming the extremely unfriendly security system the Tinker had bought in from Toybox in a trade for some of his older inventions, since they were of no use to him when they failed but they were of interest to other Tinkers, they looked around trying to localize the source of the sound.
Spunggg!
They could make out a distinct whistling noise immediately before the odd sound, now that they were listening for it.
"That way," Über said, pointing towards the shore, several rows of beached trawlers away. Carefully, staying in the shadows, they headed towards the sound. Eventually, after several more Spunggg's, they found it. Both of them stared for some time, then looked at each other.
"What the hell is that and what's it doing?" Über said in a very low voice in his friend's ear. The shorter, skinnier man shrugged.
"I have no idea," he said back, equally quietly.
"I'm practicing my aim," the reptilian horror standing on the shore said casually, rearing back and lifting a hand in a throwing gesture, a gray metallic javelin that tapered to a fine, glinting point at each end appearing in it. They both jumped violently. "Yes, I can hear you," she, for it was apparently female, said calmly. "I could hear your heartbeats coming for the last two minutes."
She leaned back even further, bracing herself with her long sinuous tail, then threw, putting her entire body into it. The source of the whistle they'd heard was now obvious, it was the eight foot long javelin disappearing from view at what must have been close to the speed of sound. Uber's eyes widened in shock. It was one hell of an impressive throw.
Whistle-Spunggg!
The weird sound was the thing punching a hole entirely through the cargo ship resting on the bottom of the bay three hundred feet or so away, about thirty feet of hull visible above the waves. He could barely make out several dozen two inch holes letting light through from the dawn sun. It looked like she was trying, successfully, to turn it into a colander.
"Fucking hell," Leet muttered. "That thing was really moving. It didn't even slow down when it hit that ship and it went through at least a couple of inches of steel. What the hell are they made of?"
"Good stuff," the female reptilian cape noted, rearing back again.
Whistle-Spunggg!
Once more the old ship rang like a bell. She nodded in satisfaction. "Getting better. That one was only about six inches off the mark."
Three more whistles and Spunggg sounds occurred, then, apparently satisfied for the moment, she turned around. Both of them flinched.
They stared into the glowing orange reptilian eyes with slitted pupils that expanded with interest when she looked at them, then after a frozen moment took in the rest of the six, or seven depending on how you counted, limbed form covered in blue-black scales. She was wearing some form of formfitting armor, Über noticed, which blended so well with her scales he had trouble seeing where it stopped and her body started.
The large wedge-shaped head tipped quizzically to one side. "Hey, you're Über and Leet, right?" They both nodded spastically. The corners of the mouth moved, exposing some extremely worrying dentition, in what he finally realized was meant to be a smile.
It wasn't particularly successful at putting them at ease. Leet stepped back while Über couldn't help flinching a little again.
"Hi. I'm Raptaur. I guess you didn't see the thread about me on PHO last night. I like your show. Sometimes it sucks but a lot of the time it's really funny. That thing with Glory Girl last month was amazing although she didn't look too pleased." Her head tipped to the other side. "You should figure out how to do it without breaking the law, though, but I guess it's a bit late now."
Being studied by those glowing eyes was peculiarly unnerving. Über had gone up against most of the heroes in Brockton Bay at one time or another, often with more success than he should have had, and a few of the villains as well, but none of them had ever made him feel quite as nervous as this one did. Lung, ramped up, was scarier, true enough, but he wasn't standing thirty feet from them right now.
It was only the fact that on the one hand she seemed to be friendly or at least non-hostile, and on the other that based on what he could see he was damn sure he couldn't outrun her, that kept him standing there. Oh, and the fact that he didn't want to leave his best friend.
He glanced at Leet for a moment. Mind you, he probably didn't have to outrun her, he only had to outrun him…
Leet was looking back at him with narrowed eyes and he suddenly became certain that his best friend was making exactly the same calculation. They stared at each other for a moment then smiled slightly, going back to the lizard-thing, which was watching with an amused air. He became pretty sure she had a good idea what they were thinking somehow.
"Where do you get those spears from?" Leet asked suddenly. His tone of voice was the one he got when his Tinker senses were tingling. "And what are they made of?"
"I do this," she said, holding out a hand, which suddenly had a javelin in it, one end in the sand at her feet and the other pointed skywards. Über twitched, as did his colleague. It was a little startling. "As far as what they're made of..." She shrugged slightly. "Some sort of very tough metal."
Walking a little closer Leet stared at the thing, obviously very curious. She held it out to him. "It's heavy," she warned. Nodding absently he touched it, then took it from her. She let go and he immediately toppled over, landing full length on the sand with a muffled and very rude exclamation of surprise, which made her giggle.
Hearing something that looked like that giggle like a teenaged girl for some reason provoked an almost irresistible urge in Über to break down laughing. The sight of his old friend getting to his knees then struggling to lift the javelin, which looked like it couldn't weigh more than ten pounds or so but obviously did, from the sand, his face going mildly red, completed the job. He leaned back against the scrap hull behind him and roared with hilarity.
Leet gave him an unfriendly look and stood up, kicking the length of metal on the ground, then hopping up and down on one foot swearing when it passively resisted with great success. Über stared wide-eyed, then collapsed in laughter.
"Thanks, friend," Leet snarled in irritation.
Über weakly waved a hand at him, the javelin, and the reptilian cape, who was standing watching with what had to be a grin on her muzzle. "You… She… too heavy..." he gasped out, snickering. She laughed a little herself, then bent down and picked the thing up like it was a toothpick. Leet gaped.
"Good grief," he mumbled. "How the hell strong are you?"
"Strong enough," she chuckled. "Here you go." The girl, since Über was now convinced she was a teenager, stabbed it into the sand with an extraordinarily quick motion, leaving six feet of it protruding. "That should let you look at it without falling over."
Muttering to himself and casting annoyed glances at his still giggling friend, the Tinker prodded the metal, then ran his fingers over it, his eyebrows going up. The dark green balaclava he, like Über, was wearing, covered his expression but the bits visible conveyed surprise.
"It's practically friction free," he noted with interest. "Weird. I don't know of anything like that." Bending down a little he studied the hand grip which seemed to be molded into the metal, with a textile-like finish. "And this is actually part of it." Feeling it he nodded. "This has normal friction. Very strange."
"How much does it weigh?" Über asked, finally over his amusement and rather interested. She motioned to it and stepped aside. Accepting the wordless invitation he walked over, not without a somewhat nervous look at her, then put his hands on the foot-long grip area in the middle of the thing. He lifted.
Nothing happened.
Frowning, he lifted harder.
Still nothing.
"It must be stuck in the sand," he said, grunting with effort. He and Leet looked down, the Tinker brushing the sand around the end of the javelin buried in the ground away with his foot, to reveal the little fact it was only three inches or so deep at that point. Under that was the granite that the local geology was based on.
The javelin was embedded more than eighteen inches into the solid rock. She'd made it look trivially easy. They exchanged a glance.
"Oops. Sorry." The girl reached out and yanked, popping the spear-like thing free with no effort at all. Gently she let it slide back into the hole. "That should be easier," she added.
Rather more intimidated than he really enjoyed being, Über tried again, grunting with effort. This time he managed to lift it but it was like lifting a stack of concrete blocks. "Jesus, this thing must weigh about a hundred and seventy, hundred and eighty pounds," he said with disbelief.
The fact that she could throw one of these on a hundred yard flat trajectory was horrifying. Never mind the fact she could actually hit a six inch target at that range, repeatedly, as she'd shown with her last couple of throws.
Letting go with relief he let the thing thud back into the hole it had come from, stepping back and flexing his hands. "I've never come across anything that heavy before," he noted. "What the hell is it, depleted uranium or something?"
Leet was staring at the javelin with a calculating look, apparently now completely ignoring the reptile-girl. He shook his head very slowly, not taking his eyes off the javelin. "No. That's much too low density. This stuff must be about..." He thought hard, his lips moving silently, "Around sixty nine, maybe seventy grams per cc. Nothing has a density that high."
After a long moment, he whirled to face the lizard-girl, who twitched a little. "Can you make other things out of it?" he asked.
She nodded. "Sure." Holding out her right hand she gently waved the long two-handed sword that appeared in it. Her other hand was suddenly holding a huge metal hammer than looked like it was for smacking telephone poles flush with the ground. With one hit.
"Holy crap," Über said in a low voice. Leet ignored him, inspecting the blade which she held out obligingly when he stared at it.
"Careful, it's really sharp," she warned him seriously.
The Tinker studied the blade from inches away, then stepped back and looked around. Finding what he was looking for, he picked up a piece of driftwood that was lying on the beach a few feet away, came back, took careful aim, and slammed it into the edge of the blade.
He nearly fell over again as there was no resistance at all, the top part of the piece of wood flying away, and nearly impaled himself on the damn thing. The girl, the sword not moving a fraction of an inch in her grip, whipped her tail around and caught him with it just in time.
"Hey, be more careful," she complained mildly. "I told you it was sharp."
"Thanks," Leet mumbled, more or less ignoring how close he'd come to a serious injury, instead looking closely at the cleanly cut end of the chunk of old wood still in his hand. His eyebrows went up again.
"That… is impressive," he finally said quietly, dropping it to the sand. He stared at her in a sort of bemused way, then said, "Stay here." Turning around he ran off.
Über and the girl exchanged glances. "Sorry," he said. "He gets like this when he's in a Tinker mood."
She shrugged. "I'm told Tinkers are strange at the best of times," she replied mildly, apparently not finding it particularly worrisome. The comment, considering the source, made him grin.
A couple of minutes later his friend was back, puffing like he'd run the entire way to the van and then back here. It was obvious where he'd been as he was lugging his bag full of custom test equipment, most of it his own design but with a few other things he'd acquired from other sources. Unzipping the bag he rooted around in it for a moment, discarding half a dozen odd looking devices, while the girl and Über watched, puzzled. Eventually he said triumphantly, "Aha! There you are."
Pulling out what Über recognized as the working Star Trek Tricorder, TNG series, one of his more successful inventions, he stood up. The thing was mainly successful because it both actually worked to design and hadn't blown up yet.
It probably would sooner or later, but so far it was still intact.
Flipping it open, producing the characteristic sound right out of the Aleph version of the TV series, he fiddled with it for a moment, then ran it down the blade she was still holding and looked at the results.
He blanched, and did it again.
Taking a deep breath, he turned to the javelin and repeated the process. Über was very puzzled now, while the girl, even through the totally non-human appearance and body language, seemed to be the same.
"That's impossible," the Tinker muttered. He repeated the process once more.
Shaking his head, he turned to the hammer and did the same thing again. Twice. Finally he snapped the tricorder shut and stared at the sand for several seconds.
"This is the most bullshit thing I've ever seen!" he finally said, quite loudly, as he looked up. "How the hell is it stable? The energy input required is completely..." Leet shook his head violently, looking very confused and somewhat annoyed as a result. Taking a deep breath, he visibly tried to calm down.
"Do you have any idea what this stuff actually is?" he asked, clearly trying to be as reasonable as possible.
"Not really," she replied, cocking her head and looking at him curiously. "Do you?"
"Yes."
That was all he said for several seconds. Über stared at him, then the girl, who shrugged scaled shoulders.
"So, what is it?" he finally asked.
"Basically impossible," Leet sighed heavily. "But I'm looking at it. The only thing I can say is 'powers don't make any sense at all'. Even in those terms this is ridiculous."
"Could you perhaps explain a little better?" his friend asked with a certain amount of sarcasm.
Leet opened his mouth to reply, then stared in shock as the javelin which was still resting in the hole suddenly vanished. He went pale again for a moment. "Oh, sorry, do you still need it?" the girl asked. "These ones don't last long, I don't want to leave them lying around all over the place."
"How the hell..." Leet shook his head again. "Never mind. I don't care. Look, what you have there is something that shouldn't exist outside the core of a large star. It's basically electron-degenerate matter." Über exchanged a glance with the girl again, seeing she was probably as blank as he was. Her orange eyes had a look of puzzlement, somehow.
"What's that?" she asked.
"Matter that has been compressed to the point the electron orbits collapse, but not quite to the point that the mutual repulsion between the electrons and the protons is overcome. If that happens you get neutron-degenerate matter. Sometimes called neutronium. Assuming you could produce it outside a neutron star, that is. Which you can't."
He seemed a little incensed about the fact that she was standing there breaking the laws of physics and apparently not even realizing it.
"It should be both either a liquid or gas, and completely unstable at anything even vaguely approaching normal pressures," he went on after a moment. "The fucking stuff should basically explode on the spot. But somehow it's not only a solid metallic material, it's stable. Leaving aside spontaneously disappearing, of course."
"I can make it permanent," she offered, causing him to stare again, "But it takes more work. Normally it's more useful to have it temporary though. Good for things like handcuffs."
"You make degenerate matter handcuffs," Leet said in a completely flat tone. "Right. Of course you do. Why not?"
There was a slightly uncomfortable pause. Über thought for a moment, then said, "So that's why it's so heavy?"
"The problem isn't that it's too heavy, it's that it's too light. Wildly too light. Unbelievably too light." Leet looked very confused now. "It should have a density of somewhere in the region of ten thousand or so kilograms per cubic centimeter, not only seventy grams. It's off by more than six orders of magnitude."
He pointed at the hole in the rock at their feet.
"That javelin had a mass of about twelve million tons, but for some insane reason had a weight of less than two hundred pounds and inertia to match. It should have vanished into the rock the instant it was formed, even if it was by some magic actually stable in the first place." He glared at the hole as if it had eaten his favorite kitten. "Like I said it's impossible."
The reptilian girl was silent for a time, looking weirdly like she was having an internal conversation. Eventually she nodded slightly, then made both the hammer and sword, which she was still holding, disappear. Holding out her hand she formed another javelin, carefully inserting it into the hole the first one had made, then let go. "Let's see what happens," she said with interest. Leet and Über exchanged a glance, then looked back at the javelin, which abruptly vanished downwards so fast they blinked in shock. There was a long drawn out rumbling sound and the ground shook under them. "Wow! That was amazing!"
She looked pleased.
Leet stared in stunned disbelief, then asked slowly, "What the hell did you do?"
"Turned off the thing that was making its mass and weight different," she replied, causing him to take a step back and go pale again. "Don't worry, it won't fall far, I made it only last for a minute. But it's pretty cool. I didn't know I could do that. Thanks for the information."
"Jesus," the Tinker muttered.
"I can't think what use it is at the moment, but it's something else I've learned about what my abilities are," she added, pleased by the sound of it. "You learn something new every day, right?"
They nodded slowly. Leet was still looking shell-shocked.
She looked up at the rising sun. "I'm going to have to go, I have other things to get on with today, but it was nice meeting you guys."
"Likewise, I think," Über replied. Leet was staring at the girl with a peculiar expression, but jumped when his friend poked him in the ribs.
"Oh. Right. Yes, it was… interesting." He paused for a moment, then asked carefully, "Could I have a sample of that stuff, please?"
She inspected him closely for a moment. "You're not going to do anything illegal with it? Or at least, not too illegal? I like you guys but I don't want my stuff being used to commit serious crimes."
Leet shook his head vigorously. "No, I'm just really curious about it, that's all. I can think of… some interesting possibilities for that material, and I'd like to study it some more."
After a second or two she shrugged. "OK. How big a piece do you want? And what sort of shape?"
"A cube about two inches across, maybe?" Leet suggested. She nodded, then held out her hand, the requested cube forming in it with no fuss. Reaching out Leet tried to pick it up, muttering when his fingers slipped off with no other result. "Damn. Frictionless, right."
Laughing, she did whatever she did to make it and the cube reformed to have a loop at the top with a rope of some sort attached. "Here you go. It's permanent."
"Thank you," Leet said with sincerity in his voice, carefully picking the thing up by the supplied rope with some effort. Über did a quick mental calculation, coming to the figure of over twenty pounds for that small amount.
"OK, see you guys around, probably. Try not to do anything too bad." Raptaur smiled at them, making them both flinch slightly. "Oh, if you need to talk to me, you can leave a message with the DWU. They're friends." Nodding politely to them she turned and headed for the water, to their shock quickly disappearing under the surface. Both of them stared in disbelief for a minute or two but she didn't reappear.
"That was… different," Über finally said in a slow voice. Leet nodded.
"I'd have to agree," he replied, before lifting his sample of impossible metal and staring at it.
"Back to testing the shrink ray?"
"May as well." His friend sounded like he was a long way away. "I'm going to have to think about this."
They headed back to the van in silence, each going over the odd encounter in their minds.
'Is Vargastuff safe?' Taylor asked, worried by what she'd learned. 'It's not going to explode or something, is it?'
"No, Brain, the process I produce it with makes it unconditionally stable as far as that point is concerned," the demon reassured her. "I didn't have the terminology to describe it to you, but what Leet said sounds plausible. We should look into the relevant branch of science. Altering the mass is obviously possible, as you saw, but it's an all or nothing thing and takes considerable effort once the material is formed. It can either be the density you know at the moment, or the natural density, which is much, much higher. It won't spontaneously switch from one to the other and I can't change more than a fairly small amount once made. Perhaps twice the volume of that javelin and only when it's not permanent."
'I wonder what use it would actually be in the higher mass version?' Taylor mused. 'Unless I need a really, really, really heavy thing.'
"I'm not certain, but we may come up with a use at some point," her companion chuckled, also sounding thoughtful. "Time will tell, I expect."
'Probably,' she laughed as she swam towards the docks and downtown. 'But that was really cool, seeing it literally fall like the rock was air. Leet looked a bit surprised. I wonder what he wants that sample for?'
"As a Tinker he may well not even know yet himself," the Varga commented wryly, making her laugh again.
Armsmaster looked at the email he'd received from a heavily encrypted and impossible to track source, his eyebrows up. Dragon, her face on a monitor on his desk, also looked intrigued.
To: Armsmaster (a) ProtectorateENE . gov
From: Leet (a) HyperCrypt . mail . com
Subject: Endbringer truce.
Armsmaster. I have important information. We need to talk. Soon.
I think I may know how to severely damage or possibly even kill an Endbringer.
Reply under truce ASAP, please.
Leet
"This is... somewhat unexpected," he finally said. Dragon nodded slowly.
"That's a good way to put it. Are you going to reply?"
He glanced at her for a moment, thinking, then eventually nodded. Reaching for his keyboard, he started typing. "I have no choice. If there's even the slightest chance that anyone, even Leet, has an idea that could stop one of those things, we need to look into it."
As she nodded, he composed a suitable reply, then sent it, leaning back and waiting for a response.