Thanks to dwood15 and Technetium43 for betareading.

Lustre 3.2

"Come in," Piggot called.

I opened the door and slipped into the office. "Director," I said with a deferential nod.

"Annatar." She beckoned me towards her desk.

I approached and sat. "How did I do at the conference, Ma'am?"

"Not terribly," she said frankly. "Your prepared speech wasn't half bad. I appreciate the effort you went to remain respectful of Aegis' leadership of the team."

"I'm not here to poach his position, Ma'am. How were my responses to questions?"

"Too jargonistic and detailed," Piggot said. "You shouldn't go into so much detail over your tinkertech; they're laymen, not cape researchers, tinkers, or power testers. You didn't give away anything classified, though. We'll just chalk it up to another tinker quirk."

I twitched slightly, my pride stinging, but accepted the criticism.

"The only response I'd actually object to is how you handled the question about Shadow Stalker," she told me. "There's no good way to respond to those questions, I'll admit, but in general the image department recommends you answer with a no comment."

"I'm not going to let them believe I'm fu—having sex with Sophia!"

Piggot's gaze sharpened. "Don't be stupid, Annatar. All you did was show them that you had a strong reaction to the idea, which will only fuel speculation."

I stared at her incredulously. "So… what? I should just let them assume something like that?"

"You're a public figure now, Ward," said Piggot flatly. "Better get used to it. It shouldn't matter, anyway."

"I'd rather not have people think I'm sleeping with her!"

"You're a cape. You're automatically a celebrity, and that means people will make things up about you. Better learn to deal with it."

I sighed and put my gauntleted hand to my forehead. I rested my head against it for a moment before looking back at her. "Yes, Ma'am," I said. "Sorry."

She gave me a look. "I haven't had to tell you the same thing twice," she said. "See to it that doesn't change."

"Yes, Ma'am."

"Anything else you needed?"

"I was wondering what the image department's decided on my sword?"

Piggot's jaw tightened. "I don't like it," she said flatly. "Your spear had a dull haft, which made it easy to justify as a nonlethal weapon."

"My sword has a flat."

"And you can guarantee you'll only hit people with it?"

I pursed my lips. "I won't use my sword if I can't take a risk of injuring someone, and I won't hit anywhere that would be fatal."

"You'd better not," she said darkly. "The image department has agreed to let you take the thing into the field, once you've seen a seminar on safe weapon use, and been through a competence test with a professional."

"The seminar's online, right?"

"Yes. You should be able to access it from the PRT website. We'll schedule an aptitude test once you've gone through that. Anything else?"

"I was wondering if I could make Vista a knife," I said quickly. I hadn't mentioned it to the girl herself yet, but one of my blueprints-a mithril knife, about a foot and a half long-had struck me as perfect for her.

Piggot's lips thinned. "Vista is a powerful shaker," she said without inflection. "She can take care of herself."

"Unless she encounters a trump, or a cape who counters her," I said. "Director, she doesn't have any armor or weapons, and her shaker ability is manton-limited. I'm still looking into making plating which fits with her aesthetic—and the others'—but I don't like her being in combat without any backup weapons."

"Talk to Mills," Pigggot deflected. "It's more an image department affair than mine."

"And if the image department okays it, you'll let me make her a knife?"

"I didn't say that," said Piggot coolly. "I'll think about it, Annatar."

"Director," I said, exasperated. "Why—"

She interrupted me by rapping hard on the desk with two fingers. "I said," she said coldly, "I'll think about it."

I grimaced and nodded. "Yes, Ma'am."

She nodded tersely. "Your collaboration with Kid Win," she changed the subject. "How is that coming along?"

"We've only just started," I said. "We're still mostly brainstorming right now. He wants to reinforce the plating of his hoverboard first, and maybe use mithril mirrors in his laser weapons. I was going to get started on the components after I talked to you."

"You'd best get on that, then," Piggot ordered. "Clear any equipment you two produce with me before fielding it."

"Yes, Ma'am." I stood up, turned about, and left. I recognized a dismissal when I heard one.

I knew Piggot meant well. I knew she was just trying to juggle a lot of different responsibilities. I knew she wasn't trying to make trouble for me.

But I couldn't help the sour taste in my mouth as I walked out.

"Pass me the needlenose, would you?"

I glanced up from my anvil, bemused. "Needlenose?"

"The long pliers," Chris said, his gaze intent on the tangle of cabling behind the open panel on his hoverboard. "The ones with the red handles."

I glanced around, found the tool and passed it over to him. "Why are there so many kinds of pliers, anyway?"

"Leverage and fine manipulation," Chris said absently as he reached into the workings with the device and began pulling looped wires off of circuit boards. "Needlenoses are good for reach when you need to get deep into a piece of equipment. How's the plating coming?"

"The bottom's almost done," I said, shifting the red-hot mithril on the anvil. "You want bladed edges?"

He bit his lip for a moment, considering, then shook his head. "Nah," he decided. "Don't want to accidentally hurt someone. Just making it practically indestructible is plenty."

"Cool."

My hammer continued to fall, beating the plate of mithril into the shape Kid Win had requested.

"So how's tinkering work for you?" Chris asked between clangs of metal on metal.

"What do you mean?"

"Do you just, understand how certain things fit together? That's how it is for me. I get these ideas, for power generators, or antigravity fields, and then I have to make those work together to produce something I can actually use. When I can focus long enough to get it done."

"It's not like that for me," I admitted. "I just… I feel like I know my stuff. Narsil and Aeglos both popped into my head fully formed, and I just built them according to blueprints in my head."

It wasn't quite that simple. I was starting to understand something of the power that was folded into the weapons and Rings I had made. It lingered, hidden in some fogbound corner of my mind, like a scrap of a song half remembered. But it wasn't enough, not by half. If I had to learn on my own, without any help, it'd be decades before I was ready to create anything on the scale of Narsil without a blueprint already prepared.

Chris glanced over at me. "What do you do when you run out of blueprints?"

I chuckled. "I'll cross that bridge when I come to it," I said. "Maybe in a few centuries."

"Oh. That's… a lot of blueprints."

"Yeah."

"And they're all complete pieces?"

I nodded.

"I'm jealous," Kid Win said frankly. "I can't even finish half the projects I start."

I blinked at him, my hammering slowing momentarily. "Why not?"

He didn't look at me. "Trouble focusing," he said shortly. "ADHD."

I winced. "That must suck."

"It does."

I didn't push him. "What made you decide to join the Wards, Chris?"

He shrugged. "It was kind of an impulse thing for me," he admitted. "I got my powers and just… didn't know what to do. They didn't fix any of my problems; just added more. My parents freaked out, I freaked out, and I was in the Wards before I had time to think about it."

I considered him. "You ever regret it?"

"No." He shook his head firmly. "I like the Wards. We make a difference, we get to work with experienced heroes, there's a whole organization dedicated to helping us do our jobs and get home safe at the end of the day. I want to be a hero, but I also want to, you know, not die. The Wards don't ask me to. Independence might."

I nodded slowly. "I can understand that," I lied, and returned to my forging, trying to ignore the little voice that had translated his entire spiel into a single word—coward.

"What about you?" Chris asked. "You were independent for a while first, right? Helped Armsmaster bring in Lung."

I nodded. "I needed a team," I said. "I can only use one module at a time, so I needed people I could trust to use the others. The Wards and Protectorate were the best way to build a network."

"So you're not planning on keeping all your modules to yourself?"

"Not indefinitely," I said. "I don't know who I'm going to give them to yet, though."

"I'll, uh, pass, if it's all the same to you," Chris said, his voice low. "I can't even use my powers. It'd be a shame to waste yours."

I grimaced and took one hand off the plate to pat him on the shoulder. "I'm sure you'll make it work eventually," I said.

He went back to his tinkering without replying.

My lungs drank deep of the cool night air. My eyes fluttered closed for a moment as I inhaled the sea-breeze, tinged with the pungent scent of the city around me.

"Don't go drifting off on me, Annatar," said Vista teasingly from beside me.

I blinked and glanced her way. She was watching me, a hint of a smirk on her exposed lips.

"We've still got almost half of our patrol route," she said. "Little early to be falling asleep, don't you think?"

I stuck my tongue out at her. "Do you sleep standing up?" I asked. "What are you, a horse?"

"I take offense at that," said Vista, shifting her hands through the air. Her powers twisted space, crafting a portal beside us, leading several blocks down the street. I could see it like the lens of a telescope, a circle of space through which my perspective was altered.

She led me through the portal and closed it behind us. We took a moment to glance around.

"Quiet tonight," Vista said.

"Too quiet?"

"God, could you get any more cliché?"

I chuckled. "Oh, Vista," I said, changing the subject. "I've been meaning to talk to you about this. Do you want a weapon?"

She laughed mirthlessly. "Like the PR mooks are going to let innocent little Vista out with a gun."

"A knife, maybe?"

"Even that." She looked at me, her eyes hidden behind her mask. "Don't get me wrong," she said. "I'd like to be taken seriously. It's f—it's annoying that, even though I've been a hero longer than half the Protectorate and even though I'm a shaker nine, people insist on treating me like a naïve little kid who doesn't understand the world. But it's not going to happen until the 'adults' decide I've passed some arbitrary age." Vista gave a slow exhalation through clenched teeth, and the built tension trained out of her small frame. "I've gotten over it."

I looked into her visor where I thought her eyes were. "I've been talking to Piggot," I said. "If you want, I'll keep working on her."

"Best of luck to you," Vista said dryly. "You'll need—"

She was interrupted by a sound. It was like thunder, coupled with the cracking of stone and rushing of sudden flame. It was a sound that I'd never heard before in person, despite living in a city like Brockton Bay. There was ectly describe it, so I'll use the one featured in films, books, and cartoons.

Boom.

I whirled around, but the buildings encroached on all sides. I could see nothing. "What was that?" I asked.

"You know what it was," Vista said, her voice cold.

I turned to her. She was twisting her hands through the air as she formed us a passage.

My radio crackled to life before I could say another word. Sophia's voice came in from the console. "Patrolling Wards, please return to headquarters at once," she said, perfectly businesslike.

I palmed the handheld and brought it to my face. "Console, what's going on?" I demanded. "What was that sound?"

"Bomb, Annatar," Sophia said coolly. "Big one. Get to base, now. We've got work to do."

"After you," Vista said before I could reply, gesturing me towards the circle of compressed space she'd made.

I clenched my teeth and nodded. "Right," I agreed, and stepped inside.