Hero

I looked over the reports, the downside of being Cauldron's main Tinker was getting the job of trying to organize our assets, the ones who offficially worked for us, the ones who worked for the Protectorate, the ones on the other side of the law, rogues, people from other countries... it was like herding cats on a good day, and we didn't have a lot of good days.

It says something that our pet Endbringer was probably one of the more drama free people on our side. Brownie was reading over her own reports, she carefully put down some notes, and looked up.

"So how's the Tinker brigade doing?"

I shrugged.

"We've confirmed that Zion's body is just a projection, just like Woody told us, Haywire and the others are working on tracking his real body."

That was an unpleasent wake up call, the world's greatest hero is actually an evil alien who destroys world, oh hey by the way, his former slave/child decided to not have a psychotic temper tantrum like his siblings and he says that isn't even his real body. It's actually in another diemeinsion, nope I don't know where it is. We're working on that, but even with our Thinkers, Tinkers and all our other resources, it's slow going.

Not that we're not grateful to have that kind of information, but it's still rather depressing. It's like we were fumbling in the dark, knowing that there where monsters there, then having one of those monsters flip a switch, offer us a cup of tea and then point to the much scarier monster and say that it scares him too. On the one hand you're no longer in the dark, but now you know exactly how fucked you are.

Brownie continued with her paperwork.

"How's space going?"

I shrugged.

"The World trees and the gravity juice is proving to be our killer app. We sent out enough machine tools and factory supplies to get the mining going, but we need more people, a lot more people. NASA's great and scientists and engineers from around the world are helping, but it's not going to be enough for the war effort."

She looked over her notes.

"We can send in more former case 53's, have Ironwood flip them to Tinker when it's possible."

"Do we have enough of them?"

She grimaced.

"Yeah, we got the failure rate down but we have a backlog. That needs to be emptied, we're releasing them into the wild more often, between Thinkers looking for them, the promise of a cure, and a PR campaign to treat it like a medical condition, the numbers look good."

"Blow back?"

"Is pretty much inevitable, some of them are going to become villains, or get themselves killed but we have enough leverage to get a majority to work with us."

I went over more of my notes, Brownie's hand was on top of mine, I looked at it, Richter's work was going to prove useful, if only he would stop working on that useless robot Waifu project of his, D something something. Looking back on it, the whole thing was a bad idea, a bunch of Tinkers played a poker game with the prize being favors and tech.

I had gotten drunk and lucky and had won the match, Richter asked me what I wanted and I drunkenly stated that I wanted my sidekick to get laid so he would get out of my hair. Since then the whole project has wasted time and effort. There was no way a robot waifu was going to save the world. Though if Armsmaster got laid it might save my sanity.

"Richters new VR's are showing promise, it might speed up our resource gathering but unfortunately..."

She sighed.

"You never make a bet with Richter."

"So what are you looking at, Brownie?"

"The current Thinker reports on Ironwood, so far we've confirmed a supression field."

I blinked.

"What kind?"

"Lower levels of aggression and need for conflict in a parahuman, the effect's city wide, it's not noticible at the micro level but when you look at the data, less crime and less violence. A healing effect on the same level, not enough to be obvious at the micro level but at the marco, you see abnormally low rates of disease and people recovering from injuries faster."

"Other information?"

"It doesn't seem to be conscious, and he is a medic type Endbringer so it makes sense, I'm also going over Icy's therapy sessions."

"Oh and how is she doing?"

Brownie shrugged.

"Stable, the fact is her whole pursuit of Ironwood came from a very broken place. Fixing her issues might be a bad idea, so the goal is more to keep her stable, functional, aggravate some issues, fix others."

"Sounds like a shitty thing to do to a person."

Brownie shrugged.

"She made big girl decisions and now has to deal with big girl concequences, keeping her from trashing her relationship and potentially fucking us out of a vital resource is more important then her mental wellbeing."

She stopped.

"In many ways the woman is phenomenally lucky, Ironwood isn't actually abusive, does seem to care about her, and is pretty protective. Personalitywise, she could have done a lot worse."

"And if he was abusive?"

"We would cover it up, and do what we had to do, thankfully they're, well oddly enough a pretty supportive couple. There are petty bullshit arguments, and minor issues, but overall they're pretty compatible."

"The kids?"

"Too young to get a reliable psych profile, but they're going to be in the public eye their entire lives, second gen capes trigger easier then first gen ones, so smart money is that they're going to trigger eventually."

"Which means the Wards."

"PR already has contingency plans, premature but we have them."

She looked over the lists.

"And the security at the World tree has been compromised."

I grimaced.

"How bad?"

"Somebody got in a boat and literally sailed around the solar system."

I thought about it.

"It was officially opened to the public, legally we don't have a lot of room for manuver."

She bit the edge of her pen.

"I know, and we might be able to use this but that was supposed to be a PRT-NASA operation. Having random civilians show up is worrisome."

I leaned back.

"We're going to need everyone we can get, and we need the public on our side, and let's face facts, we need the money."

"The mining is supossed to do that."

I shrugged.

"So have you thought about ditching the wheelchair? I mean you have a perfect excuse."

Brownie lifted an eyebrow.

"I thought you had a thing for wheelchair girls."

"Oh I do, but we could always save that for, you know..."

She smiled.

"Maybe I like having you push me around?"

She squeezed my hand.

"Another tour of the solar system?"

I smiled.

"Yeah, let's go, DOOR!"