Snake 5.6
January 21, 2011, Brockton Bay, 7:31 PM
My introduction at Brockton General went pretty straightforward, They were expecting us. As soon as they filed the papers, they ushered us to the ER. From then it was a pretty smooth routine: get to patient, cleanse, scan, apply heal, scan again, if anything is amiss, apply fleschcrafting under Panacea's supervision. Heal was gaining levels in leaps and bounds.
The first time the routine broke was at the 19th patient, household accident victim, the woman had a concussion. The heal had fixed everything else, I turned to Panacea, "Only the concussion left. Do you want to try this?"
The accompanying doctor cleared his throat, "Ahem, Mr. Maker, Panacea is unable to affect brains."
Amy nervously blinked a few times, then sighed, "No, Dr. Simmons, that's not actually the case. I can affect brains, but I refrain from it, because brains are extremely chaotic systems, no one knows how much a small change can affect the personality of the patient."
Dr. Simmons was taken aback, "I... I see. That's... Uh, sound reasoning. You should still avoid it then."
Amy shook her head, "No, I've always shied away from it because if I messed anything up, I wouldn't know how to turn it back. Maker's tech can save snapshots of the subject at the atomic level... right?" She turned to me with an inquisitive look.
Well, I didn't want the details to be out this early, but the cat was already out of the bag, I nodded, "Even deeper, actually, it scans at the quantum level." I'd actually confirmed that once, went so deep into a scan that all that remained were wave functions, and had to quickly retreat to avoid getting overwhelmed.
The doctor's eyebrow came close to touching his receding hairline. "So he will know exactly what to change back if anything goes wrong?" We both nodded.
Amy rubbed her hands together, not realizing that the action would easily twist a steel tube if placed between her palms, "Alright then, let's do this."
It took her seconds, I was scanning the process, relieving excess blood pressure, repairing a few thousand damaged neurons, leaving out a few hundred that had actually died. The patient woke up immediately, "Uh, wow, I feel amazing... and... Whaaaa! Demon! I haven't sinned! I've been a good person!" She was making warding signs at me. It took us a while to convince her that the blue demon was indeed a healer cape. Well, her husband was called from the waiting room to confirm over a short conversation that no, her personality didn't show any noticeable deviation from normal, that was just how she was.
The second time we broke the routine was more interesting, it was one of the gangers I'd disabled on one of my days out. An E88 member who was a serial rapist. I paused as we approached him, "Why is this man here?" I injected a bit of annoyance in my tone. The man in question was radiating nervousness and hostility but was still mostly smug. He didn't talk, probably been coached to keep mum.
Panacea gave me an inquisitive stare as she received his file from a nurse, she leafed through it as Dr. Simmons and I read over her shoulder. Apparently he had an in with some Empire bigwigs and had turned his jail-time to hospital time citing his injuries. Both of them grew visibly angry as they read through the attached police report. Dr. Simmons spoke to the nurse in clipped tones, "Nurse Brady, please fetch Dr. Tanner immediately, he should be finished with his policy board meeting by now." The nurse scurried off.
Dr. Simmons turned to me and said amiably in loud enough tones for the criminal to hear, "These are some very well done fractures, Mr. Maker, I couldn't do any better even with precision tools."
I flashed him a proud grin through my half mask, "You flatter me doctor." I liked this fellow, he had 19 base INT, and he just made his stance abundantly clear.
He smiled, "No, seriously, even with our best care it would take at least 12 weeks before the casts can come off, and he'll not be running before at least 6 more months of therapy. That was the intention, I presume?"
I nodded again. Panacea had caught on by now, she picked up the conversation, "Dr. Simmons, I was reading some recent papers, they're trying to pinpoint the nerves which cause impotence. I wonder if I could help them."
The ganger's demeanour had gone from outraged to confused by now, Dr. Simmons tapped his chin thoughtfully, "I wonder, if you could try shutting down someone's erectile functions, Maker here can tell us exactly which nerve clusters were responsible."
The man was still confused, bloody dumbass, I had to clarify things further, "That's right, and this rapist here is the perfect choice for such an experiment. Too bad he'd never be able to get it up after that. But I dare say the community will be all the better off for it."
Bingo! From confusion to surprise to terror, the man sat bolt upright and blurted out, "You can't do that! I, I ain't convicted yet. I'll sue you!"
Dr. Simmons let out a chuckle, "You, a nazi criminal, will sue Panacea, the premiere healer, well known for her nobility and selflessness?"
By now another doctor was angrily rushing towards us, perhaps the most 'doctorly' looking person I'd ever seen, this was James Tanner, I Observed him. Ew, ew, this guy was nasty, E88 sympathizer, and a plant from Medhall here. Okay, this one had to be dealt with.
Tanner approached me with a furious expression, "You! You should be sued for excessive force. Do you know how many cases of broken legs our EMTs have had to deal with? What are you doing here?" Then he turned to the others, and possibly noticed Panacea for the first time. "What is he doing here, Dr. Simmons? And Panacea, you should be doing your rounds at the ER, they need your help, no need to dally here, this one is a minor case."
Dr. Simmons again cleared his throat, "Ahem... Dr. Tanner, what is this man doing here?"
Tanner retorted with full bluster, "This parahuman is one of the most violent vigilantes I've ever heard of, Bert here may be a criminal, that would be decided by the court, but who gave him the right to break both his legs like that? He might never be able to walk if it heals wrongly! I had to take him out of police custody just to keep an eye on his condition!"
Amy snapped, "Have you seen his file?"
Tanner looked at her with no less annoyance, "The junior doctors keep me appraised..."
Simmons interrupted, his measured tone dripping menace, "Have. You. Seen. The. File?" I really liked this guy.
Now Tanner looked spooked, "No, I haven't had the time to... Let me..." He snatched the file from Amy's outstretched hands and started leafing through it.
Amy was not done yet, "Maker here, apart from being a very competent hero, is also an excellent healer. In quite a few cases a better healer than me. Be very careful what you say next Dr. Tanner. My mother takes particular offense on attacks at an individual's reputation." Aww, Amy, you're too nice!
Tanner's bluster lost all steam, Bert, the rapist, was cowering on the bed, oozing dread. The day just keeps getting better. I was just standing quietly and watching the show, I began projecting random pages of information in front of me, as if busy reading something.
Tanner finally finished perusing the file, "well, I see there aren't much chances of further complications, but still, any healing injury should be kept under observation... Uh, if we have to send him back, Panacea, do you mind healing him?"
Amy's sneer was textbook, "If I touch him, it'd only be to make him genderless." Bert, the rapist, quickly covered the area in question with his hands.
Tanner's furious bluster returned, "Now see here Panacea, you're a medical professional. Such threats can be very..."
"James Tanner, MD, PhD, endocrinologist." I interrupted, still pretending to read from projected pages in front of me, then turned intimidation full on. "Twelve years practicing. Empire 88 sympathizer. Almost all known patients are white. Oh, and being bribed by Medhall to affect drug policy at Brockton general." I didn't know that one for sure, but it was a safe bet. "Funny things a bit of research brings out, isn't it, Dr. Tanner?"
The change in his emotions was delicious to watch; hostility to surprise, to apprehension, to panic... Beautiful. He took two steps back, "That... That's ab-absolute rubbish! Baseless allegations..." The others were gaping at me and Tanner alternatively.
Amy recovered first, she stepped ahead and caught Tanner's wrist, "I'm monitoring your vitals, Mister Tanner. You were saying?"
He tried to jerk his hand away, but winced Panacea didn't move an inch. "Let me go! This is assault!"
Dr. Simmons sighed and shook his head, "Shame, Tanner, shame. Maker, can you provide evidence?"
I shrugged, "I'll have a dossier sent to you by tomorrow." Lisa wouldn't mind the extra-curricular exercise.
Amy's tone was imperious, "James Tanner, I'm placing you in citizen's arrest, on suspicion of malpractice. Nurse Brady, please call for security. And you, Bert, if I hear you aren't back in your cell by tomorrow... I swear I'll rot your crotch off!"
January 23, 2011, Brockton Bay, 9:24 PM
It had taken me two days of nonstop training to bring construct resolution down to 8nm at lvl.46, the dongle was apparently very high-tech. Coil was currently going to meet Accord, safe to say he wouldn't use his spare timeline to be logged on to his server. Regardless, I had placed Lisa in a communications blackout since morning, since she was the only one without an anonymity protocol.
We were in an unused warehouse at the edge of the docks near the Boardwalk, I'd already asked dada to rent it out for us, it'd take a few days for the formalities, but for now, no one was stopping us from using the place. I'd gone out last night to some tech shops and scanned their best models of laptops, cameras, phones and various other lovely pieces of tech while Swarm blacked out the cctv cameras. If I could replicate the dongle, replicating them, and my phone, was a cinch.
We waited a while to see if any of us received any precog pings just in case, and one did come, the bloody bugger was logged in from his other timeline! Our anonymity protocols would protect us from broadcasting our intentions to his precog, so he won't see us logging in from his other timeline. Taylor plugged her dongle in a brand new Dragon-tech top of the line laptop, replicated from scan. The net connection came from 8 copies of my phone, with it's wireless network piggybacking and random IMEI spoofing thing, it was very anonymous, and 8 of them gave a respectably high combined bandwidth. I messaged her with the server address and the list of passwords and security answers. Two minutes later, she beamed at me, "I'm in."
I texted Lisa to come to my home, it was about 3 kilometres from the warehouse. Taylor began to create a new super-admin account that would be invisible to Coil's login. She told me Lisa had arrived after about 5 minutes, damn that girl was hard to fool, anyway, not that we wanted to hide what we were doing from her, just when we did it, so even if Coil's precog hit her it would have no knowledge of what was going to happen. I dropped into an ID, flew home, dropped out, grabbed Lisa, dropped back in and flew back to the warehouse. Lisa and Taylor got to work subverting Coil's network.
January 25, 2011, Brockton Bay, 2:14 PM
Swarm's recon of Coil's Lair (yes, Lair, with a capital fucking L) was complete, the main layer of security was tied to the server, so it was already in our control, but there were two more closed circuit layers. One covering all the entrances and exits and one specifically inside Coil's office, which had a backup server running in a separate adjacent room.
Thankfully there was no surveillance gear that would catch my dimensional holes. This time of the afternoon was apparently when the personnel activity was the lightest. It was quite the military base otherwise. I went in through an ID, reached the closed circuit servers, and connected a copy of my phone to each, reconfigured to serve as remote access and override hardpoints. Lisa had helped with the login credentials.
After that I did a peep-hole-tour of the place, it was quite big, and mostly underground, there were still about 25 mercs active throughout the complex, and a construction crew was finishing up touches on a huge vault at the lowest level, the loading bay also had a huge door leading to this floor, were they planning to capture an endbringer or what?
January 27, 2011, Brockton Bay, 4:18 PM
Last evening Panacea and I had another very productive hospital session. Thankfully no more heinous Empire plants were uncovered; oh yeah, Lisa told me about the connection between Medhall and E88, good thing Amy didn't sign their contract. Then again, dada must have known, he would have pointed out something wrong with their contract anyway.
Today we were all at high alert, Lisa was at the Undersiders' loft, putting in finishing touches to her casino hit tomorrow, I swear some of my paranoia had indeed rubbed off on her. Swarm was sitting at a park bench with a laptop about a kilometer away from Coil's Lair. I was already in, watching through a hole in an ID. Calvert had returned last night. I'd gotten a fresh scan of him and had spied on him just to ensure everything was nominal, it was.
Calvert had ridden a car out to a busy part of downtown, gone into a nondescript building. Out the other side had come Coil - first time seeing the two headed snake, his costume reeked of menace and creepiness, but lacked any oomph... Meh. He was heading over to the hideout. His assets were on the way. We'd taken our time to put rootkits into all of the mercs' phones. Taylor was monitoring all of their communications simultaneously, through their phones and bugs near them too - that monster.
Coil arrived first and went into his office. He sat down on his terminal there, then logged in to both the online server and the local one, Taylor was monitoring those too.
Soon a car and an armoured container truck arrived inside the complex, Taylor was mentally giving me a minimap of all of that too. Really, that girl...
Coil was told the same by one of his minions. He walked out into a balcony overlooking the inner entrance hall. "Welcome, my friends. Hope your journey was pleasant." His voice was well carried by the acoustics of the hall, the arrivals looked up at him as they walked in.
I looked at them, there were two mismatched members. I already had files on their appearance, but my focus was more on the tags above their heads.
(Nuclear Ballerina)
Marissa Newland / Sundancer
Lvl. ? ? ? Aleph Parahuman
(Monster Dreamer)
Jess Tildon / Genesis
Lvl. 8 Aleph Parahuman
(Straight Shooter)
Luke Casseus / Ballistic
Lvl. 67 Aleph Parahuman
(Pretty Boy)
Oliver Siddell
Lvl. 13 Aleph Parahuman
Well, this wasn't matching up, okay fine so genesis was a projection cape, but what about Trickster? Who was this Oliver guy? Sundancer was the one who pushed Coil's threat level up? Aleph parahuman? Were there two versions of the Travellers? Something was amiss...
My musing was stopped short as Ballistic spoke up, "Yes, no trouble, thanks. By the way, what about the other two?"
Coil nodded, "They should be settling in as we speak, down in the special enclosure I've provided for Miss Meinhardt. Would you like to visit them?"
Special Enclosure? Meinhardt? What the?... I was interrupted again by a message from Taylor, 'At the vault. Check it out carefully, I can't get a detailed reading from the big one. The bugs keep dying'
I closed the hole, raced down to the vault and opened another hole from a darkish corner. There was Trickster standing outside the vault door, which wasn't closed yet, and inside was a giant mass of chimeric flesh topped by a female torso...
The Old Switcheroo
Francis Krouse / Trickster
Lvl. 26 Simurgh Victim
?
Noelle Meinhardt
Lvl. ? ? ? ?
Well, shit.
