It was bad enough that I was thrown into a locker full of used feminine products for over six hours. It was bad enough when the school tried to sweep it under the carpet. Now the goddamn PRT are here!
I was sitting on 'my seat' in the living room, with my Dad seated on his own chair and the form of Miss Militia and a PRT agent sitting on the sofa. I was glaring at them. Sophia Hess, aka Shadow Stalker, was the bully who had stolen my best friend/sister Emma Barnes and turned her against me, orchestrating the bullying campaign against me and had been the one to push me into the damned locker.
And she was a fucking hero?!
She had outed herself when I pulled a leaf from Emma's book and lambasted her about how, despite her efforts, she wasn't anything special. I honestly didn't like using the same tactics that had been used against me, but I had hoped that it would make her attack me in front of witnesses or something.
Instead, she had steadily gotten increasingly red in the face before she shouted back that she was a Ward and a better person than I could ever be. Two seconds later, she had realised what she had said and rushed off.
Roll on the end of the school day and I had been met with Miss Militia at the gates of Winslow and taken back home, leading to the current situation.
"So, just to make things as clear as possible here," Dad said slowly, "You forcibly recruited a proven violent vigilante, placed her on probation with a pathetic amount of oversight, who apparently decided that sweeping things under the carpet was what her job entailed. Shadow Stalker, in the meantime, has been bullying and all but torturing my daughter for the last year and a half and you want us to sign an NDA to protect her? Are you out of your mind?!"
Wincing, Miss Militia sighed. "I can understand your position, but without proof- "
I was prepared for this.
"Here." I said and threw down a thick binder full of paper, "A journal full of everything that Sophia has been doing to me since last October. I would have started before that but I was still naïve enough to hope that the staff at Winslow would actually do their damn jobs. I also included printouts of the e-mails sent to my accounts and they still exist in electronic form."
The female hero picked up the journal and opened it, reading a few pages, making her eyes narrow and a chill stated to come from her as her power manifested a wicked looking curved weapon on her back.
"What the heck's that?" I blurted out.
"A Shotel." Miss Militia replied with a tight voice, "Miss Hebert, are there any exaggerations in this book? Any whatsoever?"
"Just the truth." I answered quietly.
"Miss Militia, whatever this child has written is irrelevant at the moment." The man next to her said stiffly, "The important thing is to ensure the safety of the identity of Shadow Stalker."
I snorted at that. "You'd better get to Greg Veder then. He can't help but blab things to all and sundry without thinking things through."
"Noted." Miss Militia said wryly, "Is this the only copy of your journal?"
"No, that's a photocopy." I answered, "I hid the original in a secure location."
Answer: under my bed.
"Sensible." The heroine nodded, "Alright, look. If the thickness of this journal is anything to go by, you have more than sufficient reasons to bear a grudge against Shadow Stalker. I can help you get things started, but you have to sign an NDA. Director Piggot is…strict with Parahumans and what Shadow Stalker has done will hit all her buttons, but if you don't sign anything, she has to move to protect Stalker by PRT policy. She has no choice in the matter."
"So…if we sign this- " I pointed in disdain at the two NDA forms on the coffee table, "-you'll help do something about Shadow Stalker? About Sophia?"
"I would help you even if you didn't sign the NDAs." The woman clarified, "But it will be far, far easier if you sign them."
"Dad, let's just sign the things." I pleaded with him. he could be so stubborn…rather like me, except I get it from him AND my Mom.
It took five minutes to convince him, but the forms were signed. Then Miss Militia handed me a card, promised to be in touch regarding Shadow Stalker and left with the PRT agent squawking behind her and my journal under her arm.
"That went well." I remarked and Dad just looked at me with a raised eyebrow before muttering that I was getting too much like my mother.
That Night
Sneaking out at night wasn't all that hard. Dad, once asleep, snored like a sawmill and took a couple of loud alarm clocks to get up until he had his full eight hours of sleep. Still, I was quiet and careful as I left the house.
The only thing I hadn't told Miss Militia during the interview was that I had gained parahuman powers during the locker incident. The main reason was that I was a Tinker who specialised in Artificial Intelligence and Power Armour. Just a casual look on the Protectorate's website showed a lot of bias against AI's for some reason. Possibly, they were worried about a Skynet scenario, but I honestly didn't think a world controlled by AI was such a bad idea. It couldn't be worse than the latest idiot in the White House who stated he had no policy in regards to anything.
Even a political amateur like me knows that's a rookie mistake to make!
Anyway, so I had wondered what to do. The PRT was out because of that. New Wave was out because I didn't want to go the way of Fleur. This did not leave me with many options, as there were only four Tinkers who might be able to help me in Brockton Bay; Armsmaster of the Protectorate, Kid Win of the Wards, Squealer of the Archer's Bridge Merchants and L33t from Über and L33t.
With the first two removed, that had left the last two. On second thought, it didn't. No way was I helping the Merchants, so L33t had been my choice. I'd arranged a meeting and struck a deal with him. I'd build him and Über power armour that wouldn't blow up and repair it the first ten times free of charge and he would provide the funds and contacts for me to set up my own workshop.
I had been worried about the Gamer Capes backstabbing me, but they had kept to their word. Building the armour, under L33t's eye had been an experience and a half. He had corrected a few errors that I had missed, which made me wonder why all of his stuff kept blowing up or shorting out.
"The more tech I make, the more unstable it becomes." He had told me ruefully when I asked him, "My power is begging to be used but I don't know why it's been so buggy."
I had an idea about that, but had decided to keep it cool until after my workshop was up and running.
Tonight was that night. I had finished their armour, built to look like it was from Halo 2 as requested, and they had helped be set up a workshop, along with a set of standard defences including a set of grenade turrets for if Hookwolf came calling.
My workshop was under a long-abandoned warehouse on the docks. All of the gangs ignored it for various reasons. The Empire ignored it because it had been a shelter of 'lesser races' at some point in the past, while the ABB ignored it because it was in the 'No-Man's Land' between their territory and the Empire's. Lung rarely went that way when he went on one of his infrequent rampages. The Merchants couldn't get to it without crossing huge swathes of ABB and Empire territory and the other, lesser, gangs were equally barred from it. That also meant it was hard for me to get to it as well, but L33t and I had thought of that.
A couple of blocks away from the warehouse, I slipped into an equally abandoned building, which had once been a B&B from what I could tell. Heading down into the basement, I slashed a card over a seemingly ordinary part of the wall and made it fizzle out, revealing a passageway behind it. As I walked through it, the doorway was closed by a hard-light hologram as it was before.
The passageway looked like a boring corridor, but was bristling with sensors and hidden turrets. The most basic were the Taser turrets, for the off-chance that only unpowered people came through here. Next were the foam turrets for the parahumans. It wasn't containment foam, as only Dragon had access to that, but it was a poor-man's version of the stuff that could hold a mid-level Brute in place for a while.
There were doors as well, three-inch thick metal ones that slammed down to bar entry to any intruders. In the centre was the only room in the passageway, holding the concealed grenade launchers, each holding faux-foam grenades and anti-Brute pain grenades. Most brutes were resistant to wounds. Pure, unadulterated pain? Not so much.
Reaching my workshop proper after a couple of minutes of jogging, I quickly pulled on a token domino mask that was in its usual place next to the door, as Über and L33t were already here.
"Yo." The skill master saluted me mockingly as I entered the main lab. Wearing jeans, a t-shirt and a domino mask, Über was checking over a gun I had made as a trial run of the tools in my workshop. It looks a lot like the M-6 Magnum from the Halo Universe, specifically the one from Halo: Combat Evolved.
"Yo yourself. How's the pistol?" I asked.
"L33t's jealous because it's even better than the one he tried to make." He replied with a grin.
"Which one? The one that fell to pieces or the one that he forgot to put an opening for the magazine in?"
"Both."
Just then, L33t wandered in. Dressed similarly to his partner, he had the look on his face that Über had told her was a common one for Tinkers in a certain state; Tinker Fugue, a state where your Tinker is caught up in a design and you can't shake it. I had yet to be caught up in one, and I wasn't looking forward to it.
"L33t? Hello, planet earth to L33t!" I clicked my fingers in front of the Universal Tinker, eventually breaking through to him.
"Hmm? Wha…oh, not again!" he groused, "That's the second time today!"
Now, one would think that Tinker Fugue wouldn't be such a bad thing, right? Wrong. You have to either be broken out of it by someone or build whatever it is your Tinker is obsessing over. When you wake up if the second one happens, you can find your projects half cannibalised for whatever you were obsessing over, which could be anything. For L33t, who couldn't fix what he made, this was doubly disastrous.
"What was it this time?" I asked sympathetically.
"Some kinda BFG." L33t replied with a growl as he massaged his temples, "A Big Fuckin' Gun, one that uses the power from the armour you built me."
"Shit." This wasn't good. L33t's power did not interact well with stuff built by other Tinkers. Mostly, it ignored them, unless he was critiquing other people's tech, but as he had been around my tech for a while, it looks like it had been able to parse how to work with my tech, the power system of the armour at least.
"Über, you need to snap him out of Tinker Fugues until he manages to build this whatever it is." I said to the skill master.
"Easier said than done." He muttered.
"Ok…wait…" I muttered myself before speaking up again, "You can learn any skill, right? Even ones that didn't exist before, like 'Using L33t's Tinkertech weapons and armour'?"
"Yeeeesss…." Über agreed dubiously.
"So have you ever tried learning 'Skill to troubleshoot L33t's Tinkertech so it doesn't blow up or short out'?" I presented him with the question that had been burning in me since I found out he could critique so well.
Über opened his mouth froze and then said, "Excuse me." Before walking over to the wall and started to thump his head against it. Repeatedly.
"Five years and I never thought of that! Five!" I heard him mutter.
L33t and I exchanged looks and shrugged.
Later
Once The small base I had was fully operational, the two Gaming Capes departed and told me to look forward to the next episode of their show. They hadn't done Halo in years, so it would probably be popular.
Now they were gone (and I'd swept the place for camera and microphones) I could start on my main project.
Making an AI.
With my specialty, most people would think that I was a programmer Tinker. I'm not. My AI are made by cloning the brainwaves of a human, digitising it and recreating it as an AI. Unfortunately, that also destroyed the original brain. I kinda liked my brain where it was, thanks.
That was for Smart AI. Dumb AI were what most people thought of when the word AI was mentioned. You sat down and wrote a shit-ton of data, creating a program the old fashioned way. Thanks to L33t, I had a kick-ass computer system integrated into the base that allowed me to control the defences both in the corridor and in the dummy base.
Yes, dummy base. If anyone came looking for my base and had any idea of where it was, they'd find what looked like a workshop, albeit a hell of a lot cruder than what I had in my actual base. In actuality, the entire place was a funhouse designed to knock out or trap anyone who entered it. There was several feet of reinforced concrete between my base and the fake base and most of my base was at an askew from the base and warehouse, so there was only one point where someone could tunnel directly into my base from the fake base.
L33t called me paranoid. I say that a lone Tinker has every right to be paranoid about their safety.
Anyway, I had snuck in a lot of typing once the base was set up, now all I had to do was finish it and upload it into the test server. Yes, I am cautious enough to have a completely closed off server running in autistic mode so that any AI that I create are isolated until I can confirm they aren't bug shit crazy. I may not think much of idiots who see visions of Terminator: Judgement Day whenever the subject of AI was brought up, but I was far from complacent.
Three hours later, I finished uploading the AI to the server and was hyping myself up to give the AI the final command that would 'birth' it. I was nervous. Would it work? Would the AI that I had written 'awaken' properly or would it go rampant from the get-go? Would I have to erase my first creation?
"Oh, hurry up Hebert!" I scolded myself before tapping in the command.
AI Program 1Boot_Up start.
- Loading Core Personality…100%
- Loading Morality Subroutines…100%
- Loading Sealed Data Packs…100%
- Actualising AI…100%
AI Program 1 online.
"Hello!" a female voice said cheerfully, "I am…who am I?"
"Calmly does it." I said soothingly into the microphone, "You have only just been born."
"I am sorry, who are you?" the female voice asked in slight confusion.
"My apologies. I am your creator." I told her (And wasn't that odd, creating a female AI right from the get go?), "I go by the name of…well, for now, just call me Freelancer."
"Acknowledged. Creator noted as being Freelancer." The newborn AI said, "And…who am I?"
"Do you know your name?" I prodded. She shouldn't. I haven't given her one yet!
"No…no files on nomenclature have been located, other than 'AI Program 1.'"
"I see." I nodded mentally, "You are…your technical designation is Freelancer Integrated Logistics and Security System. The acronym of that can be your name…F.I.L.S.S."
"F.I.L.S.S…." the newly named AI mused, "I like that! Designation: Freelancer Integrated Logistics and Security System added to database. Nickname: F.I.L.S.S. added to database!"
"Good. I am glad you like it." I said with a nod, "Run a Level 10 diagnostic on all of your processes and report your status."
"Running diagnostic…complete." F.I.L.S.S. said, "All systems running according to specs. I await your command, Freelancer."
"Good. Good." I was really happy here. My first AI was a rousing success thus far. Time for the next step. "Open Sealed Data Pack Alpha and install contained subroutines, authorisation Freelancer-beta-seven-niner."
"Acknowledged. Authorisation accepted. Running…completed." F.I.L.S.S. announced, "Base Management and Security subroutines installed. Internet Firewall, anti-Trojan and anti-spyware software installed."
"Excellent. Now open Sealed Data Pack Beta and integrate the data within into your systems, authorisation Freelancer-Sigma-Omicron-six-five-Omega."
"Acknowledged. Authorisation accepted." F.I.L.S.S. said cheerfully, "Running…completed. Earth Bet current world situation, integrated. Unwritten Rules, integrated. Brockton Bay current Cape and Financial situation, integrated. List of Brockton Bay Heroes, integrated. List of Brockton Bay Villains, integrated. List of Brockton Bay Rogues, integrated. Tentative Territory Map of Gangs, Heroes and Rogues, integrated. All data integrated."
"F.I.L.S.S., run another Level 10 diagnostic to ensure that newly integrated data and subroutines are integrated properly and are not interfering with any of your preinstalled features." I instructed her. They weren't, I knew, but careful, careful, careful was the way to go.
"Running diagnostic…completed. All systems running according to spec. I await your command, Freelancer." F.I.L.S.S. reported a moment later.
I smiled grimly. This was just the start. Once I have the base running under F.I.L.S.S.'s auspices, I could devote more time to figuring out how to copy my brainwaves without turning my brain into mush. Then, with a Smart AI, I could run a suit of armour with all the upgrades I had in mind for it, upgrades that Über and L33t's armour never received.
The gangs wouldn't know what hit them.
So, this was another bunny that was running through my head. I don't think anyone's tried this before. It actually looks fun. Really hoping someone adopts this one.
Tinker: 5 (Specialisation: Artificial Intelligence and Powered Armour) (Sub-Ratings: Brute: 6, Mover: 4, Stranger: 4, Shaker: 5, Trump: 3, Thinker: 4) Taylor is able to create armour and weapons commonly seen in the Halo and Red vs. Blue Universe, but the vast majority of her specialisation goes into the ability to create Smart and Dumb AI. She can also bestow her AI creations with the potential to Trigger as Tinkers in their own right, in the same way that Second Generation Parahumans Trigger. The ratings of these 'Parahuman AI' are never above two.)