Ride On Chapter 4 (Original chapter Chapter 139)

Later That Week

Rooftops, Docks Area, Brockton Bay

Thanks to the dark coloring of my [Black Sun] suit, it would be very hard for someone to spot me as I stood atop a warehouse, looking down on the street beneath me, but I wasn't taking any chances. Fortunately, my suit's special functions let me see quite some distance; if I wanted to I could stand at the southernmost part of Brockton Bay's suburbs and be able to look at a rivet on the northernmost ship in the Boat Graveyard as if I was eyeball-to-rivet with it, so long as I had an unobstructed line of sight, anyway.

The fact it was some sort of special night-vision lenses only added to how useful it was. More than that, I had tried out [The First] the previous day and discovered that, somehow, a fair amount of the auxiliary functions from [Black Sun] had been installed into it, with the same thing applying to some of [The First's] functions being installed into [Black Sun], or slightly enhancing the functions that crossed over.

My insect transforming devices (and I was REALLY going to have to think of a better name for them) could apparently update and upgrade each other by staring at each other. That was weird enough. But whenever I came back to my lab recently, the unfinished insect transformers were moved about the worktop, with one or both of the finished ones sitting next to them, somehow managing to look suspiciously innocent.

…I really know so very little about my own tech that it's embarrassing.

Anyway, I was now leapfrogging across the rooftops on my second ever official patrol, not counting the few trips to the junkyards I'd made and my test runs. Last night had been my first, and it had been fairly quiet; just a couple of muggings and an attempted carjacker.

Seriously, leaving a car out in the open at nighttime in Brockton Bay was practically begging for it to be robbed. Some people, I swear...

Moving on, I had been looking for trouble for quite some time tonight with no success and I was about to give up when I heard the sounds of breaking glass nearby, followed by a quiet curse. Looking around sharply, I activated the thermographic mode of my lenses, which let me see a bunch of men crouching on the rooftops around me. One of them had accidentally trodden on a bottle or something, making him curse.

"Fire!" a man barked and the men swung assault rifles over their cover, pointed them at me and pulled their triggers. A hail of bullets sailed towards me, but I didn't so much as flinch. Why? Because regular bullets, even AP rounds, couldn't pierce the armor I wore, let alone hollow point rounds or soft point rounds. All I felt as they struck me was the sensation of being poked somewhat strongly in the location where they hit me.

"Fuck!" I swore, flinching. OK, so just because I couldn't feel anything didn't mean that the psychological aspect wasn't affecting me; guns, especially assault rifles and semi-automatic machine guns, are loud bastards!

"Fire using massed AP rounds is having no effect on the target!" one of them shouted.

"Switch to the special attachments!" the first voice ordered.

That didn't sound like something I'd enjoy. As the men paused to flick a switch on a device slung under the barrels of their rifles, I drew my Photonic Power Pistol, pointed it at the closest man and pulled the trigger.

TSSHEW!

A bolt of golden energy flew from the barrel of my weapon and slammed into the goon. He was flung back into a rooftop air conditioning vent with a loud hollow metallic sound before dropping face down to the ground, his weapon clattering to the ground as well.

Before the rest of the men (Soldiers? Mercenaries?) could try to respond, I started blasting them as quickly as I could, aiming to take the furthest away ones out first. It wasn't as easy as it sounds, as they knew how to use the cover they had to block my shots...for all the good that it did them, as the cover was destroyed by my photon bolts.

"Shoot her! SHOOT HER!" the first voice screamed, prompting some of the mercs to pull the triggers of their weapons, this time firing god-damned LASERS at me!

BZZT!

You cannot outrun light; that is something that even my very impressive reaction times in this suit can accomplish. Also, while the defensive aspects of my suit of armor was also very impressive, I hadn't had the time or options to test my suit against more exotic attacks. Guess I was about to find out.

In an explosion of light, three lasers slammed into me and I growled slightly in pain, So lasers could actually hurt me, huh? Good to know.

"The beams just bounced off her!"

"Holy shit!"

"That...was a mistake." I said flatly before pressing the rightmost button of my transformer three times, making the PPP in my hand flash brightly for a moment.

[Rider Photon Wave Barrage!]

My pistol lit up like a Christmas tree, golden light running from the grip to the barrel and then repeating. Instinctively, I swiped it horizontally as I pulled the trigger, unleashing a golden wave of light that swept out and enveloped the mercs so quickly that they had no time to duck down or dodge.

An instant later, it was over. All of the mercs were either out cold or stunned, with one nearby being dazed. It was to him I walked after holstering my pistol. I needed answers here. This guy had been the one shouting the orders, and he'd said 'she' and 'her' when talking about me. Someone, at the very least, knew my true gender, and had somehow set up this ambush specifically will me in mind. I don't know if they wanted me to die or be captured, but that was moot right now.

Grabbing the merc by the throat, I slammed him against the nearby rooftop access door to get his attention.

"Who do you work for?" I demanded. "Talk, now!"

"F-Fuck...you...freak." he croaked.

"Defiant, are we?" I responded before suddenly grabbing his hand and squeezing it with a portion of my actual strength, crushing it and making him scream in agony. "The human hand has 27 bones, all of which are now broken in that hand. The average human adult has 206 bones in total after puberty finishes. Tell me the name of your boss or I WILL break every bone in your body."

This might seem to be villainous in nature, but these people had shot to kill with deadly weapons, armor-piercing rounds and even lasers, somehow. That meant that the kiddie gloves were officially off in regards to them.

"C-Coil! Coil hired us!" he shouted, pain in his voice. "Shit...my fucking hand!"

"Once the cops pick you up, Panacea will likely be called in to heal you...if you spill about your boss." I informed him. I wouldn't have broken his hand like that otherwise. "OK then...Coil. Who is he? What powers does he have?"

"I-I dunno! The boss doesn't tell anyone stuff like that!" the merc ground out with a whimper. "I'm just a merc! I don't know shit!"

"No...you just are shit." I sighed in disappointment before I tightened my hold on his throat enough to cut off his air supply. A while later, he was out cold, probably much to his relief.

Now though, the question was what to do with them. There were over a dozen of them and while my suit was certainly strong enough to carry them, I didn't want to have to play 'carry-the-merc' all night while I ferried them to the police station. Nope.

Shrugging, I decided to just dump their unconscious bodies on a nearby street corner...after tying them up, of course. I'd have to take their weaponry, of course; no point leaving dangerous firearms around to be grabbed by every Tom, Dick and Harry in the Bay. If nothing else, I could break the guns down for materials. Plus, examining the tinkertech laser attachments that they had might help me set up guns for use outside of my transformed state.

Grabbing one of the mercs to go along with their leader, I started to use their own zip-ties to bind their limbs.

Same Time

Office, Underground Base

The relatively unknown supervillain known as Coil scowled as he watched on his monitor as the mysterious Tinker hero tie up his team of (very expensive) mercenaries and then deposit them on a street corner before leaping away out of the line of sight of the camera.

"Come back, Jenkins." he ordered.

"Yes sir." the mercenary holding the camera replied shakily before the feed cut off.

Coil leaned back in his chair thoughtfully. He had first heard of this Tinker from one of his moles in the ABB, who had reported that one group of low-level thugs had gotten their collective asses kicked by some newbie hero about a month ago. Then, there had been reports of someone making off with junk from Smilin' Sam's Scrapyard (stupid name for an business) over the past month. Then that contact of his in the ABB had reported that the same group of thugs had tried to ambush the hero that hack beaten them handily at the scrapyard and had once again had their asses kicked soundly.

Not a terribly surprising outcome; the stereotype of Asians knowing martial arts was sorely lacking in the ABB, with only a handful knowing any kind of fighting techniques aside from barroom brawling.

The previous day, he had decided to make an attempt at acquiring this Tinker for his organization. Sadly, the Tinker was somewhat competent when it came to security and paranoia, so discovering their identity had thus far fallen flat. The throwaway timeline he'd used to assail the Tinker the previous day had yielded one useful bit of information: the tinker was female. Thanks to a lucky shot by a mercenary, her voice scrambler had been damaged.

'To think that a mere girl is such a powerful Tinker...' the Thinker mused. The voice of the girl had been that of a teenager, much like his Tattletale was, perhaps a year or so younger. Young...naive...pliable...a target, in other words, for his 'special' brand of persuasion.

The armor that the tinker possessed was reason enough to capture her; immune to AP rifle rounds and lasers, possibly a strength enhancement portion as well, judging by how easily she'd crushed squad leader Jarvis' hand and the fact she could leap up and down buildings so easily. It surpassed Armsmaster's own suit by a considerable margin.

The gun as well...while it hadn't killed any of the mercenaries, it had hurt them badly enough to either be unable to move or knock them out. While Coil preferred not to leave witnesses, a weapon that seemed to be genuinely nonlethal would be of great utility if required. And tinkers could usually make very lethal weapons if the inspiration came upon them.

'What caused my emulation of two timelines to fail, though?' the masked villain thought in frustration. Just as he had been about to drop this timeline, when the tinker had downed his men with that odd pistol attack of hers, some form of interference has disrupted his 'safe' timeline and made it vanish, forcing him to accept this less-than appealing situation. He was down over a dozen mercenaries, as well as their equipment and the tinkertech weaponry he had bought for them. That was a not-inconsiderable cost that this girl had incurred.

'Perhaps I should bring Tattletale into this...' he pondered for a moment before dismissing the motion. While she had been under his thumb for a good eight months or so, Sarah Livsey, otherwise known as Lisa Wilbourn and Tattletale, was still hadn't learned her lesson and was stubbornly trying to get out from under his control. Things would be far easier for his little tool if she would just surrender to the inevitable, but it was a trifling concern.

Anyway, the upshot of Tattletale's chaffing at the bit was that she was currently too much of a risk to expose to a relatively unknown parahuman. For the moment, he'd distract her with getting the relatively rough group that was the Undersiders whipped into shape. He'd start agitating the Empire and ABB against this unknown parahuman and make her an offer she couldn't refuse when she was desperate.

Much like a spider in its web, Coil sat back and plotted his moves against this mysterious tinker who had actually managed to, somehow, stymie his plans and power.

A Few Days Later

Taylor's Base

I stepped back from the wall and nodded in satisfaction at a job well done. I had reinforced the vast majority of the support structure of the garage that housed my workshop. Initially, I had considered doing the same to the office section, but it was so weak to begin with that it would be faster and easier to just rebuild the entire structure from the ground up rather than to reinforce it conventionally, so I had taken an unconventional route.

Rather than use physical materials to bolster the structure of the office section, I was using forcefields to reinforce it. It was cheap (power wise), efficient, took up almost no time to activate once I placed the emitters at the key points and I could even use the same tech in the garage section to make it even stronger!

Heading into the workshop area, I headed to the new device I had also built since my last patrol, a sort of docking station for the transformation devices. Only two were filled right now, but I was going to add another to the total today. Something had been niggling at me to make another one and I had no more reason to deny it.

It boggled my mind, as I inserted wires and soldered circuit boards, that for whatever reason, my transformation insects were at least somewhat sentient. Looking at the materials that I put into them and the degree of intelligence that they displayed, it was a wide divide. By all reason, they shouldn't be capable of acting as they do, yet they are.

Tinkers are such bullshit.

I wiped my forehead with the back of my hand as I finished. The finished device was different from the previous ones, which had been grasshoppers. This one was a beetle of some kind. Instead, this was, and I ran a quick internet search to double check, a stag beetle. The two pincers at the front were very distinctive and the check was purely reflexive.

When I empowered it with my Shaker field, the majority of the beetle's carapace turned blue, with a golden trim. The pincers, however, turned red with a golden trim, as did the legs. Once it began to move, it showed that it had the ability to fly using shining golden wings that it kept hidden underneath its back shell. That would be useful for if I needed it to be nearby in my civilian form.

"I wonder what you''l turn me into?" I mused as I looked at it buzzing around my workshop. "OK, you know what? All of you are insects and you're all transformation devices. I guess I'll call you Zecters, short for 'insect transformers'. How does that sound, you three?"

All three newly-dubbed Zecters turned to look at me and their eyes flashed once before going back to what they were doing, which was more than a little freaky. Seriously, what the heck was with these things?

That Night

Outside of Smilin' Sam's Scrapyard

I hate stubborn bastards who refuse to accept that they're beaten!

It had been out of curiosity that I had come here to scout out my usual haunt for finding scrap and transforming into my Rider Suits, but I had known that it was likely that this place would be locked up tighter than a drum...and I was right.

The stubborn dickheads that I'd already beaten down twice were lounging around outside of the scrapyard, with several on active patrol. One major difference was that one of them had something I'd seen in a movie once...a goddamn drum-mag grenade launcher. Where the hell did the ABB get their hands on that?! And why the hell did they let a common thug carry it around!?

It's a good thing I came wearing my [Black Sun] Suit, otherwise I would have missed them. My costume was good enough to get around town, and maybe fight some unprepared thugs, but a grenade launcher? Hell no.

Drawing my pistol, I decided that the grenade launcher had to be the first to go, but neither my standard pistol shot nor my [Rider Photon Wave Barrage] were capable of destroying the weapon. That left one thing.

Reaching for my belt device, I pressed the rightmost button twice and then the central button once, making my Photonic Power Pistol glow with an inner light.

[Rider Hard Light Shot!]

Although the announcement startled the idiots down below, they neglected to look up. Idiots. I lowered my weapon at the one carrying the grenade launcher and pulled the trigger, sending a powerful beam of golden light at it. The beam pierced through the grenade launcher and it dissolved into motes of light, making the idiot holding it gape in disbelief. I mentally shuddered a bit at the thought of hitting a living being with that attack.

"It's that bastard again!" one roared. Oh look, it's the idiot who is the leader of these ABB rejects.

"Most people would have gotten the idea that you were outmatched the first time. Almost everyone would've taken the hint after the second." I drawled as I casually leaped to the ground after holstering my pistol. "And now here we are at number three. It would be nice if third time was the charm here..."

"Fuck him over!" the head idiot shouted, and out came the clubs, brass knuckles and swords. Once again, the guy pulls out the only gun of the lot of them, a MAC-11 submachine gun. How my suit was able to identify the specific model, I had no clue, but the knowledge was useful, as it made me certain not to let the guy get off a shot.

I leaped forwards faster than the idiots could track me and snatched the gun from the leader's hand, possibly dislocating a couple of his fingers in the process, before knocking him out. I had the suit create another holster for it, although a pop-up on my HUD warned me that I already had a pistol and that the weapon wouldn't be converted.

Dismissing it, I focused on dealing out yet another ass-kicking to these morons, I grabbed the katana from another one and had a sheath appear for it as the fight went on. It was good that I would have a pistol and a sword for my new Rider Suit from the get-go.

Pretty soon, the ABB idiots were lying in a groaning heap on the ground, the leader on top of them. He glared at me feebly before remembering what I'd done to him and his friends the last two times that I'd dealt with them.

"Oh no...!" he protested as I picked the mostly-insensate pile of bodies and headed to the nearest dumpster.

"Oh yes." I countered. "Show up in front of me again and I'll throw you lot into the Bay."

Having dealt with the morons, I double checked for any recording equipment or rooftop watchers before leaping into the yard itself before undoing my transformation and returning to just my costume, the extra sword and gun falling to my feet. As the grasshopper sprang away, the beetle flew in and landed in my outstretched hand.

"Okay..." I nodded and picked both of the weapons up in my free hand before sauntering over to the nearest pile of scrap. Placing the weapons on the ground again, I pressed the central button on the beetle Zecter.

[Masked Rider Pantheon!]

I attached the device to my belt, with it declaring [Blazing Charge] as I did so.

"Let's see what you've got, beetle." I smirked and pressed the central button again, causing a wave of orange-yellow light to emerge from me.

[Blaze towards the HEAVENS, Masked Rider! BURN brightly! As of this moment, the FLAMES OF RETRIBUTION are at your command!]

Once the light died down, I looked down at my new Rider suit. It was a smooth black on the legs, broken only by pieces of blue and silver armor on the feet and knees. From the waist up, I was heavily armored, especially on my chest. Most interestingly, I had a pair of double-barreled guns mounted atop my shoulder pads like a pair of turrets.

Oddly though, it didn't feel as strong as [Black Sun] suit was, as well as a lot less flexible. So, a defensive-style Masked Rider, armed with guns...kinda like a mobile fortress, I guess?

A screen popped up on my HUD and it made me raise an eyebrow with curiosity.

Initiate [Cast Off] Protocol?

[Y] – [N]

OK, what the hell is this now? A secondary transformation sequence? Since when could my suits do that? Well now I had to see what this was like. With an nod, I selected the 'Y' icon.

[Cast Off!]

Servos whirred and then, in an explosion of parts, most of the armor I wore was expelled from my body, slamming into the junk and ground around be before vanishing.

[Change: Stag Beetle!]

Looking down at myself anew, I could see and feel that the lack of speed and flexibility that had been present in the armored form was gone, and I felt a lot more powerful, although it was only on the level of being around about on the same level as [The First] if I were one to judge.

Now, what's the compatibility of this suit compared to the rest...?

Masked Rider Suit: [The First] – Compatibility 15%

Masked Rider Suit: [Black Sun] – Compatibility 65%

Masked Rider Suit: [Fire Beetle] – Compatibility 35%

And this sew suit, [Fire Beetle], just so happens to have a compatibility with my Shaker power that added together with the compatibility percentage of [Black Sun] to make 100%. Sheer coincidence or deliberate maneuvering on the part of my power? I had the feeling that the next time that I made a Zecter, I'd find out which it was...

And that's it for this ficlet chapter for the moment.

So, if you saw the AN in the last chapter of my Familiar of Zero fic, you'll know that my computer was in trouble. Sadly, the damage was worse than I knew and it couldn't be repaired. I am getting a new one built, but that will take time and money. While I have stored chapters for some of my main ficlets, it will take me a while to get my new computer set up and the way I like it, even once I get my hands on it. As a result, until I have a better idea of when that will be, my main stories are going on hiatus, although I hope to be back and posting chapters two weeks from now, on the seventh of August.

For those of you wondering about how I'm posting this, I have a laptop as a backup in case of just such an emergency. I hate typing on laptops though and any writing I do will be very, very SLOW on this, which is why this chapter took the better part of a week to finish.

Turning back to this chapter though, I named the transformation devices after the ones in Kamen Rider Kabuto, and also based Taylor's third Rider Suit on Kamen Rider Gatack, the secondary Kamen Rider from Kamen Rider Kabuto. Why? I honestly liked the man behind the suit there, Arata Kagami, more than I liked the supposed 'main character', Souji Tendo. Plus, the beetle theme will tie in to Taylor's perfected Zecter. What'll it be? Wait and see...