Ride On Chapter 6 (original chapter Chapter 139)
Timeline B
Two Days Later
Unknown Location
Sophia Hess panted in pain as her torturer stepped back. Her hands were ruined, her feet the same and now she was suspended, arms tied behind her back, above a tank of ice-cold water by her ankles. Just about the only indignity she had been spared was that she wasn't naked.
"Now Shadow Stalker...or rather, Miss Hess." the masked and costumed figure of Coil said from the chair on the opposite side of the room she was in. "It took not inconsiderable trouble for me to acquire you in a timely manner and I do not have a lot of time to spare with you. All I require from you is the identity behind the mask of the Tinker you rough-housed with a few nights ago and it will be as if we had never met one another. All of your injuries will be healed and your real identity won't be plastered across the pages of the local papers."
"Bastard...!" Sophia growled.
"Mr. Tibbens." Coil said, bored.
Her torturer stepped back forwards and stabbed her in the gut with a cattle prod for a moment. Once the black girl's muffled screams of agony ceased, Tibbens stepped back.
"Address me like that again and you will find yourself sold to the ABB as a whore." Coil stated coldly. "A lesson you seem to be in a great need for is that when you are in an obvious situation of disadvantage, do not antagonize the person who has the ability to either free you or make your situation worse than it already is. Now, the name of the Tinker if you please."
"The fuck do you want her for?" Sophia spat in contempt. "She's fucking weak!"
"Ah, your little 'predator mindset' issue." the serpentine-themed Cape mused. "I was wondering when it would rear its head. Your opinion on this Tinker's strength, mental, physical or otherwise, is irrelevant. All you need do is tell me the name, and all of this shall be over."
Sophia's face twisted in hate and rage, as if the thought of the person who was under the Tinker's mask was enough to make her furious. Coil (in both Timeline A and Timeline B) made a note to himself to find out exactly why that was. This was the third timeline he had spent torturing Sophia Hess for information and she hadn't given him anything before now...mostly due to irritating flukes. In the first split timeline, one of the mercenaries had turned out to be a closet Empire 88 supporter and had shivved her while he had taken a break from torturing the girl. The fool was promptly been 'retired from service' once Coil had gotten over his anger.
The second timeline had been more his own fault. Even although it was noted in Shadow Stalker's files that in her Breaker State she was very vulnerable to electricity, he had assumed that her vulnerability wasn't present without it being active. Sadly, that wasn't the case and he'd accidentally electrocuted her to death before he'd realized his error.
This time, he was not going to make any mistakes. This time, he had accounted for any of the possible failures present in his previous timelines. That was the point of his timeline simulation power; he could lose as many times, and in as spectacular a fashion, as was needed, so long as the only timeline that mattered turned out in his favor.
"I see that you need more persuasion to loosen your tongue." Coil remarked as Shadow Stalker glared at him, keeping silent, not out of any sort of desire to protect the Tinker, but out of sheer mule-headed stubbornness and intractability. He mused to himself that he hadn't seen someone as lacking in self-preservation since New Wave had made their debut.
Almost negligently, he lifted a remote control and pressed a button that sent Shadow Stalker down into the frozen water beneath her head-first with a muffled scream of shock at the cold. The Ward thrashed and struggled, but the way she was bound meant she wasn't getting out of there.
After waiting a moment, the Thinker Cape lowered his thumb and pressed the second button, raising Shadow Stalker, gasping and spluttering, out of the water. he fixed her with a look that drew her attention.
"As I have said, little girl, I have limited time and patience to put up with your antics." he said softly, the room carrying his voice in site of its low volume. "The choice here is to either give in and tell me what I want to know now, or be a stubborn foolish idiot and have me drag the name out of you over the course of the next few hours. Either way, I get what what I want. It's simply a matter of how much harm you come to in the meantime."
Seeing the defiance and fear in the girl's eyes, Coil suppressed a sigh of irritation. This was going to take a while, he could tell.
Timeline A
Same Time
Taylor's Workshop
I sat in the office chair in front of the safe where my most dangerous creation was sealed in and scowled at it. I just couldn't fathom why my power had given me the Rider Suit equivalent of a walking nuclear bomb. I mean, my other suits were WAY weaker than the new one. [The First] was Mid-B Cape equivalent at best, while [Black Sun] and [Fire Beetle] were solid A-Rank Cape equivalent. The new suit though? It was almost certainly S-rank. I could quite comfortably say that I could fight an Endbringer while wearing it and give it a bad day. If I was lucky.
Seriously, I couldn't even begin to guess why my power had decided to give me an Anti-Endbringer suit on the fourth try. It was far too powerful for me to even train with; I had to find a way to slap a limiter on it to get it to a manageable level if I ever wanted to attempt to get a handle on it.
Shaking my head, I turned my attention to my newly built security station. Over the last couple of days, I had managed to build some hidden turrets into various locations around my base, all linked in to my console here. There were six of them; four nonlethal armaments and two lethal ordinance per turret. In order to remove the safeties on the lethal stuff, I had to type in a code and the system had to register a Parahuman with a Kill Order on their heads being in the vicinity.
The nonlethal weapons were laser-delivered tasers, knockout darts, rubber bullets and tear gas. The problem was, calling anything 'nonlethal ammunition' was a misnomer, as bad luck, allergies and happenstance can cause problems and accidents. Less lethal ammunition would be a better descriptor.
The lethal ammunition portions of my turrets included lasers drawing power from my [Sunshine] and [Fire] energy batteries, high-speed flechette launchers, plain old machine guns and a collapsible anti-material rifle. That last one was just in case Squealer showed up, truth be told. Her vehicles are a pain to consider as enemies.
Placed atop nearby buildings and concealed behind very good facades, they would be only useful once, and not for very long. The greatest weakness with static defenses was that they couldn't move and were thus incredibly easy to target with concentrated firepower once their positions were revealed. Still, they would be enough to give me time to suit up if I was inside the garage, and their activation would scream a warning on my pager (yes, it's old fashioned, but it was easy to make) so I could activate the garage's fail-safe sequence.
Essentially, I'd blow my base all to hell...but not before the Zecters made it out. Even the new one that I'd sealed away. All of my Zecters were somewhat intelligent, but the new one...it gave me the shivers with the way it looked at me sometimes.
Gah, even when I tried to think of something other than my new suit and Zecter, I ended up thinking about them!
Sighing in a way that was more a groan of frustration, I turned my mind back to the problem of the new Rider Suit. The main problem was that it combined the [Sunshine] energy of [Black Sun] with the fiery power of [Flame Beetle] and its [Fire] energy to create what was, for all intents and purposes, the power of the sun itself. The sun was basically a giant nuclear reaction fireball, so it didn't make sense to me that Sunshine plus Fire equaled Sun. There had to be a third aspect of the sun power that was so similar to my Shaker field of burning death.
...wait a minute...the sun wasn't light and fire...it was plasma! Sunshine and fire were what primitive man imagined the sun to be, because they never imagined anything could be hotter than something like fire or, at a stretch, lava! No wonder I had so little control over my new Rider Suit; my own understanding of its power was shallow!
"I'm an idiot." I muttered, facepalming in exasperation. "I'm even good at science, so how the hell didn't I see the obvious answer?!"
Getting up, I marched over to my worktable, where one final half-built Zecter lay. I had been too freaked out by my new Suit to try and complete the last insect transformer I had the bare bones of. Now though? I was going to build the shit out of it.
A few hazy hours of frantic work later and hey presto, I had a new Zecter and, when I charged it up with my Shaker Field, it ended up looking like a ladybug, black spots and red shell included. It actually looked pretty damn good, in my humble opinion.
I would have gone out to make the Rider Suit, but it was close to five in the morning and I needed my sleep. Absently patting my new Zecter as I headed out of the door, I had no idea what would come to befall me in the next few days. Had I known...
The Next Night
Rooftops of Brockton Bay
Jackson Collins was not a happy mercenary. His current employer, the Cape known as Coil, had been gunning for this newbie Tinker Cape for a while, with a surprising lack of success. Jack had never known his boss to fail at something so long as he'd worked for the man, but this new Tinker seemed to throw whatever parahuman mojo that Coil had out of whack, resulting in over two-dozen mercenaries either arrested by the BBPD or laid up in bed from torn muscles and the occasional broken bone.
And now here poor old Jackson Collins was, standing atop a roof, completely unarmed, and waiting for aforementioned Tinker to show up. Just what evils had he committed in a past life to put up with his kind of karma?!
He was starting to regret being Buddhist.
"Another one of Coil's little mercenaries? All on his lonesome? Color me surprised." a modulated voice said from behind him. Jackson levitated almost a foot into the air and whirled around to see the Tinker that Coil had been after, already in one of her suits of armor and leveling a look at him. This one was black and dark green.
"How'd you sneak up on me?!" he demanded, forcing his heart to stop beating so fast.
"I saw you standing here from outside your range of vision and then pinpointed where your watchers were before moving in and taking them down stealthily." the Tinker replied. "So then, why are you out here all on your lonesome? I'm getting more than slightly irked with Coil for his constant attacks on me, so either you give me a good reason for being here or else..."
The clenched fist smacking into the Tinker's open palm demonstrated exactly what would happen. Jackson gulped.
"I-I'm a messenger." he blurted out hurriedly and removed the envelope from his pocket before thrusting it at the Cape before him. "H-Here, take it. I dunno what it is, but the Boss told me to give it straight to you!"
"A messenger? After ambushing me with mercenaries at least twice?" the armored Tinker scoffed as they grabbed the letter. "He's got a lot of nerve. OK, I have it. Now scat."
Jackson was perfectly happy to comply. He had little desire to receive a beating from this Tinker, thank you very much. Coil may have written an excellent medical plan into the contracts, but the best form of healthcare in Jackson's humble opinion was to not get hurt in the first place.
With Taylor
Watching the clearly nervous merc hurry off, I turned and started roofhopping my way away from the site of the encirclement. I hadn't lied to the man at all; having a kilometer of sight with night vision and thermographic vision had made spotting the mercs a very, very easy task.
Once I was certain that I was away from the small area that seemed to be Coil's 'territory' and that no one around me, I landed atop a roof and tore the paper envelope open to see what the supervillain had to say. The contents of the letter were printed in block capitals and the message itself was blunt, to the point...and made an explosion of ice appear in my stomach.
TAYLOR HEBERT
YOU WILL SURRENDER TO ME AND BECOME A PART OF MY ORGANISATION. IF YOU DO NOT, I WILL EXPOSE YOUR IDENTITY TO EVERY GANG IN BROCKTON BAY. YOUR SOLE REMAINING FAMILY MEMBER WILL PERISH AT THEIR HANDS AND IT WILL BE ENTIRELY ON YOUR HEAD.
WHEN YOU AGREE TO MY TERMS, COME TO THE DOCKS AREA WITHOUT YOUR ARMOR ON IN THREE DAYS TIME. SHOULD YOU NOT COME, YOU KNOW THE CONSEQUENCES.
COIL
A gnarled and twisted mixture of anger, fear, outrage and panic started to gnaw at me. How?! How the hell had Coil found out who I am?! I had been extremely careful to not get seen by anyone when coming and going from my base, costumed or not. My Zecters flew and leaped around after me as well, but at a distance and would have attacked anyone who had tried to shadow me from my base to my home.
So how was this HAPPENING?!
With a suppressed snarl of fury, I tore the paper to pieces in a fit of pique. How dare he? How DARE he threaten my Dad?! Oh, when I got my hands on him...!
After fuming for a few minutes, my higher brain functions reengaged and I calmed down, and started to think rationally. He knew who I was. OK. However he'd found that out, whether he was a Thinker who could deduce things from almost no evidence like Sherlock Holmes, a Shaker who could make the past play back in front of him or however else he might have found out my identity, it didn't matter. What DID matter was that I was exposed. Vulnerable.
But not helpless. Far from it. If Coil wanted to attack me, fine. I'd give as good as I got. But threatening to attack my Dad? Attack the one living family member that I had left? That was crossing a line. He'd given me, a Tinker, three days grace before 'surrendering' to him.
Big mistake.
Turning sharply, I took a great leap and flew through the night sky towards my base. Even with three days, I had very little time to actually do anything in that timeframe. Fortunately, Dad was leaving for work early and going to bed almost as soon as he got in, barely pausing to have a bite to eat for dinner, these days. This gave me most of the day to myself to plan, and even build a few minor devices so long as I was careful to tidy up after myself. Thank god I kept on top of the housework to the point it needed very little effort to keep on top of it.
'I'm going to be ready and waiting for you, Coil!' I thought darkly. 'Come after me and my family, and I'll make you regret every minute of it!'
Three Days Later
Office, Coil's Base
Frowning under his mask, Coil tapped one finger on the armrest of his chair in mild confusion. It was almost midnight, and there was still no sign of Taylor Hebert in the Docks area. He had almost thirty of his remaining mercenaries out looking from various concealed locations in the area, but there was no sign of her!
'Could she be stupid enough to believe that I am bluffing?' he pondered briefly before dismissing the notion. Everything he'd gathered about Taylor Hebert spoke of a highly intelligent girl. A naïve, easily intimidated girl judging from how she'd been so easily pushed around by a low-level thug with powers like Shadow Stalker before her Trigger event...whatever that might have been.
Shadow Stalker had possessed suspicions, but no solid evidence, about what it might have been. The two boys who had been murdered had been two she had sent after her hated target, but Coil dismissed such wild fantasies. It was incredibly rare for any Tinker to possess any other category of powers without undergoing a Second Trigger, and Armsmaster's reports (which his alternate identity, Thomas Calvert, had gotten ahold of) had clearly stated that the murderer had been a Shaker, not a Tinker.
His radio, silent up until now except for the regular check-ins from his watching men, erupting in a multitude of shouts and screamed reports.
"This is Steins in the Docks! Team 1 is under fire! I repeat, we are under fire!"
"Shoot back then!"
"WE ARE! The bullets are going right through the attacker with no effect!"
"Johnson, on your left!"
"We can't stop him!"
"Argh-!"
Coil stared in mounting fury and disbelief at his radio. 'She isn't calling my bluff...she's going on the attack! That little...well, well. Evidently, Shadow Stalker was even more wrong about little Miss Hebert than I had estimated. Still foolish, but not nearly so much so as I had estimated.'
Acceding to the whims of a blackmailer was usually not a bright idea, unsurprisingly enough, because it simply drew the blackmailed party further into the clutches of the blackmailer. It was what Coil himself used to keep a hold of some of his more expendable and replaceable pawns and cats paws. That Taylor Hebert had recognized this trap for what it was and instead mounted an offensive against him made him, begrudgingly, raise his estimation of the chit of a girl by a modest amount.
Not that it would stop him from crushing her.
Reaching forwards, Coil lifted the handset of the internal base phone system and hit one of the saved numbers before placing the handset to his ear. After a moment, someone picked up.
"Yeah, whaddya want, Coil?"
"Trickster, I have a job for the Travelers." Coil replied patiently. The leader of the group of 'Ziz-bombs' was rude, impatient, irrational and completely obsessed with Noel Meinhardt, known to the PRT as Scylla. This made him a pain to work with, as well as being almost ridiculously easy to manipulate.
"Hm. What you need doing?" Trickster asked irrelevantly.
"A certain Tinker has refused my...generous...terms of employment, and is now putting my men out of commission." Coil stated. "I do not appreciate this. I want the Tinker captured and brought to heel."
"Dealing with Tinkers is a...risky business, Coil." Trickster drawled. "Especially if their specialty is unknown."
"From what has been observed, this Tinker specializes in powered and weaponized armored suits." the Thinker answered tersely. "The weapons observed thus far have been capable of breaking bones at most. Her armor is bulletproof and recent reports have attributed intangibility to it also. I believe that Sundancer, Ballistic and Genesis can handily handle this Tinker."
"Tch. OK, we'll take care of it." the leader of the formerly migrant villain group replied after a moment. "Standard fee applies though."
"Very good. I'll have one of my men give you directions to the area." Coil said smoothly before hanging up. Once he issued more orders to one of his mercenaries, he leaned back in his chair thoughtfully. To the best of his knowledge, Taylor Hebert hadn't gotten into any Cape fights as of yet, merely taking care of a few street-level criminals and his mercenaries.
'I do wonder how she'll manage against an entire team of Parahumans bent on her capture?' he mused to himself, a cruel smile under his mask.
Several Minutes Earlier
With Taylor
Standing atop a roof, I peered through the special binoculars that I had knocked together that had the same functions as my Rider Suit lenses. I could see quite a few people who almost had to be Coil's mercenaries...well, either them or members of the gangs, but the gangs had little reason to be lurking on the rooftops and cradling assault rifles.
"Thirty of them...scattered all over the place...huh...this isn't going to be quick, that's for sure." I muttered.
My plan here wasn't exactly on the level of Sun Tzu; I was going to beat the crap out of the mercs, find Coil's base and then go in and...deal with the man himself. Quite how I was going to deal with him was somewhat nebulous, but he had to be dealt with.
Reaching out, I felt my newest Zecter land in my outstretched hand. I had made the Rider Suit for it the previous day, using the Boat Graveyard and an entire ship to do so. With its power, I should be able to handle the mercs while keeping an advantage in surprise.
Pressing the button in the center of the ladybird/ladybug Zecter, I smiled grimly as I heard the declaration of [Masked Rider Pantheon!] come from it. I slapped it onto my Rider Belt and heard the new declaration emerge from it.
[Plasma Charge!]
"Let's end this...transform!" I whispered and pressed the central button again.
[Ghost Drive Persona!]
Orange light enveloped me and the transformation sequence began. I had to wonder about the pre-transformation declaration though.
[Fly through the WORLD, Masked Rider! Haunt thine ENEMIES! As of this moment, THE ROILING PLASMA OF THE SUN is at your command!]
As the light of the transformation died down, I was clad in my new Rider Suit. It was black for the most part, with thin orange lines of power glowing on it like circuitry, as well as making up about sixty percent of the face plate. Lightly armored for the most part, it resembled the [Cast Off] version of [Flame Beetle], with a few key differences. There was a single horn on the forehead area of my helmet, the Wisp Horn, which seemed to make any sort of Stranger ability useless to my eyes while I wore the suit somehow.
Another difference was the short-sleeved jacket that I wore over my armor. It was black and orange as well, and it had a distinctly militaristic cut to it, like a civilian version of an officer's jacket. It, according to the little database that every Rider Suit came with, came with an 'Effector Hood', which when pulled over my helmet allowed me to use 'ghost-like powers', which involved poltergeist-like abilities, invisibility, self-levitation and even some kind of energy field (although how that was remotely ghost-like I don't know).
I also had been able to complete the sole weapon that this Rider Suit could possess. The Four-Mode Transformable Weapon had, as its name suggested, four different weapon modes; Sword Mode, Dual Sword Mode, Naginata Mode and Gun Mode. This had required me to assemble two swords and a gun, because 'naginata' was a bit of a misnomer; it was more like a swordstaff with a blade on either end. Anyway, I'd still had a spare gun from the last time the Moron Brigade tried to jump me. Grabbing a couple of swords from patrolling ABB thugs wasn't that hard either.
It was currently sheathed at my left hip in sword mode, more closely resembling a gladius than the katana that I had used to form it, but I'd take what I could get.
"OK...let's go..." I whispered and floated up into the air, turning invisible as I did so. Every time I did this, I felt a little giddy inside. Flight had been the power I'd wanted more than anything as a kid, and this suit let me fly...well, sort of. I'd take what I could get.
As I floated across the rooftops at around the speed of a quick jog, I drew my weapon and shifted it into Gun Mode, snapping the hilt down. That made the bade shift into a more rectangular and stocky form and opened up a pair of lenses near the top.
I love this Rider Suit.
Taking aim at the first group of guard, I deactivated the invisibility portion of the armor's powers and instantly activated the intangibility set in its place. That was the bummer: I could only be either intangible or invisible, not both. It had something to do with circuitry limitations or something.
Almost as soon as I shimmered into existence, I started blasting the mercs with bolts of energy drawn from the plasma battery in the gun. This was the sheer beauty of the power of plasma; I would hardly ever need to recharge the suit or the gun. Once every half a year at most. Granted, if there was a containment breach or something, it could be dangerous, but I could vent my plasma in any direction...including straight up...if needed, so that would hopefully be a sufficient fail-safe until I can figure out how to build in a proper one into the suit.
Some of the mercs down below shot back at me with both bullets and lasers, but I was completely invulnerable to them. It felt weird to have them pass through me...almost like that odd feeling you get when a chill goes down your spine. 'Someone walking over your grave' I've heard it called. Brrr.
After the last merc was knocked out, I destroyed all their rifles, took their sidearms and combat knives and moved on to the next group and repeated my ambush on the next set of mercs and the next. Soon enough, I had thirty KO'd and disarmed mercs scattered across the Docks.
I started to float down to start interrogating one of the mercs when an oil drum, of all things, whizzed through my intangible form at a breakneck speed. Turning to face the direction it came from, I was confronted with four costumed figures...Capes, and not ones I recognized from my research on the Brockton Bay Cape scene.
"Well...fuck." one said. He wore a black costume, including a top hat, and a red mask on his face. "The bastard's actually built a suit of armor that makes the wearer a Breaker. Go figure."
"..." Another one, wearing bulky black and red armor, with a square-shaped mask, lowered a hand that had been outstretched, meaning he was likely the one who had turned that drum into a projectile against me.
"Trickster..." the only female member said worriedly. She wore a very stylish-looking red and black costume decorated with sun-like decals and designs.
It was the last one that gave me the most pause though; he/she/it was a literal monster that looked like a mating of a human, a squid and a gorilla. Deathly white with purple markings on its seven arms, it was at least seven feet tall and was muscled heavily, with a tiny head almost comically perched atop its head.
"And who are you four? A circus act and their ringmaster?" I asked coldly. That oil drum would have sent me flying off the building if I hadn't been intangible, and even my Rider Suits couldn't fully protect me from falling four stories to the asphalt.
"The Travelers, at your convenience." the top hat wearer called 'Trickster' replied. "I am Trickster, and this is Sundancer, Genesis and Ballistic. Do you have a name we can call you rather than 'that Tinker beating up mercs for fun and profit'?"
That was a choice made by my suits. I felt a smile form as I answered the boy.
"Just call me Masked Rider, and this suit...is called [Phantom Plasma]. If you're attacking me, I'm gonna assume you work for Coil."
"Correct." Trickster nodded. "He offered a fairly lucrative sum to have you subdued and brought before him."
I can't believe he actually admitted that! Judging by the way his friends are looking at him, neither can they.
"That much I had guessed by the sudden attack from out of nowhere right after I finished mopping up his mercs." I shot back dryly. "I'm feeling generous under the 'no harm, no foul' principle and thus, I'm giving you all one chance to get lost before I take down Coil."
"A newbie Tinker taking down four experienced Capes, by yourself?" the dandy-dressed Cape snorted. "Taking down unpowered mercs is one thing, but a Cape fight's a whole other kettle of fish. I'll respond in kind and offer you a chance to surrender before we are forced to respond with more...forceful...methods."
I raised my FMTW at him. "Sorry, but Coil is someone that I'd die first rather than fall into his clutches. You want me? Come and get me, you ringmaster knockoff."
"Now that was just uncalled for." he huffed. "Genesis, sic 'em."
Then things got hectic.
And I'll leave it there for now. ^_^
So, Taylor's fifth Rider Suit is taken from Kamen Rider Ghost, for those of you who couldn't guess. Specifically, it is the Ore Damashii/My Soul version of the titular Kamen Rider Ghost.
I'm planning on doing a couple more chapters of this then going back and doing some more for Force Your Way, so look forward to that.