I had planned to have a nap as soon as I got home. Instead, after laying there for ten minutes planning how I was going to put together mine and Taylor's armor I had got up, and accompanied by Fennec, returned to my labs.
By four in the morning, I had reassembled my helmet with a few substituted parts and intuitive modifications and had repeated the process with the chest piece though I also integrated the shock mod. Both pieces were significantly improved from what they had been, more durable and more efficient, and using plenty of new construction. Both sets would require more frequent maintenance that the original however we were talking requiring regular maintenance every month or two rather than two to three times a year. Not a bad trade for two suits from the one.
I had also felt invigorated when assembling them back by the Soul of the Forge though I wasn't sure what actual benefit the pieces gained from that. Finally, my intuition ability had allowed me to both assemble, reprogram and rebuild the systems more in a much more robust form. I felt confident in how well this black-boxed them. I expected that given enough time and with full access some of the technology could be reversed engineered from them, but not enough to recreate the core functions. I was also much more confident about it resisting attempts to hack or bypass the systems whilst in the field.
I had made a minor modification to my right leg armor so I could conceal my pistol within a hidden holster Robocop style. I resisted the urge to try spinning the pistol by the trigger. That just seemed crazy. Robocop was one of the many classic movies that dad had forced us all to sit through. Most of the movies had been pretty interesting.
I had worked out a plan to integrate the biotic amplifier in my right hand but had started to drift off midway and Aria had been forced to trigger loud audible alarm a couple of times before I actually did something silly. So, for that night there was only the original which I was giving to Taylor.
Taylor has also practiced with tasers in the simulation. Before I got carried away with the biotic amplifier, I had put together one of those for her based on standard technology. It had come up quite nice though with the various shortcuts in material I knew it had a quite short life span.
Aria alerted me in time to get out of the lab and get ready for breakfast and school.
That morning, I barely noticed class. I fell asleep in each class but thankfully Aria was able to wake me up before it became an issue and provide me enough information to get by. Thankfully though her ability to hear through me was unaffected by me being asleep.
After eating lunch, I napped in the music room whilst Taylor tested the fit of the Biotic Amplifier in my lab.
The last two classes of the day passed in a blur. For part of one class, I had been forced to present a topic. I have no idea what the topic was and just repeated the words as Aria recited them to me. After that I was straight back to sleep.
I had never been great with breaking my sleep pattern and I was suffering for the work I did the previous night. I knew I was going to have to take a nap as soon as I got home if I was going to be in any state to patrol with Taylor. So much for my plan to get the legs done.
When I got home, I did have a spurt of wakefulness as I opened and examined the first packages of parts for my drum kit. There wasn't enough to really get started, at least not without pulling on my powers and making a very unique drum kit that would garner way too much attention. Instead, I sorted out all the parts on my table, lay on my bed and was asleep shortly after.
Mum had to come into my room to wake me up, she apologized for disturbing my nap and seemed a bit surprised when I was fine about it. Didn't know quite what to make of that but didn't think it was important. Joined the family for a fantastic lasagna which I way ate too much of.
I noted dad was all up in arms about something and quickly checked to confirm everything was going okay with the contract work which Aria assured me was fine. It turned out breaking news was the kidnapping of the mayor's niece. A twelve-year-old girl kidnapped as she left her school by men in one black van just after another similar van had run her protection detail off the road a few blocks away. A stun grenade had been used to stun the school guards and it had been a clean getaway. All the protectorate heroes had been otherwise occupied with a giant gorilla that was threatening the power station outside town whilst the wards were dealing with a bank robbery conducted by the Undersiders.
Having Aria display how often such events happened and then graphically display the time-line of the events of the day painted a very clear picture. I gave Aria the go ahead and do whatever she could do to gather any more information on the kidnapping of one Dinah Alcott. I had a hard time believe it was for something as simple as blackmailing the mayor or for ransom. Two or possibly three separate parahuman attacks without losing a single member of any team wasn't something that was easy to arrange.
I went into my lab and disassembled my pistol and reassembled it with an augment that allowed me to add extra mods. Once reassembled and significantly better than before, I added mods to improve damage, penetration and increase the magazine capacity. Then I spent the next forty minutes shooting holes in gang members dressed in the same poorly fitting army surplus gear that the kidnappers had been wearing. I was a more than a little more upset by reading the statistics of what happened to kidnap victims in Brockton Bay.
It was still satisfying to put holes in them as they attempted to kidnap a generic teen aged in the scenarios. Though I had to instruct Aria to reduce the gore level down a few times as it all felt a little too real at first.
I also had to adjust the scenarios a few times so I wasn't forced to run around so much. I'd have to do something about my fitness at some point. I added that to my to do list.
It was less pleasant to feel the impact of bullets from their pistols and shotguns. Thankfully the armor as simulated meant the impacts whilst harsh didn't hurt and when testing with the kinetic shield up there I couldn't feel anything.
Aria interrupted a rescue attempt scenario to let me know mum was heading to my door. I didn't ask how she knew, that would be impinging on the rule that I shouldn't be told anything she overheard unless it was important.
It was a bit of a rush, but I was out of the room when she called through the door, "Robert, do you have a moment?"
"Sure mum." I opened the door, "What is it?"
"Dad and I would like to have a chat to you and Tracy in the kitchen."
Nodding I followed her out and we were subjected to a long talk about not getting into stranger's cars, making sure we didn't wander around alone after dark, sticking with the crowds and me making sure I followed my sisters' instructions when not at home.
My parents were scared, and I could understand why. It made me even more angry and determined that if it came down to it, I wouldn't hesitate to pull the trigger to protect them, my sister, Dinah or Taylor.
When I returned to my room, I asked Aria to present me with everything she had found out about the kidnapping.
Aria listed the various investigations going on. The number of existing taskforces was shocking. It did make sense given the sheer number of kidnappings that occurred in and around Brockton Bay. I forced myself to review all the possibilities again and was thankfully that at least in this case the evidence indicated that this kidnapping wasn't related to any of the regular reasons for kidnapping.
I was interrupted from my investigation by a new power vision manifesting. The room was a massive factory floor with a huge, automated assembly line for building massive sixty-foot tall, powered suits and as I watched I knew that I had just gained the skill to tune the automated assembly of these four-fold. If I put in the effort, I could use those same principles to create the same type of efficiency in machines to produce just about anything. I would have been irritated by the interruption except this gave me a very good idea and I made a note to come back to that once Aria had finished her report.
I asked Aria to continue her report and she started with the two biggest gangs, the Empire and the ABB seemed to have a set pattern to their kidnappings. Both led to gruesome fates, and I really couldn't believe anyone could condone it just because some of the gang leaders occasionally turned up to fight the big monsters. My opinion of the local heroes dropped further. The merchants, whilst not having a pattern as much were easily to rule out.
Empire didn't seem likely; they weren't big on subtle, and Dinah was white and well connected. If even the faintest connection was made it would hurt their popularity. That and Grue was known to have dark skin. Aria had already calculated that the ABB's or and the Merchants involvement was just as unlikely.
The only other big name in town was Coil. He was known for expensive ex-military types with tinker or tinker material armor and machine gun / hybrid laser weapons. He also had never been associated with kidnappings. A significant number of people seemed to believe he was more involved in big business and politics. Fraud, blackmail, and protection rackets being his preferred methods.
The biggest surprise was that Aria was able to dig up evidence that Dinah had triggered with a thinker power recently. This news was not being made public and in fact only a few of the authorities had even considered it and then only briefly. However, Aria had correlated a bunch of school reports, doctor's reports, and the transcripts of various interviews. I did ask about how she had managed to access that data and she admitted that the rush to gather and share information between the various taskforces had made it very easily to gather the data and she hadn't broken any of my don't-hack and remain-low-profile orders. I did wonder at the time if I was limiting her too much.
She had also picked up a very interesting piece of information that she didn't believe any of the taskforces had. There were several calls to the PRT from a doctor after Dinah's parents had taken her in for a visit. A doctor that had then been involved in a bad car accident shortly after. What made it unlikely that anyone would pick that up was that on a subsequent search that that should have also found matches in those phone records those numbers were no longer listed. Someone was covering their tracks.
Aria would keep searching for any indication that a new gang had moved into town, but unless there was news on that Coil would remain our number one suspect. A reputation for having the money to spend on expensive equipment would mean he'd have the means to arrange a false attack on a power station and also to pull the strings to have the Undersiders break their normal pattern and attack a very public and non-gang affiliated business.
Now all I had to do was find him and this brought me back to my most recent power. I needed lots of eyes. I had wanted to build or repair a drone for some time, and now I could set up automation to build them much quicker. It would decrease their quality as would some of the shortcuts I planned to use. But that just meant I would design the drones to be expendable.
Patrol or not tonight I needed to find a location to set up my miner and smelter to extract the materials I needed to get to work.