Chapter six.
Alright, I actually had this one ready the day I said I would (i.e. the day after I published the last one. But I wasn't convinced, so I scraped it and worked a lot more on it. Then my semester at the university began, and as I'm actually studying Literature and Creative writing, all my creativity was sucked by my projects there. Then I came back to this and worked a little more over the past week or so. I'm not entirely convinced yet, but I think is better to get it out of the way before I can sit on it even more time.
Reviews: ...I honestly would appreciate the feedback.
Armsmaster leaped from his bike without slowing down. He hit the ground rolling, and ended his maneuver by ducking behind one of the wrecked cars along the street. As the automatic systems took charge of his ride and conducted it away from the confrontation, he took the time to contemplate the scene that was unfolding in front of him.
Facing Dauntless, the newest addition to the Protectorate forces in the city, was the merchant parahuman codename "Pusher". Brute three for his tough skin capable of resisting low caliber guns, Striker four for his ability to launch any object he touched in a parabolic arc of forty degrees, and Affront to the sight and all other senses seven for his rotten teeth, his horrible shit-tonality brown costume, and his physically debilitating stench. With a flick of his eyes, the jaw of his helmet shut close accompanied by a metallic clink. This time, he had come prepared.
"Pusher! Stand down and put your hands where I can see them!" He screamed to the criminal cape. Pusher turned around to face him but didn't let Dauntless completely left his vision. It seemed that as high as the cape was, he wasn't so out of it that he wouldn't be able to put up at least some fight, which incidentally explained why Dauntless hadn't been capable of taking him down before he somehow managed to wreck the whole street.
"That's Motherfucker to ya', Dicksmaster!" Ah, yes. Pusher's elected name. Too bad PR didn't agree with him on the matter.
"Stand down, Pusher, I will not repeat it again!" He said while releasing the magnetic safe that kept his halberd attached to his back and discretely signaling Dauntless to attack.
Dauntless noticed his instruction and the distraction of the enemy cape and immediately tried to capitalize on it. With a flicker of blinding light, he teleported right beside the villain, swinging his Arclance as if it was a police baton, cracking with electricity. Pusher, however, reacted too quickly, evading the blow and returning one of his own, catching Dauntless on the gut and sending him flying away whit a pitying shriek, landing a twenty feet away with a heavy thud.
"You sucker, get off of me already!" Screamed Pusher, and Amrsmaster resisted the urge to sigh. How could someone so powerful be so incompetent?
With a twist of his arm, he pushed himself over the wrecked car that served him as cover, the enhancements inside his armor allowing him to realize a jump by far longer and higher than his human body could ever manage, landing just out of the reach of Pusher, already in an offensive stance and with his halberd pointed against his foe. That the head of his weapon was glowing with a far more controlled, far more effective current, was just a mere happenstance.
"You come for a piece of my shit too?!"
He refused to dignify that with an answer, so instead he responded by dodging the surprisingly technical blow o Pusher, following with a swift, methodical swing to the space between his ribs, delivering a discharge powerful enough to make the brute drop to the ground, already unconscious by the time his side hit the asphalt. After that, he simply dropped one of his confoam grenades over the Merchant to immobilize it until a PRT could come to retrieve him. He retracted again his halberd and strapped it to his armor, then he pressed one of the buttons in the side of his helmet, sending a signal to his bike to come back to him. Just like that, the confrontation was over and he could follow on his patrol. Dauntless was still getting back on his feet, groaning.
"Thanks for the save, Armsmaster, I'm still learning to move at those speeds, really makes me wanna throw up every time." He said, coming closer to him.
Armsmaster limited himself to nod.
He flickered his head, and with another clink, the mandible of his helmet retracted once more "Report to console, keep Pusher secure until the troopers arrive, then resume your route." He said just as his bike came to a stop right by his side
"Ah, uh. Yeah, sure thing, boss."
As Armsmaster got on his bike, an alert popped on his hud. An incoming call from Miss Militia. He accepted the call with a flick of his eyes, trusting the automated sensors of his bike to keep his balance as he diverted his attention to his second on command.
"Militia."
"Armsmaster, sorry for interrupting, but we have some news on the Winslow incident."
"Go on," he prompted.
"The reports from the scene mostly confirm what we already knew. The contents of the locker of Ms. Hebert were let to fester approximately for a week. Today closer to seven thirty in the morning someone shoved her inside as part of what the school administration is calling a 'prank gone wrong.' Damian Hofstadter, sophomore in Winslow heard her when he arrived late at school and approached the locker.
When he realized someone was inside, he opened with a pair of tweezers he brings, and I quote, 'just in case,'" Armsmaster actually had to suppress a chuckle at the weirded out voice with which his colleague said that "and then he called us from his second phone."
"Second phone?"
"Hofstadter claimed the burned phone on the scene to be his, apparently, and I quote, 'it began ringing just before the smoke came out of the thing, so I threw it to the floor'. Forensics says the phone somehow received more data that it could manage and that toasted the circuit boards and basically everything else. They can't make heads or tails of how that could even happen, but we're almost certain it has to do with whatever it was that cut access to the local cell tower for thirty seconds.
Usually, we would suspect a Tinker, but that doesn't line up with the fast recuperation of Ms. Hebert anymore after you discarded the possibility of her being a parahuman."
"What's the current theory?"
"Parahuman involvement is undeniable, but the healing and the messing with technology imply there was more than one cape present. We're doing a background check to see if anyone involved has that kind of connections, or why such individuals would display this level of interest on Ms. Hebert, but we don't have anything concrete."
"And the culprits? I would have asked her myself, but I honestly got carried away going over the results of the tests." He asked. "I actually feel a little bad for how contrite I was with her. Do we already know who did it?"
"Ugh," Militia sighed, "that's another can of problems by itself. It would be better if we discussed it when you get back from patrol."
"Can't do, I have to go over the performance review of the NAR with Dragon when I get back to the rig."He said.
Militia seemed to doubt if she should tell him, but she relented at the end, "When we took the statement of the Hebert girl she pointed three girls as the principal culprits behind a long going campaign of bullying against her."
"The names?" Armsmaster already didn't like where this was going.
"The first two are unimportant, Madison Clements and Emma Barnes. The agent that questioned her says she implied heavy emphasis in the second name. The third, however, was Sophia Hess."
If it hadn't been for the automatic stabilizers installed in his bike, Armsmaster's vehicle might have drifted an inch to the left.
"Care to repeat that?"
"The third girl named in Ms. Hebert statement was Sophia Hess. We already have her in custody as a preventive measure"
"... I assume you verified she was telling the truth?"
"Hofstadter confirmed independently. Other students weren't nearly as cooperative when we questioned them initially, but after we mentioned the actual names instead of vague inquiries they were all falling one over the other to come forward with it, especially the ones we suspect of being accomplices in the campaign."
"Any chance it's a setup?"
"... There are rumors that Hofstadter runs with some of the Empire kids. But his record is clean of any previous troubles. And even if he fraternizes with some of them, it could be only a matter of seeking protection from the other gangs at the school. We both know Winslow is not all it should be.
"...We'll get to the bottom of this. If she's the one responsible, she will pay, if she's not, then we'll make whoever thought of framing her go down. Hard. Understood?"
"Understood."
"I can't reschedule the conference with Dragon, but I want you to arrange a meeting with Director Piggott first hour tomorrow.
"Yes, Armsmaster."
Militia closed the comms channel, and Armsmaster centered again his full attention on the road in front of him.
Great, now he would have to complete the rest of his patrol with his good humor gone.
Armsmaster sat in the reinforced chair of his workshop. He retired his helmet, and then accepted the solicitude for the videoconference. He would have gotten out of his Power armor as well, but the total shut down routine of the systems took around twenty minutes to complete, and that would have made him late.
As the virtual avatar of Dragon appeared in his monitor, he brought up the "suitcase" of the NAR system. It was, in truth, the hard drive where all the data produced by it was stored, in addition to an EMP shield, battery charger, protection case in case of falls, and a failsafe that would kill the device if it ever separated of him, his workshop or his bike by more than a hundred yards for more than a minute. Opening it, he connected it to his Computer, allowing all the data recollected to be transferred to the systems of his workshop.
"Armsmaster." Responded the kind voice of the Canadian Tinker. Thirteen years after he joined the Protectorate, Colin had been confronted with all kind of heroes, mediocre, bad, competent, and all around the spectrum between those. In all that time, however, he could count whit his fingers the number of heroes that truly deserved that title, who put their all on the job. Dragon was between such numbers.
"Did everything go well with the test?" She asked.
"It could have been more productive. Turned out the girl wasn't a parahuman, so the utility of the test was limited," he answered, sending her the data. Usually, he would be more reticent of sharing his work, but this project was his as much as Dragon's. "The girl had a Pollentia, but it was inactive as far as I can tell, so the data I got from it was limited."
"Oh?"
"You know is hard to detect the Gemma, but even her pollentia only showed partial activity, I would have confused it for a tumor if it wasn't for the readings indicating unusual tissue. At least we can confirm the sensibility of the NAR is working as intended."
"Maybe she was a tinker?"
"The test I conducted on kid win and myself showed background activity even during the sleep, as she was wide awake the readings should have been obvious, furthermore with my armor and the NAR in front of her, a simple glimpse should have fired the brain of a fresh Tinker like a fourth of July."
Dragon laughed at that. "Can't argue with you on that one. Was the drop significative?"
Colin lied back on his chair. This question merited more thought. "Your design certainly is impressive Dragon. There was a loss of twenty-four percent all around on the performance, seventy-five percent of it was due to the lower sensitivity of the nodes, but it's negligible at worst, especially considering the absence of tinker tech.
"Thank you Armsmaster, but it's all on you, your original design was just brilliant." She returned the compliment with a pleased tone.
In truth, Armsmaster didn't care all that much for pleasantries, if he thought Dragon's job to be any less than exemplary, he would have said so. His assessment was merely his sincere opinion. Dragon's reputation as the foremost Tinker in America wasn't undeserved in the least.
"A few more tests and it will be ready to send to the review board. Hopefully, they will dem the performance good enough to approve mass production."
"I certainly hope soo. I don't know down there, but here in Canada it would do a great deal to relieve the medical equipment budget of the Protectorate offices if we could replace all the machinery for this."
It certainly would be a waste. Unfortunately, there was precedent of the PRT vetoing this kind of projects before, claiming the initial costs of production and replacement of everything that would have to be changed to be too elevated Which wasn't complete bullshit, even if he desired he could claim it was.
"Let's hope." He said simply.
If the board rejected the NAR, he could still salvage some of the concepts and components developed for it to further other projects. The data generated by it would make a great starting point for his lie detector, and his predictive software would improve drastically if he could apply.
I would really appreciate the comment. As I've already said, I'm not a native English speaker, and although I consider I've been improving as of lately, your help would be immensely useful. And I know you're reading, the analytics say so!