"Kidddd… Wiiiinn… earth to Kid Win…"
"What is it Six-Two-Six, I'm busy with Triumph's armor," he said while hunched over the opened breastplate with some tiny tools in hand.
"Can I look at your laser pistol and any other schematics you might have while you're working on that armor? Oh, have you made any personal shields by chance?"
"Yes go ahead, feel free to dig around in the pile. No, I haven't made any personal shields." He said while looking over at me.
Placing his tools down briefly he pointed at me. "You know, Six-Two-Six I've been meaning to tell you. I can't take you seriously in that lab coat, it just looks ridiculous on you."
"It was the smallest one they had in stock! Fitted ones are coming next week." I said while flailing the oversized sleeves around.
I liked how I looked in a lab coat, it was cool. I mean sure it's a bit big, but it was the smallest they had. It still gave me some protection from the spills and stains from the various things used in the workshop. Trying to get some of the fluids and semi-solids out of my fur was just a pain in the butt.
"I'm just saying... you look like a toddler wearing his parents coat in that thing." before he turned back to his own work.
I rolled my eyes at him and turned back to the pile of papers Kid Win had created and left piled on his desk. I decided to try and repeat the experience I had with the modular power supply and to see if I could vacuum up tinkertech-technology. Oh look, schematics for the power armor Kid Win was busy with, yay and completely useless for me. Death-dealing laser pistol and an even bigger cannon-sized laser YOINK! and the hoverboard he would eventually start building, meh. A few minutes studying them in detail, mostly sorting out the papers to figure where everything was at to assemble the full designs in my mind and after a few minutes of concentrating on the tech itself I had suddenly had Solid State Lasers, Basic Power Armour, Micro Power Generator.
All sorts of new designs popped up, nearly every spaceship suddenly had a Solid State Laser weapon variant design along with thousands of Micro Power Generators replacing most of the Small Modular Powerpack in the spaceships. Micro Power Generator, Small Modular Powerpack, Solid State Laser combined to form a lethal-powered gun very similar to Kid Win's but which recharged itself over time. The powerpack and laser by itself made one almost identical to his laser pistol. A new version of the nonlethal federation pistol also formed with the powerpack and the generator to give a similarly self-recharging model, that is beside the gas supply which still needed to be refilled.
That new self-recharging Kid-Win style laser pistol was so tempting, shame it seemed to suffer the same problem as Kid's Win version with it basically being lethal-only. Then again you never know when you might need more firepower. Might make a few for myself and submit them to PRT reviews just so they can tell me not to use them during patrols.
On a bit of reflection, It does make sense that if I was dumped here as a case53-ish-thing/Copy of Stitch I might have been given some actual parahuman power. If nothing other than to prevent me from ending up with some random one later on, which could cause some rather pointed questions. Obviously, my specialty is reverse engineering or something similar with the way I can pick stuff up from others. Maybe a copy of Dragon's specialty which I think was essentially the same thing. Regardless, to increase my own safety I really wanted to put a video-game like shield between me and everything else in this dangerous world, I just had to find one.
Also, a nice red spaceship would be fantastic if I could get enough tinkertech to replace the federation-tech systems I can't make.
"Win, Do you know of anyone who has made a personal shield?"
"Well you can ask Dragon or Armsmaster, they might have something." he said while continuing his maintenance work.
"Oh, almost forgot you know Leet has.. or had one, he's gone out dressed as things that have shields before."
I... I almost forgot about Leet being around, Leet and Uber aren't really a focus in the story as they tend to stick to the sidelines. I think they only got involved in the main storyline during the Bakuda bombing thing as mercenaries going up against the Undersiders briefly.
Bliznak, Leet is a treasure trove for me, the Tinker who can build anything once and also the Tinker whose shard is trying to murder him for playing it safe. That… brings up a good point, is my power an actual parahuman one? If it's shard-based and pseudo-sentient is it going to try and kill me if I'm not actively in danger enough?
Kid Win and the other Wards seem to be doing ok with just the normal Ward duties. Guess the patrols, combat practice and fighting the occasional random normal criminal (and rarely the parahuman ones) generates enough conflict to satisfy hungry shards. Guess I shouldn't worry too much about that right now.
Leeeeeett-tech, I was practically drooling over the things he's probably made and broken. It made me regret joining the wards instead of trying to find them and joining, but to be fair, I didn't know I might have had an actual parahuman power besides "Stitch" at the time. Leet's tinker shard had access to.. well everything tinkertech that I could imagine. I could just about...
"Six-Two-Six! stop drooling on my schematics"
Oh, how embarrassing.
"Sorry"
I cleaned up as best as I could, using my lab coat sleeves while I plotted my dastardly plan to gain access to Leets tech.
"You're drooling again!"
Bliznak!
"I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree then director, I've got to go. But i'll make sure to ask him and I'll tell him about your offer too."
She slammed the phone down into the receiver before muttering under her breath. She was livid that the news of the new parahuman didn't even make it a week before someone squealed to the other directors.
"Fuck you too asshole."
Bellowing at her secretary in the next room, "Get Armsmaster, Miss Militia and Six-Two-Six in conference room six in ten minutes."
The last thing I needed was the other directors breathing down my neck. If I find out who squealed I'm going to make patrolling a Simurgh zone look like a fucking vacation!
"Miss Militia is out on patrol, Armsmaster and Six-Two-Six are on their way" came the shouted reply a few minutes later.
"Fine, just the two then." As Piggot angrily got up and, stretched briefly as the stabbing pains in her sides and back flared up and headed out to the conference room.
Piggot calmed herself before pressing the record button and starting. "We're recording this just so you both know. The other directors are of course up in arms complaining about how we now have three tinkers in house. Armsmaster and Kid Win are both settled in and have homes and lives and so forth. Six-Two-Six, I'm sorry to say but you'll probably have to be transferred."
The weird four-armed blue koala like cape sat there for a few seconds before drumming his claws on the desk.
"Questa," it said before continuing, "I'd rather not"
"I'm not being given much of a choice either. This is coming down from up high, the demand for tinkers in other cities is just too high to have so many of them in one city. They were forced to let us keep Kid Win since he's underage and has family here, and was unwilling to transfer."
She took a breath and a few seconds to let that sink in "That being said, they are willing to double your base pay, double your trust fund and give you your own lab. You can basically pick which city you want to go to. Los Angeles in particular has strongly requested your presence, you would be working directly under one of the triumvirate there."
"I'm not interested in transferring!" Its ears folded back and stuck tightly against its head as it growled and slammed two of its hands down on the table, gouging and denting it. The antenna on its forehead bobbing around a little.
I just grinned from the side, "So you're formally protesting the transfer then?"
It perked it's ears up, swiveling them a bit to the sides and stared with its large black eyes blinking slowly for a second before replying, "Feeboogoo yes!"
A smile creeped up on my face, finally a bit of good news for once. "So you're refusing the offers of doubling your pay to stay here?"
It growled and jumped up onto the table, flashing its teeth at the camera and me and shouted "Bata naba gata, Yes!"
I can work with this, transfers are largely dependent on the willingness of the cape in question. With endless budget cuts and few capes willing to transfer into Brockton Bay, Six-two-six had been an unexpected boon. First recognizable as simply one of the most pleasant-looking and downright adorable case 53's found, she though that maybe he'd just give them a good shot of PR, have him pose for children and do interviews. Then the power testing came and she knew she'd hit the jackpot, high-end super strength, brute resistance and tinker abilities. I'll take ten more of those please, the recruitment bonus towards budgets alone was substantial for acquiring high end capes.
For once, in years the budgets across the board had been increased, especially once his mass-producible tinkertech started production. Brockton Bay PRT received a small portion of the production costs for each one produced under the PRT-tinkertech ownership agreement.
"Alright, I'll have someone send your reply immediately, go ahead and go back to whatever you were doing before." and stopped recording.
Alexandria will just have to choke on that refusal.
It hopped off of the table and headed out, I motioned for Armsmaster to stay and waited a few minutes for Six-Two-Six to leave the area.
"Any progress with that?"
He stiffened up and the slightest bit of a grimace crossed his face. "It doesn't seem to match any language on record. The blood and DNA results came back, he does have DNA but not even a fraction of it is human or even terrestrial in origin. A banana tree as an example has roughly 60% genes similar to a humans, just about everything on earth uses the same proteins and other fundamental building blocks for essential chemical reactions. His genes... well lets just say that he shares less then one percent. The blood results are similarly strange resulting in an "unknown" blood type. As a quick example, he's not using Hemoglobin or Hemocyanin as the oxygen carrier."
"So a northeastern united states accent, a foreign, unrecognizable language, an alien biology and no identifiable tattoo. Strange for even a case fifty three. See if you can crack that language at least, low priority though, quietly."
"Also, Armsmaster good work on the Shadow Stalker case, she's taking the deal. She should be here in a few days once the lawyers are finished hashing out the final bits and pieces."
The video was sent out a few minutes later.
"Armsmaster!" I said while chasing behind him down the hallway. One of his rare appearances in between his "Don't disturb me while this light is on" lab, in which he never bothers turning the light off and "out on patrol".
"Yes," he said in a clipped tone. Probably headed out to patrol and moody about it, or maybe he likes going on patrol to relieve some tension. It's hard to tell with him.
"Can I look through some of your schematics or designs for some of the things you've designed or improved?"
That got him to stop rushing down the hallway. Oh, wow I didn't think he could frown that hard or glare that much with his eyes behind that visor.
"I'm looking for some shields, and general ideas for tinkering projects." I hurriedly specified
"I can't give you access to everything as many things are extremely dangerous. But I can give you access to some defensive technologies." he snapped.
"Can you ask Dragon for the same?" I asked in my sweetest, sappiest voice.
"Yes," he said while subtly gritting his teeth. Wonder what I did to irritate him.
"Thank you! Armsmaster, you're the best!" and gave him a thumbs up.
He nodded slightly at the praise and continued on his way, Choota.