Kid Win looked at me like I was a fish on roller skates, "Is... Is there a reason why you're naked and wearing a blue wig down your back instead of wearing clothing?"

"Yeah, I've got a.. thing to do.. somewhere… because I owe them...look.. uh. gotta go!" and promptly took off and ran into the door to the lab and bounced off of it. Ugh, probably should have practiced with it a little. Weird moving so much faster than normal, but should be able to get used to it by the time I get there.

Camera drones one through six hovered nearby, occasionally bumping into each other as they tried to keep me in frame.

"I'm fine, I'm fine!" I screeched out to cover up my embarrassment before opening it and heading out at a much more sedate speed while the drones followed like little-floating puppies, turning towards anything that moved and drifted apart from each other to capture different angles even though they weren't recording yet.

"Ohmygod you look so cool!" cried Vista as I dodged her grasping hands and took off as soon as I could get the door open.

"Thanks, but gotta run!"

Gotta go fast!

I hummed a song while running down the street, dodging the pedestrians and the cars. Traffic really takes the fun out of this, running really fast sounds fun and all but not when you have to dodge every few seconds.

Gotta go faster, faster, faster, faster!

"Six-Two-Six! Office! Now!"

"What the hell is this video that Leet and Uber posted today, and more importantly why the hell are you in it dressed up like some video game character!"

"Oh, well you see, Leet and Uber are considering turning to rogues."

"What the hell is wrong with you Six-Two-Six, you're associating with villains now?" I could just make out the words 'where did I go wrong' on her lips as she started to lean over her desk.

"Oh, for god's sake they are the least villainous villains in town. Can I continue explaining or would you like to just sit right there and yell at me for the next thirty minutes?" I flailed all four arms around in exasperation.

"Fine, go ahead. Explain" she groused while sinking back down into her chair.

"As I was explaining, Leet and Uber are interested in turning into rogues."

Piggot snorted and waved a hand at me dismissively, "Unlikely with their laundry list of criminal activity."

"Ah, but you see Leet has designed something… game changing. Specifically, a tinkertech healing device that is incredibly versatile and can even bring the dead back to life.. with lots of caveats of course and a percentage of the chance of successful resurrection."

Piggot went silent and still.

"I'm just helping them build it, we're planning on donating the first one to the PRT"

"What?" She said, almost shouting it out but unsure if she should. I could see the conflicting emotions fighting a land war across her face.

"Leet's ability is that he can build anything once, anything you can imagine he can design or build, but he can build each thing only once flawlessly, unfortunately each component that he builds that happens to be like something he's built before is unreliable the more times he builds it."

"How do you know this?" she eyed me wearily.

Guess that wasn't in his files, after all, wonder if they just thought he was a bad tinkerer. Surprised Armsmaster didn't catch onto the fact that his captured devices were getting worse over time. On second thought, Armsmaster is fairly blind to everything except his own tinkering. "Figured that out after looking at a bunch of his devices, seeing the growing flaws with each iteration of a device and making an educated guess."

"And my ability, as far as I can see is the ability to build anything I've seen designed or built, basically Reverse Engineering. He can design anything, but can't build it without a risk of failure. But I can build anything I've studied but have a lack of designs to build from."

"But what about the mass produced tinkertech stuff you've been able to build?"

"I think that was it, that was my... what I would call my "starting tech base", which was just a handful of devices. Everything else I've picked up from others designs which are why only those few thing were not tinkertech. So, a healing device capable of limited resurrection, he has to design it and I'll fix the flaws and build it. The only cost for the first one will be letting them turn rogue, reclassification basically."

She seemed to deflate a bit and paused to think about the issues. "I can't do something like that unilaterally, they are still wanted for multiple felonies."

"A thing like one of these being available at an Endbringer attack would save an awful lot of capes, it'd be like having another Panacea on call. But we're planning on making a bunch of them, not just one. We want to keep the price low, instead we'd like to have a maintenance contract, which should keep Uber and Leet themselves busy. Look I know you can't make a call on something this big by yourself.. put in a call to the head of the PRT, I'm sure she'll be interested in something like this."

Something that could prevent cape deaths or even undo them and probably even have a secondary PR-like positive boost for capes to show up at endbringer attacks. She'd eat her hat for that, she'll probably eat Contessa's hat too. Hmm, wonder if she would help, path to the best method of eating hats. Step one, use blender… heh

Leet sighed as he stood up and cracked his knuckles loudly before he stretched. Cramped from the long hours designing the still unnamed healing device. "I still like the "Vita chamber" for the name."

Six-Two-Six was half-buried in Leet's piles of broken tinkertech and pipped up in the ongoing discussion "Well it doesn't really function like the Vita-Chamber from the game, I mean you basically have to have a nearly whole corpse, a whole brain at least and shove it in. No auto-teleporting quantum mechanic-bullshit going on there."

Uber cut in from the couch where he was attempting to beat his own time on some racing game " How about Phoenix Down, HP Up, Elixer, Ressurecto, Ressurectron, Rezzer?"

The blue-furred creature replied, "I think we should focus less on its ability to resurrect people and more on the healing portion. The limitations on the resurrection are pretty strict. Twenty minutes from the time of death and having to have an undamaged brain really isn't much. I mean in a fight where people are actively falling over dead then yes it's amazing but you're not going to be able to dig up Hero and have him start building things again."

A slight misstep on the racecourse had Uber restarting the race. "How about the Elite or Leet Auto-Doc? Throw your name in the PRT's face, Leet designed this. Suck it Armsmaster! I built something you wish you could build!"

Six-two-six dragged a large device out of the pile and started checking over it. "I'd leave your name off of it, that might attract unwanted attention from the gangs or wandering murder-hobos. They'll probably figure it out anyways, but why make it easy for them? I think just "Auto-Doc" would be a good name though I am partial to 'Phoenix Down' too. Oh, maybe have that as the name of the company, The Auto-Doc by Phoenix Down. Unless of course we just get sued into the ground for using a name like that."

The short cape thought for a moment "Oh, also Leet for the interface you might want to have two big stupidly-easy-to-use buttons on the side. One labeled 'Stabilize' to just get someone to I'm-not-dead-or-dying-now state as fast as possible and the other button should be 'Full heal' to fix all their medical issues. For advanced users, an LCD panel would give anyone that knows what they are doing more options. Maybe have it display a chance of successful resurrection before a confirmation screen pops up or something?"

Leet snorted, "If you want something like that you can design that part yourself, I'm just going to finish the base device."

Uber hummed and asked, "Wait, wandering murder-hobos?"

"The Slaughterhouse nine, specifically Mannequin has issues with helpful tinkers." answered the small cape as he tore off the side of the device with a hand and wiggled inside of it.

Leet's face fell "Oh, I didn't even think about them."

With his squeaky voice muffled by the innards of the machine, Six-Two-Six replied. "Yeah, it's one of the reasons I wanted you to work on the designs for those anti-Endbringer weapons. I don't think anyone's going to complain if I run some nice live-fire tests on the Slaughterhouse if they ever show up. But let's talk about less depressing things like this nanotech assembler."

Leet looked over at the long broken device with its side panel now ripped off, "Oh, that thing? It worked a couple of times before going up in smoke."

"It's like a 3d printer on steroids and the tolerances on its output… just wow. It's just what I need for some of my larger projects like spaceship engines and powerplants ." Covered in dust and oily-looking fluids the blue creature wriggled back out of the device from one of its output chambers.

Leet looked over at him as Six-Two-Six cleaned himself off, "Spaceships, you can build spaceships?"

"Yeah the red vehicle outside is a spaceship, just a small one and it's tinkertech based. I couldn't build a lot of the mass-producable individual systems for the larger spaceships because of tolerance issues and material problems. I think this hunk of metal might just be the key to getting some of those systems up and running, a Tinkertech assembler making mass producible spaceship parts? Yes please."

Nanotech assembly, Automated Medical Stabilizer

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Calvert," I said while crawling up into the chair provided and stood on its seat. Like most normal chairs I'd just end up looking like a toddler taking a seat in 'daddy's' big chair if I tried to sit in it.

I had actually dressed up in a suit this time to try and put on the air of respectability. Just a higher end 'normal' two-armed suit made for toddlers whose parents wanted something adorable and fancy, pulled off the shelves and then tailored a little to fit my non-human frame. Keeping my lower arms tucked it to keep the costs down. I gave up trying to look to dignified, even the 'best' suit would just make me look adorable. I think it's the thought that counts, not much I can do looking like a koala-bear-dog thing.

Thomas Calvert was, of course, all business and all class. With his slick haircut, an Italian suit, sparkling smile and silk tie tucked behind his polished mahogany 'power' desk with leather and gold embossed into its surface. His hands spoke about as much as he did when he talked but started out together with the fingers entwined. "It's a pleasure to meet you as well Mr. Six-Two-Six, now can you tell me more about this secret Endbringer resistant base you seem to be interested in?"

"Ah, well more data-center than anything, quite interesting actually. You see me, Dragon and Armsmaster worked on a predictive AI system to predict the next Endbringer attacks. They are unfortunately resistant to prediction but then I had the thought of turning it to other things like predicting outcomes of certain actions, companies or more specifically the stock market. You ask it a question and it gives a percentage chance of what would happen. So far in testing, it's been remarkably accurate and the only downside is that it requires an enormous amount of processing power, the more complex the question is the longer it'll take to answer. I call it 'Project Oracle' for obvious reasons. Now, I was told that your company could offer confidentiality in these matters."

A winning smile was flashed at me as he placed his both hands on the desk separated by several inches with the palms facing upwards. "I can assure you that what is said in my office will remain confidential Six-Two-Six."

I nervously played with my own cheap tie with my left hand. "Still, I've probably said too much already, life is enough of a gamble. Anyways, what I really need is a space suitable for a ten thousand square foot data center and a two-story, five thousand square foot tinker workshop with large industrial lifts inside of it, and including facilities for eating and sleeping for six. But most importantly... secrecy. If this sort of thing were to get out. Well, an awful lot of people would be interested in something like that."

"That can be accommodated. However, I must inform you that hiding such a significant structure is quite difficult and inefficient. The cut-and-cover method of construction is usually used in underground structures. It's a simple and easy method of construction where we simply dig up the ground, lay the foundation in the exposed hole, construct the underground building and then bury the entire thing underground." While sweeping his hands around, he made motions of cutting up the earth with his hands and scooping out the soil then putting it back on top as he spoke.

He continued,"Unfortunately, hiding the structure is extremely difficult or impossible with that method as it is exposed for several weeks while we build it."

"Oh, I see" I nodded along

"Now with trying to hide a structure you add in substantial difficulties and significantly increased costs. The main method with hidden structures would be excavation, similar to traditional mining techniques we would be using small machines like small backhoes, miniature bulldozers and rock drilling machines all lowered down a central shaft. The smaller equipment increases the time it takes to finish the job, the amount of people required to do the job, and of course greatly increases the amount of manual labor which is the biggest cost in projects like this."

"Can you give me a quote for both methods then, I'd still greatly prefer a nice hidden data-center for something like the Oracle. I don't really have a location picked out either, so could you include a suitable, cheap piece of land in or just outside of town in the quote?"

"Sure thing Six-Two-Six, I'll have my team get right on that for you. Now do you have any further questions for me then?"

"No.. wait.. you know actually I do, in order to keep costs down I would be willing to trade some of my time or some of my tinkertech for portions of the bill. Just go ahead and throw some suggestions at me in the quotes, I'd be willing to work quite.. flexibly to make the costs reasonable. I'm not planning on being in the Wards for too much longer so my time will be free to work on other projects."

"I'm sure I can come up with some ideas for you Six-Two-Six"

"Yes, I want you to get me as much information as you can on a 'Project Oracle' that the PRT's golden goose is working on. Six-Two-Six is apparently laying another golden egg with both Armsmaster and Dragon involved. I want to know exactly what it can do and get me everything that the PRT and Protectorate has on Six-Two-Six as well."

Received my presents from Faultline, impeccable service, I can't recommend her enough.

Spent the remainder of the week and the weekend working on Oracle, finally finished.

Project Oracle

AI - based Prediction Engine

(External Drive A) Code Core completion (100%)

(External Drive B) Prediction Engine completion (100%)

(External Drive C) Morality Core completion (100%)