In response to FTomato, a reviewer who made some good points:

-Okay thanks, I'll see about changing the spelling to Wildbow. I guess I've been reading that wrong.

-I think that tinker specializations are fairly public knowledge. Everyone in Brockton Bay knows that Armsmaster is the miniaturization tinker, for instance. Not everybody knows about tinker specializations, but it's not exactly a secret. Then again, I may be wrong about that, in which case I call creative license.

-Skeleton Crew isn't supposed to be a problem later on, and could you really see someone like that NOT getting a kill order? He certainly fills the 'has killed lots and lots of people for personal gain' and 'potentially major threat to the world' conditions that they seem to base those off of. He's just a plot device for the trigger event. Still, I might come back and do some story cleanup once I get farther in and get more practice at writing. Maybe I'll edit some stuff and change it so he's alive to be a recurring character. (I will say in the author's note at the beginning of a chapter if I have done so.) He is a pretty cool villain for someone I came up with on the spot, if I do say so myself. Anybody who wants to borrow him for their own stories is welcome to do so.

-I know the tinker ability doesn't much match the trigger event. Problem is, severe mental trauma like that isn't very likely to happen to me, or therefore a SI of me. I had the idea for the power and a SI, and then I went about trying to figure out how I might trigger. Honestly, a supervillain was the only thing that came to mind. I suppose I could have gone for one with a more psyche-damaging power, but hindsight is 20/20. I needed a trigger event, and anytime I thought of a situation for mental trauma I just couldn't see myself reacting that way. I honestly do agree with you on this though, which is why I had the trigger occur when my SI finished going into complete panic mode to make it a little more believable. I did so even though I thought it was putting myself, as represented by Jacob, out of character. Even so, I have some reasoning that may come up in chapter 3 regarding this topic.

-Grafter was what I came up with instead of Olson, which is what it was in my first draft. See? it could have been worse... It wasn't until after I wrote it out and decided that it was better than my other ideas that I realized that it looked kind of relevant to the powers I was giving him. I thought about it for a second, and then just shrugged my shoulders and decided I didn't really care. In any case it's what I have to work with, now.

-Bonesaw and the Slaughterhouse 9 will figure majorly in the story later on. I already had that planned, and I'm making no secret of it, to the point where I very nearly put Bonesaw or Jack Slash as one of the character tags. His powers are actually quite a bit different from hers, since his are more focused towards tinkertech implants and possibly cybernetics, while as I understand it hers work almost exclusively with biology. Jacob upgrades people with tinkertech, while for Bonesaw the people ARE her tinkertech. I cannot emphasize this enough. Their powers would work together very well, but would be complementary, rather than redundant. The resemblances, both apparent and actual, will not be ignored however, and were one of the main things I was thinking about as I wrote the summary and decided on the title for this story. Exactly how the Slaughterhouse 9's involvement will go... I have no idea yet.

I'm going to try writing this chapter from a more standard perspective instead of first-person of Ch1. Any resources that Jason has to start out are only there because my family in real life has them. We have a lot of junk and a lot of tools that might be useful, even if many of them would have to be repurposed from woodworking.

I gave you your disclaimer last chapter! You want one anyway? Too bad laddie! Go read the other one! Not like I've bought Worm from Wildbow since then or anything. *grumbles about kids these days and slams front door* Seriously though, I don't own anything here that belongs to someone else, just my OCs and inserts, and.

"speech"_'thoughts'_emphasis_ALSO EMPHASIS OR SHOUTING_stuff from a superpower

STORY START

It was three days after he had triggered, and Jason stared at his laptop as he held an internal argument. 'I could really use the parts… NO! I need my laptop for all sorts of things! Even if it is a pretty cheap model… But I need it for sure in order to get the other parts that I need. Then again…' Suddenly he had an idea. 'I do NOT want to part out my laptop. That early Windows XP days desktop of mine, on the other hand…'

Jason had already disassembled his half-broken I-pod, several old and broken monitors, a couple of other old computers that didn't work anymore, an old and likewise broken printer, and anything else the Grafters had sitting around that might be helpful and wouldn't really be missed. He was suddenly very glad that his dad had never gotten around to getting rid of any of their electronic junk like he had been meaning to. Those parts, combined with some wires and devices from various science kits they had in storage from years of homeschooling and the parts he had bought at the hardware store or ordered online, would let him get started on his first projects. He was still rather limited until the online orders came in the mail, but he could make do for now.

And so, Jason started work on his first projects: the tools he would need to safely implant things, and what he could do so far on a reactor to power his other implants. The tools were what he would have the most trouble figuring out. He ran over what he would need.

"Surgical Tools are a must. Also something that would let me operate on myself without pain, blood loss, or my own movements getting in the way too much. Preferably a way to give myself some forgivability for any mistakes I might make. I think I know something that could work for the last two, but I'm not sure how well I'll be able to build it. Unless I made it as a prototype for a device that will eventually go inside my body… AHA!"

With that last thought pulling the project within his realm of purview he felt he could do it. In fact, Jacob wasn't sure why he hadn't thought of something so critical before. It wasn't going to work with the parts he had access to right now, though. Jason resigned himself to spending the remainder of his savings on materials, and went back to shopping online. He was going to need some backing pretty soon.

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-3 weeks later-

Jason was ready for the first major implant. All diagnostics and safety tests checked out, his tools were sterilized, and it was time for the operation. A sheet was laid out on his bedroom floor with his most important safety measure in place on top, his tools were ready and within reach, and the reactor in his hands was complete. He laid down on his back, centering his abdomen on the device before activating it. The area of his body he would be working on was now placed into a parallel subdimention in just the right way. He sat up slightly. Despite the fact that he was using several muscles in the target area, it showed no signs of change.

Jacob began cutting with the scalpel. He felt no pain, and little to no blood came from the cuts. 'Excellent,' he thought. Several muscles and organs were shifted out of the way, and he began the process of installing the reactor. It would be connected at the juncture of his large intestine and rectum, so that his body would retain the maximum nutrition and moisture from his food. A tiny percentage of the waste matter would be siphoned off into the reactor and converted directly into energy; the exact percentage being determined by a base setting that was adjustable on both a temporary and permanent basis through a neural interface with his central nervous system in case he needed more power for something. And he would need to adjust it as he added more implants, or when he needed to feed more power to those implants for something specific.

Jacob was almost finished when he heard his dad get home. 'OH CRAP! Please don't come downstairs until I'm done, please don't come downstairs until I'm done…' Mr. Grafter, Jacob's dad, came downstairs. 'Please just be getting something from the fridge. Please…'

"So whatch'a working on Jaco-GRAAAGAAACK?! WHAT ON EARTH?!"

"STOP DAD I'M FINE! DON"T CALL 911!"

Mr. Grafter, barely taking in the tools and electronics sitting around his 20-year old son who was SITTING THERE WITH HIS GUT CUT OPEN, rightfully demanded information. "What on Earth are you DOING Jacob?!"

"Okay, this is going to take some explaining, and I need you to calm down while I tell you all about it. I'm usi-"

"Calm down? You cut your GUT open! What-"

"YES! and I've taken every precaution normally possible and a few that most certainly aren't to make it perfectly safe. Do you see this thing I have set up around my lower body? That's a Subplanar Parallator, and it-"

"A what now?" Mr. Grafter asked a bit more weakly as he slowly slid to the ground against the doorframe. All the wind was knocked out of his sails by the way Jacob was talking and acting about the whole thing.

"Well, technically it's a Localized Correlative Parallel Subplane Generator. I shorten it to subplanar parallator, or just parallator. I made it. I'm a cape, dad. A tinker."

"O-Okaaay. So please explain to me why that means you have to cut your gut open."

'He's a bit hung up on that, isn't he,' Jacob thought.

Jacob began to talk slowly, so as to choose his words very carefully, even as he finished stitching himself back together. "Alright, so you know how different tinkers work with different things? That isn't something they choose. Every tinker has a slightly different power. Different tinkers have different areas that their power makes them good in. My power involves upgrading people. You know, like cybernetic implants. I have trouble making anything else, and I have to tinker. To put my ideas into reality. I'll go crazy if I don't. The Subplanar Parellator is something I made that takes an area and makes a parallel alternate subplane, or subdimention, if you want to use the more popular, incorrect term, of that area and lays it over the real one. So basically, the entire surgery is happening in a parallel subplane, so it's like I'm operating on a dead body with no heartbeat. I don't feel any pain, and nothing I do with those parts of my body affect what I'm working on unless I go completely out of the field or something. The body parts don't start to rot because they are effectively frozen in time apart from any outside influences. Once I'm done I can swap out the subplane and the actual one."

"So if you can make things like that, why can't you just... Why do you have to do surgery on yourself?"

"I could only make this because it's a simplified version of something I made to go in my body, dad. In fact, the one I just implanted with the reactor is something I'll need for this to work right. I need it to maintain the subplane. The way I have it set up, once I switch the subplanes out the modifications will still be in the parallel one, it's just that all my bodily functions will start to route themselves through there instead of the original one until I switch them back for the next operation. That way it gets really hard for someone to damage my implants or vital organs. There's some stuff in there that really should not work, but it does because, well, tinkertech." Jacob had gotten more confident in what he was saying as his dad began to calm down a bit.

Mr. Grafter massaged his face with his hand. "Most fathers have to worry about their college kids doing drugs and reading porn behind their back, but I have to worry about you performing surgery on yourself on your bedroom floor. How long have you been this way?"

Jacob finished the pulling his skin back together and smeared a small amount of what appeared to be white paste of some kind from a mason jar along the last incision. It would hold it together safely for the time it took to heal, but it wouldn't make it heal any faster than normal. That part seemed to come with the superpower, even if it was really weak. "Only been a couple of weeks since I triggered. Remember when Skeleton Crew attacked the college? This was my first major operation. I needed a reactor to provide power for all the other implants I have planned, and an implanted parallator, so I made them a single unit." He flicked the switch on the external parallator, and felt the additional energy from the reactor suddenly begin coursing through his body as he adjusted its power output the last little bit with a mental nudge. "I did do a couple of things with Korea over the last week though." Korea was the family cat. Jacob stood up and started packing up his materials. "Well, I'm done. You want to get some supper?"

"I thought you liked Korea. You always say cats are your favorite animal."

"I do like Korea. That's why she isn't going to be dying for a looong time now."

Mr. Grafter shook his head in disbelief for a second, then nodded as he too got up. "We're going to talk about this some more while we eat."

+++++++break+++++++

And talk about it they did. Several more questions had been asked and answered, such as where Jacob's materials had come from, but now one of the most important ones was on the table: "So what will you do with your powers Jacob?"

Jacob had thought about this question himself for quite some time before he decided on his answer. "I'm going to join the Protectorate once the semester's out. Computer networking isn't what I want to spend my life on anymore now that I'm a tinker, and I've pretty much used up my savings on parts already. I need a backer, and maybe some other tinkers that I can get some tips from. Some of them have specialties that would open up whole new avenues of research for me if I had their input. The Protectorate can give me that, and a place for me to use what I make, too. Um, villain groups that found out about me will start trying to conscript me forcefully if I'm not already affiliated, too. I thought of Toybox, but my stuff isn't really the sort of thing that can be sold the way they do. Uh, Toybox is a group of tinkers that make and sell their stuff commercially. I suppose if I don't like the Protectorate I can still go there, but my stuff isn't easy to work like that. I mean it would still be possible for some of it, just…not really ideal I guess."

"But I suppose going out to fight villains is." Mr. Grafter sighed. "Well, I guess it makes sense. Why is it that capes always go out into the public like this?"

Jacob knew the question was rhetorical, but he really felt he should say something anyway. "Because if they don't then they have to always hide what they can do? I don't know about non-tinkers, but I just have so many ideas I think I would go mad if I didn't make some of them. Or use what I make. Other capes probably just can't help chasing that feeling of doing something that other people can't. I know how I would feel about doing stuff that just isn't normally possible without even trying. How I will feel, I guess, once I get some more implants done. Anything else you want to know?"

"Probably, but I suppose that does it for now. You get to tell your Mom about this with me though."

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A/N

Once again, Read and Review to make me more likely to update faster. It makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside to know that people actually care about what I write, and helpful input to improve my writing is something that I will greatly appreciate.

Now if only I was as good at talking to people as Jacob is here in real life... Helps a lot when you control both sides of the conversation and can go through and edit it as much as you want.

Now, there is a very important poll going up for this story on my profile. I have an idea for an Alt!Power Taylor for this story and a reason for why the appearance of my character could change it. I even have the scene behind this possible change in mind, but I want your opinion on whether or not I should do it. The poll results won't be something that I take as gospel, but they will have a definite impact on my decision.

It may take a bit for me to update again, since I have finals to study for at the college.