It was the weekend, and I was staring off into space trying to figure out what to do next.
It should probably come as no surprise at this point, but Auntie was kind of a bad parent. Even if you ignore Gerard's continued presence in our lives, she pretty much just made sure we had a roof over our heads and food in the kitchen.
The level of independence the Hess kids had from any actual parental oversight was frankly staggering.
In the month or so I had been around, she had never once asked me what I did when I wasn't home. I could be on the track and field team or be moonlighting as a Merchant, and she would have virtually no idea as long as I didn't cause any problems at home.
It was a different kind of neglect from Taylor and her father, which was itself a situation I badly wanted to jump into, but had no reasonable way to do so.
Auntie didn't ignore us, like Danny Hebert did. She just genuinely thought she was doing well and saw no reason to change. The fact that everything about the scenario worked to my advantage, and that from what I could tell, none of her kids were crackheads, didn't change the fact that it wasn't a great situation overall.
Still, that negligence was what allowed me to spend my entire weekend in the hideout, sleeping sporadically in an office chair I'd found upstairs while I worked on fixing my armor.
Right now, I had my entire kit laid out in front of me, across a conveyor belt that probably hadn't moved in years. My Spell Core sat to one side, its twisted lengths of copper blackened slightly here or there where my shoddy work had allowed excess spell energy to build up and spark to life.
My two remaining spell gems sat next to it, the cheap gems sparkling with barely restrained magic energy. Standing upright next to me was my Mining Jack, held aloft by two lengths of rope tied to the scaffolding overhead and then looped around the shoulders of the suit.
The metal shell covering its internals was cracked open where I had been checking to see how things looked inside it. My Mindlink Circlet rested in my lap, where I was rolling it back and forth in thought.
Idly, I considered the handful of spells I could currently code into my core. Daze, Energy Ray, Fabricate Scrap, and Psychokinetic Hand covered my current Zero Level spells. Flight, Scrap Armor, and Baleful Polymorph constituted my First level ones.
This was the sum total of what I had available to me right now.
And it sucked.
I mean, it wasn't terrible. Truthfully, my current loadout let me function as a low tier Mover/Brute/Blaster combo. Against any normal mook I was basically unstoppable. Even Coils guys, who all used laser weapons, couldn't possibly beat me, due to the way Starfinder armor worked.
But that was only against normal guys.And even then, I had serious difficulties dealing with them without killing anyone.
The real test was other Capes. Given infinite resources and time, I could conceivably defeat anyone in the city easily. But really, so could any competent Tinker. That was kind of the whole point. Tinkers were the wildcards of the Parahuman world. One you can beat today may just come back tomorrow with exactly what they need to beat you.
Unfortunately, I didn't currently have the resources to produce a specialized loadout for each individual enemy I might face. So I had to come up with a single generic one that would work against as many people as possible.
Currently, my most versatile option was definitely my Spell Core. My ability to cast spells was probably always going to be my ace in the hole, because the sheer breadth of what I could accomplish with spells was so vast that I would eventually become nearly impossible to predict. I definitely wanted to get my Spell Core upgraded as fast as physically possible.
But you know, that got me thinking. The Spell Core was a class feature, but because it qualified as an item, I could craft it. I didn't have the Technomancer class, but I was convincingly faking it. So what was to stop me from doing the same with other class features that were technically objects? What if I could combine them?
Slowly, an idea began to take form in my mind, but I quickly shelved it for the moment so as not to lose my train of thought.
So.
Other upgrades. I had the cash to do some pretty good work. I definitely needed a weapon, at least. I considered making a better suit of Armor, but frankly, the sheer difficulty involved in not only making a new suit, but in cannibalizing the old one put me off the idea for the moment.
I also, to my dismay, realized that I was going to have to get a chemical lab built up. Level three was when Spell Ampoules opened up to me. Liquid magic that could be imbibed or injected by literally anyone. If I only had myself to worry about, I'd probably hold off on the subject.
After all, Spell Gems were less work, and did the exact same thing. But I was the only one who could use those. If I was ever knocked out and in need of healing, Sophia would have no option but to let me die, or to bring me to the Hospital, where I would have to let Panacea work on me.
Assuming she had triggered by the time I got seriously injured anyway. Should be any day now honestly - not that I remembered the exact circumstances.
I had nothing personal against Panacea, but she scared the shit out of me. Not because of what she could do - I could arguably be much worse if I wanted to - but because of howtenuousher grasp on reality was. It might not be the case right now,since she was new, but that girl was basically always one step away from turning into an absolute psycho, and that worried me. I knew if I left her alone she would last for a while. But what if I got involved and fucked that up somehow?
I shivered at the thought, then retrieved my cellphone, and started jotting down supplies.
Then I started the arduous task of locating places to buy those supplies in multiple installments.
One kid buying some cleaning chemicals and leaving? Not suspicious.
One kid buying dozens of bottles of chemicals? Sketchy.
The same went for pretty much everything I was going to need. Computer parts? I'd need to buy multiple desktops worth of the stuff at several locations, so that it only seemed like I was a teen building his first computer.
Worse, I could only carry so much of it with me at a time, which meant I was going to have to make trip after trip after trip hauling it all back here. I was going to be lucky if I was finished collecting what I'd need by Sunday, let alone started my upgrades.
Oh and there was the other, less obvious problem I was going to have to deal with.
"Hey Soph, come here a second." I called my cousin, who was currently undergoing some kind of self made obstacle course in the rafters overhead.
I ignored the way she opted to follow through on my request by ghosting straight down and into a crouch next to me.
"What?" She demanded, slightly out of breath from her workout.
"...So there's this guy in the city who has even odds of trying to kidnap me forever." I opened, eyeing her suddenly rigid and annoyed posture.
"...oh yeah? What's his name." She asked, with a deceptively calm tone.
"If I tell you, you have to promise not to go anywhere near him." I cautioned immediately.
"Why the fuck not?" She retorted, crossing her arms and glaring at me.
"Cus- okay look. This guy, his name is Coil. He splits timelines, kinda. Like, in one timeline he turns left, and in the other, he turns right, and then he gets to pick which one actually happens. But he knows what happens in both timelines. If you go near him, he'll just close the timeline where you got anywhere near him, and then come after you when you aren't expecting it." I expounded, not wanting to get bombed or something because Soph couldn't keep her murder boner under control.
"How is that fair? So this dick can just use his power to make it so he always wins?" She growled in irritation, turning to eye my Mining Jack curiously.
"Pretty much. Look I'm only telling you this because if he gets me, you won't know what happened. One day, I'll just disappear, and you won't ever see me again." I continued.
"Real fucking helpful." Sophia stated flatly, tapping her foot anxiously against the floor.
"Yeah well. I know his secret identity. So if I ever just vanish for days, and you can't find me, you need to go to the PRT and tell them everything I just told you, and that the guys name is Thomas Calvert. Then they'll probably bomb his house from orbit or something, because he and the current Director kind of hate each other." I finished, plugging the last of my shopping into my phone so I'd remember all the places I had to go.
When I looked up, Sophia was wrinkling her nose at me like I had just spoken something truly foul. I lifted one eyebrow in question at this, and she kindly filled me in on her thoughts.
"That's your plan? You're going totellon him?" She asked me incredulously.
"Well, that, and also blowing up the bomb under his secret hideout if he ever brings me there." I said with a shrug.
"I mean yeah, I'd probably die, but so would he, so he'd have to switch to a timeline where he didn't capture me."
Soph shot me a considering look.
"So your plan is to tell on him like a little bitch, and/or, suicide bomb him?" She asked again.
"...yes?" I offered hesitantly. I mean, I knew it wasn't a great plan, but until I got to a higher level and could disrupt his connection to his shard, or outright hunt and kill him in two timelines at once without getting caught, this was what I had.
Soph stared at me for a little longer after that before snorting at me and walking over to her bag to grab a change of clothes.
"Picking up more crap?" She asked, disappearing around a corner to change.
"Bad guys don't shoot themselves." I replied lazily, heading for the door. A minute later Soph caught up to me, her backpack slung over her shoulder.
I was - ever so briefly -touched by her concern in coming to help me grab my supplies.
Then she opened her mouth.
"So how hard would it be to build me something a bit lighter than your diving suit back there?" She asked as innocently as I'd ever seen her.
I groaned and whipped my phone out to start plugging in extra things on the to buy list.
--
You wanna know the weirdest thing about Music on Earth Bet?
It took on entirely different values after Scion popped up. Sure, by now there were nearly no modern or contemporary bands I recognized. After the point of divergence between normal history and Earth Bet's superpowered bullshit, things spiralled too far out of control for that. But that isn't what I was really talking about.
No, what I was talking about was how the musicians from the 80's still existed, and had mostly written the same music, but with slightly different lyrics, sometimes entirely different contexts.
For instance. Iron Maiden had a song about Vikare - the first Superhero. 2Pac's song Can't C Me was about a Stranger who had taken over his neighborhood in his youth.
All sorts of changes, from minor to major existed, and they absolutely floored me with how different yet the same they were.
"Ruuuuun too the hilllllssss~" I sang - badly - as I bounded around the area near the back of the plant where I had officially set up my workshop.
"Ruuuuun fooooor you're liiiiiiife!" I continued, perhaps just a touchtooexcitedly.
I couldn't help it. The tangible feeling of progress I'd managed over the last two weeks was better than crack. I was perfectly aware that my shard was probably just giving me the parasitic equivalent of a back rub for doing something cool or entertaining, but I just didn'tcare.
"Turn it the fuck down!" Sophia yelled at me from where she was in the rafters, breaking in her new equipment.
Second Skin Armor was pretty much the best I could do for Soph as far as armor went. If I did anything too complicated, all the electricity would screw with her power. The armor itself was basically just a half an inch thick form of treated rubber. The stuff came in a variety of colours, mostly because it's supposed to be stealthy. In general, a Second Skin was the type of armor a celebrity might wear, coloured to match their skin tone so it didn't look like they were wearing anything at all.
Since the stuff was also skin tight in a very traditional super hero costume way, I had opted to make it pitch black, because I'm not a pervert. Likewise, as much as I wanted to put something useful into the thing, I had to waste the upgrade slot it came with on a Quicksuit upgrade - which basically meant the thing jumped onto and off of Soph at a mental command, instead of requiring a lengthy process to put it on and take it off.
The hockey mask she typically wore when out and about as Shadow Stalker had been replaced by a mask of my own design, which possessed a small - tier one, by Starfinder standards - computer in it that my own systems could connect to if I needed to pass information to her. I had tried to keep the mask design down to what I remembered from her canon costume, but hadn't quite managed it. Mostly because Soph thought wearing a white mask when you were wearing all black and trying to be stealthy was stupid.
She... sort of had a point.
The last thing I'd gotten done for her was to replace her cloak with a Holoshroud. At rest, it was pretty much just a cloak. But if she stopped moving, it automatically projected an image that hid Soph from view.
So, black mask, black cape, black armor, all seemlessly blended together to make it look like an inkblot was currently yelling at me.
I would have tried to put bat ears on the thing but I suspect Sophia might break my hands if I tried.
"What's that? I can't hear you over how awesome I am!"I yelled back, gesturing for my Psychokinetic Hand to hold steady while I inserted the last chip into my new Spell Core and then carefully flipped the cover shut over the circuitry.
I was - but shouldn't have been - then surprised by a blast of light from the Mercy Pistol splashing off the floor to my right.
"Okay! Jesus christ, that thing isn't a toy!" I yelped, edging away from the spot that was hit and lowering the volume on the radio I had found for cheap just recently at Lords Market.
"What are you gonna do if someone comes to investigate the music you idiot?" She yelled down to me.
I opened and closed my mouth a few times.
Then chose to blame the lapse in judgement on my shard. Because I would totally never forget about something that crucial. No. Never.
"Ahem. My bad." I admitted sheepishly, returning to my finished project.
The Spell Core 2.0 was my baby. I had cobbled together every possible advantage I could conceive of to put into the thing. Not only did it have a significantly greater capacity to store and cast spells, it also housed an entire actual computer within it, one advanced enough to put me head and shoulders above any normal computer security. I'd have to wait and see how it stacked up against other kinds of Tinkertech.
Mostly because of the other addition to the thing.
You see, in Starfinder, a first level Mechanic can choose to have a Drone (boring) or an Exocortex.
Now, if you're reading the word Exocortex and deriving something like External Brain from it - that's because it is. An Exocortex was a device specifically designed to network the mind of a Mechanic, and their custom AI.
That's right, I programmed an entire AI.
Counter to what you might expect from something of that magnitude, AI weren't actually hard to program. Starfinder included tons of them, as playable races, assistants, friends. They were all over the place really. So while a normal tinker would probably find the task daunting as hell, I found it pretty simple.
The finished device, by the way, ended up looking something like a stainless steel bracelet, inlayed with six ruby's I'd managed to snag from a jeweler who was going out of business. You know. Because he got robbed seemingly twice a month.
I know, in Brockton Bay? Shocking.
Carefully lifting the device I eyed it one more time, the smile slowly slipping from my face.
The one problem with an Exocortex was that they were supposed to be surgical implants. I, unfortunately, was quite against the idea of self applied brain surgery, and hence, had found another way.
Another... extremely dangerous... way.
See, Spell Gems worked by forcing the information on how to cast a spell directly into your head. That meant that by default, they were connecting to your mind. Spell Cores used the same process - being just networked groups of Spell Gems.
So hypothetically, when I put this on, the Spell Core should fire up, and my burgeoning AI should be connected to my brain.
Or it could melt my brain, instantly murdering me.
In preparation for that second thing happening, I had finished putting together my chemical lab - again, fairly simple and easy given the existence of childrens chemistry sets - and gotten a brace of five Spell Ampoules loaded and ready with Mystic Cure.
"Soph! Come on, let's do this." I called my cousin, who I had already explained the majority of this too.
She had been apprehensive about it at first, but since she could either help or not - with neither choice actually stopping me - she had opted to be on hand incase I gave myself brain damage and desperately needed healing.
"You better not fucking die, or I'm gonna tell Mom you ran away to join the Merchants." She half threatened me.
Never change Soph. Never change.
"What do you think this is for?" I asked irately, gesturing at the five syringes on a conveyor belt in front of me.
"Dumb," She responded succinctly.
"Well... fuck you too," I muttered, before taking a deep breath and pushing my hand through the bracelet.
For a minute, nothing happened.
Then there was a voice.
"Sir?"I heard, and I cracked one eye open to look around myself.
I didn't feel like I had brain damage.
"...hello?" I asked the air, getting a strange look from Sophia who probably couldn't hear who I was talking to.
"Good afternoon sir. All systems are nominal, Spell Core integrity is currently one hundred percent. I'm synching with Shadow Stalkers systems now," The... vaguely scottish sounding voice told me pleasantly.
Full disclosure. I had to train my AI with sample data, so I had spent the last day or two leaving the chip connected to a DVD player playing every James Bond movie I could find. I had left instructions for the AI - I still hadn't named him yet - to pay special attention to the Bond girls.
Mostly because I wanted a hot sounding AI assistant, okay? I'm biologically thirteen and have no outlets. Leave me alone.
I could see Sophia stiffen up in response to the sentient program 'talking' to her through her masks built in computer, and decided to satisfy my own curiosity.
"So... I'm pretty sure I told you to pay special attention to the girls...?" I asked carefully.
"I did, sir."It responded.
"So why..?" I put forth, ignoring the look Sophia shot me. Listen, the only women I would feel morally okay dating are over twenty, and ironically, any twenty year old okay with me is probably a pedo. Leave me alone Soph.
"It came to my attention that many of them were duplicitous, and that they rarely appeared in more than one movie. Bond or Q made for much better role models."The AI informed me bluntly.
"...fair..." I muttered.
"So what do I call you then? I was thinking - "
"Merlin, sir." He - Merlin, I guess, replied instantly.
"Why that?"I asked dumbly.
"I'm a Magic Computer, sir," was the reply.
Yeah that'd do it I guess.
"S'okay Soph, I think we're good." I told my - still mildly confused - cousin.
"It's not gonna take over your brain and make you kill all humans or something is it?" She asked me cautiously.
"No ma'am. I am simply here to assist." Merlin answered for me.
Seemingly happy with that, Soph put down the syringe I hadn't noticed she was holding, and went back to marvelling at how cool her new suit was.
Thus leaving me to check over the rest of my stuff with my new buddy in tow.
Stuff like my new Gun.
"Whadda yah think Merlin? Too much?" I asked half jokingly as I went over it all.
First of all, I had some Ion Tape. The stuff was pretty useful, but it was simple enough to make that I felt like I should have had access to it from the start. It was pretty much just a roll of cloth I had treated in a simple chemical solution. When an electrical current got run through it, it hardened into a tough plastic. When it happened again, it changed back.
Basically, it was space duct tape.
Next were my five healing Ampoules, along with two Ampoules of Polymorph for a rainy day.
Then there was my Armor - which was almost the exact same except for the repairs I had been forced to make because of Alabaster.
And finally, there was my Compliance Ray.
Compliance Ray's in Starfinder were basically high powered flash lights. In practice, it was a laser that caused intense discomfort, and occasionally, temporarily blinded its targets. It was noticeably different from the Mercy Pistol in that it did so without hurting.
Hopefully this would get Armsmaster off my back. I'd been on some safer patrols in the local area over the last couple weeks, and a Ward never failed to be mysteriously close by. Usually Gallant or Aegis with a rotating door of other people who were typically partnered with them.
I'd ask them if they had better things to be doing, but since they were children, it was probably for the best that they didn't.
Of course, that only applied to the children.
Our neighborhood was close enough to 'bad' to require an escort, and I had been forced to make nice with entirely too many grown men and women in spandex recently.
They definitely had something better to do.
"Don't you think something slightly more lethal might be required sir?" Merlin noted, reminding me that his metaphorical nurse maid had been spy movies where most of the bad guys just got shot in the face for being evil.
"Can't. They sanction the shit out of Heroes who kill people. Look up Gavel." I told him, waving to my cellphone sitting nearby.
It immediately flared to life as Merlin used its connection to the internet to find what I was talking about.
"Gavel was a depraved serial killer who murdered the families of his victims for entertainment. He was only a hero in so far as his targets were often villains." Merlin pointed out when he was done.
"Still. I'm trying not to draw attention to myself here." I explained, knowing that at least that concept Merlin would understand right out of the crib. Again. Spy movies.
"Too true sir. Might I suggest an update to the spell library?" He offered while I continued to fuss with all my new stuff.
I smiled, as I started to feel the pieces coming together.
"Yeah, sure. That was next on my to do list anyway." I said, before considering something.
"How do you think the spell Know Coordinates interacts with alternate timelines?" I mused aloud.