You know, I think my power filling my mind at all hours of the day with images of planet killing weapons and intergalactic fleets might have skewed my ability to feel impressed by things.
Technologically speaking, I mean.
The Rig was one of those things you just kind of got used to when you lived in the Bay for any length of time. You could see it from pretty much anywhere that was elevated enough to view the water, which was pretty much all of the safe or successful portions of the city. It was this giant, repurposed, oil rig out in the middle of the bay, and it was visible at literally all hours because of the glowing blue forcefield that always surrounded it.
The Protectorate and the PRT were technically two separate organizations that worked together, and the Rig was nominally the Protectorates headquarters in the city. In theory, it was impregnable.
The force field prevented anyone from launching an attack on it, and the only way to get people onto it was to cross the bridge made out of lasers the thing projected to a spot on the waterfront.
By basically every standard of measurement, it was one of the most advanced, ambitious, pieces of tinkertech ever made.
And all I could think of while we were being driven across said bridge made of lasers, was that the entire thing was hilariously ostentatious. It also didn't seem like it served an actual purpose.
Simply being over the water provided as much protection as anything else, and you didn't need any Tinkertech for that. It didn't even fly.
From my powers point of view, the Protectorate had set up shop in the busted ruins of a non functional starship, and promptly declared themselves the greatest inventors in the world.
"Crazy right? I'm still getting used to it myself," Dervish noted from the opposite end of the troop transport we were riding in. She was using that tone I've come to recognize as an adult trying to impress children into having a conversation with them. I'd been largely silent since we got in the transport, mostly because I was busy contemplating what I should do with my temporary access to the Protectorate base.
Still, the statement brought to my mind a half dozen replies, none of which were liable to be friendly sounding.
Don't say anything demeaning. Don't say anything demeaning. Don't-
"How much does it cost the city to turn this bridge on for the five minutes it takes to get across it?" I blurted out.
Okay. Not... quite... as rude as I could be.
"...Shit, you know what? I have no idea. Militia?" She asked turning to her irked coworker.
It was the weekend after my first meeting with Dervish, and I was now more sure than ever that Miss Militia was with her explicitly to mitigate her free wheeling tendencies. It was like watching Assault and Battery bicker, except they obviously didn't love each other.
"That information is classified, unfortunately." Miss Militia stated primly, choosing to keep herself focused on me and Soph instead of engaging Dervish any further.
"I feel like knowing where the tax money goes should probably be a bit more transparent than that." I stated flatly. This of course caused the heroine to falter slightly.
"I'm afraid I wouldn't be able to tell you even if it was public knowledge. I don't actually know how much it costs." Miss Militia returned, changing tact.
"Really? You seem like you'd be the type of person to have a lot of time to figure out how the sausage is made. Like, if you never sleep and have enhanced memory, then spending that extra time on further education should warrant a low Thinker rating," I pointed out.
Realistically, the six to eight hours a day a normal person spends sleeping was time Miss Militia could use to do online college courses or something. I wouldn't be surprised if she had a bunch of degrees that way, just from sheer lack of anything better to do when everyone else was asleep.
Everyone in the transport turned to look at me funny as I said that, and I paused before speaking again. Well. Everyone except Sophia. She got me.
"...What?" I asked defensively. I didn't think my comment was that out of place. 'How would you abuse this capes powers' felt like it should be a pretty common game in this setting. PhO was probably full of threads to that effect.
"Most kids your age-" Dervish said, forcing me to consciously choose not to react to the implication she knew how old I was. "- wouldn't take the ability to skip sleep and immediately think 'do more work' is all," she finished.
This time it was my turn to look askance at her.
"Lady, we have fucking Nazis in this place. Any advantage that helps me win a fight is an advantage I'm gonna go for," I explained, because that was just plain common sense to me. I could slow down when Scion was dead.
...only not really because Ward was a thing.
Fuuuuuuuck.
"You're only a kid once. Don't you have a girl you like, or a game you play in your free time?" Dervish pressed, apparently put on the backfoot by my answer.
I squinted at her, not that she could see it through my helmet, which mostly just showed a hazy outline of my head to anyone watching from the outside.
The fact that you're only young once was hilariously false in my case, but I couldn't exactly say that so...
"That sounds like a whole bunch of stuff I would be a lot better off doing when there aren't any more literal Nazi's," I tried to emphasize. I stuck my hands out in a chopping motion as I said Nazis, as though to encapsulate the word for better viewing.
Jesus, I knew they didn't fully experience the horror of World War 2 the same way my world had, on account of the fucking superpowers and all, but come on. I wasn't even talking about anything insanely stupid like killing the Endbringers or anything.
I'm black. They're Nazis. I'm not the one who declared a war of total annihilation, I just happen to be one of it's preferred targets.
...do I focus too much on the Empire? I feel like I'm ignoring Lung and the sex slavery thing he does a lot recently.
Hm.
"Get off his case. We have hobbies and shit," Sophia interrupted the awkward silence that followed my statement, in her usual characteristic manner.
"I read. He does his own thing." She explained with a shrug.
You read one book Soph. And 'my own thing' is Tinkering and getting my ass beat at the gym to supplement my tinkering. Nothing about any of that is recreational or healthy for a teenager.
Not that I was going to say that. I think this might be the most duplicitous I've ever seen Sophia in my life. I was actually kind of proud of her.
Dervish and Miss Militia shared the first look of agreement I think I'd ever seen from them then, and they promptly changed topics, with Miss Militia shooting me a wary look I couldn't quite place.
Okay so, full disclosure. I'm completely ambivalent towards Miss Militia. Her powers don't interest me, her personality is bland, and her goals appear to start and end at 'doing what she was told'. Yeah she's a friendly lady and all, so I wasn't going to go out of my way to cause trouble for her or anything, but I just didn't think about her all that often.
So it was only at that exact moment that it occurred to me that I was probably ticking off a lot of her child soldier trauma boxes. From an outside perspective, I must look like I was preparing to go to war - because in a certain sense, I was. I had been given a lot of time to prepare for when things started to go crazy a few years from now, and I felt like nothing I could do would be enough to fully take advantage of it. It probably didn't help that I also appeared to have 'grown up' too fast to anyone who wasn't aware I actually was a grown up.
"I mean, I would totally spend my time on other stuff if I could!" I blurted out like an idiot, immediately trying to paper over my social blunder.
"If you could..?" Militia asked me leadingly.
"Well yeah, I mean, Tinkertech doesn't build itself and I don't wanna die or get kidnapped or something." I explained.
Contrary to my efforts, Miss Militia didn't look pleased by my attempts.
"What about you Stalker? You said you read right?" Dervish chimed in.
"Yeah," was Sophia's monosyllabic reply.
"Well what kind of books then," Dervish pushed.
Sophia - as if embarrassed to have to explain much at all, which she probably was - turned her head slowly to glare at me through her mask, and I had the distinct impression Dervish might be putting my life in danger.
"...the Jungle Book." Soph growled out, still glaring at me.
I cleared my throat at that point.
"Wow, look at that, we stopped moving. Must be there already." I said, quickly standing and moving out of the vehicle.
I think I heard a snort of amusement from behind me but chose to ignore it in favour of exiting Sophia's immediate reach.
Would she punch me in public for embarrassing her? Probably not.
But only probably.
--
"For the love of god dont get into any of their systems Merlin. They have an AI too, and I have no idea how you stack up."I cautioned my AI as we traveled through a series of hallways and checkpoints that made it easy to track where in the building we were for security.
"As you say, sir. I will keep to myself while present," was Merlin's response. Although I caught a degree of petulance in his tone that was mildly worrying.
This might be a good time to explain the breadth of Merlin's functions. Merlin was an AI, but not in the same way that Dragon was.
If Dragon was the digital equivalent of a shark swimming through the waters of the web, then Merlin was more of a symbiote, or parasite. Dragon, if I understood things correctly, was capable of moving what passed for her mind anywhere that had enough storage space for her code base. She could remain on her own servers, and dip her toes into a network to mess with it. She was, in short, very independent as far as AI went.
Merlin was precious few of those things. He was largely anchored to his hardware - which in this case was a combination of my Spell Core and my own brain - and could only interact with other devices or networks if they held physical proximity to me.
He had a wireless connection, so he could tear apart any tech I was standing next to, and to a lesser extent he could send information from network to network to reach his target destination - which is how he stayed connected to Sophia when she was alone - but he couldn't move his core programming from point A to point B.
He had to do everything by proxy. He was, in essence, designed and focused around the concept of being an extension of my own mind.
That was why I had no idea how he would stack up against Dragon. They were just two completely different organisms that happened to fall under the same catch all category. It could be that he would rip her apart and wear her as a hat. It could be the opposite.
Frankly, I really didn't want to find out. I already sort of had a plan for connecting with Dragon, so getting discovered by her in the PRT's system later would be... unfortunate.
Still, there were things Merlin was good for that Dragon couldn't possibly accomplish.
For instance, as I was led through the Protectorate building, a litany of information was being fed to me visually. If I so much as glanced at something that interested me, Merlin would snapshot it in my memory and save it for later. Every foam sprayer we passed, even recessed in the walls and ceiling as they were, was highlighted in bright red for me to see. So was every weapon being carried by an officer.
This was the true benefit of an Exocortex. Merlin wasn't just a cyberwarfare suite that could talk, he was riding shotgun on all the action, right there with me. He could nudge me to move faster than I could think, help me aim, help me plan.
He was my partner, basically.
Eventually we were led to a mid sized gymnasium, where we quickly started to hash certain things out. There were certain tests that weren't viable for me to take. Brute testing was specific to parahuman powers - I wasn't going to get out of my armor so they could see if I was magically stronger than normal or something. The same went for a majority of the physical tests, which Sophia took to with gusto.
Naturally they had likely expected something like this, so I was moved to another room while Soph did her thing.
I wasn't worried about being separated. Even as I moved out of sight of her, Merlin used his connection to her mask to highlight it through the wall.
"I will monitor audiovisual and report any anomalies," He explained, making me frown.
"She knows your monitoring her right?"I asked, just to be sure. Soph, like any teenage girl, really hated the idea of being spied on.
"Yes, sir," Was Merlin's swift response.
"We use this room to test Thinker ratings," A lab tech who'd been following us around and explaining things told me as we arrived at our destination. Miss Militia had stayed behind with Sophia, presumably because leaving two unregistered Capes to wander the building unsupervised was just plain stupid. That just left me, Dervish, and the lab technician.
"...it's just a table and some playing cards," I pointed out. I could already guess what came next, but it was still pretty disappointing to see how low tech the PRT was about this.
"Thinker abilities are often hard to gauge. Simple is best to start." The tech explained, walking over to the table and sitting down.
"Let me guess. Guess the card?" I asked suspiciously. The tech nodded once in confirmation.
"Go get 'em champ." Dervish offered, patting me on the back and speaking in that weird, awkward way people do when they clearly don't have the faintest idea how to interact with kids, but had just decided to go for it anyway.
I knew I was going to have a long painful day the minute the chair failed to hold up against the weight of my suit.
Dervish, of course, found this hilarious.