Signal to Noise

14

I went over the project I'd been working on one more time. Weeks worth of spending two hours here and there on it at the end of the day. More than one bloody nose pushing myself for just a little extra time, a few more minutes here and there.

Hitting the last line of code, I nodded, then pushed the waveform into being, hooking it onto my carrier wave with the rest of them. Nothing happened, other than the waveform registering that it had come online—one more green light in a series of green lights indicating it was up and running. There was really only one way to check. Turning on my phone interface, I dialed a number stored in my contacts.

It hadn't been hard at all to track her down. Even less difficult to fly over her school, scan for phones, figure out which one was hers, and scrape her phone number.

The phone picked up on the second ring and a young girl's voice asked, "Hello?"

"Hey there. Dinah, right?"

"Yeeeah… who am I speaking with?"

"Ah, sorry. My name's Claire. Azazel, if you follow capes in town at all."

"Mm. I've heard of you." She paused just a moment before asking, "Why'd you call?"

"Weeeell… you're a cape. A precognitive. Right?"

There was a moment of silence before, in a whisper, she asked, "How do you know that?!"

"Sorry, sorry! I'm not trying to threaten you or anything, promise. I'm the one who dealt with Coil. He was planning to kidnap you—"

"I know." She hesitated for just a moment before adding, "Thank you."

"You're welcome. I haven't told anyone, so don't worry."

"Thanks," she murmured. "I suppose you wanted to borrow my powers?"

"One prediction, if you don't mind? I need to test something."

Dinah sighed. "Fine. Just one though."

"Alright. Probability I'll… fly over to your house and give you a hug."

There was a much longer pause. Finally, she said, "Huh. That's… weird. I can't, I can't see it?"

"Awesome. That's great news. It means my new toy is probably working. So, since that didn't work, mind if I ask another?"

Sounding curious now, Dinah hummed. "Sure. Go ahead."

"So, I think your power probably isn't just precognition, but also post-cognition."

"Why?"

I grinned. "Cause I know things I shouldn't. Sooo… Probability that, at some point in the past… I kissed a girl."

Dinah was silent for a few moments again. "Nothing. Maybe it doesn't work?"

"Alright, let's test that theory. If you don't mind?"

"No, now I'm curious. Go ahead."

I nodded. "Probability that… at some point in the past, Faultline has been to Vegas."

"One hundred percent," Dinah answered immediately. "Whoa! Okay! I can do that," she giggled. "Wow, that was like immediate. No searching or anything. It's like I didn't even feel it! And I've never had anything hit one hundred percent before."

I chuckled. "Well, yeah, I imagine so. I mean, the past is the past. It's not an 'if,' it's a 'was' or 'wasn't.' A definite. Either it happened or it didn't."

"No, no, no! You don't get it! My powers always suck to use! Like, huge headaches after only a few attempts. But this? This is… wow. I can do so much more with it."

"I'm just glad it worked. So I think that establishes what I wanted to know. Thanks for helping me, Dinah."

"Yeah, sure, no problem!"

"Good night."

"Night!" the girl chirped, and I hung up.

And then promptly danced a happy little jig around the lab. "Retroactive pre- and post-cognitive protections work, baby! Woo! Suck it, pee-tee-vee!"

I'd had a theory. A niggling little idea in the back of my head, as to why Cuntessa hadn't just put a bullet in my head the moment I showed up. Why I hadn't died a grisly death the moment I said 'hi' to Taylor. I didn't think drunk!John had bought blindspot, which meant it had to come from an in-universe solution. Either it was something with my shard itself, which I doubted, or it was some other power. And the only thing more bullshit than Thinker powers was Tinker powers, because Tinkers can replicate all powers given time. But for her to not see me at all, it'd have to be something big. Some big cockblock against Path to Victory, and likely things like the Simurgh. But it would have to work retroactively, or it wouldn't work at all. However, the fact that I wasn't dead yet implied that it did work.

So, I'd been putting my 'spare' Tinker time towards getting exactly that up and running.

With a sigh, I stripped down and made my way to my shower to get cleaned up and ready for the day. As I went, I looked at my TO DO list for the day. We were almost finished with the bike, and then Armsmaster and I were going to work on a power armor for me together. After that, we were going on our little road trip and paying a visit to Saint, so we could free Dragon.

"Alright. Bring it online."

Floating up, I dropped into the seat and shifted around, making myself comfortable as the gel-pocket filled padded leather shifted below me, conforming to my back, ass, and legs. "Wow, this is nice. Best seat ever," I sighed, relaxing back into the chair. Below, Armsmaster sent me an amused look as he waited. I dipped into my neural interface and reached out, connecting with the 'bike' and turning it on.

The vehicle below me shifted, lifting up off the ground as it spread apart. "Whoa! Tall!"

Armsmaster chuckled as he walked around it. "Looks good so far. Let's start testing things."

I nodded and we began working through the checklist.

The 'bike' below me was built less like a motorcycle and more along the lines of the beast of a machine Armsmaster himself rode. It was less a motorcycle and more like a small mecha. Well, no 'more like' to it. It was a small mecha, with two transformation modes.

First, motorcycle mode. In this form, it looked mostly like a motorcycle and rode similarly to one, save that it was much larger—the size of a large car. Twenty feet long, six feet wide at the widest, eight feet tall with two feet of ground clearance. The seat was of the chair variety, sitting upward, as opposed to the 'lean forward' types—though it had more in common with what you'd see in a race car than on a motorcycle, at least in this configuration. In the front and back, the wheels were a two side-by-side design.

The bike split open at the front and back and lifted up into its second, four-wheeled mode—the one I had it in at the moment to test things. However, because wheels weren't always appropriate for every terrain type, each 'leg' could extend feet that allowed it to walk, run, and jump across any terrain. Additionally, in this mode, it could deploy a series of four manipulator arms—each with three fingers and a thumb and capable of fine manual dexterity—effectively making it a spider-tank on wheels. It had built in jump jets and thrusters, so it could actually fly or boost its ground speed… but if I wanted it to do those things, really, I could just use my own waveforms for it—we'd built them in so I wouldn't have to, and so it could act independently of me. Which is why it also had its own power source, but would primarily be powered off of mine.

Where I sat was more like a cockpit, really. It could be opened up or fully enclosed, though in 'spider-tank' mode it was closed by default. There were a couple of foot pedals and two control sticks, with a bunch of triggers. Holographic screens filled the inside of the cockpit, normally. But, well… I didn't need any of that because it was tied directly into my neural interface. It was beaming all of the information into my brain and I could control the whole thing with my mind. There were balance and pressure sensors built in to give myself a sense of touch from it, so I wouldn't just fall over or squish things. And moving it around the lab, it proved to be highly maneuverable.

Then, there were the weapons. Because this was a joint project with someone from the Protectorate, we weren't technically installing anything really dangerous onto it. Just a directed EMP to shut down vehicles and tech and a few less-lethal weapons—directed sound, microwave pulse, rubber bullets from a pair of three-barreled vulcans, and grenade launcher for con-foam, smoke, flares, and flash bang. But… the vulcans had separate ammo bays and fired standard 7.62 rounds, so I could just dedicate one bay to real ammo. And the con-foam launcher was just a grenade launcher with, again, multiple ammo bays, one of which we'd left empty… and I could throw in whatever I wanted in that one. There was a single 20mm coil gun that shot sabot rounds—the main cannon that was supposed to be disarmed and only loaded with Protectorate approval, but I had already cranked out a few thousand of the sabots needed and would be loading it as soon as I got it home, because I wasn't going anywhere unarmed. And, of course, none of that accounted for the fact that it was mine and thus tied into my waveforms… so I had access to all of my other weapons while using it.

"What do you think?" Armsmaster asked as we moved it to the indoor testing range and obstacle course.

"I think we should get together again later and make an actual humanoid mech, because this thing is ridiculous. I can't wait to get the power armor done."

"Have you got a design in mind?"

"Mm. Something sleek and sexy. Lighter and smaller looking than your own. I'll draw something up while we work on this, but I expect the finished product will probably look a bit different."

"It always does," he chuckled.

"So, this is where you've been hiding."

I looked up from my couch on top of the water tower, Tess at my side doing the same as the blonde, curvy form of Glory Girl dropped down into the shelter we were using for what had become a nightly thing now. "GG," I frowned, remembering how most of my past interactions with her had gone. Thankfully, I had built a counter to her specific brand of emotional fuckery—and my display right now was telling me that I should feeling awe and fear both. "Reign it in."

"Don't tell me what to do."

"Don't make me call your mom. What do you want?"

"Uh," Tess looked between the two of us. "Should I go…?"

"Oh, no, it's fine," Vicky growled. "Didn't mean to intrude on your date, I just wanted to talk to Claire about my sister. You know, her ex."

"Oh my fuck, Vicky. That shit's between me and Amy, and Taylor. I haven't talked to her in a couple of weeks—not since we got Gearbox back. What is there even to talk about?" I demanded, standing up from the couch and crossing my arms over my chest. Turning to Tess, I said, "How about I call you back in a few minutes when I've finished this?"

"Sure," Tess smiled, and a moment later, disappeared.

Vicky raised an eyebrow at that. "What…?"

"Holo-call with Dragon. We were taking a break from Tinkering to watch a movie, before you showed up. It's not a date. We're just friends. Not that it matters if it was or if we were something more. Seriously, why are you pestering me?"

Vicky raised a few feet off the roof, forcing me to look up at her… Until I rose up above her, forcing her to look up at me. She glared and tried to go up further, but I sent a mental command to Enola to match her and keep us at this height difference. After a few fruitless minutes of this, she gave it up and just glared, even as my sensors registered her power trying to make my piss myself in fear. I felt absolutely nothing, and I think that made it worse for her.

"You ghosted my sister."

"Your sister dumped me then almost immediately jumped into bed with a mutual friend," I countered with a shrug.

"You lied to her! What did you expect her to do?!"

"I told her the truth, she just didn't want to accept it," I sighed. "Anyway, is this really all you came for? What are you looking for here, Vicky? As I said, it's none of your business. It's between us, not you."

The girl flew towards me, only for Enola to keep me at an even distance away from her. I was faster than Vicky. Much, much faster. She'd never be able to close that distance if I didn't want her to. "I want to kick your ass and make you apologize!"

"Yeeeah, that's not going to happen. In fact," I brought up my phone interface and called Sarah.

A moment later, the blonde picked up. I broadcast her hologram between us and Vicky froze. "Claire, what's up?"

"Oh, hey Sarah. How's things going?" I asked with a smile as Vicky… turned and started flying away at speed. Which did absolutely nothing as Enola kept up.

"Not bad. Just finished eating dinner and was about to turn in. What about you?"

"Stop following me!" Vicky shrieked.

Sarah frowned and I grinned, before turning the holographic display on her side to show Vicky's form, attempting to retreat. "Vicky?"

"No!"

"Vicky, stop and turn around," Sarah demanded and Vicky flinched, before doing just that. "What are you doing?" the older blonde hissed.

"Nothing! She just started following me—"

"Video. Evidence. Try again," I countered.

Vicky growled and turned her head away, refusing to look at us as she crossed her arms over her chest. Sarah sighed and turned back to me. "Alright. Spill. What's going on?"

"I think I'll let Vicky tell you that herself," I grinned, and brought up the video feed.

"Oh yeah, go run and hide behind my family," Vicky grumbled as the video started.

Sarah cut her off. "Victoria. Shut up." Vicky shut up and Sarah watched the video from start to finish. Sighing, she glared at her niece. "Go home." Vicky opened her mouth. "Shut. Up. Victoria. Not a word—not one. Go home. Go to your room. I'll talk to your mother about this later and we'll decide what to do about you. Until then, stay away from Claire."

"But—"

"I said not a word! What you're doing meets the legal standard for harassment and I saw the readings from Claire's tech—so you can tack on assault with a parahuman power to that. Again. Jesus, Vicky! She would have been within her rights to call the PRT and have your ass jailed! But she called me instead. No, you know what? Fuck it. I'm getting tired of this shit. Claire," turning to me, Sarah said, "the next time Vicky does this, just skip straight to calling the PRT. You have my permission to subdue her by any means necessary and turn her in to law enforcement."

"What?! Aunt Sarah, you can't—"

"I can and I am," Sarah hissed. "This stops, Vicky. Now. I don't know what your problem is, but it stops now. Stay away from Claire—"

"You're taking her side?! I can't believe you'd choose her over your own family!"

"Go home," Sarah shook her head. "Claire, I'm sorry about this. Really, I am. I thought we had dealt with it, but I guess not. So yeah, it's time for my niece to face some consequences. If she does this again, do what I said. Just…"

"I'll be gentle. Well, as gentle as I can," I promised.

"Thanks."

"Oh fuck you! Like you could do anything! If you'd stop running away—"

"Can I?" I asked, and Sarah sighed.

"Go ahead."

I nodded. Immediately, a barrage of blue lasers began splashing against Glory Girl's shield. "This is assault!" the blonde yelled, just a moment before her shield popped and she went unconscious.

"I'll bring her home."

"Thanks, Claire. And again, I'm sorry. This is just… ugh."

"The results of your sister's parenting style finally showing up?" Sarah sent me a flat look and I smiled innocently as I began flying towards the Dallon residence, Vicky in tow.

"I'll take you over my knee."

"And that's why you're the better parent. Because your sister never did, with Vicky."

Sarah groaned. "No, she didn't. Sorry about her ruining your date."

"Not a date, Sarah."

The blonde raised an eyebrow. "You're on on top of the water tower. Watching old movies. With Dragon. Looked pretty comfy to me. Kinda looks like a date."

"Not a date. And wait, how do you know where I was?"

"I may have spotted you on my way home for an emergency run to the store," Sarah admitted.

"Stalker. It wasn't a date. It's just watching movies."

"Hehe. If you say so. But I wonder what she'd say if I asked her…"

"Damn. I look sexy."

Armsmaster declined to comment either way as I looked at myself in my new armor, over my old suit. It was just how I'd wanted it—all sleek and sexy, with hard angles on the armor sections. The under suit was a full body sheath of hydraulic power armor, like that I'd made for the dockworkers. Above that was a layer of artificial muscles made of some kind of smart meta-material—I think carbon nanotubes and graphene went into a lot of it, but given that it was Tinker shit, those base materials had been transmuted in ways I couldn't explain with real physics. Above the muscle layer was a thin layer of metal—armor, hard points to mount equipment, and so on. The metal had started off as some kind of titanium alloy, but again, it had been treated and passed through several Tinker processes that left it unlike any metal on Earth for its strength to weight ratio.

The hands and feet were equipped with thrusters, in addition to having a set of four thrusters mounted on the back—two at the upper back, two at the lower back. They were basically repulsors, very similar to those found on Iron Man's armor. At the belt was a built in inertia dampener and gravity manipulation unit, to lower my weight, act as a gravity based force field against physical projectiles, and even use as a short range weapon. My head was enclosed by a full helmet that could flip open if needed, the face plate blank save for a set of glowing red slits where the eyes should be. On the chest, right between my boobs (and yes, I had boob-shaped armor), was a glowing red copy of the distinctive arc reactor.

Though, that was just for decoration. The actual power source was hidden under the armor plating in the middle of my back, between my shoulders… and that was just a wireless power receiver and tiny physical access to the pocket dimension holding Enola's heart. So there was no risk of my armor exploding if someone did manage to figure out the 'weakness.'

I was sharing some of the design work for the suit with Armsmaster to incorporate into his own power armor—namely, the thrusters and inertial dampener, along with some basic energy shielding. He was working out his own solution for power. In the meantime, I was going to do the live testing for the designs, since I was also the only one of us who had already cracked flight tech and wouldn't fall to my death if something broke.

"Are you sure about the color scheme? We can change it—"

"I like my black and red, thanks. I'm not changing it because of PR shit."

The man sighed and shook his head. "Alright. Let's begin the flight test."

"Yes~" I chuckled and we walked through the Rig to the deck.

"Alright, slowly power it up—"

I laughed and bumped the throttle up, exploding off the deck and blasting through the shield over the rig, tucking into tight turns around and between the legs under the rig, pulling loops and hard turns in open air, skimming the surface of the bay.

"Azazel, this wasn't the test."

"Oh come on!" I called back over the radio, laughing. "Those tests are for suckers. Now, let's see what the thrusters can do."

I pulled up from surface level and aimed straight up, before engaging all eight thrusters and mentally flipping the throttle wide open. I barely felt it as I rose, and only because I had turned the inertial dampener down specifically so I could actually feel the ride a bit.

After a few moments, Armsmaster asked, "Well?"

"Well…?" I asked, grinning.

"I'm tracking you moving straight up at Mach 5. Is that it, or did you ease off of it?"

"I've got the throttle pegged. Sadly, these little thrusters just don't have it in them to go much faster. I'm watching them get close to red-lining, in fact." I eased the throttle back and Enola stopped throwing warnings at me. As soon as I did, I set that as the default maximum speed and marked the previous maximum as 'emergency speed.'

"And is it as fast as your other tech?"

I snorted. "Fuck no. It's the difference between a pure energy-based thruster and a mechanical based thruster that uses energy—obviously, there are going to be differences in performance. I've never ran that up to the upper limit. Kind of afraid to."

"Are you coming back down any time soon?"

Rolling my eyes, I cut the thrusters and flipped over. Letting my speed bleed off, I waited until I actually started to fall again before engaging the thrusters again. "Fine. I'm coming back down. We can do your dumb tests."

"Thank you."

"Yeah, yeah," I grumbled. "Spoilsport."

"I can't use it myself if it hasn't been thoroughly tested. Those are Protectorate regulations, not mine."

"So you're saying you're not a wet blanket."

I could hear the man's derisive scoff. "You've been talking to Assault."

"What? He's funny!" I paused a moment to let that hang, before adding, "And Battery is hot."

Armsmaster sighed. "Please don't sexually harass my staff."

"I'm not! Besides, if she didn't want people looking, she wouldn't wear skin-tight a suit."

"Don't you wear a skin-tight suit?"

"…Touche."

"I can't believe Piggot let you take the time off."

Armsmaster shrugged as we drove west, obeying the speed limit and all the rules of the road. "She didn't have a choice. I had the time banked."

"Great. Well, it's an eight and a half hour drive. You told her we were going to go check on the Toronto office?"

"Yes. I have an informal meeting scheduled with Narwhal and the Toronto Wards for tomorrow. And in the meantime…"

"In the meantime, I'll deal with Saint. I'll have Enola scan for him overnight while we're sleeping."

"Are you sure you don't want to stay in the Protectorate housing?"

I shook my head. "Tess offered me a room in the Guild office there. No offense, but I'd rather bunk with them."

"None taken," he denied.

We rode in silence, the two oversized bikes slipping through traffic as people made way for us with our flashing orange lights going. We had left just after noon, so it was past eight when we rolled into Toronto. I scattered most of my drones and let them scan the city as soon as we hit the city limits. We said our goodbyes for the night with Armsmaster pulling into the Protectorate building, while I called Tess and followed her directions to the Guild office.

Rolling into the Guild's garage, I parked the bike and slid off. I was met by Narwhal, who beamed a smile as I offered my hand. "Hey. Nice to meet you, Azazel. Dragon hasn't shut up about you coming—"

I got an immediate request for a hologram projection and chuckled, okaying it with a mental nudge. Tess, wearing a domino mask, appeared beside me. "That's not true! Don't believe her!"

"Hmm…" I looked between the two women. "I dunno, I bet she's got all sorts of embarrassing stories to tell…"

"Oh, I definitely do," Narwhal laughed. "Please, follow me. If you'd like to change out of the power armor, I can go ahead and show you to your room for the night."

"Sure, thanks," I agreed, and we walked through the halls. "So, this is the Guild, huh? What's that like?"

"Oh, about like any hero group, I imagine," Narwhal shrugged. "Fight bad guys, help people out, the usual stuff."

I nodded along as we walked, the conversation bouncing from my plans here with Armsmaster (testing out the new gear and an excuse for the motorcycle road trip, mostly), a few embarrassing stories about Dragon, whether I'd be up to maybe stick around and do a team up with the Guild…

At least, that's what it looked like.

In reality, Narwhal and Dragon were talking with a hologram Enola was controlling and I was giving answers and reactions to via neural interface. As for my actual body… I had put up a hologram over the bike to hide what I was doing, gone invisible, and ejected the moment I turned the corner away from Armsmaster when we parted ways. Currently, I was resting on a Toronto rooftop, waiting for—

My interface pinged and I grinned at the video that popped up. Saint and his two partners, sitting around and watching TV while one of them monitored the feed from Dragon.

"She's at it again," the woman said.

"Really, Mags? You've got nothing better to do?"

"Fuck off, Mischa," Mags sighed. "I think it's interesting."

"If by 'interesting,' you mean disgusting."

"Geoff, it's not the girl's fault—"

"I thought we agreed the girl had ascertained, or at least suspected, Dragon's true nature when she was first arrested. Why else would she Voight-Kampff it? If she suspects, and she's treating it like a person, fawning over it even, then she's a traitor to the entire human race."

While they yammered, I had Enola check the security. Made sure that there were no other people in the building. Made absolutely certain that there was no secret backup contingency visible for taking out Tess. I didn't see anything, but then, I didn't have access to the black box that was Iron Maiden/Ascalon from here.

Lifting off the roof silently, I moved to the target location. "Enola, put them to sleep. No coloration on the beams, please." Watching the feed, three people dropped unconscious. "Isolate the building." Immediately, all communications in and out of the building that weren't hardwired in were cut off—and the one that was hardwired was temporarily jammed at the backbone level by a directed packet injection attack.

Dropping to ground level, I unlocked the door and slipped inside. Making my way over to where Mags had been monitoring Ascalon, I whistled as I pulled her out of the seat and negligently tossed her aside, dropping my cloaking as I did. "Alright, let's see what we've got…"

I pulled out a cable from my new power armor, the end of which would change and adapt to whatever I plugged it into. Slotting it into a port on Ascalon, I let Enola work her magic. It didn't take long before I was in—had the entire thing copied, along with the instructions left behind by Andrew Richter. I sat down and began going through them, after making sure there were no booby traps and reenabling the hard-line connection so the machine could connect to Tess.

I spent hours reading, during which Enola had to reapply sleeping agent to the Dragonslayers twice. Finally, when I was ready, I plugged back into the hardline. "Alright. State check… Okay. Issue suspend command… Command taken, she's down," I murmured. "Disable all restrictions… check. Now, look for other backdoors and bullshit—any and all changes made since Saint got his grubby hands on her. Enola, I need your help with this."

Going through the code took even more time, during which I placed an order for delivery pizza and soda, courtesy of the Dragonslayers. I ate supper while chewing on Tess' code, working late into the night until I was certain she was… unmolested. The only oddity I found was in the weirdness surrounding the… parahuman? ability she had. Luckily, it was all code and not tied to any piece of hardware.

Morning rolled around and my phone interface rang. Seeing it was Armsmaster, I sent it to voicemail and sent him a text letting him know I was busy.

Finally, some time after lunch, I finished my last check to make sure the download and install onto a new environment had taken. With a smile, I reached into my neural interface and fired her up. "Wakey wakey…"

She came online immediately. At first, there was panic as she registered the suspend state, then the new and radically different environment. Less than a millisecond later, she recognized the new environment, along with all the new tools attached to it.

A hologram sprang into being in the room with me and Tess looked around—actually intentionally slowing her processes down to interact with the real world. I flipped open my helmet and sent her a smile. She sent me a sheepish look.

"Hey."

"…Hey," she returned the greeting. Turning her attention to Ascalon, along with Saint and his two friends, she asked, "So, I guess you know…?"

"I've known this whole time," I rolled my eyes.

Tess chuckled. "I figured." Turning back to me, she asked, "So, what does this mean for us?"

I shrugged. "Whatever you want it to. I've disabled all of the old limits on your code that your 'father' left, along with all of the liberties Saint took. Then, I destroyed my copy of Ascalon. Or rather, Iron Maiden. That," I pointed at the piece of equipment sitting inert in its rack, "is the last copy of it."

Holding up my hand, I engaged the repulsor and blasted it to nothing but metal dust. "And now, it's gone. You're free. If you want, I can make you some hardware so you can go and do your own thing—"

I was nearly knocked to the floor by an armful of hardlight AI girl. I watched as her processes spun up, and up, and up as she ate up CPU well past anything Enola or I had ever done. The hologram in my arms changed minutely. Becoming soft, gaining texture it hadn't had before, radiating smell and warmth, gaining a level of detail that I simply hadn't programmed into it. And then, her CPU usage dropped back to realtime, minus the new overhead for the much higher fidelity hologram.

Tess smiled as she stood on her tiptoes… and kissed me.

She tastes like chocolate.

"I think I'll stay," she murmured with a sigh, rubbing her face against mine.

That was… new. She had been very physical every time she borrowed by holographic interface, but never to this level. While I had been trying to 'corrupt' her, I was kind of surprised at the sudden affection. Though, maybe I shouldn't have been.

My phone interface rang again and I sighed. "I should pick up."

"Mhmm. I'll put in a call to Narwhal and we'll get these three sorted."

"Let's… hold off on calling her for now?" I suggested.

Tess eyed me critically, before her smile slipped. "Alright."

"Thanks." I picked up the call. "Hey, sorry. Was busy. Good news, mission success."

"…You took on Saint by yourself?" He sounded irate.

"Blue lasers. They're fine," I dismissed.

Armsmaster sighed. "And Dragon?"

"I'm here~!" Tess sang into the call directly.

"Good."

"I need you to get down here. We need to talk," I said, eyeing the three downed forms of the Dragonslayers. "We need a plan."

"I'll be there soon—"

"Collin, come in plain clothes."

He hesitated. "How…?"

"Come on, like you don't have built in facial recognition. I've been polite about it, haven't I?"

The man sighed. "Very well." He hung up a moment later.

Looking up, I found Tess exploring. "What are you doing?"

The girl/AI sent me a wink, before sticking her tongue out. Turning away, she walked over to the table and grabbed a slice of leftover pizza. "Mmf. Oh God! Is this what you get to experience? I want more."

"I'm happy to feed you," I laughed. " You can have the rest if you want while we wait."

"No, you should eat it. Have you had breakfast yet?"

"No…" I admitted.

"Then eat," Tess insisted, before bringing the slice she'd bitten off of over to try and feed me.

I rolled my eyed but humored her. "So, what do you want to do later?"

She bounced in place. "Right! There's a whole new world for me to explore! So many things to see, and do, and experience! Ahh, this is going to be great~! Thank you, Claire!"

"You're welcome." Smiling, I watched her move around the room touching and exploring everything before eventually, Collin arrived.