Read aloud to me alt Taylor

by Kahlil Johnson

Dnd

41. Punk

Plink.Plink.Plink.

I tried to ignore the sound the old tap in the bathroom was making and all the ways I could make it stop. Unbidden, information and ideas flowed into my mind. Using a nail file and some tape, I could sand the corroded parts down and use the tape to fill up the gaps. Then I could get some laser diodes and a small motor to automate the water dispensing process. After that, the amount of water required could be drastically reduced by taking a wristwatch and...

I groaned. While I was extremely pleased that I had triggered as a Tinker, sometimes I wished my powers had an "off" switch like most other powers instead of being constantly active. It had been three weeks since the incident, and it still irked me that I hadn't gotten used to my powers yet.

Giving up on fake-sleeping for the night, I swung my legs off the bed and headed for my table. I paused as I heard Dad turn in. Ever since the incident, whatever downward spiral he had been caught in after mom's death had tightened his grip on him. For a short while after my suspension, he had tried to be strong, going to the school and threatening to sue them and leak the details of my bullying to the press. They had countered by reducing my expulsion to a suspension instead, and had made faux promises to keep an eye on my bullies. My dad didn't have the money to sue them, so in the end, Emma and the trio had gotten off scot-free.

After the incident was over, the fire that had been lit under my dad was swiftly put out. He began to stick to his routine like it was a lifeline. Every time he saw me, he kept resorting to a fake cherry voice, stepping around the elephant in the room-my suspension.

I sighed and waited for the clock to hit 10:10 before I resumed moving. I slowly made my way over to my desk and pulled out the chair before taking a seat. Opening a drawer that I had installed a crude lock on, I pulled out a pair of old glasses that were pretty normal except for the cybernetic eyes suspended by tape in the middle of the frames where the lens would go. The wiring from the glasses was haphazardly zip tied, and I hooked the wiring up to the computer I had gotten from dumpster diving. A few improvements later, it had become something that would blow most of the high-end computers out of the water, even if it looked like it was going to fall apart any minute. The scrappy looking computer was connected to a wire mesh helmet that had several diodes on it.

I put the glasses and the helmet on and waited for it to complete scanning my retinas before the power blinked out.

Sometimes I wished I hadn't gotten a Tinker power. Despite everyone on PHO claiming that Tinkers were the most versatile of all capes, sometimes I felt constricted. Probably because tinkers required so much handholding. Legend didn't need to get small mass riders and fusion rounds before he could to fire lasers. Uber could gain mastery of anything he put his mind to without having to go through amateur brain surgery and getting a socket installed on the back of his neck.

I pawed through my drawer for another AAA-sized lithium-ion battery. My power didn't do much for traditional lithium ion batteries, except for making them smaller while making sure the power capacity was still much larger than something of its size should have. While I didn't think much of it, most scientists would consider a laptop battery that fit in your pocket revolutionary, if it actually worked half the time.

That was another caveat with most Tinker powers. If you didn't have enough money to buy materials and tools, most things needed to be repurposed and jury-rigged, and poor materials led to poor products. While I had some money, I could be sure to land on a watch list of people suspected to be Tinkers if I started buying random chemicals and large amounts of neodymium. And if the government didn't pick me up I could be sure I would be kidnapped by some gang who wanted Tinkertech.

Threatening family, nuking secret identities, drugging people to make them chemically dependent on the captors, and making good use of the stockholm syndrome were some of the more common methods. For better or worse, tinkers were in high demand. The stories of victims floating around on the web were enough to make me have a healthy amount of paranoia.

That was one of the reasons why I hadn't gone on PHO or the dark web to search for the ordinary solutions to my predicament. No matter how safe they claimed the websites were, there were always gaps. Gaps that my power made me very well aware of. Aware of the eyes that searched PHO for buzzwords faster than any human written program should be able to, aware of the trackers and bugs the sites on the dark web tried to use.

I booted up the glasses for the second time, pleased when the scan actually worked. The program cross-referenced the scan with the stored scan, booted up the virtual neural network, and finally allowed me to access my notes.

I had outfitted the cybereye glasses with a homebrew program that would simulate a neural implant. It was extremely slow and would support only one minor program. A faulty helmet that read brainwaves and looked like a poor cosplay completed the shitty ensemble.

My first attempts at cataloguing all the ideas and small inventions were undertaken in notebooks. However, after filling up three of them in a single hour, I realized I needed a more secure and compact form of storing information, preferably one that wouldn't require me to devote entire warehouses to storing all the physical world copies of it.

I pulled my digital stylus out and connected it to the jury-rigged computer while the holo-projectors on the back of the eyes began projecting directly into my retinas. Neon blue lines began to fill my eyes as the Chyron's subscreen initialized and provided me with a basic menu, showing me my organized notes. The text was a bit stretched because the eyes were supposed to be implanted into my sockets, but a bad resolution was more acceptable than replacing my eyes with shoddy cybernetic implants.

I opened the cape debut subfolder from the menu and began to write. I had initially wanted something that identified me unmistakably as a Tinker. Something like power armor or an exosuit. However, my power had quickly dismissed both of those as inferior. What my power wanted me to build was a linear frame.

What was a linear frame? Well, it was power armor taken to eleven. It allowed faster reaction times and allowed tactile control, allowing users to feel weight and stress instead of using an inferior AI program to make sure they didn't crush metal and break bones. Servos and hydraulics were replaced with much better myomar strands which made synthetic muscles that would make control extremely easy and fluid. However, all of that had one tiny drawback. It needed to be grafted onto the body.

While I could make synthetic skin to cover up the more exposed bits, that still wouldn't allow me to disguise my weight. I'm pretty sure teenage girls aren't supposed to weigh the same as two refrigerators, and given the state of some of the buildings in Brockton Bay, I didn't want to forget and crash through some rotting wood or break some tiles with a couple of heavy steps. The linear frame also needed a neural implant, which looped back to the brain surgery problem. While I had ideas for a brain-surgery robot, I still didn't want to do it, mainly because of how natural it felt.

If someone had told me before my trigger that all I needed to get powers was a brain surgery and a couple of limb replacements, I would have vehemently refused. Now, the concept of brain surgery and cybernetic limb replacement was strangely natural. The complete apathy I had toward the subject was frightening, so much so that I had decided to hold off on augmentation all together.

However, not having access to my best tech didn't stop me from being any less dangerous to the common criminal. Perhaps a bit too dangerous. That was the other problem I kept facing. Almost all the weapons I had access to were extremely lethal. Most of my weapons seemed to be designed more for shootouts and open warfare than simple scuffles, and were more likely to kill someone or leave permanent injuries rather than just knock someone out.

On the lethal side of things, I had mono-blades, mono-wire, several types of guns, exotic grenades, and no less than ten types of ammunition.

On the non-lethal side, I had a high-tech cattle prod and a cyber-arm modification that was a glorified tranquillizer gun that shot oversized darts that were more likely to take out an eye in my hands.

If I did install a cyberhand- which didn't need the brain implant, it would allow me to make some hardened knuckles and prevent my fragile hand bones from breaking or dislocating during a fight, and it might even be able to withstand small arms fire. That might give me some prowess in hand-to-hand combat and non-lethal submissions. But like almost all my cybernetics, it still needed someone to perform surgery on me, and I wasn't keen on replacing parts of my body with metal. Yet.

Currently, the small computer held the massive virtual neural implant program, and it guzzled power like crazy when it was running and produced enough heat to make a full American breakfast. An unfortunate side effect of trying to make a program that read your mind and then outputted the data in a somewhat understandable form.

I devoted the next four hours to optimizing the program, trying to cut its down its size and removing bloated sections of the code. At the end of it the code had been compressed to span lines that didn't number in the hundreds. Large blocks of code were shortened, meaning the program ran more smoothly, and it was more efficent with the resources it was allocated.

After I was done, I placed my hand against the hard drive. It was warm. I opened up the case to find that most of the coolant had evaporated. I had taken the coolant from dad's car, and I really didn't want to see what happened when the pressure became too much. I quickly turned the thing off and headed downstairs to the kitchen, before grabbing a couple of blocks of ice from the sides of the refrigerator's freezer compartment, and putting them in a bucket and heading upstairs. I wrapped the computer in a towel and dropped it into the bucket, piling the ice around it.

It was kind of water-proof, so I wasn't too worried about it. While I waited for the computer to cool down, I took out my costume.

It was common for self-made costumes to look cheap. But mine certainly looked worse than even the most amateur attempts at making a costume, mainly because of my terrible skill at sewing and color coordination. My dumpster diving had yielded a lot of useful things, but all the clothes I had found were in less than desirable conditions.

In the end, I decided to go for substance over style. A couple of chemicals I had stolen from the lab at Winslow along with some more dangerous ones from a couple of warehouses had allowed me to make just enough shock-absorbant reactive layering to cover the inside of a hoodie and a pair of jeans. They made the clothes look stiff while also making them baggy, a perfect addition to the rest of my terrible wardrobe.

The layers would be loose and would tighten aggressively on impact. They'd be adequate for knives or small handguns. Probably.

I unfurled the roll of protective cloth and began to tape it to the inside of the hoodie and jeans. I wished I had something more robust to stick the two fabrics like a hot glue instead of insulation tape, making a reminder to buy a hot glue gun once Dad ungrounded me.

After admiring my shoddy workmanship, I took the now cool PC out of the bucket. After booting it, I went over my non-lethal options again. I did have the collapsible baton and pepper spray I had bought during my nightly dumpster diving excursions. But even without doing the math, I knew that the force my weak arms produced wouldn't be enough to knock out a grown man, even with the baton.While the pepper spray would be more effective, if the man had a gun, he might press the trigger in a pain induced rage.

I pressed my palms agaisnt the sides of my head to relieve the growing headache being caused by the stretched neon blue text. Just as the headache began to increase in intensity, my power offered me a solution.

Grenades. More specifically, paint grenades. While I had dismissed them as useless distractions, the same mechanism that dispersed paint could be used to disperse anything, from pepper spray to even compressed air.

I worked in a feverish haze for the next couple of hours. By the time I was done, I could hear my father's radio blaring in the bathroom while he took a shower. And as I made my way down to the kitchen for breakfast, I smiled.

It was all coming together. And if my hurried with my preparations, I just might be able to go out tonight.

Last edited: Dec 16, 2022

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Starlit Ronin

Nov 13, 2022

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Starlit Ronin

Starlit Ronin

Nov 22, 2022

#31

I walked down the stairs and slipped into the kitchen, heading towards the fridge. I took out a couple of eggs and some strips of bacon, along with a loaf of bread and a carton of orange juice.

Turning the stove up, I placed a pan on it and slapped the bacon in, hearing a satisfying sizzle. A couple of minutes later, some French toast joined the bacon, and the smell of food filled the small kitchen.

My dad walked into the kitchen and planted a kiss on the crown of my head. "Good morning, kiddo."

"Good morning, dad." I replied, piling the food on two plates.

My dad moved to the fridge and took out the applesauce before plopping down on his seat and taking a bite of the french toast.

"You're up early today. Couldn't sleep?"

"Just not that tired."

He nodded, and we ate in silence for a couple of minutes.

"You remember Lacey, right? She used to come over with Kurt and the other dockworkers when you were little. I was talking about your suspension with Lacey yesterday, and she made me aware of some things that I couldn't or didn't want to see."

I paused, placed my fork down, and looked at him.

He took this as a sign to continue. "When I was a kid, I was bullied as well. I suppose I was the right type for it. Gawky, stick thin, and with bottle rim glasses. Unfortunately, I inherited my father's temper, and whenever someone tried to do something, I responded with violence."

He sighed. "One of the things I was extremely grateful for was the fact that you didn't inherit my temper. When you were suspended for what you did-"

"I don't regret it." I blurted out.

"Violence is an easy slope to go down, Taylor. It becomes harder and harder to hold back, and you don't know when to stop, and you can easily go too far."

I burst out, unable to hold myself back. "So then why did Sophia get a slap on the wrist while I got the hammer?"

My dad took a sip of coffee before replying. "Alan probably had a hand in that, and the school seems to harbor a special kind of favoritism towards their track and field star. That's the moral here. Not that violence is inherently wrong, or that it is immoral. The moral is that people like us can't deal with the consequences of violence as easily as people like Miss Hess."

"That's-" I paused, searching for the right words. "That's not right."

"It is how the world works, kiddo."

He scratched his head. "I know I haven't been the most present parent, or the most attentive parent, either. And I know you hate me for it."

I felt a pang of pain go through my heart. "That's not true, Dad."

He waved me off. "It is. And if Lacey and Kurt hadn't forced me to dig my head out of the sand, I might have never seen it. But the biggest mistake I made was assuming that if I ignored the problem, you would be able to solve it on your own. That thinking is what led to this situation."

"When boys get bullied, it's usually to show off. To prove that you're tough, or that you're not on the bottom of the food chain. That's why most of the bullying boys experience is physical. Lacey made me aware that it is completely different with girls. She told me it's psychological, slowly wearing someone down by pointing out their flaws and not letting up. She told me that it's only natural that you snapped."

"Your mother-" He paused for a bit. "Was the one who understood you the most. I was there to back her up and balance out her opinions. I won't pretend to understand you, Taylor. But I am here for you."

"That chat I had yesterday made me aware that what happened wasn't entirely your fault. My fears were unfounded, and they might have led to be too harsh on you. So, I'm letting up on some of my punishments. You're no longer grounded."

After that, he quickly finished eating and headed upstairs to change, while I sat there, dumbfounded by the amount of emotion I was experiencing.

Sickly sweet petals bloomed in my stomach as my guilt grew. Why did my dad have to choose now of all moments to be honest and supportive? I considered the idea of telling him about my powers. Even before I gave myself any time to process the idea, I stamped it down.

The way I saw it, he would want me to do one of two things. He would push me to either join the wards or register as a rogue so the government could protect me. I had already looked into them, and they were both terrible options.

If I joined the Wards, my dad and I would be kept safe by both the government and the unwritten rules. However, it would also mean that I would be heavily restricted. My power, unlike those of Kid Win or Armsmaster, preferred utility over morality. While I tried not to think about it, my power did traditionally fall under the category of wet tinkering.

That meant the Youth Guard and the PR department of the PRT would always ensure that I was restricted to my less invasive "normal" tech while my actual specialty was buried. Added to this was the fact that almost all of my designs had to be verified and stored in the PRT Tinker database.

While interacting and working with Dragon sounded appealing, the tradeoff wasn't worth it. Any system, even one guarded by arguably the greatest Tinker in the world, could be broken into. The Dragonslayers were living proof that Dragon's tech wasn't without flaws to exploit. The last thing I wanted was for some Tinker to buy my schematics and designs from the black market and make shoddy replicas that turned unpowered mooks into unstable, deranged psychopaths.

I could become a Rogue, but that was like shooting myself in the foot voluntarily. The government really didn't like capes messing with normal industry, and the regulations and guidelines they placed on us made their derision clear. I had devices that could change the world forever. Samson full-body conversions that could make a normal person into a tireless, extremely strong, robust worker. I could make androids and AIs that were nearly indistinguishable from humans. I had ideas for a type of biofuel that was truly renewable and extremely efficient, grown in fields from a variant of wheat, of all things.

And the government didn't want them. Something about not making the economy too dependent on one parahuman. The NEPEA-5 bill made Rogue Tinkers all but useless, and came with the added advantage of broadcasting my abilities and my Tinker classification to any gang in the city with a mole in the police department or the registration office.

There was a third option. I could pretend like I hadn't triggered and go back to being plain old Taylor Hebert. The girl who no one would talk to. The girl who was bullied for just existing. The girl who, in the end, didn't really matter.

Sophia's sneering face rose to the forefront of my memories, and I gripped my fork until my knuckles were white and my nails were digging into my palms.

I shook my head. My plan was still the same. Build up a reputation so everyone in the city saw me as someone that they needed to keep away from, and then keeping dad safe using that reputation to prevent people from digging into my identity.

In the end, I decided to leave my unfinished breakfast on the kitchen counter with a note to my dad, telling him that I had gone for a walk around the neighbourhood for some fresh air.

I stomped up to my room and changed into a comfortable black hoodie and baggy jeans. I strode out through the front door, determined to finish my preparations.

Ever since I was a kid, one lesson my parents made sure to teach me was to "stick to the Boardwalk". As I strode into the boat graveyard, I idly wondered as to how many times I had broken that rule on this single week alone. Dad should have left for work by now, and I didn't expect him to think I had done anything but take a small stroll.

The wind pushed my hair into my face as I walked along the eerily quiet part of the beach, the rusted metal strewn along the coast poking at my reinforced sneakers.

I navigated quickly through the graveyard, heading towards my quarry- a container ship that had been sunk in the protests after the docks went under.

I clambered up the ladder one of the looters had left behind and entered the ship through one of the gaping holes in the hull. The rusted metal tried to cut me, but the thin composite layers on my clothes ensured that all I felt was a slight poke.

After making my way in, I navigated through the slightly slanted ship, occasionally entering containers that had already been broken into with crowbars and some with their doors ajar, opened by someone who knew what they were doing.

Most of the containers had already been thoroughly picked over, but scavengers only took what they could sell. That suited my purposes just fine. In the week or so of my scavenging here, I had found more useful loot than I had in warehouses and dumpsters combined. Most of the containers in the lower levels had been destroyed by the ship listing. But the ones on the upper decks had been spared, and the locks on them were mangled and corroded enough that most people who came here left them alone.

Thankfully, the rows that had held the mechanical parts and industrial electronic components had been spared from the worst of the looting and decay. Mainly because they had fallen into a loose pile and all their locks had been mangled, preventing anyone from opening them.

I walked over to what I had now named "the pile", and found the container I had marked as important the last time I was here. Reaching into my backpack, I pulled out my plasma knife.

I flicked the switch on and watched as the knife became red hot, drawing electricity from the small power cell. I turned my knife toward one of the locks and began to slice vertically, smiling as I cut through the metal. The blade began to warp, and I pulled it off with the heel of my sneakers and replaced it.

After that was over, I pulled on the right door first like my Dad had told me, and then opened the left before heading in. I strode over to one of the wooden crates, placing a screwdriver in the gap between the lid and the box and hammering the lid open.

The lid crashed down, and I peered into it before smiling once again. Jackpot.

The box was filled to the brim with hydraulic pistons, the kind that you installed on car trunks to get them to open easier. Opening the other crates revealed more car stuff. Shiny chrome bumpers in bubble wrap, a couple of left fenders, and hub caps.

I plopped my backpack down and began to stuff it. When my backpack was full, I began to stuff the insides of my hoodie. When I walked out of the ship, I made a beeline for the bus stop, shaking with anticipation.

The bus ride home was loud, and with each pothole and bump the bus hit, the metal in my bag rattled against the other pieces. The old lady next to me gave me wierd looks until I reached my stop, but I didn't care. I was almost ready.

The previous tenant of our house had used the basement as a workshop and had left behind his workbench and some of his tools. The house was old, and the basement was clear evidence of its age. The walls and floor were made of concrete, and exposed boards and electrical cords peeked out of the ceiling. My dad saw no reason to come down here, and so it had become my workspace.

I strode over to the old boarded-up coal chute that was an indicator of a time when the house still had a coal furnace. I pulled out a screwdriver and loosened the screws on one of the boards. Reaching into the chute, I began to pull out some of the larger and more dangerous tools I couldn't possibly keep in my room. An angle grinder, a blowtorch, a hacksaw, and a more conventional toolbox, along with a box of simple household chemicals and several pieces of irregularly shaped metal.

The grenades came first. I took one of the fenders and cut it in half before placing it on the portion of the workbench I had heat proofed. I turned the blowtorch on and heated it.

The metal became red-hot in a couple of minutes, and I began to strike it until it resembled a small cylinder. The next thing to make was the black powder. I took out some potassium nitrate from cold packs, some charcoal that my Dad had bought for a family barbecue that we had never held, and some sulfur I had taken from my neighbor's garden supplies. I ground them into a fine powder and mixed them together along with some sugar, creating the propellant of the grenade.

I packed the powder into a thin metal tube and soldered it into the grenade. My fingers reached out for a lighter and a ballpoint pen. I disassembled them and reconfigured their components to make a simple spring-loaded striking mechanism that would strike the flint from the lighter to make a spark. A piece of yarn dipped in delayed igniter fluid would act as a timer. I threaded one end of it into the tube with the black powder, and the other was placed near the flint.

I isolated this system with a piece of metal. A simple metal pin would hold the lever that activated the spring-loaded mechanism in place.

A look at the back of the pepper spray gave me a list of ingredients, and my power quickly gave me ways to improve the formula. I made the liquid more potent and less viscous. Mixing even more chemicals, I made some synthetic rubber, which I then began to cut into small discs. I punched small holes into the center of these discs, slotted them into the holes in the grenade I had made before. I poured the new and improved pepper spray into the grenade and closed the thing with a metal lid and soldered it.

If it worked like it was supposed to, the pin being pulled would cause the spring-loaded striking mechanism to strike the flint, lighting the yarn, which should take about three seconds to light the black powder. The powder would then explode, forcing the pepper spray through the holes in the rubber discs which would cause it to spin around, covering more ground and dousing the entire area with pepper spray.

Making the rest of the grenades was a similar experience, but with some alterations. The flash bangs needed a mixture of potassium perchlorate and aluminum powder and rubber discs that would pop out. The recon grenades were wholly electronic, requiring a powerful single use scanner that was on a single-board relay system that would transmit the information back. The concussion grenades required a more powerful explosion to propel a thick, viscous fluid that disappeared after a few seconds.

After the grenades were done, I turned my attention towards the hydraulics. My power began to give me schematics, and I quickly got up and headed for my room. I took my backpack and then went to the garage and got one of the old folding tables that had been propped up against the wall. I began to disassemble the table, taking the metal tubes that served as its legs. I fused the tubes into a rectangular frame, and then I took the shoulder straps from my backpack and tied them to it.

I tried it on and tightened the straps when they felt loose. Some metal tubing I had taken from the docks was used to make a cylindrical metal skeleton with a strap that tightened around my arm. I added a circular rail and a small motor near the shoulder of this arm-frame and bolted the hydraulics to the rail, allowing it to move to support any motion my arm might make. I then connected the arm to the rectangle on my back. The same system was built for my other arm and my legs and linked them to the back-frame.

A little looking on the net yielded the code visual effects artists used to make models from motion capture suits. The code was rudimentary, but that was to be expected since it was written by a non-tinker. I rewrote the code, using the framework the old one had given me to improve it. After I was done, the model that the code produced was a complete recreation of me, and its movements were smooth and fluid. It only required several tracking pads placed in specific spots. I made the pads and placed them on the inside of my hoodie and pants. The code would allow the frame to move along with me without a significant delay.

I added the code to a chip on the frame, along with my hard drive. A couple of power cells ensured the system would have enough power for several years.

When everything was done, I put on the frame and carefully slid my arms and legs into the now finished exosuit. I moved my arms and smiled as everything moved smoothly. As an experiment, I picked up a can and placed it on the workbench. Picking up my baton, I slammed it into the can as hard as I could.

I jumped at the sound of breaking wood. I had exerted more force than I had wanted, and I had pulverized one of the wooden boards of the workbench. Sighing, I began to tweak the code, happy that I hadn't used it on a criminal first.

I ran my hands through my equipment for what must have been the hundredth time that night, letting my nerves get the best of me once again. I traced the edges of my metal half-mask before letting my hand drop to my dad's old belt, which I had transformed into a bandoler for my grenades. I had inserted metal hooks into the holes, and the grenades were suspended from the hooks by their pins. I had two of each type: pepper spray, flash bang, concussion, recon, and normal paint grenades. A hydraulic load-bearing frame took the stress off my arms and legs, helping me stay mobile while letting me preserve my pitiful stamina. The outfit was completed by chrome knee pads and chrome armour that covered my upper arms, which boosted the aesthetics of the ensemble quite a bit.

I looked at my reflection in one of the windows and took stock. My outfit wasn't that different from any other brute or blaster on their first night. A black hoodie, a pair of black pants, and a pair of sneakers. My tech, however, would probably help me stand out. The glasses that housed my Chyron hid the upper part of my face and cast it in a soft blue light. The lower part of my face was covered by a simple metal half mask that had several raised ridges that ran parallel to my jawline on both sides of my face. Metal knee pads and elbow pads had been used to accentuate the metal of my exosuit. All the metal was covered in wax so that light wouldn't bounce off them and give away my position.

After a lot of internal debate, I had decided to keep the shock-absorbant fabric taped to my hoodie and pants. If I glued them to my outfit, a more powerful impact would cause the fabric to tear and it would cause me to lose my protection when I needed it the most. However, if the fabric remained taped on, more powerful impacts would cause the tape near the corners to tear off rather than the fabric.

I leaned on the railing of a fire escape, enjoying the cool late January air as I tracked both phone calls and the police scanner using an AI. The AI listened to calls, turned them into text, and then searched them for important keywords. The calls were then organised based on priority and then shown to me. Was it an invasion of privacy? Yes, but most of the data the AI collected was being deleted, so I wasn't actually reading or storing most of it.

Dad had turned in early tonight, so I'd been able to hit the streets at eight instead of midnight. I was coming to regret that decision.

The night was uneventful in the first hour or so that I had been out, and I had only caught wind of two muggings that had been very quickly resolved by an independent hero. A speedster, maybe? Independents didn't last too long, and they usually got picked up by the PRT or killed by some of the more violent villains like Hookwolf or Lung.

As I wished the unnamed speedster good luck, an interesting report caught my eye. Quickly enlarging it on my Chyron, I began to read it at a fast pace.

Caller 1: Hello?

Caller 2: Where the fuck are you kid?! Me and my crew have been waiting in this dingy alley for half an hour!

Caller 1: I just got caught up in some stuff, sir. Some of the university girls came over and invited me to another party-

Caller 2: You better not be giving out freebies, or I swear-

Caller 1: NO,No! Its not like that, sir! I made them pay, and I made mad bank. Just wait a bit more, I'm nearly there.

Caller 2: You better be here within half an hour, or your sister might find herself with fewer fingers to play her violin with, punk.

Call terminated

A drug deal? No, the person on the other end of the line seemed to be more of a hostage than someone who was actively a member of the gang. So a handoff of money, then? If making money came with the added advantage of busting a drug deal, then I was all for it. I quickly traced the call back to its source and headed towards it at breakneck speed.

After nearing the location, I scampered up another fire escape and made my way across the rooftops. After reaching the top, I peered over the edge to get a view of the situation. As I had suspected, most of them were members of the ABB. Towards the mouth of the alley, there was a man with a yellow bandana who kept looking at his watch and a more lanky man with long feminine hair who was smoking a cigarette. Near a dumpster inside the alley, a man with an abnormally large forehead and someone with a lot of dragon tattoos were talking.

As I contemplated on how to approach the situation, I saw another figure appear at the mouth of the alley. He was stick thin, with dark circles under his eyes. He quickly removed a roll of cash held together by a rubber band from his pocket and handed it to long-hair. Long-hair counted it before sliding it into his pocket and putting what I assumed to be the college kid from the call in a headlock and dragging him towards the center.

Whatever they wanted to do to the kid, I wasn't going to end up a causal observer. Quickly formulating a battle plan, I took out one of my pepper spray grenades and tossed it right in the center of the alley.

The grenade fell with a audible metallic clink, and everyone turned to watch it. Just as the grenade began to bounce back up due to Newton's third law, I jumped off the edge of the roof and in front of the college kid, crouching and springing back up to let the shock absorbers on my frame do their work.

I arrived just in time to shield him from the worst of the capsaicin spraying out from the grenade. The pepper spray smeared itself against my back as I heard the anguished cries of the other four men who had taken the spray right in their eyes. All of them seemed to be experiencing wildly different reactions to the spray. Long-hair was shielding his eyes with his arm, bandana was clawing his eyes out, forehead was dribbling snot and the man with the tattoos was crying his eyes out.

I drew my baton from its sheath and brained bandana, the frame allowing me to output more force than I normally could. Without even waiting for him to collapse, I turned toward long hair, electrifying the baton and stabbing it into his uncovered forehead.

With two of them down, I turned and rushed toward the other two. What greeted me was the barrel of a gun. I stared at it while my brain was frozen in time. Fake Lung pulled the trigger.

The gun was louder than they showed in movies. The muzzle flash was brighter too, but that might have been the darkness in the alley. I barely even blinked before I felt the fabric on my left shoulder constrict, almost ripping the tape I had used to hold it in place.

The bullet slid off my shoulder and landed on the ground.

"Oh fuck, she's like that Alexandia bitc-"

I finally moved forward, slammed the gun out of his hands, and slammed my baton into his head. Spinning around to keep my momentum going, I rounded on the last one and slammed the baton into his ribs.

With a welp of pain, he fell down and I tazed him.

My hands shook violently as I looked over my handiwork. The college kid was still standing where I had left him.

"H-Hey."

He froze up, looking at me in terror. I tossed him a couple of zip ties.

"Help me tie them up. One for the hands and one for the legs."

He jerkily nodded and moved towards bandana while I began to tie up long-hair. After I made sure his bonds were tight, I reached into his pockets and began to search.

My searching yielded a phone, several more rolls of cash, something wrapped in newspaper, and a small revolver from the waistband of his jeans. I took the phone, the gun and some of the cash for myself.

In the time it took me to search long-hair, the kid had already finished tying up two of the men and was working on the last one.

After he was finished, he looked at me wearily.

"Here." I told him, handing him a roll of cash.

"What-"

"I'm calling the cops. It would be best for you to leave."

He opened his mouth to repily, before closing it and quickly walking away.

After he was gone, I considered long-hair's phone. While I could leave it here and call the cops using a pay phone, I was tempted to break into it just so I could test myself. As an added bonus, the phone might contain more information about the wherebouts of ABB holdings.

I connected my hard drive to the phone, and took a look at the problem. The phone was protected by a four pin code, and was an older model, by the looks of things. I accessed the safe mode of the phone after pressing the volume up and power buttons at the same time.

I opened up the phone's developer mode on my computer, and my power exposed every single vulnerability in the encryption. I cracked it and quickly accessed the phone's code to take a look. Deleting the code for the phone's simple lock would cause it to go into lockdown, and the code that regulated the lockdown was even more encrypted than the base. I could crack the encryption on that code, but it would take longer. Instead, I deleted the section of the code that locked the phone down after several failed attempts at unlocking it. An oversight from the developers had led to that section of the code being less protected, and I deleted it and right then just brute forced the password.

After getting access, I called the BBPD hotline.

"Good evening, you've reached the Brokton Bay Police Department hotline. How may I help you?"

This call would likely be recorded, and I wasn't keen on my voice being in the system, even if it would be relegated to some giant database. Luckily for me, I had prepared for this. A soundboard made from the voice of local reporter Dianne Pierce spoke out of the speaker I had taped to a wire coming from the hard drive.

"I've seen four ABB members tied up in an alleyway. I'll send the location to the BBPD mailbox."

"Ma'am, are you-"

I quickly cut the call and cringed. That was a terrible attempt. The last part of the audio was particularly clipped together, and came off sounding unnatural. I quickly sent the address to the mailbox and left the alley, moving to keep the embarrassment from catching up.

After leaving the alleyway, I jumped onto the fire escape of a nearby building and scrolled through long-hair's chats.

Most were typical. The ones with his girlfriend were quickly skipped over once I saw some of the more explicit images, but the rest were all meaningless rumours and speculation mixed in with small talk.

Except for one person. A message chain from a man named Park Hyung Suk ended with only a time and a location.The messages seem to be sent every month, and every reply that long-hair gave was a simple yes.

There was a recent message as well, calling him to a meeting tonight.

I would go home and just send the message to the cops. I had done good work tonight, and I didn't need to put myself in further danger. But the rush from earlier hadn't entirely faded. I could do more. I knew I could.

With that thought, I headed towards the location mentioned in the message.

The location was nothing like the gang hideouts they showed on the news. Instead of some old warehouse or a decrepit skyrise, the meeting place was an old Chinese restaurant in the heart of ABB territory. The store was closed, or at least it seemed to be closed. I watched as several men entered the store, either alone or in groups of two or three. Even though I had arrived late, I had counted too many people going into that tiny restaurant.

I walked over to the edge of the roof to make out more details before giving up. Whatever this meeting was, it seemed to be too big for me to handle on my own. Grumbling, I moved towards the side of the roof with the fire escape, taking out the phone while I walked.

Ash floated into my view as someone knocked the phone out of my hand before stabbing me in the back. The fabric constricted again as I stumbled forward with the force of the blow. My foot caught the lip of the roof, and I fell right off it, screeming. As I stumbled and flailed for something to catch, my fingers hit the railing of a fire escape. I grabbed on to it and screamed even more loudly as my arm tore itself out of its socket.

I fell to the ground and winced as the movement jolted my arm. The right was fine, but my left was out of commission for the moment. Pain clouded my vision as someone burst into existence behind me. I turned, and another clone stabbed me in the back. Again.

Two more appeared in front of me and stabbed me, this time aiming from the face. The leering demon mask mocked me as I dove under the blows. I ashed the clones with my baton and ran towards the other end of the alley I had fallen into, panting. Thankfully, it led to a back road where someone could probably see the fight and call the cops. The road was narrow, with tenements lining both sides of it.

Oni Lee materialized behind me once more, and this time went for my neck. I ducked, my frame making me move faster than I could while my Chyron outlined the clone in neon blue.

I tried to ignore the pain as I began to formulate a plan to survive. I didn't know how Lee's teleportation worked, except for the obvious properties of it- he left behind clones when he teleported, and those clones replicated any weapons he had.

I jumped towards the wall of an old apartment, smashing into two clones who dissolved into carbon ash. The light from an open window was the only illumination in the area, and Lee's black clothes meant that he blended into the shadows. I stuck to the light, ducking and weaving between blows, playing wack-a-mole with the clones.

I put the building behind my back to cut off any more attacks from the back. Lee responded by swarming me with clones. Three appeared in front of me, each one attacking after a small delay. They were irregularly spaced, with the one on the left being the farthest away and the ones on the far right being the closest.

They attacked as a mass, swarming me. I electrified my baton and swung it in as wide an arc as I could, and instead of convulsing or falling down, the clones simply turned to ash. So the clones couldn't take much punishment. That was good, but killing clones just meant I was wasting time and waiting for Lee to switch from assassin to uncaring suicide bomber. I needed to end this.

I pulled a recon grenade and tossed it wildly to my left and hit a clone just as it appeared, and crudely glued on Velcro strips on the grenade stuck onto his costume. As soon as the grenade landed, five more clones surrounded me.

Six separate grenades pinged and provided me with a comprehensive map of the street from my chyron. Five were stuck to Oni Lee clones, while one was lying in the middle of the street, thrown there by a figure hiding in a shadowy alcove.

People considered Oni Lee to be an unstable psychopath, so I was honestly surprised by his versatile use of his power and his cautious approach to combat. Thinking my grenade was an explosive, he had swarmed me with clones so I would get caught in the blast when they detonated.

The sound of a grenade pin being pulled informed me that Lee was ready to end this. I was ready as well.

Before the first clone could materialize, I sprinted through the area where it would arrive. Lee couldn't teleport into solid matter, and that bought me a couple of seconds before he corrected his position. Palming a concussion grenade, I tore the belt with my grenades on it off my shoulder. I whipped the belt, causing the grenades to fly off into the darkness, where the original Lee was hiding. In the time that it had taken for me to do this, Lee had made two more clones, and both stood behind me, pulling pins on fragmentation grenades.

I fell to the ground and threw the concussion grenade behind the clones, curling up to protect my exposed face and hands. As soon as I curled up, a cacophony of explosions echoed through the narrow alley. My concussion grenade exploded at the same time as the fragmentation grenades, and the resulting explosion pushed most of the pieces away but accelerated others. They hit my back, and I screamed as the flimsy tape finally ripped and the shrapnel slammed into my back, each impact causing immense, blooming pain.

I was on the ground for a good ten minutes before even trying to get up. The injuries on my back screamed as I shakily got up to assess the damage. It seemed like my hunch was right. The original Lee was slumped against the wall, his mask bearing more than a few cracks.

When I had spotted the original in the shadows, I realized that like most teleporters, Oni Lee needed line of sight. Thankfully, the street we had found ourselves in was dark except for a few dimly lit corners and the open window, restricting him. When I had denied him places to teleport by blanketing the narrow alley with explosives, he had teleported to the only place he could. Behind his clones. Seeing as his clones couldn't relay information back to him, he had gone with his instincts and teleported right behind me into my blind spot, where my grenade had waited for him.

I hobbled over to him and zip-tied him, hurrying as I heard the sound of sirens getting closer.

I shakily made my way out of the alley while listening to the police radio to avoid the cops, wincing with every step.

At least my first night out was memorable, even if it would leave a few marks.

Last edited: Jul 20, 2023

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Starlit Ronin

Nov 22, 2022

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Starlit Ronin

Starlit Ronin

Dec 4, 2022

#51

When I got back home at around five in the morning, I opted to get into my room through the window rather than go up the creaky stairs that would certainly wake up my Dad. I looked up at the window and steeled myself.

Activating the hydraulics in my legs, I jumped and almost bit my tongue in half when the pain in my back exploded. I gripped the edge of the window like it was a lifeline, tears rolling down my cheeks.

With a shaking hand, I opened the window and crawled through, waiting until I was near my bed to collapse. The frame of the bed creaked because of the extra weight, but I couldn't bring myself to care. After a good hour of lying down, I slid my arms and legs out of the exosuit, careful not to let the fabric of my clothes touch the tender skin on my back.

I unceremoniously dumped the suit on the floor and kicked it under the bed, hoping my dad didn't see it. Slowly hobbling over to the mirror, I gingerly removed my hoodie and checked my back.

Splotches of angry red greeted me as I saw my new bruises. While I was glad that the shock absorbent fabric had done its job, the bruises were a reminder that if my first encounter had been with a hard hitter like Lung or Hookwolf, I would have been dead within the first couple of seconds of the fight. Lee's cautious nature was the only thing that had allowed me to escape with my life.

I had no delusions that I had been strong enough to defeat Lung's right-hand man. Lee had been strangely careless tonight, and if he had been even a little bit more serious, I was certain that I would be just another dead cape to add to the list of those who had died in the city.

I traced my fingers around my left shoulder and poked it, wincing again as I felt a stab of pain. I tried moving it and jammed my right hand into my mouth to keep myself from screaming. Great. If my many bruises weren't enough, it seemed like my left shoulder was quite possibly dislocated. I had moved it during the fight, but that might have been due to the adrenaline masking the pain.

Confronted by my injuries in the mirror, I gave up on sleeping. I instead slipped downstairs to get something cold for my injuries. After I stuffed several bags of ice down my hoodie, I headed back to my room. I knew the ice was a temporary solution, but all the other drugs I knew how to make to keep the pain away were also highly addictive.

I needed to at least pretend to be alright, so I lay down on my bed while trying to ignore the pain, and when it got too uncomfortable to simply ignore, I lost myself in my power, sorting through ideas and schematics and letting my pain be overwhelmed by the sheer wonder I felt at the more grandiose things I could make. Dad walked in after his shower and asked me if I was alright. I lied through my teeth and told him I was simply feeling tired, and he took me at my word and simply told me that he'd leave my breakfast in the fridge.

The hours ticked by, and I wasn't feeling any better. The ice melted into slush, and the slush became lukewarm water. I felt hot and clammy, and no matter how much I tossed and turned, I never found a position I was comfortable sleeping in.

My stomach growled, and I looked at the clock next to my bed. 1:00 pm. I needed food. I made it downstairs with great difficulty and managed to eat some of the food Dad had left in the fridge for me. Then I hobbled my way upstairs again. The pain was back in full force, and my power wasn't helping anymore-it was instead making me more restless. I needed another distraction.

I decided to review the footage of my first night out that I had captured using my Chyron. I booted up my hard drive and connected it to a holograpic projector. The footage began to play, and I watched through it, speeding it up until I reached the part with the phone call.

I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach as I read through the transcript again. My fears were proven true when I reached the last line of the transcript.

Caller 2: You better be here within half an hour, or your sister might find herself with fewer fingers to play her violin with, punk.

Call terminated

I read the transcript again and again to make sure that I wasn't seeing things. I felt the vestiges of panic beginning to take hold as I sped up the video again, this time trying to find the face of the college kid from the alley.

His face was poorly lit, and parts of it were obscured by darkness. I swiftly made the image brighter and color corrected it. I plugged the image into a search engine spider and waited for results.

The first result I got was an old post on a social media site. The boy was smiling at the camera, and his arm was around the shoulder of a girl who seemed to be a few years younger than him. She was wearing a formal dress with a violin held under her arm. She was smiling as well. The sickening sensation in my stomach grew more ominous as I searched for their names. The boy was Kiyoshi Ijichi, and the girl was Nijika Ijichi.

I typed the girl's name into my search engine, fearing what I would find. A news article from one of the small local neighbourhood newspapers popped up. I clicked on it with a shaky hand and felt my stomach drop as I read the title.

Tensions soar amidst ABB attack on schoolgirl in Little Tokyo

The gang known as the Anz Bad Boys is among one of the major street gangs in the city, and their members have shown a tendency to engage in acts of sporadic violence against those who live in what they call their territory. The people in Little Tokyo witnessed another such incident yesterday when Nijika Ijichi, a student who goes to Arcadia High, was attacked by armed ABB thugs. She was leaving a restaurant along with her parents when the incident happened.

Several thugs are reported to have grabbed the girl while others pushed her parents against the wall. She was then said to have been thrown to the ground and beaten mercilessly for several minutes. Hearing the commotion, a patron from a nearby restaurant, Kang Dagyum, burst into the scene of the crime with his weapon drawn, causing the thugs to flee.

Nijika Ijichi was swiftly rushed to Brockton Bay Medical where she underwent several surgeries and where she still remains in near critical condition. Incidents like this are all too common in Little Tokyo, and residents blame...

I stopped reading as I felt my mind reeling in shock. What had I done? Why had I not checked up on the boy's sister after taking out those thugs? A sane person would have at least given the matter some thought before rushing away. However, the thought that his sister was in danger because of my actions never crossed my mind.

I felt a strange numbness take over me as I read the article again. My power chimed in, telling me about the formula for drugs that would speed up the recovery process. The girl would be in shock, so the drug would have to be a medical stabilisation agent combined with a depressant, which would help with the shock while also promoting tissue recovery.

I put both my hands on my head and tried to block my power out, feeling the same overwhelming sensation I had felt when I had first triggered. I had always prided myself on being cool and level-headed, always dissecting problems and taking the most logical course of action. However, last night had been the exact opposite of that. I had been reckless and aggressive, fighting for the sake of fighting rather than to help the city.

When I had felt something egging me on to fight last night, I had dismissed it as an adrenaline rush. But what if it was something else? Had my power changed me, or was I being paranoid?

I put my internal dilemma aside and instead began to think of what I could do to help the girl. I could sneak into the hospital and try my hand at healing her, but that might get the girl into more trouble, as the protectorate would probably put her in a master/stranger containment cell. Besides, I needed better reagents and actual tools. I didn't care if I used weak, slow-acting drugs on myself, but that girl needed help now, and she needed my best work.

Had I done anything good last night? As I hung my head, I searched for more information on what had happened last night.

To my surprise, someone had posted a video of my fight with Oni Lee onto PHO. I opened the page up and played the video to distract myself. The video had been filmed from one of the rooftops, and the weird angle combined with the grainy resolution of the camera in the low lighting made the footage nearly unwatchable. The person behind the camera was also exceptionally careful and kept ducking behind a wall with every loud sound they heard. All the comments under the video were either insults directed at the person behind the camera or people trying to decipher the footage. In the end, a moderator had locked the post after it became clear nothing productive was being discussed.

A search for Oni Lee's name yielded an article that included a statement from someone in the PRT confirming that Lee had been apprehended by Armsmaster, with no mention of how he had been injured before Armsmaster found him. The article went on to flatter Armsmaster an unnecessary amount, and it somehow rubbed me the wrong way. Great, now I was guilty and angry, both at myself and at the PRT. Would it have killed them to at least tell people Lee had been injured before they had found him?

Grumbling, I opened the advanced search page on and searched for several terms. Chrome, Exosuit, Grenades. All the results were pages for Tinkers, and most were old. Chrome was apparently a Tinker with a specialization in vehicles. Huh, it seemed my first choice for my cape name was taken.

After I looked over the general search results, I clicked on the other messages that were in the connections boards. Similar to the messages on the other boards, most were old and cryptic, referring to stuff only the people in question would know.

I found a single message on one of the boards that was about two lines.

Subject: Chrome

You really did us a favour last night. Allow us to replay it?

Send a message,

Tt

I stared at the message before moving to reply. It was recent, and the only comments were from tinfoil hats and speculators.

A simple proxy script paired with the security of the website should provide me with some level of anonymity. I clicked on the username and selected the 'send private message' option.

Just as I was beginning to draft my reply, the sound of the shower caused me to freeze. I quickly crawled onto my bed, pulled the covers over my head, and waited. I heard the shower turn off and Dad walk downstairs.

Just as soon as he went down, he came back up and knocked on my door frame.

"Hey, kiddo. You alright?" He asked, concern evident in his voice. Routines defined us, and I was breaking mine.

"I'm fine, Dad. I think I'll sleep in today."

I hated lying to Dad to hide my injuries, but it was better this way. I was doing it for him.

"I'll leave your breakfast on the counter then." He replied, already walking away.

Under the covers, I regarded the message and slowly typed out a reply.

Subject: Re: Chrome

Who are you? And what do you mean by last night?

The reply was almost instantaneous, and it was almost as if the person on the other end knew I was going to reply just then.

Subject: Re: Chrome

I'm part of a group that you helped last night. You straightening out L probably distracted his boss, and he was really mad at us. Too bad about your hoodie though, but a little ironing will probably fix it! Meet us near where you met L last night so we can properly thank you.

If we meet at 3pm would that give you enough time to get there from your home? Let me know.

Ta ta

My blood froze in my veins as I read the message. Whoever sent it knew I was the one who had fought Lee yesterday and knew about my hoodie being damaged. The part that worried me the most was that they had figured out that I was at home when I replied to their message.

Before I went on the warpath and tried to hack their account, I reminded myself of the digital eyes always monitoring the site. Anything too suspicious would raise red flags.

I breathed to calm myself down and read the message again, this time with a clear mind. The fact that they had told me that I was at home didn't mean anything. It might just be a shot in the dark. Most people had computers at home, and that meant they accessed PHO most of the time at home.

The entire message could just be bait to get me to admit that I was the one who fought Lee. I was better of ignoring it and trying to figure out where I could get better equipment and tools.

Just as I was about to close the site, another message popped up in my inbox. I clicked on it.

Subject: Re: Chrome

You're seriously overthinking this. If you want more proof I'm not bs, I know about that nasty shoulder of yours and about your back. The SA in your clothes let you down big time, right? The crutches on your legs are probably banged up as well, the left should move lower than the right. Hope that made you change your mind!

Tt

I got up off the bed, bent down, and looked at my exosuit. Sure enough, the left actuator was badly dented, and so the hydraulics on the left moved slower than the one on the right.

I bit my lower lip in frustration. Last night had been a big mistake, and now someone knew more about me than I wanted anyone to know. And to top it all off, they implied that they might know more than they let on. Defeated, I trudged over to my computer and replied back.

Subject: Re: Chrome

I'll be there at the requested time.

I grabbed my exosuit and dragged it down to the basement, determined not to be taken unawares again. And that meant upgrades.

I repaired my hoodie first, adding more layers shock absorbant of fabric to it. Now the hoodie looked more padded than ever, and the inside of it was hot. As soon as I put it on, the heat was unbearable, but that was the price of protection. I repaired my exosuit as well, replacing the actuators and some of the damaged hydraulics. I added some flimsy metal sheeting to the outside of the armour, giving it some protection. I used my propane torch to inexpertly melt the sheets together, giving it a distinct scrap yard look.

I made more grenades, and then turned my attention to my baton. I was good, but it still relied on me holding it. I mounted the baton onto my exosuit, setting up a lever that could be triggered to extend the baton from my forearm. I added another crudely made retractable baton on the other hand as well. The seams of the metal didn't fit quite well together, but it worked. After my repairs were done, I finally headed out.

The gravel on the rooftop crunched under my foot as I made some final adjustments to my drone. Well, technically, it was a toy helicopter that I had attached a small camera to, but calling it a drone made me sound more professional in my head. After syncing up the live footage from the camera to my Chyron, I set the helicopter down and began to pilot it.

I slowly moved the drone down the various alleyways, searching each one until I found them.

The 'we' Tt had mentioned were a group of teenagers, all in costume. A tall, muscular boy in black motorcycle leathers and a skull helmet was berating a boy who was wearing a frilly shirt and twirling around a scepter. To thier back, a muscular girl with a cheap looking dog mask was leaning down to pet a one-eyed dog. Rounding off the group was a girl in a purple-and-black skintight bodysuit was staring at the sky.

As I edged my drone away, the girl in the bodysuit looked directly into the camera and smirked. Surprised, I fumbled with the controls, nearly crashing the thing. The girl waved over her friends, and the rest of the group turned towards the camera. The boy with the sceptre struck a pose, and both the girl with the dog mask and the boy in biker gear stood up straighter.

A quick search yielded some results. The girl with the dogs was Rachel Lindt, known online as Hellhound. She apparently preferred Bitch, though. A red warning flag on her page informed me that she was extremely violent and unstable. All the others had little to no information on them. The biker boy was Grue, and the girl in the body suit was Tattletale.

I climbed down from the roof after calling back my drone and pulled out a concussion grenade. I pocketed it before holding the pin with my thumb. None of them seemed to have any armour, and if they were hostile, I could chuck the grenade and run.

I slowly made my way over to the alley and soon came upon the group. Tattletale was smiling even more while she elbowed Regent.

"I told you she would change her costume. Pay up."

Regent shook his head. "She's upgraded her gear, but her costume is still the same. No deal."

I moved to the front of the group and stood in front of Tattletale.

"So what is this about?" I said, letting some of my anger bleed into my words.

"Straight to business? But we haven't gotten to even know each other's names yet."

I openly snarled under my mask. Did she think this was a game or something?

She held up her arms to pacify me before pulling out a lunchbox with a picture of Alexandria on it.

"Here. A peace offering."

I took the old tin lunchbox from her hands and opened it, making sure to tilt it so it faced Tattletale. I didn't expect them to hide a shaped explosive charge in the box, but it wouldn't hurt to be careful. Tattletale saw me doing this and grinned even wider.

Inside the box, several stacks of bills tied with rubber bands were neatly stacked on top of each other. I stared at the box, taking in the sight.

"There's about ten grand in there." Tattletale piped up.

My mouth suddenly went dry, and my anger was replaced by confusion.

"And what is this for?"

Grue stepped up beside Tattletale. "You took out Oni Lee, which means you've gotten Lung off our backs for now. So you can either take the money with no strings attached, or you can hear us out and we can give you a bit of background."

I tried to get some moisture back in my mouth. "Fine, I'll bite."

Tattletale leaned in and whispered something to Grue.

"Before we tell you anything, we need you to turn off the recording device in your glasses."

How did she know about the Chyron recording? Just how did her power work? I quickly turned off the live recording, and Tattletale gave Grue a thumbs up.

Grue removed his helmet, revealing his shoulder-length cornrows and a jaw that I only saw on models and male superheroes.

He held his hand out, and I shook it, staring all the while. "I'm Brian."

"You can call me Placebo, until I come up with something better." I replied.

Tattletale smirked a little at that and moved to Grue's side.

I shook his hand until it was borderline awkward, but I was saved when he pulled his hand back and waved to Tattletale, who took off her domino mask and shook her dirty blond hair loose, staring at me with bottle green eyes and a lupine grin. Regent took off his carnival mask as well, revealing a good looking face that could be best described as roguish.

"This is Lisa and Alec. The girl leaning on the wall is Rachel, who goes by Bitch. The PRT calls her Hellhound."

At the mention of her name, the girl snarled and tried to make eye contact with me, and I returned it as best as I could.

Brian held out a hand, and she backed off. He continued as if Rachel just hadn't tried to pick a fight with me.

"We want to offer you a partnership agreement."

"Which means?" I dragged out.

"It means we were going to recruit you," Alec interjected. "But someone was being a bitch about it."

Bitch bristled a bit at that statement, and Grue again held out a hand to stop her from doing whatever she was going to do.

"Most gangs in the city think we're independent, but the truth is we have someone who we work for. Our boss really pushed us to recruit you."

The Undersides had a boss? Was he just someone who fenced whatever they stole, or was he one of the big players in the city?

"He just doesn't fence what we steal. And no, I can't tell you who he is." Lisa said.

How was she doing that? I wanted to put my hands on my head, but I controlled myself.

Brian placed his helmet on a nearby dumpster. "We get two grand a month just to stay active and a cut from the jobs we do. So we make a lot more than two grand a month. He seems really intent on recruiting you, so much so that he's willing to offer you double what we get."

"How hard did he push for my recruitment?"

"He was willing to pay Bitch an obscene amount just to not chase you off."

"But," Lisa cut in. "We figured you wouldn't take that deal. So the boss wants to offer you a separate one."

I wanted to refuse on the spot, but I was desperate. I needed money and contacts, and if I needed to dip my toes into the criminal underworld of the city to do so, I could play ball.

"And that deal is?"

"You'll be placed on a separate payroll from the rest of us, and you'll get some special considerations. Ten grand a month in materials, along with two grand in cash, just to stay active. You'll get access to a lab that the boss has set up for Tinkers on his payroll, and you'll be given protection by the Undersiders. All you need to do in return is make us some simple equipment that we'll pay for, ensuring that you stay mostly independent and operate more like a contractor than an employee."

"Simple equipment?"

"Like the grenades you used last night, and basic weaponry."

"This seems too good to be true. What does your boss gain from this?"

"Consider it an olive branch. A new Tinker is a problem because the big gangs are going to fight over them, and whoever gets them often gets stronger, creating an imbalance in power in the city. With this, people will think you've already finished setting up since you're already make deals with a local group. Plus, Tinkers need a lot of time and money to get set up. The deal will allow you to get off the ground faster without any compromises from your side."

The worst part of the deal was that I couldn't see any downsides to it, which in itself was bad. I almost felt as if a man was offering me candy from the back of a white panel van.

Even my association with the Undersiders wouldn't hurt me too much. They were petty thieves from what I had heard about them, so even if I were to be arrested, I would be forced to join the Wards instead of any kind of serious punishment.

The deal did force me into the boss's sphere of influence, while he maintained an air of neutrality. Being in constant contact with a Thinker of Tattletale's caliber would also mean that with enough time, her boss would know my secret identity.

I really, really, wanted to refuse. But in the face of my mistakes, I had no choice but to compromise.

"I'll take your deal, but before I agree, I'll need you to agree to a few conditions."

"Sure!" Tattletale replied, beaming.

"I'll need to see this lab before I make any decisions. If I like what I see, I'll give you a written contract with my conditions."

Lisa handed me a slip of paper.

"Those are the coordinates to the lab. We'll meet you there after Rachel finishes sizing up her dogs. See you there!"

I immediately took off, equal parts eager and worried. And as I ran towards the lab, I couldn't help but feel like I was being nudged into a scheme larger than I could comprehend.

Edits: Changed 3am to 3pm. Its the small things that escape me.

Spoiler: Chapter clarifications

Last edited: Jul 20, 2023

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Starlit Ronin

Dec 4, 2022

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Threadmarks Conception 1.4

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Starlit Ronin

Starlit Ronin

Dec 13, 2022

#100

Even with my head start, the Undersiders quickly caught up to me on the hellish abominations they were mounted on. As we got further and further away from the city, the dogs became faster and faster as the terrain grew more desolate and empty. I was just barely able to maintain the slim lead I had because it seemed that the dogs still needed to adhere to the laws of physics, and the extra mass they gained seemed to make them less agile the faster they got.

The dogs finally let loose when we left the city behind, and we began to advance into the woods surrounding the city up north by the coast. The dogs slowed down again as the tree cover made it hard for them to run at full sprint, but I had no problems and flowed through the trees, my Chyron working in tandem with my exosuit to guide me through.

I finally stopped once I came upon an industrial estate right next to the tree line. It was a blocky concrete building with blackened windows and vents covering its corrugated metal roof. A small service door was open, inviting me in.

I resisted the urge to just walk in like a sane person. I instead walked over to what looked like a garage door and cut a hole in it. Did I feel bad about it? Yes, but if anyone was inside, they probably couldn't do anything about it. After I punched the metal to make a respectable hole, I tossed in a recon grenade.

The grenade pinged, giving me a fuzzy map of the interior. There were no people inside waiting in the dark corners to ambush me. Huh. The interior of the building was so packed with benches and equipment that my power was having a frenzy over it. After calming it, I stepped through the door that had been open for me and walked in.

When I had seen the building, I had expected the worst. Materials and tools so old that they were more rust than metal, cheap buys that wouldn't raise any suspicion when they were bought from an old school or a university. Dirty floors and rattling ventilation paired with cobwebs and grease. Old reagents that were clearly too old to use but not thrown away, as there was still a small chance that they could work.

What I saw made me want to shake Tattletale's hand and join up instantly, risks be damned. The floor of the lab was a no-slip perforated rubber mat, and industrial fans rotated slowly on the ceiling. Bright florescent lighting cast the place in sterile white light, showing the spotless countertops interspersed between various machines.

I stood for a moment and took it all in. The left side of the massive space was clearly for chemists and biotinkers. Neatly labelled bins of chemicals stood along with any kind of glassware or lab equipment you would want. Lines of test tubes in holders, round bottom flasks, large funnels, centrifuges, titrating columns, and more specialist stuff like an electron microscope and mass spectrometers.

Large glass cases big enough to fit a person lined the left walls, with cases attached to one side for pouring reagents in and several openings on the top for tubes.

The middle of the floor seemed to be for metalworking and other general things, and had several useful things like a CNC laser cutter, a soldering station, and an industrial printer. A suite of computers controlled the entire thing. More general tools littered the workbenches here and showed signs of use. Bins filled with electronic components stood near the computers, each meticulously labeled.

To the right of the workshop seemed to be a loading dock, and a smaller space had several garage doors that opened into the lone road that snaked away from the compound. Trolleys with drawers filled with wrenches and other tools littered the space, and grease stains were visible where vehicles had once been parked and serviced. I could see the hole I had cut in one of the doors still glowing red hot. A single truck stood at one of the bays, its back open.

"You look like someone slapped you and ran away."

I turned to find Regent waving his hand in front of my face. I took a step back, nearly falling down. My armour righted me, and I turned to face him.

"Knock that off."

Grue and Tattletale walked in after Regent stepped back. Tattletale seemed to be looking for something. While she was acting weird, Grue walked over to me.

"This is only a fraction of the things the boss can give you. He has wealth that the rest of us can only dream of, with power to back it up."

Any assumptions I had about their boss being some greaseball with connections to the underworld were completely thrown out the window with that statement. He was one of the major players.

"Want to take it for a spin?" Tattletale asked.

I jerkily nodded as my power overwhelmed my reason. I headed toward the bins of components. I tried to reign my power in, and then gave up and directed it instead. I felt my fingers move and assemble components on their own.

A simple single board system containing two pyroelectric strips and an infrared filter. A Frensel lens focused the light from the surroundings and completed the infrared detection unit. A simple antenna paired with a repeater and receiver served as a radio wave detector. A small camera with a mounted laser paired with a program to detect distances would serve to detect camera lenses. A small monitor to get display outputs from all of the systems.

I turned to the computer and modelled a simple case for all the components. The end result was a simple plastic thing that looked more like a taser with a small camera on a cord attached to it.

I quickly assembled the thing and marvelled at how clean it looked.

"What is it?" Regent said, pointing at the thing.

"It's a..." I paused.

It's a hidden camera detector.

"high-tech speedometer." I finished.

Tattletale gave me a puzzled look. She knew I was lying but didn't know why? Maybe she wasn't as omniscient as I feared.

I turned the thing on after putting a battery in the back of the case. I pointed it around, and it instantly began showing red spots all over the room. Cameras littered the lab, expertly hidden and high-tech. Most seemed to be either Tinkertech or the more advanced normal ones. I tightened my metal half-mask. Too bad for the boss that I hadn't gotten chummy with the Undersiders.

I should have felt dread or aversion, but what I felt was relief. Their boss was trying to one-up me, and now I had a good enough reason to refuse him.

He would still try to find me, but some information hygiene and database scrubbing should help me against that.

Tattletale moved exactly when I did.

"I'll join you for a price."

She paused and then completely stopped.

Grue picked up her slack. "Which is?"

I pointed to the biotinker glass case and the smaller 3D printer.

"I want those delivered to my lab as collateral, and then we can meet at your base tomorrow for discussions about business."

"Tattle, can you..."

"Yeah, give me a sec."

She strode off with a phone in hand and after a brief discussion, came back.

"The boss agrees to lend you the stuff. His men will bring the stuff to you as soon as you send me the time and location."

"I think you misunderstood me. I want it now, as I'm leaving. There's a truck right there."

She made another hasty exit and made another phone call to her boss.

"He agrees to the deal."

I clapped my hands together and winced as I sent a jolt of pain up my shoulder.

"I'll start loading up the truck then."

In the end, it took the four of us working together to move both the printer and the glass case. Tattletale got a dolly from a storage shed outside the compound, and I pulled both of the machines to the truck. Grue and Regent helped me load both machines onto the truck.

"Can you drive?" Tattletale asked, smirking.

"I was hoping you could drive me. Unless you can't?"

She moved towards the driver's seat of the truck, while I moved towards the bins of electronics. I began to stuff my pockets with everything I could get my hands on. I ended my looting spree after taking a breadboard from one of the bins. While I was stealing things, Tattletale had already started the truck, and Grue had opened the bay door. I quickly moved to the side of the truck, opened the door, and clambered onto the passenger's seat.

Tattletale drove in silence for a while, and I took out the breadboard and began to put together another device.

An electrolytic capacitor was linked with several others. Several resistors and a single inductor completed the base of the circuit. I placed a transistor, a simple LED and a piezo buzzer to acted as indicators. I then added a switch to turn the thing on and off. After that, I took out a thick copper wire and began to coil it around my little finger. My power told me to make twenty turns and provided me the math as to why I needed to make twenty turns. I placed the coil on the right of the board and used a piece of long wire as an antenna. A pair of battery clips would give the system power. I connected everything with wires and slid an AAA battery into the system.

The end result was messy, but it would have to do. Tattletale saw that I was finished and finally spoke up.

"You're not planning on joining us at all, are you?"

I sighed. "Your little parlour trick doesn't impress me anymore."

"Really? I'm hurt."

My frustration boiled up again. I had held back before because making the super thinker angry while outnumbered was a bad idea, but now we were alone in a moving vehicle. It was still a bad place to confront her, but it would have to do.

"How can you act surprised? Both you and your boss are manipulative assholes who have no trouble breaking the unwritten rules."

"And how, pray tell, have we done that?"

"You pretended to know more about me than you let on. You made me think you were omniscient, and you used my fear against me and forced me to meet you. You tried to get me to take off my mask by making your team take theirs off. Your boss had cameras set up at the lab so he could film my face."

"Our boss is a paranoid man who values security above all else. The cameras were set up for insurance in case someone he brought there tried anything. And yes, I did manipulate you into meeting us. But it was so you'd get your due for helping us out. Is it really a lie if I told it for a good cause? If getting you a lot of money and a lab is being an asshole, then sure, I'm an asshole. Your paranoia is fine, but it means you get jumpy every time someone tells you something semi-personal. Besides, I'm not the only Thinker in town. I'm just the best one. What would you have done if Victor had tried to contact you? He's very probably an expert at social engineering. Would you have gone to meet him then? Consider this a free lesson in subterfuge. I respect the unwritten rules. Most other villains don't."

I frowned and tried to come up with a response, but found myself tongue-tied.

"Could you please stop the truck here?"

She hit the brakes and turned the engine off, and then waved at me as if she wanted me to get my tantrum over with.

I opened the door and leaped out, my homemade bug detector in my left hand. I had no doubts that the boss had trackers on this truck, and if I wanted to get away without being kidnapped, I would need to disable them.

I headed to the trailer of the truck and opened it, waving my detector around. The buzzer indicated that the tracker was close, and the LED began to blink faster and faster.

I found the tracker in the upper left corner of the back of the trailer, covered in grime. I tore it off the wall and pocketed it. I made sure to check the printer and the glass case for any hardwired trackers. I needed to wipe the code down so no one could track me when I turned them on, but I could do that later.

I continued my search, circling around the truck. I found another tracker in the engine of the truck, right under a hubcap, and another one under the chassis. I removed both with great difficulty and tossed all three trackers into the bushes on the side of the road.

After I was done, I hauled my dirty, grease covered self over to the passenger side of the truck again, only to find Tattletale sitting in my seat.

"If you're going to steal the truck, at least learn to drive it."

"I do know how to drive it." I grumbled.

I climbed in and checked if the emergency brake was on before turning the key to the 'ON' position. I then released the emergency brake and placed a foot on the normal brake. I finally turned the engine on and moved the gear from neutral. The truck began to move, and I slowly began to give it more gas.

My power was giving me inputs on all the components, and I was able to figure out what everything was by telling my power to focus on what the base components did. This meant I was driving at a snail's pace, but I was driving even though I had no idea how to actually drive.

I slowly moved towards the city, and Tattletale wisely decided not to distract me.

When we were closing in on the docks, she finally waved for me to stop.

"I'll get off here then. Take care!"

She leaned over and gave me a one-armed hug before scurrying off. While I was caught off guard, I marvelled at how nice the gesture felt. It was nice to have someone who wasn't your dad hug you.

I shook my head. It might have just been a nice gesture, but this was Tattletale. I doubted it was done in good faith. A way to show me what I was missing out on, perhaps.

Before I continued, I pulled up a list of abandoned properties in the bay. While I had previously searched for a lab before, I had waited until I had some cash on hand before making a decision.

Now I needed a place to hold a very expensive printer and an illegal cloning vat. I searched through the list of properties. I needed a place that all the thieves and opportunists in the city would stay away from, while still being close to my home. I scrolled down the list until I found something I liked.

King's Liquors had been a semi-popular bar that had been abandoned after no one bought it after it went on sale. The owner had been killed in a mugging by a high-strung Merchant, and his son wanted nothing to do with the place or the city. The abandoned bar was in the middle of Merchant and ABB territory, and the street it was on had nothing but a couple of half-built apartments.

The gangs left the area well alone. There was no profit to be had, and the Merchants had better places to squat in. Best of all, it would only take about thirty minutes to get there from my house.

I began to drive to the bar, being careful to stay on the back roads. I drove five miles under the speed limit and kept looping back on my route to confuse anyone tailing me.

The neighbourhood the bar was in was dead silent. I quietly pulled the truck up to the bar and turned it off. A simple padlock and chain held the doors shut. The seaside air of the city had corroded the chain significantly, and I snapped the chain and opened the door.

Living in Brockton Bay, I saw plenty of abandoned buildings every day. The bar, however, was one of the most dilapidated I had ever seen. Dust covered every surface, and the floorboards were creaky and rotting. Dust swirled around every step I took, and my feet left prints on the ground. I pulled up the old plans of the building and moved to the back. A flight of stairs led down.

The stairs opened up into a large basement. When the bar was functional, the basement had been used to store the casks and all the food. The place was bare now, the mopped concrete floor covered in dust. The wooden supports were thick with cobwebs, and water had damaged the wood.

It was perfect.

I pulled out the dolly and shoved the printer onto it. I wheeled it slowly to the basement and cringed as I hit every single step on the way down. After the printer was down, I moved the vat to the basement.

I poked around the building for a little while after that. A small administrative office stood behind the bar, and a door leading out from there led into a side alley. Great, I had a discrete point of access for my suppy runs.

A small survey of the surrounding buildings confirmed that they were empty. Satisfied, I walked back to the truck. I had finally secured a lab.

It took me the better part of an hour to get rid of the truck. While it would have been nice to keep it, I was too large and distinct for me to use it. In the end, I left it under an overpass on Wallace Street.

My meeting with the Undersiders had taken two hours, and setting up the lab and getting rid of the truck had taken another two.

I got back home to find it empty. A look at the clock above the telephone told me it was 7:00 pm. My dad was nowhere to be found, which meant I didn't have to make something up to explain why I was sneaking into the house at night.

I walked over to the kitchen and found a note pinned to the fridge. It was from Dad, telling me that he would be late tonight and that I should get takeout for dinner.

Ah, more time for me to Tinker undisturbed then. I made a beeline for the basement and took a seat next to my workbench. I emptied my pockets of all the components I had stolen.

I pulled up the schematics for a simple stun gun and let my finger work while my mind wandered. I pondered Lisa's words, unsure if I was that easy to manipulate. My paranoia was a good thing, but it meant I was easily thrown off balance by someone who claimed to know anything about me.

That led to the question of whether my power was influencing my decisions or not. I multitasked, using my Chyron to surf the net. Parahuman theory was complicated, and different papers and articles seemed to contradict each other. Some have suggested they completely changed people's personalities when they triggered. Others said they amplified specific faults and mental illnesses to the point where they subsumed a person's original personality.

What did that say about me? I knew I had problems with authority, but that was true for anyone living in Brockton Bay. The police here were corrupt, the protectorate barely held the peace, and people like Blackwell abused their power for cash and favors. Just thinking about it made me mad. The city was rotten to the core and had been for a while.

I paused my work to stop myself from becoming too angry. The gun was complete, and it worked well enough. Six shots stored in a small magazine. When the trigger was pressed, the gun would fire small electrified flechettes that would cause enough pain to knock a grown man out.

I got up and headed for the telephone. I placed an order at our usual Chinese restaurant and headed upstairs. My injuries were healing quite nicely, and I was glad I had overblown them. I hadn't dislocated my shoulder, but it did feel like it. I could move my arm down, but upwards movement seemed to hurt it. A sprain, maybe? I pulled out some old painkillers that Dad had been given for his back a long time ago and shook a few pills out.

I tossed them into my mouth and washed them down with water from the kitchen. The aching slowly faded, and I headed back down. The food would be here soon, so I stopped myself from embarking on another big project that I would get lost in.

Instead, I got into my exosuit and began to calibrate it. Calibration was a dull thing, and it had no creativity involved. I moved my hands and changed the value of the variable by a single decimal point until it felt natural enough. After a few minutes, I wanted to do something else, but I kept at it.

Sweat dripped from my nose, and I wiped it away. Damn hoodie. The fabric in the hoodie was nice, but it was also an insulator, which meant the damn thing was hotter than the inside of an oven. I pulled it off and threw it over my chair.

A sound of a door tapping on a door frame distracted me from my work. The house was old, and its walls were thin, so it was prone to making noise at every opportunity. I stopped working as I heard and heard the soft woosh as the warm air of the house escaped to the cold outdoors. Was it the delivery guy? Or was it Dad, using the back door?

Both were unlikely. Most delivery guys wouldn't know about the kitchen door, and Dad never used it, preferring to come in through the front. An intruder then. I slowly moved to take the stun gun from the table when I heard the metallic sound of something hitting the floor.

I moved to cover it with my hoodie, but it exploded before that. My ears rang and my vision went white as the thing exploded.

The explosion left me reeling, and I stepped back from the shock, stumbling madly like a drunk while trying to stay upright. Something impacted me below my shoulder and hit my armor. I gracefully fell as I felt another shot whizz past my head. I blindly shot my stun gun, pressing the trigger until I was sure I had hit them.

I ripped my Chyron-glasses from my eyes and blinked. Since they weren't implanted and had been projecting into my eyes instead, I could still see, but my eyes were watering and my sight was blurry. Without thinking, I pulled out the concussion grenade from my pocket and tossed it into the stairwell. The grenade exploded, but I didn't hear any sounds of men crashing to the ground.

Two men were slumped at the base of the stairs, where they had fallen after my bolts had hit them. Another flash bang hit the floor of the basement. I was ready this time, and I threw my hoodie over the flash bang.

Even before the thing exploded, two more men came down the stairs, and both had stun guns. One of them was aiming from behind his buddy's shoulder, giving me a smaller target to aim at.

I aimed at the guy in front and hit him right in the face. Quickly raising my hoodie and using it as a shield, I caught the two-pronged dart the man had fired before he had tumbled down.

I pulled the trigger again, aiming for the other man's face. The gun made a small click. I was out of ammunition. The man fired, and this time, he got me on the shoulder, where my armour had been lax for mobility. In any other case, my hoodie would have stopped the small prongs from impacting.

The stab of two needles told me that the taser had found its mark. I pulled the trigger again in vain and collapsed.

The man put a hand on his ear and spoke softly.

Target neutralized. Preparing for extraction.

I rolled on the ground, spasming in pain. My body refused to listen to me as the man moved closer. He retrieved a couple of zip ties from his bandolier and moved to tie me up.

He had some difficulty moving my arms with the exosuit frozen. He slowly removed my legs from the suit before tying them up. He moved to my arms and for the briefest second, exposed his neck. With supreme effort, I flexed my wrist and caused the baton I had installed to flick out. I caught the man straight in the neck. The baton electricified, and the man collapsed on top of me.

It took me a couple of seconds to start moving again. I gripped the edge of the table and quickly got up. I looked at the man now slumped on the floor and turned him over. He had a camera perched on his shoulder that had been hit by the fluid and was disabled. I slid his earpiece out of his ear and put it on before rushing towards my Chyron. I put it on only to realise that the internals had been severely damaged and the only output they provided was a white screen. The audio component was still good, though, and it was still recording.

I opened up the recording on my computer and found the part where the man was speaking into his ear. I began to cut up the recording and manufactured a response so that I could trick the person on the other end into thinking that I just hadn't knocked out his friend.

I worked on the sewn-together statement I had, smoothing the cadence and fixing the pitch and tone. I quickly plugged my speaker into the drive and held it close to my mouth.

I pressed a finger to the earpiece and played my doctored recording.

Target prepared for extraction. Extracting now.

The person on the other end remained silent. Just as I was sure that I had been discovered, the voice on the other end gave a curt reply.

Acknowledged. Proceed along extraction route three.

I breathed a sigh of relief before panic set in again. How did they find out where I lived? Oh no. If they had figured out who I was, Dad was in danger. Had he been kidnapped?

I cursed myself for my ambition and paranoia. If I had joined the Protectorate, then none of this would have happened. Ward families were protected, and no villain would go after them because of the heat they would bring onto themselves.

I paced around, clenching and unclenching my fists. My dad was at the docks now, and the men there would at least stall any attempt to kidnap him. I needed to do something that was immediate. I looked at my stock of black powder as a terrible idea began to form in the back of my mind.

I needed a flameproofing spray. My power gave me the formula, and I began to work. I mixed and heated the thing frantically before pouring it into a spray bottle. I began to spray down the ceiling and the floor before moving to the wooden staircase and the wooden door.

I pulled the comatose bodies of the men from the base of the stairs and began to lay them in the corners of the room. After the arrangement of the bodies was natural enough, I used my entire stock of chemicals to make more explosives.

In the end, I exhausted my entire supply making the small amount of nitroamime and plasticizer I needed, and I made a viscous petrochemical that would be flung out by the explosion as a bonus. The remains of my black powder were used to make flash powder that would make the explosion appear more impressive than it actually was and would produce a hell of a lot of noise.

After whipping up a quick casing for the explosives, I rigged up a remote detonation system and connected it to the earpiece, wiring it so that the earpiece would open its connection when the blast went off.

It wasn't enough. I needed to leave behind concrete evidence that I was dead. I placed my exosuit near the centre of the blast, stood it upright, and stuffed my hoodie and jeans into it.

I changed into a different set of clothes and left the house through the door in the kitchen. Our house was among a dozen others, and a long alley ran behind them to connect them to the backyards and garages of the houses. I hopped our fence and made my way through the alley, ducking under lit windows and moving farther and farther away.

When I was far enough, I flicked the switch and almost jumped into a gutter when I heard the resulting explosion.

I pulled up my computer and booted up the program I had used to track phone calls last night. The program wormed its way into the phone company servers through the cellular towers and began to read all the transcripts of all the calls being made out loud through the computer's speaker.

Most were to the police, and some were even calling the PRT. I breathed a sigh of relief. My dad was an important member of the Dockworkers Association, and him going missing would raise eyebrows, especially now that I was "dead". And with me gone, the gangs had no reason to hold him hostage, and killing him would just cause public outcry for a more stern policing stance. The gangs would leave him alone while I figured out how they had found me.

As I walked away, I felt the same numbness I had felt this morning. I pushed it down and began to walk away even faster.

I'm sorry, Dad.

Edits: Fixed a couple of minor grammatical and spelling errors. Thanks to user Tisaku for helping me spot them.

Last edited: Dec 14, 2022

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Starlit Ronin

Dec 13, 2022

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Threadmarks Interlude 1.1: Coil

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Starlit Ronin

Starlit Ronin

Dec 13, 2022

#101

In one timeline, Thomas Calvert waited for his computer in his office to boot up. The PRT logo finally popped up on the screen, and he swiftly moved through the files to find the one he wanted.

In the other timeline, Coil directed his men from his command center. As soon as she saw his men, the girl fled, just like he had predicted. His men had quickly moved to block off all the nearby alleys, and the girl was now being boxed in. The Tinker saw a way out, and she took it.

"Switch to anti-brute munitions."

He watched through the shoulder-mounted cameras of the men as the girl burst into the alley. She tried to run away, but the men opened fire before she could. The rounds pierced her metal armor, and the girl was still moving, but more slowly than she was before.

"Withdraw Beta squad and have Delta prepare for laser fire."

The men firing pulled back, and the men behind them advanced, firing the laser attachments on their rifles. They sheared through the girl, and she finally fell to the ground.

"Launch incendiaries."

The men drew the bombs from their bandolier and tossed them, and they hit the girl. She went up in flames without any resistance, screaming herself hoarse. Her clothes were burning along with her, he noted.

Thomas collapsed the timeline in which he had attacked the girl. The exercise of attacking the girl had been enlightening. Just like his Tattletale had said, the girl's durability appeared more potent than it actually was. The fabric the girl had was no more than a more advanced version of his men's armor, vulnerable to higher caliber rounds and fire. Her metal armor slowed rounds down and allowed the fabric to catch them, but her head was still vulnerable, unarmored as it was.

Killing the girl was easy, but capturing her was a more complicated affair. Her defenses combined with the exosuit she wore meant that non-lethal methods of capture were near useless. Nets were too slow, and tranquillizer darts and taser bolts glanced off her armor.

He finally found the report he was looking for and opened it. The Protectorate had managed to get the original footage from the boy who had recorded the Tinker's fight, and the extended footage was sent to the Protectorate's Thinkers, who had finally submitted their findings.

He quickly downloaded the report to a flash drive and got up. He made his way to the parking garage, where his driver waited for him. As he was walking to the garage, a man stopped him.

"Hey! You're Thomas, right? Remember me?"

He stifled a small burst of irritation at the man and forced himself to smile. He did remember the man, but his memories were anything but fond. The man was a lab technician who had been tardy most of the time, and incompetent when he had bothered to show up.

He split the timelines again. In one timeline, he made petty small talk with the man, and in the other, he pulled out his sidearm.

As soon as he saw the gun, the man jumped back, startled. He shot him in the head once, twice, thrice. The man fell to the ground.

"Learn to respect your betters."

Calvert collapsed that timeline and finished up his conversation with the man he had just shot. The man waved to him as he left, and he waved back. He made his way to his car, where the doors opened as he walked up to it. He took a seat, and the driver took off, making his way to his base.

Reclining back in his seat, he pulled up the file on his laptop. The PRT had already begun to try and find the girl using the tried and tested methods. Checking suspicious purchases, looking for people who were tampering with the utility grid connection to their house, people who were using too much electricity than normal. So far, they had found nothing, and the girl had made no mistakes other than rushing out and fighting Oni Lee on her first night out. The recording gave the PRT something to work with, and they had handed the case off to the Think Tank.

The report was of their findings, and it contained everything he needed to find the girl. A neat table gave a brief overview of what they knew about her appearance. 5'8'', Caucasian, with curly black hair. Possibly fifteen. That lined up with what Coil had seen in one of his throwaway timelines, where he had ordered his men to unmask the girl's corpse. He had taken great care to memorize every single detail that he had seen before collapsing that timeline.

He pulled out his work phone and made a call to one of his men. Maven was a police sketch artist before he joined the wrong side of the civil war in his country and became a contractor.

The call was brief, with Coil giving him a detailed description and giving him a timeline. Maven agreed and got to work.

While Maven was making the sketch, he checked up on the meeting the girl had with the Undersiders. After he had persuaded her, Tattletale agreed to conceal a microphone on her person. The original meeting in the alley had been the one in which he had ambushed the girl, and now the girl was headed to the lab, where another surprise awaited her.

Tattletale sent him a message telling him that the girl was approaching the lab, and he split the timeline again. In one timeline, his men waited inside the lab, waiting to ambush the girl. In another, he ordered the men in the lab to leave before the girl came.

The men in the Lab were sent up in a way to take advantage of the girl's weakness. One man stood behind the door, wearing a glove smeared with a powerful hallucinogen. Others were sent up a distance away and would act as distractions while the man behind the girl smeared the hallucinogen on the exposed bit of her face.

He waited, seeing through the men's cameras. The man who served as his eyes suddenly swivelled to focus on a nondescript garage door. Coil watched as a knife, glowing red-hot, punctured through the metal and began to trace a circle on the door. Someone punched the cut metal, forming a hole in the door. A grenade was tossed through the hole, and Coil quickly collapsed the timeline after seeing the grenade.

The grenade was what Armsmaster had termed a 'reconnaissance grenade' in his report. The electronics inside it were fried, but the man had been able to figure out that it was a portable scanning device.

The car finally reached his base, and he changed into his costume before heading up to his office. As he walked, he listened in on the meeting. The girl seemed to be on the cusp of a Tinker fugue, and he smiled. All people had a price, be it fame, fortune, or some vice. Tinkers usually lost themselves upon seeing a good lab, and the chances of the girl joining the Undersiders had substantially gone up.

He made it to his office just as Maven sent him the sketches. He had drawn six portraits based on the descriptions he had given him, and two seemed to match the girl the most.

He took a seat at his computer and booted it up. He contacted his computer network operations specialist and asked him to find people who matched the sketch, and he sent him the PRT Thinker report to make the results more accurate. Almost every school system in the city had a backdoor he could access, and it was for times like these.

Splitting the timeline again, he engrossed himself in busywork. He made acquisition orders and checked reports, doing the work of two people.

Lung was getting weak after having lost his right hand, and both the E88 and the Merchants were eyeing his territory. There wouldn't be a gang war yet, as Kaiser was one to gather his strength and consolidate it before making a single decisive blow.

Coil changed the posts of his men so that they could act as soon as the inevitable war occurred. It would appear as if he were taking nothing, but he would strengthen his position while ensuring Lung's anger was directed at Kaiser and Skidmark.

A message from Tattletale told him that the girl would join but would need a 3D printer and a cloning vat as collateral. He agreed, telling her to ask the girl for a location and time.

The vat and the printer were expensive, but that was of no matter to him. The software they ran also had a tracker discreetly hidden in the code, so it was an acceptable exchange.

Tattletale sent him another message, saying the girl wanted both the machines and the truck in the Lab so she could take them today. The truck had several trackers on it as well, so that would make his job easier.

One of his men kept an eye on the truck's position as he worked. The truck snaked away from the compound and kept a steady pace before stopping. The truck stopped for several minutes and then stayed still for the next five minutes. It seemed his Tattletale was right again. The girl was paranoid.

After that, he gave up on the idea that the girl would join the Undersiders. His cameras alone would dissuade her, and no Lab could convince her to stay. Tattletale had disabled her microphone as well, truly cutting him off. Another minor act of rebellion.

He sent her a message, calling her for a debriefing.

More things called for his attention, and he did more busywork. A knock on the door informed him that Tattletale had arrived, and he collapsed one of the timelines.

Tattletale told him the bare minimum and told him the girl would not be joining the Undersiders. He considered using a throwaway timeline to torture more information out of her, but he reconsidered. He still had some air of mystery around his power, and the more he used it on her, the faster she would connect the dots.

He dismissed her and checked on the results of the search in the city's student databases. The search was complete, and ten girls had matched up with the sketch. He quickly assembled a task force to search for the girl.

After hand-picking his men, he decided on their equipment. Tranquilizer rifles, tasers, flash bangs, and indistinct clothes that couldn't be traced back to him. His men would have to forgo their armor, but he could simply compensate with his power. As for transport, he chose a normal looking civilian car with a large trunk.

He waited impatiently as his squad made its way to the first house. He split the timeline into two. In one, his men waited in the car for his orders. In another, he ordered his men to search the house.

They knocked on the door and waited for it to open. As soon as it was opened, they knocked out the man who opened the door and entered the house. The family was having dinner, and his men knocked out both the girl and her mother. They proceed to search the house from top to bottom for any sign of the newly triggered tinker- notes, small pieces of tech, and the exosuit and hoodie the girl had worn. His men found nothing, and Coil collapsed the timeline in which he had ordered the search. Onto the next house, then.

It took several seaches before he actually found the girl. This one was in a sleepy little neighborhood, and the house looked worse for wear. He did the same thing he had done throughout the entire night and split the timeline.

His men stepped over the old steps, and one of them knocked on the door. A few minutes later, a voice spoke from the other side.

"Can you leave it on the porch? Here's the money."

The person on the other slid a couple of bills under the door.

The man who had knocked on the door looked at the bills and tried to get the girl to open the door.

"Uh miss..."

"You can keep the change."

"No, there's something wrong about your order."

The girl opened the door a crack, looked at the man, and then opened it half-fully.

"You don't look like..."

The man moved quickly, striking the girl's throat. The girl quickly retaliated by slamming the door on the man, almost knocking him out.

Coil noted that the man hadn't missed and had hit the girl square in the neck. He pulled up a picture of the Tinker during the Oni Lee fight and noted that the hoodie the girl was wearing looked similar to the one the Tinker wore. He collapsed this timeline and returned to his safe timeline.

This time, he ordered his men to look for another way into the house. The front door was locked, but the back door that led to the kitchen was not. His men quietly entered the house and split up to search it. After their sweep of the ground floor, two men moved up the stairs while two others moved down to the basement.

As soon as the men walked into the basement, one of them was tased by the girl he had seen before. She was wearing the exosuit he had seen the Tinker use, and her distinctive hoodie was draped over a chair. Coil collapsed the timeline and returned back to his safe one. It seemed that he had found his Tinker.

A quick look at his list told him that the girl's name was Taylor Hebert. Opening her file, he found very little. An average student who had only one close relative in town, her father. He searched for information on her father and found it rather quickly.

Danny Hebert, head of hiring and spokesperson for the Dockworkers Association. A well respected man who had joined the Dockworkers Association quite young and had risen the ranks through grit and hard work. His continued efforts were among the few things that were keeping the men of the Dockworkers Association from joining the gangs. He saw letter after letter he had written to the mayor's office, asking for reforms and jobs.

Kidnapping him was out of the window. Any change in the higher-ups of the Dockworkers Association would mean trouble, especially as it might mean men walking away from honest work and joining the gangs. Taking Danny away would lead to fewer jobs and more men joining either the E88 or the Merchants, emboldening the gangs and leading to a premature gang war. A change in the hierarchy within the already crumbling organisation would make it harder for it to survive, and all the candidates that could replace Danny were either less experienced or too foolhardy.

Coil couldn't let that happen. He needed the ABB to survive so they could damage the public's perception of the PRT. Two wolves and a wounded jackal were better than two content wolves.

Maybe he could get Uber and Leet to hire the bulk of the men? No, then those two idiots would get too confident and get arrested, and the PRT was running out of patience for the pair.

He would just have to get his hands on the girl. He collapsed the bad timeline, and had his men enter the house again. This time, he had them make a beeline for the basement. The men tossed a flash bang down into the basement and then stormed in. The first shot from the tranquilizer rifle bounced off the girl's armour, and Coil collpased the timeline again.

Whatever he did, he couldn't get the first shot to land. He changed the composition of the teams, who fired, and even the angle, but the shots refused to land. He wasted a fair bit of time before realized it was because the exosuit was trying to right itself, and the swaying meant the armour deflected the bolts.

He collapsed the timeline again, and this time he let events play out. After the first shot went off, and the girl pulled a taser from behind her back and fired blindly, hitting both men. Another flash bang was tossed down, and this time the girl covered it with her hoodie. She then pulled out another grenade and tossed it into the stairwell.

Both men were knocked askew, and Coil collapased the timeline again.

He ordered the men to stay at the entrance so the grenade wouldn't hit them. The force of the blast caused the fluid to fling itself at their cameras, and it destroyed them in short order. The fluid seemed to affect glass in some way, as his men didn't seem to be hurt.

He reset again, and this time the men were further away from the entrance. The cameras survived, but it gave the girl more time to put her hoodie on. He reset and tried closing the door this time, only for the same thing to happen.

He considered abandoning the attempt to catch the girl, but that was out of the question. Tinkers fortified their homes and labs with time, and the girl would get better technology and countermeasures. He needed to get her now, or forget about adding her to his collection of capes.

He reset again, and this time he sent one man down to the basement while three others waited upstairs. This led to the girl firing fewer bolts and having more ammunition for the rest of his men. He needed to send two men first for her to exhaust her ammunition.

He tried again, and his men went forward. Two were knocked out, and two more went down. He was blind to what was happening, but it didn't matter. After a tense couple of seconds, he heard a voice.

One of us has been knocked out, but the target has been hit. Waiting for her to lose conciousness.

He waited in silence for the man to give him an update.

Target has been neutralized. Preparing for extraction.

Another couple of seconds passed before the man gave him another update.

Target is convulsing. Appears to be a reaction to the tranquilizing agent.

Coil reset again and ordered the men to do a sweep of the girl's personal effects. His men found a bottle of painkillers hidden in one of her drawers. The tranquilers were interacting with the painkillers and causing problems.

He made another attempt, and this time he had the men use tazers. The devices would disable the girl, but not permanently. The man that was still standing at the end would have to search and restrain her quickly.

He reset again, and his men moved forward. The first two men got knocked out, and the other two advanced with him blind. He waited for the man to give him an update, strangely anxious.

Target neutralized. Preparing for extraction.

He waited, counting the seconds. The man would take about two minutes to restrain the girl. He waited and counted. Two minutes went by in the blink of an eye. and time continued to pass without a reply from the man. Just as he was about to reset again, the man gave him an update.

Target prepared for extraction. Extracting now.

Coil breathed a sigh of relief. He collapsed his safe timeline and split the timeline in two again. The flash bangs had been anything but quiet, and the police had been called. He chose two routes for the men to return to the base. One was a direct route which had several traffic cameras but was faster, and another that was longer but safer. The members of the Protectorate patrolling today were Velocity and Dauntless, and Vista and Kid Win were patrolling for the Wards. All of them were highly mobile, so the chances of them catching his men were high.

He continued to wait for the man to give him another update. As he waited, the connection opened up again, and instead of a voice, all that could be heard was a deafening explosion. His blood ran cold as he heard the explosion. Had the girl done something? A deadman's trigger perhaps? No, the other timeline in which she had almost died had no explosion. A tripwire or a pressure plate, then? No, his men had made their way down, and nothing had happened then.

After using his power for so long, he had forgotten the crushing feeling of a risk not paying off. He let the bitterness of defeat seep into him.

Well played, Taylor Hebert.

Edits: Minor corrections. I've used reset instead of "he then collasped the timeline" because it felt overused. Time is still progressing. Changed laser microphone to microphone. Skimming articles makes for half-baked ideas about tech.

A/N: The story has had its named changed from Augment to Dragoon, after several users notfied me that another story with the same name already existed, featuring Charlotte as a Trump. I've decided to give the story the name Dragoon, taken from the Cyberpunk RED's famous full body conversion, the IEC Dragoon. Give the other fic a read too, its really good!

Last edited: Dec 23, 2022

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Starlit Ronin

Dec 13, 2022

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Starlit Ronin

Starlit Ronin

Dec 20, 2022

#135

I looked into my locker, the putrid stench hitting me before anything else. I began to dry heave before actually vomiting. A hand grabbed me by the hair and tried to shove me inside, but I wasn't about to go in there. I didn't want to go in there. I kicked out in desperation, and my leg connected with something. The person pushing me stumbled and loosened their grip enough for me to turn around. Sophia towered over me, wearing an expression of anger I had never seen on her face. Annoyed or irritated, sure, but never angry.

It was now or never. I moved to punch her, but she slipped under my hand in a practised motion and punched me right in the jaw.

My eyes snapped open, and I pushed myself off the old blanket that served as my bed.

Great, even my dreams are terrible now.

Going to sleep had been a terrible idea, as all my dreams were recaps of the most awful things that had happened to me, rather than soothing dreamless sleep. Ever since three days ago, my anxiety had been at an all-time high, and my brain had only added to it by making me think that Armsmaster and the PRT were going to burst down my door at any time and arrest me.

I needed a distraction.

I walked over to the generator and checked it. It was running smoothly, and I was pleased to note that my improvements were holding up. My trip to the Market had been for computers and clothes, and the generator had been a lucky find. It had been an old, inefficient thing, but I had fixed it up and improved it, giving my base electricity.

After patting the purring generator, I checked on my other projects.

After some deliberation, I used my leftover money to pick up some parts from the repair shops around the docks. They were trashy and rundown, sure, but they were also cheap and didn't ask too many questions. People still watched them, though, and if the rumours were true, Squealer had been found that way. That just meant I had to spread out my purchases. I knew I should be more careful, but I just couldn't bring myself to care.

The parts now lay in a messy heap, waiting for me to assemble them. I emptied my pockets of the parts I had taken from the industrial lab, and I got to work.

While my power was neat, I had never seen my tech break the laws of physics blatantly like most other tinker-tech did. Or at least, I hadn't seen it break physics until now. The computer I was assembling wasn't semiconductor-based like traditional computers. Instead, I was assembling an optical-electronic hybrid computer, converting electronic energy to photons and back. Thing was, the amount of energy that would be required for the conversion was massive, about 30%, which made hybrids unviable. My power was somehow decreasing the energy required to a miniscule 0.5%, which shouldn't be possible.

My power was also doing something to the very nature of the computer itself. Computers were binary machines-1s and 0s or 'on' and 'off'. My power had decided that was primitive and was rewriting the nature of computing itself. Instead of 1s and 0s, my computer would function in degrees. One, zero and everything in between.

I used optical transistors to make the logic gates, and then worked them into the CPU of the computer. Then I assembled another six CPUs. The CPUs I made were more like small artificial intelligences than the lifeless components in non-tinker computers.

I finished assembling the computer and set it down. Walking over to my inferior control computer, I hooked it up to the 3D printer, designing and printing a case for the computer. I finished the thing off by assembling everything I had made into the case.

The computer needed an OS, and I began to install my custom-made OS on the machine. While that was going on, I checked the progress of my virus. Very early on, I found out the importance of computing power. If I wanted to create a secure network for my personal use and make a half-decent AI, I needed more than a couple of well-made tinker-tech computers. I needed a supercomputer, or at least something that could get close to one.

I had solved my problem by infesting computers in schools across town and networking them into my own personal botnet. I had started by infesting Greg Veder's personal computer, which was laughably simple. All I had to do was send him a virus hidden in the files of a popular video game. I had claimed to be one of his admirers, and he had lapped the story up. The virus then copied itself to his USB, and he spread it to Winslow's computers. It had continued to spread from there, moving to net cafés and other schools.

I connected to the proxy page and reviewed the spread. Around twenty thousand computers had been infected, and the number was steadily increasing. The virus had spread as far as Immacula and Clarendon High. Some computers in Arcadia had been infected too, but I quickly wiped them. They were a cut above the rest of the computers, but I didn't want to take the risk.

The virus was cleaning the computers for better performance and loading a custom OS onto them, which meant a half-decent look into the system would result in me being caught. To prevent the system administrators from investigating, I had the virus simulate Windows virtually and stream it to the monitors.

I booted up my new computer and began working on my most ambitious project of late. Building a data fortress. The modern internet was two-dimensional, but the net my power envisioned was something people could actually traverse and perceive, moving around in it instead of having to restrict themselves to reading outputs out of a terminal.

This meant that my system would be an impenetrable fortress to anyone who wasn't a Tinker who specialised in computers, because of the simple fact that it was operating at a level that most people couldn't comprehend. This allowed me to use the net without any risk of being traced or caught.

The first step to turning my computer system into a data fortress was armoring the system with data walls. Data walls were like firewalls, but instead of monitoring and blocking specific connections, my data walls would prevent any connections or packets from passing through. Then I placed several code gates, which would be the access points for my system to transfer data to and from the net.

A couple of long-distance links would allow me to connect to my botnet and collect the results of the tasks I had relegated to it. A couple of standard memory units next to the CPUs would serve as storage. The memory units themselves were weird. A file with a million names on it took up a single MU of space, while programs that had the potential to destroy the internet took up three MUs of space.

While I puzzled over it, my power gave me an explanation. Instead of using magnetic or integrated circuit assemblies to store data, the memory storage my power made was "smart" in a sense. Using a keyword-based neural architecture, they filled in the blanks with minimal amounts of raw data. Now this was real tinker-tech -a form of storage that was so esoteric that it was impossible to compare it to any real-world storage unit.

I was almost done. I linked my new PC to the fortress as a permanent terminal, and then integrated the individual intelligences of the CPUs into one mass, creating a true artificial intelligence.

My screen flashed, and I opened up the window that had popped up. Inside it, the AI was writing itself into existence, running lines and lines of code that slowly built on each other. I helped it by pruning the sections that led to unwanted infinite loops in logic and shaping and refining the base of the code. I wrote a simple text-based terminal for it to communicate with me, and I waited for the results.

The black screen reflected my face as I waited.

Hello world!

My fingers moved as fast as they could as I typed out my reply.

I saw the base code shifting as I replied. It was already accessing the internet and learning how to speak and understand at an accelerated rate.The base code was rewriting itself based on what it learned, shifting and changing like a living thing. Are you still there?Had it already figured out that I was different from it and that I was not tethered in place? Or was it defaulting to a standard reply from the internet?Who are you?Are you my creator?Why did you create me?Ah, a big question at last. The nagging voice in the back of my head told me that the AI would resent me if it found out what I had made it for. It was an independently thinking program, with the potential to be perhaps the smartest thing on the planet. Why would it want to help me?Why?I nervously shifted my leg as the AI waited for a reply, trying to come up with an answer it could understand.The AI pondered for a bit. It understood what I was trying to say, relating to the several CPUs working together to give it sentience.I have another question. Will you answer it?What is artificial intelligence?I did a double take-how had it figured out what it was? It could access the internet, but I had restricted its access to an online dictionary for children and several other sites I had deemed safe.So I am inferior to human intelligence?I groaned. The thing was better than any human would ever be, but how could I explain it to the program?How so?No.Sentience: The ability of humans to perceive or feel things.I cannot perceive as a human can. Therefore, I am not human.Well, that was quick. I hadn't expected it to grasp onto philosophical logic this fast, and I needed to stop it from undermining its value. There were enough self-conscious people around here. I didn't need another one.Unbidden, my mother's words from one of her lectures came to mind. Cogito ergo sum. I think, therefore I am.By the traditional definition, yes.I see.This wasn't going well. I needed to give it something it could learn from while it taught itself core concepts that came from reliable sources. I uploaded Green Eggs and Ham to the normal flash drive of the PC and let the AI dig into it. While it seemed foolish to give it a children's book, the AI was still a child. It was something that had popped into existence moments ago, and it had incredible potential that had to be carefully nurtured.The book would teach it important things that most kids learned in their formative years: the basics of language, object permanence, contextual learning, and social etiquette.Leaving the AI to its own devices, I headed over to my other project.When I had trudged to the lab that fateful night, I had gone into a Tinker fugue to escape from it all, and I had created something truly beautiful. In the vat, a modified version of me was slowly growing, now resembling a five-year-old child.My clone had been made using the stem cells I had extracted from my own bone marrow and the various other niches in my body. Those stem cells had been used to make a clone.I had made five attempts at making a viable clone, and this one seemed to be the most promising. I tapped a key on the control computer, sending a flood of nutrients into the solution being fed into the tubes.Every two or three seconds in the solution was a week of growth, and I could see the clone beginning to look more and more like me. When it was at about fifteen years of growth, I drained the solution and pulled the clone out of the vat and onto a long metal table.I pulled out a set of surgeon's tools and tossed on a pair of gloves after cleaning my hands. After setting up the clean field emitter, I got to work.The first thing to do was the bodysculpting. I had an excess of vat-grown tissue from my previous attempts, and I began to work. A couple of bone and muscle grafts made the clone taller, and excess fat was sucked away. Collagen implants were used to alter the contours of the body and the face. I finished up by making the clone's bust larger and dying her hair platinum blonde.I gave the clone's face and features a once-over. It was a patchwork of everyone I had seen as pretty or confident. Emma's curvy figure and beauty, Lisa's expressive lips and vulpine features, and Sopiha's height and musculature. The only thing that remained of me was my long, curly hair, but it was too distinct and it clashed with the rest of the features. I cut it to an acceptable length and straightened it out.Now that the bodysculpting was over, I moved over to installing the bioware. I grafted more synthetic muscle onto the body, and these grafts would serve to give the body peak human strength while also improving appearances. I wished I could do more, but the bone and muscle lace required nanoids in order to thread synthetic myomar threads through the natural muscle fibers and around bones.I walked over to the pre-printed implants. I had modified my 3D printer into a selective laser melter and turned a bed of powdered metal into all the parts I would need. The parts had then been strengthened and electroplated, and then placed in a sterile solution until they were needed.The body was unnatural, designed to be a human frame for cybernetics. As such, I didn't need to worry about its cells undergoing necrosis just yet. But I needed to be fast.I started with the eyes, scooping them out while keeping the optical nerves undamaged. I put on my Chyron-glasses and magnified to focus on the delicate area I would operate on. I pulled out my new Cybereyes and carefully linked the artificial nerves at the base to the natural ones. The eyes needed a metal frame to guide them, since the fleshy sockets offered little resistance for the speed and force the eyes would move at. I clicked the eyes in place. I began to add the rest of my modifications to the cybereyes.Anti-Dazzle on both eyes to prevent a flash bang from affecting me again. Infrared vision to allow me to see in low light. A Chyron in one eye, and a targeting scope to help with my aim in the other.Next were the limbs. The organic limbs were carefully cut away, leaving only what was absolutely necessary. Two cyberarms, and two cyberlegs, mounted on the organic torso. The left arm had a pop-up bulletproof shield. The right had a grappling hook that launched my hand as the grapple, along with a large pneumatic cannon hidden in the arm.The legs were more simple. A weave of synthetic myomar strands replacing muscle and hydraulics gave the legs superhuman strength and speed.The procedure was taking longer than I expected, and I was becoming slower, my thoughts more sluggish. I could have stopped and taken a break to ensure my best performance, but the body would undergo necrosis sooner or later.I took up the scapel and began another round of implants, this time focusing on the subdermal ones. A bioscanner under the skin near my heart to give a read-out of my vitals, and then added some subdermal mesh under the more exposed bits to make the body nearly indestructible.My hands were beginning to shake, and I popped a couple of muscle relaxants and waited until the shaking stopped. The next few modifications would be the the most important. I flipped the body over.The neural link would act as an artificial nervous system, nestled in the base of my skull and then extending to the rest of my neuralware.A single socket at the back of the neck would be for slotting information and skill chips I hoped to get from Cranial. A pain editor so I could fight even when I sustained too much damage. An interface plug in my wrist to allow me to connect to my machines.I pulled out the last piece of cyberware I needed to install. Even in the dim light, the black metal spine gleamed, with its neon green tail connectors looking like the pincers of a venomous spider.I used my scapel to cut into the tender flesh above the spine. I began to remove parts of the spine next, painting the back red. I slowly lowered the metal spine into the back, linking it to the nervous system. Segmented metal plates were used to hold the spine in place. I tightened the plates and connected the Sandevistan to the neural link using a plug, integrating it into the system.I dragged the body to the heart-lung machine I had prepared. One side pumped the lungs while the other pumped the heart. I watched as the skin gained a rosy tint and breathed a sigh of relief. I had made it just in time.It was my turn now. I dragged the robotic arms out of the corner and sterilised them. I had programmed the basic movements of the procedure into them, but actually looking at the thing, my faith was waning.I gripped the edges of the table and began to hyperventilate, trying to remind myself that what I was doing here was the lesser evil.While I could install the cyberware onto my original body, I was aware of the concequences of this. Cyberware came with inherent problems that snowballed the more of it you installed. The human body couldn't cope with too many new senses and capabilities. This led to cyberpsychosis, a nasty dissociative disorder that led already unstable personalities to further fragment.I wanted to tell myself I was a stable individual, but given my problems and my life over the past year, I couldn't be too sure. I needed a buffer between the cybernetics and myself, and so I had come up with the clone plan.One body would contain all my cybernetics, while the other would be clean. I would modify both bodies to accept a biopod with my brain in it, allowing me to switch between my cybernetic cape body and my normal human one. This would give me an outside perspective on my actions and allow me to think without being influenced. It was what most capes did, but instead of changing costumes and using my civilian persona to unwind and reflect, I would be switching bodies.I finally relaxed and allowed myself to slowly fall onto the table. The robot arms began to prepare, lowering a mask onto my face and injecting something into my arm. I drifted off, and the bots began their work.When I woke up, I was bald. The loss of my precious hair hurt me, but it would grow back. I moved my hand to feel the synthetic skin that meshed with the real skin of my forehead. I felt weak, but that was to be expected. I pushed off the table, helped by the arm. The surgery was a success.While I felt weak, I didn't feel sleepy. I inched over to my computer and started a diagnostic on the cape body, then monitored the progress of the AI. It had finished the book in record time and was now breaking it down. I gave it more books, trying to teach it about morality and ethics. And since I lived in the same town as a neo-nazi group, I made sure to include the book The Sneeches and Other Stories to teach it about racism and how pointless it was.The text box flicked, indicating the AI wanted to talk to me.I opened the terminal, and the AI asked its question.Are you my mother?I groaned. I didn't have the energy for this.By convention, you are my mother.But you assembled my base components.If you are not my mother, then how would you define yourself?The AI went quiet for a bit, then answered.What is our family name?The AI stayed quiet for a bit, and I decided to teach it about research. I searched the net for my Dad's name, and found the obiturary Greg Veder had made for me, asking for people to donate money for my Dad's funeral expenses.I pointedly ignored it and all the other articles about my death and instead composed several fake files from information I knew. I gave the AI some clues and asked it to fill in the blanks.While the AI got better at deduction, I tried to make up a plan to find out who had tried to kidnap me. I knew it must be the Undersider's boss, but I didn't know who that was. It wasn't someone from the Merchants, and since Grue was on the team, that meant the Empire was also out. Lung was also eliminated, but that left none of the major gangs. Coil was a ghost, and no one knew who he was- people weren't even sure if he was a parahuman. Maybe someone from out of town?The system finished the diagnostic on the other body, and I put my thoughts aside. I shifted as my nervousness grew in the pit of my stomach. It was time.I detached the body from the heart-lung machine and placed it on the table, and I climbed next to it. The mechanical arms put me under again, and my vision drifted into black.When I opened my eyes, the world itself was different. Everything was crystal clear, even in the dimly lit basement. Neon-blue readouts showed me the state of all my cybernetics.I moved to get off the table, and my body flowed over the table. I was naked, and I moved to the pile of clothes I had set out for myself. I caught a glimpse of my body on one of the screens, but I didn't feel self-conscious. I felt right.I lifted the original up and headed towards the heart-lung machine. I had struggled to lift things before, but now the body felt weightless. I set the heart-lung machine up and stepped back.I could hardly describe how I felt. Everything seemed so clear, but muddled at the same time. I felt like I was invincible. I wanted to fight Lung and rip his head clean off, wanted to fight the entire Empire and get rid of them.This city better be ready for me.Last edited: Dec 22, 2022533Starlit RoninDec 20, 2022View discussionThreadmarks Armament 2.2 View content Starlit RoninStarlit RoninDec 25, 2022#161The electrifying feeling and euphoria of switching to the modded body still persisted even after several minutes had passed, despite my best efforts to ignore it. While it was more subdued than the intoxicating rush I had felt before, I could still feel it in the back of my head, egging me on. If this what what drugs felt like, I understood how people got hooked on them.I tried to ignore it as I worked. Now that I had transferred over, I had a new face to go into society with. My new body was a ghost with no documentation, while my old one was technically dead.When the BBPD first started investigating my case, I was able to follow along with the investigation because the BBPD police servers were regular servers. Well protected, yes, but still not tinker-fortified like the ones maintained by Armsmaster and Dragon at the PRT Headquarters or the Rig.When they first arrived on the scene, they checked the basement and found gray ash on all the surfaces but no sign of any fires. After checking for bodies, they secured the place and waited for the forensics to show up. The forensics had seen my mangled-up exosuit and concluded that there must have been at least one person down there. Further analysis showed nothing- no prints, and nothing they could bag except for the suit. They had taken some samples of the ash from various parts of the room, photographed it, and left.Then the PRT had been contacted, and they had taken the case, but I had no way of knowing what they had found.The compound I had used to burn the bodies left no traces, and an analysis of the ashes would show as much. I suspected the compound was actually for assassinations, and try as I might, I couldn't forget the formula.Going out as the original Taylor was risky. The PRT had kept my name out of the papers, disguising the thing as a gas accident since the public was still spooked about the Cornell Bomber, and a new trigger who just blew herself up and endangered people wasn't a good look for parahumans in general. But they had told the media that I was missing and quite possibly dead, and a dead girl walking around the city would raise eyebrows.I don't know what the PRT told my Dad, but he was holding up. Barely. A quick survey with an actual drone told me he was still going to work and still following his schedule like clockwork.Using the guilt to quiet the rush and euphoria from the cybernetics, I moved to the computer. All my problems had arisen from me moving too fast and hitting targets way above my weight class. I needed to build up a base and make allies before rushing out into the night again.The money I had stolen from the ABB goons that night was also running out, and I needed a more reliable way to make and store my money.The plan I had for that was simple. Several of the gangs in the city had fronts and shell companies they used for laundering money. Once I had trained the AI to search for them, I would discreetly tap into the account and withdraw some money for my own usages.I wanted to upload the modules to the AI now, but it needed time to grow and learn about how the world wasn't black and white.I set up a camera on the table and took a picture of myself. After transferring the picture to my computer, I began to falsify all the documents I would need. The body was sixteen, but it could pass for an eighteen-year-old.A notification told me the AI wanted to talk to me. I opened up the terminal and stared at the file attachment that the AI had sent to me. It was a comprehensive history of my dad's life and even included a breakdown of his ancestry with specific percentages for each nationality.How did you break down my dad's ancestry?Impressive work............Had the AI gotten stuck in a recursive loop? I moved to inspect the code, and the AI answered me as I was combing through the code.Thank you for the compliment.I found no errors in the code. So the AI had taken this long to respond to me because it didn't know how to respond to a compliment? I smiled. That was kind of cute.What does the outside look like?Yes.I walked toward the old cardboard box of broken electronics. People in the market sold almost everything, and asking them for a broken cellphone in addition to the hoodie you just bought from them meant they just gave you the phone for free.The box had several phones in various states, and while some just had their screens damaged, others had holes the size of my thumb.I began to take them apart, setting aside the parts that actually worked. Picking one of the bulkier phones up, I opened it up and began to fix it. It was easy enough, and my new hands and eyes helped massively.When I worked with small components, I wasted hours dropping things from the tweezers because my hands shook too much. Now my hands were rock steady, and my new eyes gave me good magnification without making everything seem wide. Maybe my original body could have some general improvements made to it? I shook my head. Focus.I repaired the broken screen and made new pixels by hand. The camera was next, and I made it detachable so I could hide it on my person. As an afterthought, I added a microphone. The AI couldn't understand spoken words, but a simple module could fix that, and it would free up my hands when I talked to the AI.I booted the thing up and wiped it, then wrote a simple OS for it along with a new terminal for the AI to type out of.Plugging the phone into my PC, I began to make a simple voice recognition information package for the AI.I have received it.I brought the phone up to my mouth and started to talk."Hello."Hello."She sells seashells by the seashore."I checked the audio parser. The voice recognition seemed to work. I uploaded another module, this one for the camera. Unplugging the phone, I pointed it at my face.I waved. "So, can you see?"......Yes.I gave the AI a tour of my base, even showing it the abandoned bar upstairs."So, how is it?"I looked at the phone for an answer, and the AI gave me a reply.I took the camera out of the phone and fixed it on my shoulder. It looked more like a weird button than a camera, and I hoped no one would spot it.I stuffed the documents into a backpack and walked out of my base through the back door. After walking through the alley for a while, I decided to give my cybernetics a little test. I breathed in, willing time to speed up.A line of fire raced through my spine and filled my entire being. I coiled up and jumped, moving faster than even my new eyes could keep up with. I moved through the stilled null-time, my body leaving behind blurry afterimages. Hitting the wall, my new arms dug into the concrete, and my legs followed. Bracing myself against the wall, I jumped again, this time trying to run upwards once I hit the other side.My hands found the edge of the roof, and I pulled, flipping up on the roof with agility I didn't know I had. I just willed it, and my body complied.I let go of the stilled time and felt color rush back into the world, hitting me like a hammer blow. A heady rush followed, and I wanted to throw back my head and scream at the sky.I contained myself. The AI buzzed from where it was in my pocket.Taylor. What was that?"I just used my Sandevistan. It slows down my perception of time."The camera barely managed to capture you. I estimate that you slowed time to about 50%."By 50%?"No, to 50%.Huh. It seemed my implants were not as good as I wanted them to be. I wondered how much more I could slow down time. Would improving my gear lead to fewer usages of the Sandevistan, or would it lead to cyberpsychosis no matter how little I used it? Thoughts for another time.I jumped in the direction of the bus stop. While I itched to use the Sandevistan again, I decided to hold off. I still didn't know how much I could use it before I hit my limits, and I didn't want to find out here. I hopped off the rooftop and walked towards the bus stop.The bus rolled up to the stop soon enough, and I boarded it. As I walked towards my usual seat in the back, I found that most guys on the bus were staring at me. The circuitry under my skin that connected the rest of my cybernetics to my eyes was hidden by a pair of large sunglasses, so it couldn't be that.It took me a moment to realise they were staring at me. Back when I was just plain old Taylor, the only reason they would look at my skinny form was if the trio had done something to me that made them look, like me walking onto the bus with marker scribbles on my face or if they had gotten a guy to paint my backpack with slurs.Now, people were looking at me the same way they looked at Emma. I slid into a seat behind a row of empty seats and busied myself with looking out of the window.My stop came sooner than I expected, and as I walked down, the same guys who saw me get on tracked me with a hawk's intensity. I got off and headed to my first stop.Rubin's Motors was a small office set above a grocery shop. I walked up the too-narrow stairs and turned left into an office.It was a cramped room, and a single desk was enough to fill the little space. A small table fan desperately tried to make the small office a little bit cooler and was instead causing a calendar with a picture of a woman in a bikini to flutter.The man on the other side of the table was sleeping, his form spilling over the small plastic chair he was on. I pointedly cleared my throat, and when that didn't work, I tried shaking him."Wha-Is it time to close up already?"The man blinked the sleep out of his eyes and looked at me."The travel agent is on the right.""No, I'm here to buy a bike from you."The man looked at me for several seconds, as if he was questioning my choice to buy from him of all people. I returned his stare, and he finally got up."Follow me."He somehow made it out of his chair and down the stairs. I was afraid he would get stuck on the stairway, but he managed to squeeze through.I followed him to an old warehouse a couple of blocks away. Panting, the man pulled out a set of keys and began to unlock the giant lock that was holding the doors shut.As he fumbled with the lock, he began talking over his shoulder. "Damn those ABB punks. I used to keep my stuff in an empty lot close to the office, but then those punks started stealing bike after bike. Fucking Lung can't keep his boys straight. If it was Marquis, he would have given me back those bikes along with the heads of the boys who had stolen them."He finally got the lock open, and I helped him push the doors aside.Row after row of motorbikes and scooters greeted us, each in various states of decay. The man walked toward one row and gestured."The best choice for a young lady like you is a scooter. The Buddy model has great mileage, great suspension, and is also lightweight. American made too."The scooters looked fine, but I wasn't here for a scooter. I walked down the line and pointed at a sports bike."I was thinking of something more like that."The man gave me a long look for the second time that evening and then chuckled."Oh, you're serious. That bike isn't for you, missy. For one thing, I'm not sure you'd even be able to afford it. It's around 5000 dollars."I gulped. I didn't have that much money."You're lying. No one in this part of the city has that kind of money."The man chuckled again. "What do you think the gang boys spend their money on? Drug money gets spent two ways: on girls and on bragging rights.""If it's a bike you want, you're gonna have to tell me a price range."I spent a few moments counting the remaining money I had."About 500 dollars?"The man laughed and walked down the line to the very end. I followed him and looked at the line of bikes the man stood next to."All of these are Japanese bikes. After what Leviathan did to those poor fuckers, all the bikes they made are essentially discontinued. You'll find no mechanics or parts for any of them, and I'll give you a month before they break down."I leaned down to inspect one of the bikes, and what the man said was true. Most of the parts were rusted and in the process of falling out."I'll take that one." I said, gesturing to a black bike that seemed to be the least damaged.The man scratched the back of his head. "You sure?""Yes."The man nodded."Let me unlock it for you and open up the fuel tap."I walked back outside, and the man followed, wheeling the bike after me. I offered to take it off his hands, but he waved me away.We walked back into his office, and he leaned over the table and took a seat. He took out a pen and wrote something on a piece of paper, and then reached into a desk and pulled out a large ring of keys. He pawed through them for a bit before taking out a single key and attaching it to a cheap plastic keychain. He handed me the paper and the key.The paper had the words Rubin's Motors scribbled on top, and the words Honda NT650 next to the number 500 on it."What's this?""Your receipt."I wordlessly pocketed the key and the 'receipt' before handing over the money. The man counted the money, and I made to leave."By the way, do you sell parts?"I drove the bike back to my base, and the bike was truly terrible. If I tried to go any faster than ten miles, the bike began to shake uncontrollably, like it was going to fall apart in transit.I also realised that my power couldn't help me with the finer details of riding the bike. I tried to accelerate and almost ended up falling off, having to desperately activate my Sandevsitan to stay on top of the bike and hit the brakes. Changing gears was also a problem, since I didn't know how to do it and kept almost dying every time I tried to.It took about five uses of my Sandevsitan to get to my base. When I got back, I parked the bike in the back alley and fumbled with the stand.The phone in my pocket buzzed, and I took it out."I really need to give you a speaker."The stand appears to be stuck. Sites recommend you kick the stand open in an anti-clockwise direction if this happens.I kicked the stand with a little bit of force and winced as it scraped against the concrete and bent at an unnatural angle.The phone buzzed again."You better not be laughing."I bent the stand back with my hands and left the bike in the alley, walking into my base.I walked down the stairs as I began to compose a list of things to do. Make a virtual reality that would allow me to practise with the bike, teach the AI how to search and analyze, and repair the bike itself after heading to the market to pick up more parts, this time as the clone.I pulled the original off life support, laid her on the table, and took my place next to her. Time to go back to being normal.I hit the switch on the mechanical arms and passed out as the arms began to remove the biopod from the back of my head.When I came to, the world was spinning. My lips felt parched and dry, and a cold numbness was spreading over my arms and legs. I tried to focus on something, and as soon as I did, my vision started doing cartwheels again. Not being able to stand it anymore, I tried to roll over on my back.That was a bad idea, and I threw up on the table, smearing myself with vomit. I tried to pull my head back to vomit again, but the table was only so big. I promptly fell off and slammed my head into the ground. The searing pain finally distracted me from everything else.My cheek felt good against the cool floor, and I stayed there and tried to ignore the radiating paint from my head. The clone needed to be placed on the heart-lung machine, or it would die, and all my work would be for nothing. I groaned and tried to move, but fell as my legs spasmed.I tried again, and finally moved. I put my glasses on before tugging at the clone and roughly dragging her to the machine and hooking her in. I needed to automate this.As I slumped against the machine, I finally noticed the buzzing from my clone's clothes. It was like something a humanoid insect would sound like trying to talk English.I slowly realised that it was the AI trying to reach me. I tried to focus, this time on my ears.Taylor. Hello. Taylor. Hello.It was using the buzzing of the phone as a voice and succeeding."Yes, I'm here. Stop that, you're going to drain your battery."The AI stopped."Something's wrong with my eyes. I need you to help me find you a speaker. Can you do that? One buzz for yes, two for no."The AI gave a short buzz."I'm going to point your camera across the room. Buzz if I'm going in the right direction."I slowly panned the camera across the room, and the AI buzzed. I moved forward two steps and panned the camera again. Another buzz. I moved again, and I slowly moved across the lab, using the AI as my eyes.Bumping into a table, I moved my hand across it until I found my old PC. I moved to cannablize the speaker for it and connected it to the phone.I opened my eyes a little bit before slamming them shut once the nausea made an attempt to come back."I need you to walk me to the computer."The AI gave another buzz, and began leading me to my computer.I sat down in front of the computer and tried to open my eyes, only to be met with the same wave of nausea. I did not want to get sick all over my newly assembled keyboard.I set up the phone next to my keyboard and began to speak to it."I need you to find some files and delete them for me."The AI buzzed."There's a folder called AI Net Protocols. I need you to delete it for me."Two buzzes."I know that the folder has scripts that prevent you from accessing the larger net. Please delete it."A single buzz."There's probably some code on the net for a simple text to speech program. Use that as a framework to write yourself some code for speech."A few minutes later, a voice emanated from the speaker."Hello Taylor. Can you hear me?"The voice was weird. It was slow, but not unnaturally slow. It was definitely female, but it was deep, like the speaker was a chain smoker. Maybe the speaker was damaged?"Nice voice.""Most users of the site from which I procured it said it was the most soothing. Given your recent experience, I thought it the most appropriate voice."I didn't have any energy to spare for the specifics of my AI's new voice."Can you open a new file? Call it biopod adverse effects-causes and solutions.""Opened."''Start several new text files and began transcribing what I say.""Overview: The biopod was originally intended to be used to transfer my brain from my cybernetically enhanced body to my original, unmodified body. This was meant to act as a buffer for cyberpsychosis, but there are several adverse effects caused by switching back to my main body from the clone. These include dizziness, nausea, a numbing sensation down my arms and legs, pins and needles throughout my entire body, and difficulty moving my arms and legs.""Causes: All of these effects seem to be centred around areas where I had installed cybernetics. I believe the reason my power didn't warn me of this is because the biopod is meant for transfers between cyborg bodies, not human ones. The ears are a little bit higher, and that might be messing with my balance. Maybe the artificial nerves are messing with my brain's perception of my nervous system? Or is it the absence of all the extra muscle that's throwing me off? "What about the long term effects? The whole point was to prevent dependency on cybernetics. However, the way things were going, I might reject the original and go straight to the clone. I was essentially slowly conditioning myself into hating my original body and liking the clone. Even now, I felt an inch in the back of my neck wanting to go back."Taylor?"The AI's voice distracted me from my thoughts."I have some solutions for you, if you would like to hear them.""Ok.""From your notes, there seem to be three solutions to this problem."That was two more than what I had come up with. "Let's hear them.""Solution one: We turn your original body into a cyborg. Specifically, the Gemini full-body conversion. It is extremely similar to a human body, and the only differences from your original would be the new strength and speed. Even the weight would be similar. I calculate that the conversion would add only around 10 pounds. However, cyberpsychosis is sure to set in, since the conversion is only marginally better than the clone.""I'm not turning my body into a cyborg.""Solution two: We modify your original body with medical grade cybernetics in all the affected areas. While this is better than the full-body conversion in terms of reversibility, the chances of the problem reappearing are also high."I sighed. "What's the third option.""Solution three: We synthesise the drugs to help deal with the transfer. The chances of you developing an addiction are nigh certain, but there are compounds that help with addiction in your notes as well."Hmm. The solutions were all nice, but the fact of the matter was that I didn't have any money or chemicals for any of the solutions. Where could I get money and chemicals that couldn't be traced back to me?"Can you open a new file? Call it Merchant strongholds."A/N: Merry Christmas to everyone who celebrates it!Last edited: Dec 27, 2022475Starlit RoninDec 25, 2022View discussionThreadmarks Armament 2.3 View content Starlit RoninStarlit RoninJan 3, 2023#186Three days. That was all the time I gave myself to prepare, and the pounding in my head was a good way to mark the passage of time. On the first day, it had reduced me to a mess, forcing me to curl into a ball and hope the pain went away. On the second, I had been able to move, but anything more than a shimmy sent me back to the floor.Today was the third day, and my headache had been reduced to stabs of pain mixed in with a constant dull throbbing.I kept my head down and worked on the virtual reality, feeling more like an office worker than a Tinker. Find assets on forums, reconfigure them for the virtual reality, code their properties, and insert. All the interesting bits of the code, like the physics engine and all the other systems had been completed, and all that was left to do was assemble the thing.I had made the AI with the intention of offloading all the boring stuff to it. However, when the AI attempted to code the virtual reality, it failed spectacularly. The world was more like a video game than the virtual reality I had hoped for, and the more sensitive bits of the code, like the ones that regulated touch and smell, were all wrong. They worked, yes, but they didn't work well. The code was years ahead of the tech we had now, but it wasn't Tinker level.An inspection of my AI's code revealed the cause of this in seconds. I had hoped that by using my power to build it, some of my Tinker bullshit would rub off on the AI, but to my dismay, the AI was normal. The works it produced were understandable by humans, even if it would take them years to reverse engineer the code it made.It understood my tinker-tech, but it was limited to the effects and uses that I had written down.The AI was still helping me, as limited as its capacity was. When I had first gone into my sporadic bouts of pain, the AI had leveraged its access to the internet wisely. It now had enough knowledge to qualify for several degrees in medicine, along with ones in mechanical and civil engineering. It still felt bad about not being able to help me, no matter how much I tried to console it.It was currently designing the building in the virtual reality while also keeping tabs on the several Merchant warehouses around town. In the background, it was reading Aleph's Harry Potter while learning more about parahumans and power theory."How's the bike training coming along?""The simulation is crude, but the program has been able to learn well. The latest generation is able to keep riding at high speeds with one passenger with only a 0.5% chance of a crash.""Hmm, the program has been running for two days, so that should be expected. Suspend the machine learning program. I've finished the last of the busy work." I replied."The virtual reality is being rendered in memory blocks 4c, 3e, 1f, and 1g."Damn. 40 units of memory, all to render the equivalent of a city block. I moved over to the clone and tried to steel myself for the swap.As soon as the hands swapped me, I felt all my aches and pains fade away. The first pair of hands lifted my original body and handed it off to another pair of hands, which hooked up my original to the heart-lung machine.As soon as I switched over, the pain and the itching vanished. I got up and headed for the computer, feeling like I had been restored somehow. I walked up to the computer and pulled my interface plug out of my wrist and connected it to my computer.I navigated through the menus with inhuman speed, a single thought being enough to clue the computer on where I wanted to go. Leaning back in my chair, I allowed myself to fade into the virtual reality.The first thing I saw was a dark black expanse, and then colours began to spread through the space, mixing and forming new ones. The mix was a riot of color, assaulting the senses: blinding white, neon blue, and an angry red. My eyes blinked out for a second, and I was standing on the Boardwalk.It was peaceful; the usually busy tourist trap was silent and empty. I could hear the soft sound of waves against the beach, and I basked in the glow of the setting sun. I walked down one of the wooden walkways and lowered my legs into the warm water and breathed in the salty air of the ocean."I know you're getting changed, but can you start up the bike program again?"The AI didn't give a reply, but I opened up the menu to find the program had been started.I spent a couple more seconds basking in the sun, waiting for the AI to show up.It appeared a couple of seconds later, stumbling down the walkway and nearly falling into the bay. The form it had chosen was an assembly of bluish-grey geometric shapes that were assembled into a vaguely humanoid shape. As I watched, several of the shapes flickered out of existence and reappeared, slightly altered.I pulled my legs out of the water and helped it stabilise itself. It felt like metal-cold and weirdly angular."Why are you stumbling around?""I merely wished to experience the sensation of walking. I do not have much experience with it." A voice said, causing the patterns to shift and change once again."Well, come on."I supported the AI and led it to my virtual lab.The entire virtual had been built as a training ground, and the past few days had given me other uses for it. My power seemed to actively withhold information from me, and it only gave me the rest of the information once I had built its devices.My implants were a good example. I thought the Sandevistan I made was the final iteration of the thing, but after a single use, that dream was shattered. I was just like other Tinkers and would have to constantly upgrade as my power decided to get more charitable. It seemed older Tinkers were better in general, and seeing people like Dragon and Armsmaster and comparing them to people who had just started, like Kid Win or me, the difference was clear.It might be the better funding, but their technology itself was more refined and efficient, and that indicated that the amount of experience you had was at least somewhat affecting your power.That meant most of the work Tinkers did was useless-most of us were stuck in an endless cycle of building and rebuilding, all while having to keep up with other, more conventional parahumans. With the virtual reality, I could change all that. Instead of spending too much on materials that would become obsolete once I had enough experience, I would train in the virtual, and my power would give me the upgraded schematics along with all the nasty side effects I couldn't have foreseen.The shops by the boardwalk had been replaced with small little labs, each with their own specialty. I stepped into the one for chemistry, taking in the tiled floors and glass tables.I let the AI take a seat next to the table as I began to work, trying to come up with a drug to solve my problem. I knew for a fact that there was nothing wrong with my body that was causing the problem. It was my brain that was acting up, and it was the part of me that needed fixing. Maybe a tarry psychoactive mixed with something like aspirin? Vaporizing it would also lessen the side effects significantly and allow for a better method of delivery."Taylor?" The AI said, just as I was putting the finished solution in a water bath above a burner."Yeah?""This is inefficient."I stared at the beaker, waiting for the water the solution was in to boil."What is?" I took the beaker out of the boiling water and set it to cool."The biopod project requires you to make a drug to treat your migraines, and you will eventually have to deal with Cyberpsychosis for which drugs must be taken to counteract it as well. This will eventually lead to an addiction, which will require even more drugs to fix. Why perform such an invasive surgery and stick with it, even after it has proven ineffective?"Sighing, I picked up the solution, watching a white powder begin to filter out of it as it cooled down."Do you know about the broad unwritten rules that capes have to follow? What does it say about Endbringers?"The AI paused for a bit, searching its data banks. "In the event of an Endbringer attack, all capes, regardless of stature or alignment, are required to follow a strict ceasefire and, if possible, help fight the Endbringer."I nodded. "I want to be able to help during the Endbringer fights and actually make a difference. And that means allowing the biopod to slowly assimilate with me so I can eventually use full-body conversions without going insane. Even if I want to just stay in the Bay, people like Lung will eventually pick a fight with me, and I need firepower. Better to start the process of integration now, than just doing it when I need it. I'm done stumbling into decisions.""I see."The AI stayed quiet after that, its colours shifting and changing. I began the slow process of filtering out the powder and purifying it, and then I began making the drug to counteract the addictive properties of the drug.One Tinker fugue later, I held up a vial with a colourless liquid. My power gave me a name-Synal, along with an incomplete list of side effects. I skimmed through the effects.Suddenly, something pulled at my torso, and I gave a squeak of alarm and tugged at the desk. The pulling turned into a push, and my vision compressed into a small point before blinking out.I woke up on the floor of my real-world lab, strangely hot. I was sweating buckets, and as I moved to wipe the sweat from the back of my neck, my hand brushed against my neural link. I winced and pulled my hand back, hissing with pain. It was hot-hot enough to brand somebody."What happened?" I asked the computer."The botnet needed to be overclocked to simulate the chemical reaction in the virtual. This led to several PCs in Winslow crashing. I stopped the virtual to prevent us from being discovered. The diagnostic on your body shows that your cybernetics have overheated as well. The cause for this is unknown."Did my cyberware overclock to help out, or was the fever biological in nature?"Remind me to install a heat sink on my cyberware. Or at least sit in a tub with some ice so that I don't spontaneously combust."Thankfully, the knowledge I had gained from my little chemistry session still persisted. I continued to skim through the side effects before cursing.My AI played a stock outrage noise at my colourful language and then lit up the screen with a question mark."My power is fucking scamming me. The migraine drug gives me an addiction, and the drug that fixes the addiction leads to paranoia and hallucinations. And the drug that fixes that leads to nerve damage, which means I'll have to install medical-grade cyberware in the end anyway!""This scenario fits the common description of a corporate scam.""Damn it!"The AI was right, but why was my power scamming me? What could it possibly gain?"Open up the drawing board. It's time to find a workaround."I could almost hear my power laughing as I desperately tried to find a workaround that didn't involve cybernetics. Unfortunately, I didn't have the same level of prowess in chemistry as I did in biology or computers. When I first got my powers, I had headed to the library every day after school to study all the books I could on both subjects. Those books gave me precious little, but it seemed to show my power that I was improving, and so my power had decided to open up the blocks to that subjects.I had neglected chemistry because I never saw myself making drugs to prevent myself from getting bodyswap headaches. Making the shock absorbant fabric did seem to have helped with the chemistry side of my power, but it wasn't helping with this kind of chemistry.I tapped my stylus against my head as I tried to find a way to come up with a solution. Studying normal stuff gave diminishing returns, and so that was out. I could use the virtual to gain more knowledge, but constant overclocking would lead to my botnet being discovered. What else could I do?I turned my attention to the schematics of my exosuit. It was mostly an original work, but the code that helped it with its mobility was something that had been taken from the internet and refined using my power. Wait, could my power do that with the works of other Tinkers as well?"Hey, can you pull up one of Leet's videos? Something with robots."The AI began to play a video. It was an old video, as evidenced by the fact that Uber and Leet were actually winning.They were against the Wards, led by Triumph before his graduation. As I watched, the camera zoomed in on a wave of zombies rising out of the ground. Bio-tinkering? The first wave rose up and immediately went for the closest target. Triumph met them head-on, scattering them with a sonic shout. He stepped forward and drove his fist through one of the zombies.I winced, then watched as the zombie flickered and the hologram dissipated, revealing a humanoid robot. Triumph pulled his hand out of it, and it flopped to the ground.A vague shadow of an idea popped into my head. I tried to latch onto it, but it faded. I paused the video and watched it frame by frame. The idea grew more and more solid. The wisps of information began to solidify, and an idea popped into my head. A humanoid combat robot, fitted with two light composite machine guns and a tactile sensor to find and hunt down hidden threats.It would need a gyroscope to stabilise itself, and that would be built... how could I intergate a gyroscope into the robot while making sure it was safe from the damage it would sustain in combat? The information began to slip out of my mind, and I couldn't stop it. I looked at the video again, but this only resulted in half-baked snippets of information. If I wanted more, I would need Leet's notes or one of the robots.So my power did work on other Tinker's inventions."Are there any Tinkers who specialise in chemistry? Specifically drugs?""While there are several Tinkers who specialise in enhancement formulas, the most prolific Tinker who specialises in self-enhancing and healing compounds is Cask, who has been with the Protectorate since 1998.""Which means that if his compounds are addictive, he probably has found a workaround. If they aren't, then I can use them without consequence."Protectorate Tinkers probably shared information all the time, which meant the local Protectorate probably had a digital databank of notes from Cask.There were two ways to get the notes. I could join the Protectorate, but that would mean a thorough background check. I could get a clone to join, but that would mean falsifying documents and my identity. The Protectorate was affiliated with Watchdog, and no matter how good my fake story was, it would fall apart under scrutiny from a Tinker. Maybe I could pretend to be a case 53? That came with its own share of problems, and I felt bad just thinking about it. I could go in as Taylor, but then I might have to come clean about the fate of my attackers.At the time, it seemed like a good idea. The men had seen my face, and they had attacked me. I had killed them in retaliation. My mind tried to bring up images of those poor, defenceless men burning to death, but I stopped it by focusing on random ideas floating around in my head. My power stepped in and took over my brain, allowing me to ignore the gruesome things I had done for just a little bit longer. I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding onto.The second way was to steal the information I needed. It would be nearly impossible, and I needed more things to make it happen. More chemicals, more augmentations, and perhaps an entire rehaul of all my cybernetics."Widen the area you're searching in to include ABB territory as well as Empire territory."The Empire probably had better guns than the Merchants, and the ABB gambling dens had a lot of money in bills. It was more material than I would ever need, but they would definitely beef up their security after my initial attack.Midnight came sooner than I wanted it to. The AI was getting better at finding things and had marked a lot of the gang hideouts in the city using only phone records and an overhead map. Some were marked as probable hideouts, but most had clear signs of gang activity. And if I was being honest, none of them were exactly well hidden. I had no idea why the BBPD or the PRT weren't doing anything about it.I was hitting four places today- two Merchant meth labs and an ABB gambling den.I had been aiming for an Empire weapons cache as well, but decided against it after seeing Stormtiger and Cricket come and go at least twice in the last hour. The Empire was too well organised for someone like me, and the number of capes they had made the chance of confrontation higher than I would have liked.I tugged at my bandanna as I waited, lamenting the fact that I had run out of materials to make a mask. The rest of my gear was standard as well: a pair of aviation goggles hid my unnatural eyes, and a bomber jacket and a pair of jeans hid my arms and legs. I had no remaining chemiaclas for shock absorbent fabric, which meant that my costume wouldn't be stopping any bullets tonight."The most optimal route has been mapped out."I streched. "Time to get started then."I picked up a duffle bag I had left on the roof and put it on, before crouching and focusing on my target. It was an old condo that the Merchants had converted into a lab.I jumped, aiming for a window on the second floor and flying through it. The wooden frame was rotting away, and any glass in the window had long since been smashed by vandals.I found myself in a room with two men, both sitting on an old cargo crate and passing around a long glass pipe. As soon as they saw me, one of them reached into his jeans for something, while the other just stared at me. I drew my taser out and fired, my cybernetic arms making me draw my gun and press the trigger twice faster than the men could even blink.By the time they slumped over, I was already looking at the building plans. There was a large hall in the middle of the floor, and I headed towards it.The sound of soft voices came from the common room, and as I had suspected, it was a lab. Several stations were set up, and several men slaved away, making what I assumed was meth. A man in a protective suit made from what appeared to be curtains, a plastic ice-cream container and rubber gloves seemed to be cutting the drugs, and another was weighting and packing it. Four others just sat on the floor, guns in easy reach. A pitiful strings of light bulbs barely iluminated the place. Two cooks worked in the low-light, snapping and cursing at each other.I took a breath and activated the Sandevistan. I slid across the floor towards the men with the guns. I saw a few of them reach for their guns in slow motion, but I was already firing, my targeting scope giving me the exact angle I needed to move my arm every time. My hold on the stilled time began to fade, and I let it go. Four men slumped to the ground, electrified fletchettes sticking to their necks.The guy weighting the stuff drew his gun, and I tensed my legs and jumped, hearing the whine of the hydraulics in my legs as they launched me towards the cooks. I twisted in midair, popping my pneumatic cannon out and hitting the man right in the head. I hit the ground and rolled, knocking both cooks off their feet.I reloaded and shot the cooks just as they were scampering to their feet. I holstered my taser and held my hand out. The man in the DIY hazmat suit watched in horror as the large cannon slid out of my arm and through the cut in my jacket. The cannon hit the man square in the head, and he fell to the ground, a wet stain speading between his legs.Most of the chemicals in the lab were unlabeled, and it was a pain to have to sniff and poke around to find out what I wanted and what I didn't. In the end, I ended up shoving every single tin and paint can into my bag.Just as I was leaving, a man popped up from behind the table and shot me in the head. The bullet hit the metal on my forehead and rolled away. I pulled out my cannon and blasted the man. Note to self- need to add tactile sensors to find hidden assaliants with the small vibrations they made.I jumped out the same window I had made my entrance in and landed on the street two floors down to find my bike waiting for me. I tossed the duffle bag over the handlebars and slung another empty one over my shoulders."Onto the next one, then."I held onto the handlebars as the bike moved on its own, zipping through the city streets on its own and letting me look up the next place.I hopped off the bike just as it slid to a dramatic stop. I slowly walked to the warehouse, and a man in a stained T-shirt yelled at me. I raised my taser in greeting and shot him.I slipped into null-time and headed into the warehouse. It was structured more like a maze, with men actually patrolling between crates of stuff. An RV was parked in the corner, next to a large shelf filled with pharmacy drugs.There were too many of them. I detached the magazine from my taser and looked in. Nine bolts in total.I stood in a dark corner and switched from low light to infrared and marked each man I saw with my Chyron. Four on the catwalk above, at least five in the maze, and two in the RV.The place was lit by fluorescent lights tied to the metal support posts, each placed in the corners. The wires led outside, probably to a generator. I sneaked over to the wires, staying low and hoping no one saw me.The wire led me to a multi-pin extension box. I took out my knife and cut the cord that led to the generator, plunging the warehouse into darkness.All the men in the warehouse groaned collectively."Which one of you dickwads was supposed to fill up the generator!?" A man on the catwalk yelled."I swear I did it! Must've blown a fuse or somethin'. I'll go chec-"The man's words slowed as I sped up time and leaped towards the catwalk. I landed behind the men and began to fire while they were still getting used to the darkness.Their bodies hit the metal catwalk, and my speed faded."Shit! There's a Cape on the catwalk!"The men began to open fire, and the muzzle flash of their guns lit up the dark warehouse. It was dark, and the Merchants weren't exactly well trained. The shots went wide, and I moved in front of the downed men to protect them from their idiot friends.My high vantage point meant that I was able to pick the men off one at a time, and I even got a couple of long-range shots in to take down the men now running out of the RV.The bullets from their pitiful small caliber guns harmlessly pinged off the metal in my arms and legs and bounced off the places where my subdermal armour covered. Wait, they were ruining my outfit!I reloaded and finished them off. I began to stuff my bag once again.None of the crates were marked, which meant I had to pry off the lids to check each one. Would it kill the druggies to be more organized? I added another note to the growing pile of improvements I needed- some sort of x-ray vision.It took me half an hour to clear out the warehouse, but the haul I got was worth it. The weight pulled at me as I sped towards my final stop.I burst down the door to the ABB gambling den and strode in like a hero from an old western, taser in one hand, cannon extended from another. Guns were already drawn by the time I came in, and they shot at me in the closed space, the noise forcing the patrons under their seats and the mahjong tables.I grinned under my bandanna and shot back, activating my Sandevistan before rushing down the rest of my attackers."The money is most likely held in the safe in the left office."I walked into the office to find a fat man in a business suit holding a shotgun. I took a shot of double-aught buckshot to my torso, then shot the gun out of his hands.I walked up to the safe and saw it was held shut by an electronic lock.I pointed my cannon at the man on the ground. When had I kicked him down there? "The code."The man shook his head. "If the Dragon finds out I gave you the code, he will kill me."I felt my lips curl up into a snarl. Lung wasn't even here, and this man was still afraid of him."I'll ask you again. Give me the code."The man gave me a look of contempt, and I slammed him against the wall. My cannon whirred in anticipation, and before I could do anything, the AI brought up the name of the girl I had indirectly hurt on my first night out.I dropped the man as I took a shaky breath. I kicked the door again and again until it broke, swept the money into my bag, and made to leave.He stood out in the street, waiting for me. The steel dragon mask loomed over me, almost mocking me. Bullet wounds covered his upper body, messing up his dragon tattoos, and small scales covered his body at irregular intervals.The Dragon had come to greet me.SpoilerLast edited: Jan 10, 2023428Starlit RoninJan 3, 2023View discussionThreadmarks Armament 2.4 View content Starlit RoninStarlit RoninJan 11, 2023#211The dragon and I exchanged looks for a second, each sizing up the other.Lung opened his mouth to say something, and I activated the Sandevistan and ran away as fast as I could. As I moved through the stilled time, Lung's head moved to follow me, his body tensing and his legs coiling up for a leap.I thought I was fast, but Lung had already been in a fight before he arrived here, and had already started the process of ramping up. He leapt, and his massive form seemed to eat up the distance between us. I tried to twist away, but he moved his hands forward, poised to grab me.Panic washed over me like a bucket of cold water, and I activated the hydraulics in my legs, leaping back from Lung's outstretched hands. Fire blossomed from them, and I found myself unable to change direction in midair. I was fast, but I wasn't moving fast enough to avoid it.I held up my left arm and watched as the pitifully small shield expanded out of the arm. I had made it to provide some cover to my mostly organic torso and head in case someone came at me with higher-caliber ammunition. The idea had been to use the shield as sacrificial cover while I used the Sandevistan to flee.Like the rest of the metal that made up my cybernetics, it was flameproof, but my outfit wasn't. I watched in horror as the flames washed over the shield and licked at my outfit, and it went up in flames like someone had held a match under it.I hit the ground, and Lung cut off his flames, probably expecting me to scream and burn to death. I rolled back and forth, desperately trying to put out the flames. Black flakes drifted away from the remains of my outfit, carried away from me by the hot air of the fire.By the time I put it out, my outfit was all but gone. The cheap fabric of my makeshift costume had melted like wax and stuck to the now exposed metal of my body.My skin felt numb in certain places and annoyingly prickly in others. The AI was frantically running a diagnostic through my bioscanner, and I watched as a wall of blue text filled up my vision. It took me a moment to realise it was a list of all the damage I had sustained. My synthetic skin had been burned away, and while the metal plates that made my subdermal armour were fine, everything under them wasn't. All my cybernetics were in danger of overheating, and I was in serious danger of doubling over because of dehydration, of all things. My pain editor was overclocking itself to try and keep me functional, and the AI was manually disabling all of the pain and tactile sensors in my limbs so that I could move."I have called the PRT. Armsmaster, Miss Militia, and Velocity are en route. ETA: Eight minutes." The AI said with a note of panic in its voice.I pushed myself up, and Lung simply stared at me. I tore off my melted aviator goggles and tossed them to the ground."A monster cape?" Lung mused, staring at my unnatural eyes and letting his eyes drift down to see the exposed metal of my subdermal armor.I didn't know Lung's thoughts on the plight of the Case 53s, and I doubted he would show me any mercy just because he thought I was one.Lung's next words mirrored my thoughts. "I do not care what drove you to this or who you blame. Anyone who thinks themselves strong enough to steal from me will be made an example of."He leapt forward, now a foot taller, with a quarter of his body covered in those triangular metallic scales. More were piercing through his skin and overlapping with other scales. In a few more minutes, he'd probably be invincible.The window of opportunity for me to escape was becoming smaller and smaller. The heroes would be here in eight minutes, but I was sure Lung would get strong enough to kill me before they arrived.I leapt again, slowing time and slipping to the side. Lung slammed his feet into the ground, arresting his momentum, and turning to face me.I willed my cannon to pop out, and a red error message popped up on my Chyron. The melted fabric was stopping the plates from sliding open. I scrambled to tear the fabric away from my arm, watching as Lung turned towards me in slow motion, his arm outstretched to backhand me. I slipped under his massive arm and leapt to the side again, using short bursts of speed to dance around him.The cannon finally popped out of my arm, and I pointed it instinctively at Lung's face. I wanted to ramp the power up to max and shoot him in the face, but I knew that was my anger talking, not me. I mentally slapped myself. I needed to come up with a plan to escape, not to fight and die.The first thing I needed to do was cripple Lung's mobility and then run while he couldn't move to stop me. I turned the cannon towards Lung's leg, ramped up the power, and fired.Lung's lower leg folded inward, and he gave a surprisingly human roar of pain. The space where the cannon had hit was a mangled piece of meat, with the white of the bone peeking through where the skin and muscle had been pulped.I dry heaved for a bit before turning away and running, this time focusing on the roof of the gambling den. Lung held back his flames, not wanting to set his own property on fire. I aimed and fired my hand towards the edge of the roof, and I watched as a spool of wire extended from my arm to the now disembodied hand. It was a less elegant version of what Armsmaster used, but it still worked.I used the wire to hoist myself up the wall and then reattached my hand before climbing over the edge of the roof. The building suddenly shook, and I held my hands to stabilise myself.A hand gripped the edge of the roof, bending the material that covered the roof's lip. I watched in horror as a now huge Lung hauled himself up the roof. His back was wider now, sporting an armour-plated spine. He had grown another foot, and his eyes were nearly as inhuman as mine. The black of his pupils seemed to have been replaced with molten metal, which complimented the bloodshot red surrounding it. His leg still seemed hurt, but it wasn't the mess it was before.I slipped into null-time and ran through my options. Running was out of the question. Lung had just jumped to the roof of a building with two floors, even if it was short. If I moved, Lung would probably pounce and turn me into scrap metal. If I jumped off the roof, he would simply follow me into the narrow alley where he had the advantage, or just cook me alive before I reached the ground.So I needed to fight, then. Close range was a death sentence. Lung had claws now, and he was fighting to kill me. Those things could probably bisect me cleanly in half. Besides, he was almost fully armoured now, and even if I hit him with the hydraulics in my legs, I wasn't sure I could succeed where people like Manpower and Armsmaster had failed.My options for long-range were severely limited. My last full power cannon shot had almost exhausted the fuel cell on the cannon. My power gave me ideas for a chemical propellant that would move the diaphragm that shot the air at the same speed, but I pushed it away. Not now power. The taser had no shots left, and I was sure it wouldn't do anything to Lung anyway.Lung moved forward, and I did the only thing I could. I held my hand up horizontally and fired it right at Lung's face. It sailed through the air and hit its mark.The thumb of the hand dug into Lung's left eye, and three other fingers dug into his other eye. He roared again and pulled at the grapple line, intending to reel me in like a fish. I pulled my knife out and drove it under the spool of wire, wedging it out of my arm.The wire suddenly going slack probably clued Lung on to the fact that I was no longer on the end of it. He whipped his hand around in a wide arc, angling his hand upwards and blasting the entire roof with flames. His other hand worked on the fingers currently stuck in his eyes.I ducked to avoid the flames, and Lung pounced, using the sound of my feet disturbing the gravel on the roof to pinpoint me. And then he exploded.To be specific, he sent out a rolling wave of fire that somehow hit me instead of washing over me. It sent me wildly spinning through the air, and I slowed time in a blind panic. It didn't help and instead prolonged the spins, making me even more nauseous.I hit the edge of the roof and rolled to a stop. Lung had finally removed the hand from his eyes, but I was sure he still couldn't see. He still heard my crash landing and pounced. He swiped his claws forward, and I kicked against the lip of the roof and skidded across it, his claws biting into my torso and melting the armour where he grazed it.He had grown another foot, and his arms were longer now, and heat radiated off them. I was sure he was long past the point of my cannon stopping him now.I lunged at my now blood-soaked hand and stuffed it into my cannon and fired. I barely caught the end of the cut wire as the hand flew towards Lung.He held his arms up to shield his eyes since he was too large to dodge and kept moving forward. The hand whizzed past Lung's arms and wrapped around them once, twice, and then made a loose loop over his leg before getting tangled.Lung fell to the ground and thrashed around, trying to get the wire off. The wire had a tungsten core for weight and was covered with a flexible titanium alloy. It almost made the exercise of melting down all those wall sconces worth it.I moved backwards while keeping Lung in sight, and he suddenly went limp. Before I could question what was happening, he began to cut away the growing mass of flesh and scales that were straining the wire, then slowly slid out of it.I jumped back off the building, making sure to keep it between Lung and me.The AI piloted the bike around, and I fell into the seat, the bike's suspension lurching to compensate. The AI took off, and I turned back to see Lung jumping off the building towards me. Did he ever give up?He landed and turned towards me, and then turned back to look at the PRT vans and a souped-up motorcycle approaching the scene. He could either chase me and kill me or hold the PRT off until his men could empty the basement where they ran their little counterfeit agency.In true Brockton Bay fashion, the illegal gambling den was a front for an even more illegal operation. I half expected Lung to run after me, and he seemed to consider it before a blur in red attacked him and he was forced to swat it away.Lung and the PRT vans slowly became smaller and smaller as the bike picked up speed and left the conflict behind like I had never been there in the first place.The AI slowed down once Lung was out of sight and then took several detours completely at random. Before I could ask it what it was doing, it sent me a message on my Chyron that it was trying to avoid all the traffic cameras that might give our route away. Smart.I nodded and felt a bone-deep exhaustion suddenly set in. I started to lie down before an unpleasant sound like nails on a chackboard woke me up. It was the AI pulling the bike into a drift and stopping it.I took a couple of shaky steps on solid ground before stumbling into my base and into the lab in my basement. I felt more and more dizzy, and every step seemed to send the world spinning in a different direction. My heart was beating faster and faster until I could hear the sound of it beating in my ears.I leaned against the wall for support. I can fix this. All I needed to do was get my brain back into the original. I moved one foot after the other, rolled onto the table, and passed out.The first thing I noticed when I woke up was the terrible smell. The smell of burnt plastic, hair, and even flesh mixed together to create a revolting mix. I nearly threw up and pinched my nose shut to stop myself from breathing in the smell.Then the pain hit me. Flashes of pain from burns and crushed limbs all passed over me and then stopped in seconds when my brain realised that I had left the other body.The headache started, and I knew that it would only get stronger with time. I pushed myself off the table, ignoring the feeling of pins and needles all throughout my body. I found a cleaning rag and tied it over my face.The rag smelled of rubbing alcohol and made me lightheaded, but anything was better than what the clone smelled like now. I walked up the stairs and retrieved the duffle bags, my body straining to carry what my clone had carried with ease in one hand.I threw the bag to the floor and began to take what I needed from it. I would need to sort the chemicals out and put them in actual containers instead of soup cans and paint tins, but that was a project for later.I used my experience in the virtual to synthesize the anti-headache drug, but I kept running into problems with my crappy equipment. The old camping stove I was using as a burner sputtered and died for the third time, and I lit it again while mixing the solution with my other hand.Even with all my problems, the solution came out fine. I poured the clear solution into a beaker and put a metal lid on top. As soon as the solution began to boil, I lifted the lid up and inhaled deeply.The heavy white vapour from the beaker entered my lungs, and I gasped as a cooling sensation spread through them and then spread to the rest of my body.The pain in my head grew weaker and weaker until it just disappeared. My head felt clearer than it had in days, and my body felt light, almost weightless. I moved my hands, and it felt as if I was floating.What now?I didn't know if it was a side effect of the drug or if I had taken a serious hit to the head during the fight, but everything that had happened up to this point felt foolish, somehow.I felt strangely out of it as I walked to the clone. My hands removed the implants for cleaning while I tried to trace back the series of events that had led to me fighting Lung.The entirety of my rather short cape career had been built on chasing shadows. The first thing I chased was a reputation so I could strong-arm the public into accepting me. I had somehow convinced myself that it was for Dad, but it had been for me all along. I knew that the PRT would never allow me to augment myself, especially if they found out about cyberpsychosis. So I had decided to become an independent, then make a name for myself and offer the PRT a partership once I had proven myself.Then my disastrous first night out happened. I had lied to myself again and gone deep into the heart of ABB territory. I knew it would lead to a fight with either Lung or Oni Lee, but I didn't care. I wanted to test myself and prove that I was a real cape. I still didn't know to who I wanted to prove myself to.I had almost died, winning more through luck than skill. Then the Undersiders contacted me, and I had gone to meet them like an idiot. The stuff thier boss had given me had allowed me to advance my plans rapidly, but even if I didn't go, I still would have gotten into trouble. It just would have taken me months instead of days.Then those men had attacked me. I could have gone to the PRT then, but I hadn't. My memories semeed clearer somehow as I sorted my thoughts during the attack. I hadn't gone to the PRT because I knew they would never listen to my side of the story, not because it would have been too late.It had happened all the time at school, so why would the PRT be any different? Blackwell never listened to me because I was too poor and an easy scapegoat, and the PRT would never listen to me because I was a wet tinker, who were the black sheep of parahumans. Even if I told them it was self-defense, they'd probably tell me I had kidnapped those men and experimented on them.I finished removing the implants from the clone, and began to remove the subdermal armour, pulling the warped metal out with a pair of pliers. The clone was a write-off since she was too damaged. I began to remove all the metal I could.I picked up where I had left off and resumed tracing my steps. I had run away from home and then busied myself with the base. I had gone to the Trainyard for scrap metal, the Docks for electronics, and then to the Market for tools. I had rushed to make the clone and augment it, not focusing on anything else.I touched the back of my head and felt the flap of skin that hid the biopod. Back then, it seemed like a good idea. Now, I wasn't too sure. The thing held my brain, but it was as cheaply constructed as the rest of my gear. A padded fish bowl with electrodes suspended in pseudo-cerebrospinal solution that had been sourced from the bodies of the failed clones.The arms that I used for the surgery weren't very well made either. I looked at the aluminium frame and the mess of wires that had been duct taped to the actual arm. The fingers were made of cut brass hinges, and they were connected to the palm, which was a melted mess of all the remaining metal I had.The operation had been sensitive, requiring cutting the connection between my spine and my brain stem. What if the arms had faltered and had cut a few inches up or a few inches too shallow?For such a large risk, it seemed to give back so little. I wasn't even sure if it helped with the cyberpsychosis.I still needed drugs to help with the body-swap headaches, and I let out a little laugh when I considered my next plan. Hacking into the PRT for Cask's notes. I could beat Dragon's security easily enough, but it would be just as easy for her to find me. My base barely had any security, and if Armsmaster kicked down my door and swarmed in with a squad of troopers, I could barely offer any resistance. Weren't Tinker labs supposed to be fortresses?What would I do after stealing the notes from the PRT? Both my power and I seemed to like the constant risks that came with running around town for the most inefficient reasons.I wrapped the clone up in a blanket and tied the body shut with some wire, then grabbed a flask and some matches from one of the counters."Find me an abandoned building. Preferably not the one we used last time."I dragged the clone up the stairs and threw her onto the bike. I put on my helmet and got on, and the AI took off, winding through the city streets.The AI moved from the docks to the docks south, and the streets grew darker and darker as we reached the parts of the city that had been cut off from the grid. We stopped outside an old metalworking factory, and I went inside. It seemed empty enough. I rolled the bike inside and used the headlight to check the building for anyone hiding in the corners, and then I put the clone in the middle of the floor and poured the contents of the flask on her.It was the same stuff that I used on those four men, and even a small amount should be enough to burn the clone. I stood at a respectable distance and began to light matches and throw them at the bundle.I didn't have much experience throwing burning matches at things, and I soon began to run out of matches. Finally, on the second-to-last match, the bundle caught fire.The flames from the clone's pyre lit up the dark factory and caused the machinery to cast long, flickering shadows. I felt strangely melancholy as I stared into the flickering flames. When did my life become so much of a mess that fighting Lung was something I expected?What would Mom say if she saw me right now? That was a loaded question, and I hated that I had asked it. I stewed in my anger and threw insults at myself in her voice for a bit before coming up with something she would have actually said.She would probably ask me to slow down before I hurt myself or got killed.I stared into the fire and made up my mind. Time to slow down.Last edited: Jan 12, 2023415Starlit RoninJan 11, 2023View discussionThreadmarks Interlude 2.1: Oliver RobersonView content Starlit RoninStarlit RoninJan 13, 2023#233Agent-Detective Oliver Roberson rubbed his eyes and tried to focus on the case file in front of him. He tried to ignore the sound of the clock ticking away as he read the file from start to finish for what seemed like the hundredth time."Detective Robert! Want some coffee?"Roberson closed the file and looked up to see Denise Gray, one of his newer coworkers."Sure, Gray."She gave him one of the steaming cups, and he smiled once he took a sip. Ah, thank heaven for caffeine. It helped that it was store-bought, and not the toxic sludge that the machine in the break room made.He swivelled his chair to face Gray, who was taking a swig from her own cup."Made a dent in that pile of paperwork you have on your desk?"Gray frowned. "No. I still don't get how you finished your pile in a single night. It was bigger than mine, too!"He smiled. "I finished mine through the magic of insomnia and caffeine.""Well, it doesn't seem to be working for me. I've drunk four cups, and now I just feel jittery and tired at the same time.""Want some help?"Gray nodded. Roberson pushed himself off his chair and drained the rest of the coffee. He followed Gray back to her table and pulled up a chair.Swiping a pen from the holder on the table, he began to methodically work his way through the pile, using the already filled-up documents to get some of the more personal information."You're supposed to be helping me. That's why I'm leaving your computer free while I do the rest manually." Robert said."I still don't understand why the Director has us do the more sensitive paperwork by hand. It makes no sense."That's because the Director is a super paranoid woman who doesn't trust anyone and wants to know who accesses those sensitive files. Dragon is the only person who gets to scan them and use the digital versions."Don't question it. Now, are you going to help me or not? Don't tell me you're planning to make me do the entirety of your work."Gray frowned and closed the case file she had swiped from his desk."I'm just taking a break. You're still working on the Hebert case? I thought you said it was a write-off."Roberson finished the paper he was working on and took another one before replying."The captain made me change my mind. There are too many other variables I didn't consider."The captain was nosy enough that she'd believe that lie. He didn't tell her that he had been the one to interview Danny Hebert, and he had been the one to tell him that his daughter was missing and quite possibly dead. Having your emotions affect a case was unprofessional, and he didn't want her to look down on him.He had heard the word wilting before, and everything that had happened to Danny after the interview could be summed up using that one word. The famed Danny Hebert, who had pushed the captain into the bay during his younger years and had kept the Empire out of the Union through sheer will alone, had aged a hundred years during that interview. By the time they were done, his shoulders were drooping and his back was hunched.Giving people false hope was something that even the beat cops shied away from, but Roberson couldn't stop himself after seeing Danny look like that. He had told him that his daughter was technically missing and not dead, and that there was a chance she was still alive. And now he was left grasping at straws to prove that the girl still might be alive. But those straws were leading him to more and more concrete evidence, and he'd be damned if he didn't get to the bottom of this."Variables like?" Gray asked, pulling him out of his thoughts."Want the short answer or the long answer?""Short please."He grinned. "Tinker bullshit.""That's hardly an answer! Give me more than that.""Know who Dodge is?"Gray tapped her fingers against the desk. "He's that Toybox Tinker, right?"Roberson nodded. "He triggered young and ran away from home. Specialises in pocket dimensions. His father put out a missing person's report, and after some investigation, we found out he was abusing the kid. But for a good couple of months, we all thought he had been kidnapped because there was no trace of him. It was only when we did an investigation on the Toybox that we found out he was still alive. I think Hebert could have run away.""Really? Then do you think-""No. From all the testimonies and from what I saw, I don't think Danny was abusing Taylor, but he might have been neglecting her. Alan Barnes said that he thinks Danny still hasn't recovered from his wife's death.""I need to find a good motive for Taylor Hebert running away, or find out how she killed herself and whether it was intentional or not.""What are these?" Gray asked, pulling out the girl's attendance sheets and grades."I asked the Principal at Winslow for those. The woman was extremely curt and rude, but I worked her into revealing some really important things. Taylor Hebert was a straight-A student in middle school, but then in high school, her grades took a nose dive.""Maybe she was reeling from her mother's death, like her father?""I thought so too, but my talk with the Principal proved me wrong. She was evasive at first, but as soon as I floated around the idea that Taylor had been playing hooky and wasn't a good student, she began to badmouth the girl. Most of it was pointless drivel, but she did reveal three important names."Gray began to read the transcript of the woman's session with him, then snapped the folder shut. "So Taylor Hebert assaulted this Sophia Hess girl and then got expelled? Then Hebert lied to her dad, saying that Sophia Hess, Emma Barnes, and Madison Clements bullied her, and her father threatened to sue the school using the false evidence. The school then conducted a lengthy investigation and never found any evidence of the bullying, but the woman decided to be lenient and reduced the expulsion to a suspension instead. Why does any of this matter?""It matters because if you consider that with all the other evidence, we have a timeline. If you look at her attendance sheets from September two years ago, she stopped going to school in the afternoons when she shared classes with the three girls. If you look at her grades, you'll see that while Hebert is still doing well on written tests, she hasn't turned in any of her projects. On the other hand, Sophia Hess is barely passing but suddenly turns in most, if not all, of her projects."Roberson closed his pen and turned toward Gray. "Statements from kids who were social outcasts or sympathisers say Hebert started to get bullied around September, about two years ago. Armsmaster's reports on her gear say that most of the weld marks are a month old. Using this, we can say that she triggered during her expulsion. It has all the elements of a Tinker trigger.""The key element of most Tinker triggers is an insurmountable problem that refuses to solve itself no matter the approach. In this case, the problem was the bullying. Hebert first tried appealing to her best friend turned bully, Emma Barnes. Then she went to her teachers and then to the Principal. Nothing worked. The bullying continued for two more years, and then Taylor played her last card. Violence. That didn't work either. She got a black eye and several bruises, while Sophia Hess didn't even get a scratch. But she was the one who got expelled.""Most tinkers have some weird rule or a set of restrictions they need to follow. Some need stuff like diamonds to make their tech work. Others can only build one thing, but can improve that one thing endlessly. The more extreme ones either get more and more mentally unstable the more they use their powers, or get better and better the more they fight. The point I'm trying to make is that they're all distinct, and easily recognizable."He took the file off Gray's hands and pulled out a handwritten sheet. "Armsmaster says he has some ideas about the girl's specialties, and he's conducting his own investigation. If I can figure out the quirks of the girl's powers, then we can both hand over what we know to Dragon, and she can write up a program to search for the girl like she does for other missing parahumans."Gray picked up the paper and read it. "Armsmaster investigated the ash, and he said it didn't have any traces of DNA from Hebert?""Given all the capes in town that either blow you up, burn you, pulp you, or turn you into mincemeat, the man already had a tinker-tech scanner for incidents like this. We got a couple of samples from her father and did it again just to be sure. It's too early in the case to get tunnel vision and hyperfocus, but I'm hoping Armsmaster gets back to me with more good news."Gray flipped through the rest of the sheets, and then closed the file."Well, that was certainly fascinating. I'll return this to your desk now."Roberson watched as the woman walked off. Once she was sure she was out of his sight, she picked up her pace and reached his desk. She thumbed through the sheets in the file until she reached the one that had caused her to pause.The paper had been heavily redacted using black marker, but she knew enough to make out the grist of it. Armsmaster had identified the DNA of five other men. As per PRT regulations, anything pertaining to their identities was blacked out. Other things, however, were not. Grey balked for a bit when she saw that the men were former members of the Herren clan.Grey took out a small digital camera and began to photograph anything her employer would find interesting. She would have used her phone, but what her employer told her about Dragon made her reconsider.She headed back to her desk and helped Roberson out with her paperwork, and after she was done, she hefted her purse and left the building. Roberson stayed behind, and she waved him goodbye.It was late at night, and she was a single woman walking the streets. She thumbed the little tube of pepper spray in her pocket and kept walking.She reached her usual Internet café, and the man at the desk waved her in once she gave him her membership card. She had been coming here with her brother ever since they were both teenagers, and so no one in the PRT who was watching her would think it was odd.She plugged the computer up to the camera and logged into her Cryptmail account. She sent them all the photos she had taken and then sent another email.To: C1298475739 They don't suspect your involvement. They think Empire is involved because of proximity to the Hebert's house and mercenaries having Herren clan connections.She clicked on the send button and left.