Fixer 2
* January 14 2011 *
She had been sullen, sitting in the back of the transport, wearing her ear protection and trying not to think about the steps that had led her to here and now.
Because, while Hebert was a useless toe-rag, she knew damn well that the Protectorate and the PRT were all about image and how they could spin things. That's why a little cowering speck that had an image-friendly power was immediately deemed important.
She had stopped being sullen because some woman in a PRT uniform had started showing her pieces of equipment.
"-and these are thermal grenades - they have the red stripe. Same as any grenade, pull the pin and throw. Three seconds and they go off and create a sphere twenty feet across that's 5000 degrees Centigrade. You do NOT want to be in that area of effect."
This gal had immediately become her absolute favorite faceless minion of the PRT. Because she had ALL the toys.
"C-4-E. Tinker variant of regular C-4, except it is a two-stage epoxy. Knead the blue and red to make a purple paste. Give it a minute after that and it'll look a little sparkly as it crystallizes. That means its ready to go boom. Size of the explosion is based on how much of it you use. Tiny dab goes off like a cherry bomb. Use the whole container to bring down a building. Once you mix the two all it requires is a bit of heat or a decent amount of kinetic energy."
She got boomies? She got boomies! She preferred the silent killer in the shadows thing but this worked too.
"These are your loadout for crossbow bolts. Regular broadheads have these blue fins. Explosive narrow points have orange fins. There are two of these tinkertech bolts with the green fins. See how they've got a bulbous head here? Think containment foam grenade."
"I get containment foam grenades too though, right?" asked Shadow Stalker.
"Those were the first thing I mentioned," said the Trooper. "They're on this bandolier, they have the yellow band."
"Right, right, right," agreed Shadow Stalker. "Just making sure. May need to use them in doorways and such, restrict access to rooms and such. So I'm going after Heartbreaker after all?"
"Not exactly," said the Trooper. She pointed at the harness that had locked into place. "If you find you're about to be compromised, flip the plastic cover and press the button. It's a self-destruct. You don't want to be caught by your target."
"Right," said Shadow Stalker, thoroughly expecting to find a way to ditch the self-destruct mechanism. Not like they could use electronics without disrupting her Breaker state and it sounded like she'd be needing it.
Well, this would show everyone how badass she could be and make her star shine over Hebert's uselessness. Yeah, combat oriented powers were really the only way to go.
"Five minutes," said another voice over their headsets. "Insertion point chosen. Be ready to enter Breaker state and drop directly through the floor of the transport to avoid alerting patrols."
"Gotcha," said Shadow Stalker, feeling the excitement of the hunt beginning to rouse her. "Okay to kill minions or do I have discretion?"
"Assume any minion is hostile with no chance of redemption. Any deaths would be considered a mercy killing."
Shadow Stalker felt even more excited at this. Target rich environments were the best.
"Two minutes."
"One minute."
"Go go go go!"
Shadow Stalker phased through the bottom of the transport and dropped down to a roof. Halfway there she realized where she was. Ellisburg.
* Old County Road, Wells Maine *
Take one old wrecked RV. Scan. Repair. Then spend some time talking to a couple of people because she didn't know how to drive.
Finally get the thing going, fortunately it had been an automatic transmission, and head off on a cross country journey. Which became a LOT easier once she could take her shelter and toilet with her.
It wasn't a huge RV, just a little Dodge Roadtrek Class B Motorhome according to the documentation. It had been wrecked in some car accident and she had used her powers on two other vehicles in the lot as trade for the vehicle and paperwork. Temp plates from the dealer she'd have to get her Dad to sign off on for the permanent one, but that was a concern for later.
She had to sponge bath though. That was a minus. And there was the fuel concern, so she didn't do a lot of driving. Seriously this thing was almost in the gallons-to-miles category.
Bed was comfy. Frankly, if she could talk to a tinker and have some stuff torn out and other stuff added and maybe go with something other than a gasoline engine - she could see keeping this. Oh, maybe someone could add flight capabilities. THAT would be seriously cool.
So here she was, on the run from supervillains and anyone else that was going to try and capture her for nefarious purposes.
Taylor sat back on the chair, reading sections of the owner's manual for her RV, occasionally looking out to see if anything odd was going on. Hopefully she was off the grid enough that she wouldn't be found.
* Coil *
"We have eyes on the target. Confirm approach?" asked the mercenary team leader.
Coil considered his options. While Brigid had zero direct combat abilities, having her on his payroll would certainly be of great benefit to him. The upkeep on tinkertech weapons was quite pricey, and maintenance costs on his underground base could be slashed if he had her in his employ.
He was still back-and-forth on whether she'd be too high-profile for him to recruit though.
"Commander. Request permission to withdraw effectively immediately. This just went over our paygrade."
"Elaborate," not-requested Coil.
"Legend just arrived."
Coil frowned and considered. "Permission granted to withdraw. Assume that if you can see Legend that there may be other assets in place you don't see."
"Affirmative. Sending signal to withdraw. Wait."
Coil paused as he considered what this latest wrinkle might be.
"Valefor spotted."
"Take the shot," said Coil automatically.
"Lining up. Got him. Headshot."
"Surrender to PRT authority, MacNamara," said Coil. Knowing some of his mercenaries had pasts that ended up with employment where they had a chance to resolve past issues was just one way to get the best people. People who had military or paramilitary experience and had suffered at the hands of capes had motives he could exploit. "They'll review your history, find out your family suffered at the hands of the Fallen and will quietly make charges disappear. Congratulations. Not many people manage to get their revenge and survive it."
"Thank you sir."
* Noelle *
She was fixed, that was what Miss Fixit did.
From the discussion, what Noelle Meinhardt had taken away from the comments she'd half-listened to, was that her power had been like a program written in BASIC that had a whole block of error-filled code. The simplest solution had been to simply erase the program.
She had no powers in this group, but that was okay. She was herself, and she was surprisingly comfortable with that - particularly as she could remember the mess she had been.
Oh, the others still had their powers. It was just that some of them had been shifted a bit since the whole "Simurgh bomb" thing had been fixed.
Cody's reset power as Perdition, for example, was mostly the same - line of sight and reset the target to seven seconds previously. Not the most useful of powers perhaps but in the right circumstances? He seemed a bit calmer and less likely to start a fight, whether that was from Miss Fixit's attempt or the less tense atmosphere in the group was not certain.
Oliver, on the other hand, had stabilized a lot. He now looked like he had stepped off some steamy Harlequin romance cover. And was learning new things from videos that he could use to refine his strength and fighting abilities. Maybe he'd only be able to reach high human performance levels, but as he pointed out it was both a goal and nothing to sneeze at.
Luke, aka Ballistic, was now using Pez dispensers. It amused him. No changes to his power other than him discovering he had a sense of humor.
Jess, alias Genesis, was still in a wheelchair. Apparently the length of time she'd been in the wheelchair and the growing she'd done since then made fixing her problematic for Miss Fixit. Still, her power mostly operated the same it was just that she could do non-monsterish forms now as well. She liked doing the bird one, so dreams of flying and such.
Marissa, or Sundancer, was largely unchanged. Still making suns though being able to change the color was new. She was trying to work something out where she could produce suns that were particularly "tuned" to produce specific wavelengths. Being able to produce sunlets that could be used for tanning or wouldn't produce heat. She thought it might be possible but so far hadn't had much success unless you counted the color variants.
So, they were still the Travelers, still trying to find a way home. Still traveling, still searching, still together.
But a lot less desperate and a lot more willing to find ways to leverage their abilities the way Miss Fixit was doing.
Oliver stuck his head in the door to her motel room. "Stay put. Something's going on. Miss Fixit may be in trouble."
Noelle experienced a sinking feeling. "Where's Krouse?"
"Oh shit," realized Oliver.
* Legend *
He was ready. Well mostly.
Current theory was that the Entities had something like an immune system. That their homeworld had the rough equal measure of viruses and parasites and other environmental hazards much as Earth life had developed. That the Entities would have that and some sort of healing factor or shard that served the same purpose as the immune and repair functions that humans possessed. That Taylor Hebert had somehow ended up with either the Thinker's or the Warrior's immune-system-shard.
Also current theory, based largely on what Taylor herself had said, was that her Scan power let her see the injury/disease/damage and then Repair basically did a restore from backup on only the affected section.
Put in those terms it was a very understandable power and not too far out from what they'd come to expect from parahuman abilities.
This did not make it any less potentially useful.
Video footage had been recovered and analyzed. A bar/grill named Stutesy's not far from here had been half-destroyed in a cape fight between two local villains: Doctor Demonica (Tinker-3, specializing in one-shot weapons) and Rubber Czech (Breaker/Brute, stretching powers.) Which led to an under-the-counter deal for food and secrecy in exchange for fixing the place. A security camera at the Seacoast Motel had recorded the pieces of building arcing up and flowing together into a repaired building. Time lapsed: 12 seconds.
Which violated NEPEA laws of course. The owner of Stutesy's Pub & Grill had basically lost about thirty dollars of food and water in order to receive thousands of dollars of repairs and could open immediately instead of having to take a month off. Whereas, if everyone had obeyed those laws, the owner would likely be out of business entirely and declaring bankruptcy.
Which brought Legend to here, to talk to Taylor Hebert and get her into the Wards program where she could be trotted out as a rescue/repair worker after the fighting was done. Doing it that way allowed her to use her powers without getting lawyers, unions, and worse after her.
There were a lot of things about the situation he didn't like, but he saw them as needed because otherwise the Simurgh would eventually intervene. The Slaughterhouse Nine would get involved. Any number of...
Was that who he thought it was? And he was down with a good three-quarters of his head now splattered across a parking lot.
He was pretty sure that had been Valefor of the Fallen. Which meant...
Mercenaries and Fallen were now popping up and shooting at each other. An old woman screaming about her boy being shot abruptly found herself holding a bag of grenades where her purse had been. Followed immediately by little pieces of Mama Mathers now flying around the battlefield.
Legend decided to just take a stand and start shooting anything that was endangering Miss Hebert's RV, which was helped by Miss Hebert apparently deciding that now was the time to use the mobile part of mobile home and slowly edging her vehicle towards the exit of this particular parking lot.
"Pew pew pew."
Legend frowned. "Mouse Protector?"
"Egads. I have been found out! The Sultaness of Stealth, the Sneakerer of Time has been detected! "
"WHY are you here?" asked Legend, using a freezing laser to immobilize a potential attacker's gun. Also his hand, a good chunk of arm, and his crotch when Legend found his arm jiggled. By someone who was adding unneeded sound effects.
"Pew pew pew. I'm here because lots of people have started heading to Brockton Bay. Director Tagg wants to try talking to Hebert's father and get her signed up for his neck of the woods."
"Tagg? Why would he want Brigid for Eagleton?" asked Legend as he ricocheted a laser blast off two windows in order to hit a Fallen that was hiding behind a car.
"Because if Repair Girl can revert something to when it wasn't busted, she might be able to revert something to when it wasn't a killer robot?" asked Mouse Protector. "Just guessing here."
"Actually that makes sense, but I'm reluctant to put Brigid anywhere near a Containment Zone except under very precise circumstances." Legend fired a bolt that curved around and set fire to someone's crotch.
"Borf!" declared a large dog as it trotted past them, a very young pink-haired girl riding it through the parking lot and being missed by practically everyone aiming at it.
"What the hell?" asked Legend.
"No idea, but you won't believe me on that will ya?"
"Not a chance."
"Didn't think so."
* Taylor *
She edged slowly out of the parking lot, got to the street proper and then accelerated on her way towards the interstate.
On occasion she'd see a laser beam streak from the roof of her RV and blast someone, but the target usually had a gun and so that was understandable. Except she didn't have a laser turret on the roof. What was-
"Hi there! ROAD! ROAD! KEEP ON THE ROAD!"
Taylor got the RV back on the road, her heartrate under control was a little bit harder to manage.
"Don't take being startled that well, do ya?"
Taylor stopped the RV as there was currently nobody shooting at her. She took a deep breath. Slowly she turned towards the person who HAD NOT BEEN THERE a very long minute ago.
"Hi there! Again!" said the mouse-themed parahuman.
"Mouse Protector?" asked Taylor.
"IT IS I!" proclaimed Mouse Protector, using her #3 Declaration Pose (right index finger pointed high, knees bent, left hand on hip) for effect. "The Protector of Cheesy Goodness! The Salami of Swing... wait that one doesn't sound right. Ahem. The Pun Princess and Escape Queen! Mouse Protector!"
Taylor golf-clapped briefly, feeling it was necessary and that the introductory phrases would probably keep coming until she did.
"Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week, try the spring rolls - they're fresh."
"Why is Mouse Protector here?" asked Taylor.
"Because, quite frankly, your hiding skills suck," said Mouse Protector. "Not to worry, my sidekick-to-be! I shall-"
A hole opened in mid-air, a large hook emerged, Taylor was grabbed by the hook, which then zipped back into the hole with Taylor and then vanished.
"...Okay," said Mouse Protector. "Didn't see that coming. Literally."
* Elsewhere *
Being whipped out of your Recreational Vehicle into a sterile-looking white room and then shoved off into your freaking dining room at home was VERY disconcerting.
Several people, including her father, were sitting at the table.
Alexandria looked up. "Ah. Right on time."