A Wizard In Alexandria's Court
Chapter Seventeen
by Skysaber
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Story Day Eleven, April 16th 2011, Saturday - Early Afternoon
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The decoy currently undertaking Blackjack's duties looked up from his surgical table (currently empty) and glanced out of the tent flaps at the line of first responders.
It was a far departure from the usual paramedics and firefighters he was used to.
With the noise of the race going on around them, dozens of men stood in ranks, each wearing matching fireproof jumpsuits, with goggles and filter masks, presumably as much against smoke as to conceal their identities. They stood in lines before a large number of platforms that looked not unlike Star Trek transporter pads - and the function was similar.
When a car or other vehicle wrecked out on the race course and a crewmember was probably injured, one of the transporter pads would flare to life and the uniformed emergency person would vanish, instantly replaced by the casualty from the race car, who would then be treated with a vial of blood-red medicine, almost instantly sealing their wounds, and even healing most of them.
If any injuries remained, they would be moved to open-air operating tables (kept clean *somehow*. The copy did not ask for now, but would definitely be looking into that for the clinic later) where Blackjack, or in this case just a copy made of tofu, would treat them - sewing limbs back on, or whatever else they needed.
The copy currently posing as Blackjack knew enough to realize those pads were not true teleportation, they just switched the locations of two people, the emergency responder and the victim of whatever horrible accident had just occurred. So while the victim got treated, off in the distance, at the site of whatever wreck they'd been transported to, the emergency responder would extricate themselves from the wreck, then make their way back on foot to rejoin the lines ready to be transported again.
It was the smoothest emergency medical operation he'd ever heard of.
Trauma medicine was always a race against time, trying your utmost to resolve the patient's wounds before they became fatal. Here? They did not have that problem.
It was almost relaxing.
In the midst of this outdoor field hospital, the body double of Blackjack watched this calmly in the spare moments and listened with amusement to Victor's announcing over the PA system as emergency responders brought in the latest crash and bullet-hole victims.
The back-alley doctor did not even have to treat most of them.
The real Alec, back before he'd switched out with the double playing Baron Otto Matic (because actual racing looked more fun than the same medicine he did every day), had discovered there were, apparently, quite a few new medicines available from Toybox, and, dare he even say it? They all looked to be as good, in their own ways, as his beloved Heart's Ease. For instance, they had a vial of blood-red liquid that he was inwardly calling Trauma One, never having heard its actual name, that sealed up physical wounds and injuries of all sorts better than he could, and in an eyeblink.
Faster than Panacea - he had clocked it.
Stuff almost threatened to put him out of business - and he was glad.
Anyway, Skysaber had provided generous doses of that, and his people administered them at need to the people they switched out to rescue. That by itself rendered emergency treatment almost a non-issue, the time crunch was off. People could survive on their own after a dose of Trauma One, as even if it could not deal with everything, it stabilized them so even natural healing could often take care of the rest.
No risk of infection, either. It was good stuff.
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Off in his race car, Jared kept receiving mental updates, and he, too, was pleased with the ongoing medical rescue operations, as it served as extra validation for something he'd been a private advocate of for a long time.
In D&D, a homunculus was a miniature servant created by a wizard. About the size of a cat, they were ugly as sin, their default appearance looked a lot like an upright frog with a mean glare, pointed teeth, and wings. But they were weak in combat so almost nobody ever used them.
Jared considered this a mistake, primarily because there was so much to life *outside* of combat!
A homunculus had all of the skills their originator did, and to the same level. So if you had four ranks in something, so did it. That's HUGE! That meant that a wizard with a homunculus had someone to pawn off all of the boring research tasks on, a bureaucrat had someone that could handle his paperwork just as well as he could. A person who had a homunculus never had to cook their own meals, make their own bed, clean their house, do the dishes or the laundry... They were the Perfect Servant! Able to do anything you could just as well as you could do it for yourself. You did not have to pay them, they were never disloyal, never slept, never got sick, or late, never stole from you or ate the last cookie, and the homunculus literally never had anything better to do with their time than look after you 24/7.
It was everything anyone had ever wanted, as far as having someone to look after you and take care of chores.
The fact that more wizards did not make use of them was something Jared considered outright bizarre, as, if anyone needed someone to look after them, the often absent-minded wizards did!
And if you had any skill at darning socks or writing poetry or carpentry, or whatever, it could do that for you too!
And it would do this as carefully as you would do them for yourself, as no hired servant ever really did, because it basically was you! It cared about the stuff exactly as much as you did.
What few objectionable parts they had could all be fixed. They did not have to be ugly. Their appearance actually got decided by their creator, just like other constructs. So they could be as pretty as your skill and imagination allowed. Jared had his all looking like pixies, miniature winged fey that were quite cute.
Or, if you wanted to hide them in an urban environment, you could make them look like pet dogs! They could do it while their wings weren't extended, and they went on four legs. Nobody was going to be concerned if you kept your dog or dogs with you all of the time - that's normal. But heaven help the person that tries to mug you when your 'dogs' all pull guns out of hidden pouches.
Hmm, that could be fun.
Normally a homunculus could not speak. That could be gotten around a couple of ways, like enchanting one with continual Ghost Sound so it could make any noise you wanted so long as it was not louder than four men (so your homunculus could literally sing quartets), but you almost did not need to as the process of creating one linked it telepathically with its creator, out to a range of 1,500 feet (previous editions had this as one mile, and Jared's table allowed objects and spells from previous editions to be reinvented under 3.5, so they used the version that had a one mile range). So it always knew what you wanted, and could anticipate your desires like no other servant could!
As a tool, they were incredible. As a combatant? Don't even bother. In fact, the reason most wizards never even considered creating their own homunculus was they had a drawback where if the little construct got destroyed, its creator suffered some significant damage.
But Jared came from a modern culture, and so knew what a surge protector was, and so had been able to devise a couple of magical ones to protect the wizard from suffering that feedback damage over their link, so he did not get hurt should his homunculus be destroyed.
Those had gone viral and homunculi were all the rage at Redhurst now. For one, it took all of the pain out of grading assignments, lesson prep and setup, and the other dreary parts of teaching, so each and every professor there had at least a dozen of the things. Of course, most of those were specialized homunculi called Dedicated Wrights that could help their master make magic items, such as Jared had plenty of himself, mostly working at his underwater safehouses.
They also had them looking after students, as serving as dorm supervisors ate up more of the teachers' time than anything else.
Back at Redhurst, Jared had talked Headmaster Andarlin into letting him set up a store in the public-access portion of campus, equipped with special tools allowing even non-wizards to build their own custom homunculus, with over a hundred stock body blanks and a variety of options for sale - and it was doing a rousing business.
For one thing, it was the only servant some kings could trust absolutely not to poison them. So royal households typically bought several. But really, Redhurst students and alumni made up the bulk of his customers.
As good as the base model was, like all constructs, you could modify them. You could even load them down with options to where they overcame their weakness to combat and became halfway reasonable guards, for low-levels anyway.
Jared's were typically optimized to eye-bleeding standards and tricked out with special features he'd never offered to the public in his shop. His could change size and appearance to human (among other things) and he currently had some human-sized ones employed as race technicians, running the cameras and other technical things for this event that the average Empire grunt could not handle, as well as doing the emergency medical response.
He was rather pleased with how that was working out. The things looking like Star Trek transporter pads were actually magic items. When constructing magic items you could make them look how you liked, and he'd chosen transporter pads, enchanted with the spell Benign Transposition, which was a lesser-known but delightful first level wizard spell allowing the caster cause any two willing targets of up to ogre size within range, to trade places - and any creatures considered helpless, like the unconscious or dying, were always considered willing.
Enchanted objects did not always follow the same limits as the spell. His emergency transporter pads switched out whoever was on them with their target, within a range of two miles.
He'd also sent his homunculi around before the race, casting the Status spell on every participant, which allowed you to mentally monitor someone's relative position, direction and distance, and general condition. So they knew when someone was unharmed, wounded, disabled, staggered, unconscious, dying, nauseated, panicked, stunned, poisoned, diseased, confused, or the like.
That made it very simple. They knew who needed medical assistance the very moment they needed it, and could switch out instantly with such a person, bringing them to the first aid tents, where other human-appearing homunculi were waiting with maximized potions of Cure Serious Wounds - which were able to instantly heal any amount of physical trauma a normal person could survive.
Or, in cases where those rescued did not survive, they also had potions of Close Wounds, which if applied within six seconds immediately after the subject took damage, it effectively prevented enough of that damage to leave them (barely) alive and stable. Jared's table had interpreted the fluff-text rather liberally on that spell so really it did not matter the amount of damage taken if gotten to in time (their DMs saw it as their own tool for avoiding killing off players by accident - they played some pretty rough games at times). So even those killed instantly could be saved - Provided one could respond within those six seconds, of course.
It was quite a setup.
Really, the only thing they needed Blackjack for was if someone arrived in more than one piece, because he was excellent at reattaching limbs and could do so with ease, and in minutes.
So, really, the only people lost to the race so far had been those Merchants in the wheeled pirate ship that had exploded when shot by Laserdream, as being effectively disintegrated in the blast, there had been nothing to switch out with, so they could not be reached in time to be saved.
Then again, if anyone were to have died, drugged-out would-be murderers were pretty high on Jared's list of acceptable losses.
Having replaced a large number of racers blinded and/or deafened by the explosion of said pirate ship, Jared's rescue workers were now working on parking those vehicles, while their rescued drivers got seen to, as he'd forgotten to arrange sufficient supplies of potions to cure blindness and/or deafness, so those drivers were effectively out of the race while his minions brought those potions down from Fairhaven.
So support functions for this event were not going perfectly. But he felt they were going well.
The important part was that, with the exception of those Merchants who'd died in that one explosion, everyone would be walking away from this in better condition than they'd arrived to the event in.
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Kid Win, err... actually, considering the PRT owned the rights to that name, Chris did not even know what his cape name was at the moment, but the *former* Kid Win was in a race, and finding himself surprisingly challenged.
Chris was a Tinker, one who did not even know what his specialty was yet. He'd thought for a time that it might be lasers, but the hovercraft built out of leafblowers and a lawnmower was something he'd thrown together surprisingly easily. So that cast some doubt on his earlier guess.
Anyway, Chris was a Tinker, and the universal rule was: Tinkers Needed Money. He'd been caught out and recruited by the PRT in the first place because they had noticed his scrounging patterns. But Tinkers needed parts, that was inescapable. Nominally, he had a full outfit of cape gear, costume and devices, but he would be unable to actually use any of the stuff he'd built as Kid Win until the legal process of the PRT defaulting on rent to the 'storage facility' that was his parents' garage actually went through - and even then there would be a wait for other parts of the legal tangle to resolve, because until that mess had fully processed, the PRT still technically owned everything he'd ever built while working for them.
They would still own his image, along with the name 'Kid Win', probably forever. They'd worded those contracts carefully, so they'd kept hold on the imaging and brand rights - and would probably hold them until well after he'd died.
So, the one thing he could NOT call himself anymore, was Kid Win.
That was actually a relief, of sorts. Between having Poo-get as a boss, along with Shadow Stinker as a teammate, he did not have too many happy memories of working for the PRT. Also, having been viewed as something of a failure, especially by Armsmaster (his other boss, and a cape he *used* to look up to, before having to work with the man - and the disappointment and neglect of his superior became too obvious to ignore), Kid Win did not have much of a fanbase. So that was not a big loss.
But that meant Chris was without a costume, established identity, or any Tinkertech he could actually use in the field.
Originally, he'd been thinking to just chill out, tinkering in his parents' basement for the couple of months he'd be waiting for that to happen. Then, once he'd had his gear released from the legal mess, he could go back to doing patrols and other cape things.
Then the TV he'd had on in the background had announced there was going to be a race today, specially for capes, then gone to some live helicopter footage of a couple of cars, one called the Thunderbolt GreaseSlapper, and the other, the Mystery Machine, by the announcer, that had raced through town on their way to the event.
A voice over by one of the talking heads, repeating something they'd been told by experts the studio hired to perform research, gave an estimated value for the prizes offered that was frankly unreal.
Tinkertech serums that could cure any diseases, mental or physical? Rich people got sick, just like anyone. They had families that got sick, too. Sure, they could pay for the best treatments, but not everything could be treated successfully, and with the semi-secret pressure release valve of buying early slots for seeing Panacea gone, with Panacea having been turned to glass then smashed apart by PRT agents, and the USA having no one who could really replace her with regards to how safe and easy her cures were, along with how many she could do per day, the cost of anything medical able to treat what the standard hospital care could not was already skyrocketing.
Chris was a Tinker. He *needed* money. His power basically ran on it. He needed parts and tools to do anything, and the two routes to get those were either to buy them, or to steal them.
However, the PRT knew all about his civilian identity. They'd watch him. They wouldn't admit to it, but they'd still do it. So if he stole parts, they'd find out about it, call him a villain, arrest him, then force him back to work for them. And between the new criminal history they'd assign to him, and Poo-get's attitude, he'd be back in solitary confinement across the hall from Clockblocker before the week was out.
So that was a no-go from the start.
But, no longer employed as a cape, no longer *employable* as no one could legally hire a parahuman except the very Federal agency he'd just quit from, Chris had no salary, and with his Tinker budget gone... Things were going to be tight for a while. He did not have a lot of savings, as the PRT paid their Wards minimum wage - and kept the trust fund they'd set up for him, as apparently that was a clause in their standard contract, that by failing to stay a Ward until he hit eighteen, they were allowed to take back the whole thing.
He wondered how often those trust funds actually paid out, since few Wards actually reached eighteen. Most did not live that long.
Anyway, Chris did not have a lot of money.
But he suddenly *needed* a cape costume and vehicle to enter this race in order to *get* money!
He did have access to a great workshop, though, with some excellent tools, that just happened to be stored in his parents' garage.
So he'd gone the bargain basement routine of going through some second hand stores, pawn shops and thrift stores looking for materials he could use. What he'd found hadn't been great, and the Army Surplus store he'd hoped to use had closed, having gone out of business (not much Army made for not much surplus anymore, he'd guessed), but he'd been able to throw together some used motorcycle armor, along with some hockey pads, some paint and a bath towel, to get a costume he could wear.
Chris did not actually care what it looked like, he'd just needed *something* to secure his identity so he could participate in this race, as even a shot as those awards... well, at the prices those talking heads had estimated, victory could fuel his entire cape career!
Costume ready, he had then used a bunch of leaf blowers and a riding lawnmower to build a hovercraft to use as his ride in this race.
It was not going anything like what he'd expected.
The former Ward's hovercraft was relatively fast, and able to take terrain like soft grass the heavier vehicles could not, so he was racking up some impressive points as he'd already burst quite a few time bubbles (he'd lost count at ten), but as the teen cape jinked his home-built hovercraft to avoid getting shot, or run over, by the tussle of cars trying to surround him, he revised his ambitions to just getting out of there with his skin intact and the participation award.
Those Merchants with the guns were NUTS!
Almost worse were their drivers. This was not a game of Bumper Cars!
Inwardly, the former Kid Win admitted that he'd overestimated his abilities quite a bit. He'd thought that having been the next best thing to a professional hero, having received coaching and some training... okay, not a lot of training, as Poo-get had already slashed the budget on that long before he'd joined the program, but still the 'I am one of the Good Guys! We do this for a Living!' idea had been pretty strong within the PRT, and had bled off onto the Wards somewhat.
But he was rapidly discovering that going on patrols, teamed up with partners, in safe areas, while in constant radio contact with base, who could send a variety of reinforcements at a moment's notice, and with Panacea on speed-dial to cover any injuries, was almost totally unlike going out as a cape *without* that support network!
The former Ward took careful note of the scar-faced cape doctor the race organizers had hired to handle medicine for the race, already resolved to seek out the man the first moment he could after the race was over and ask for the guy's rates and contact information.
Getting shot was no joke, and happened occasionally in the cape business. But suddenly he did not have a national organization providing medical care for him, so had to arrange for it himself. And, Chris noted, that guy was doing an excellent job on some very difficult surgeries, reattaching limbs like it was nothing.
He was no Panacea. But then, who could be?
As a badly-aimed flamethrower nearly set his hair on fire, the former Kid Win shook off his burning bath towel along with those thoughts of other things and got his head back in the game.
He had to survive this race, first!
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Jared, as Tom Slick, grinned as he gunned it, accelerating as fast as his little car could manage, passing around several vehicles as he raced in the wake of whoever was driving the KITT car.
They had been having a friendly competition between each other.
Why neither one had fired at the other yet!
Of course, neither of their cars were armed in the source material. But he was not naive enough to imagine nobody had *ahem* added to the official specs in building the versions they were now driving.
His own car, presently appearing as the Thunderbolt GreaseSlapper, certainly had a few changes from the original cartoon. The construction methods he'd used for Lisa's van were not restricted to her vehicle. No, really good, really strong armor and solid construction were options he would not neglect on anything he was planning to use long term.
Naturally, since he did not intend to lose any of his Sirens, and raising them from the dead was a pain at his level, their vehicles all had similar levels of protection to the Mystery Machine - including animation and intelligence!
So Taylor's little Love Bug was a better match for the original Herbie than she probably knew.
Jared had based them off of a monster in the D20 Modern rules called a Demon Auto. Of course, those were more demon than auto, hated nothing more than people and killed them whenever possible, so totally unsuitable for having around or making friends with. However, there was a kind of construct called an Effigy where you took another creature as your example, and built a magic-robot based on them that had none of the original's personality or attitudes. Of course, as a simple, physical copy, effigies usually lost a lot of powers, as they could not duplicate anything supernatural, and most monsters worth copying had several such abilities. But Demon Autos were actually an excellent fit, as they lost almost nothing (except a bad attitude and all sorts of habits you'd want them to lose) when created as an effigy.
And it was a handy way to get a self-animated car that was sportscar fast, handled like a dream, and was smarter than most college students.
The perfect driving partner was, of course, the car itself, whenever possible.
The D&D character part of him was celebrating the wonderful action economy, as he himself could take his full set of actions each round driving this car, then the car itself got another full set of actions! It was like being able to think and act twice as fast, and often! Much like a good DM would let you have with a horse - the horse uses its set of actions moving, and you use your full set of actions fighting, and between the two of you, you are a lot more effective than either one alone would be.
Speaking of, seeing as how this race was nearly half over (the airport was not that big, and lots of cars had left the main tracks and were hunting down time bubbles, ignoring what the lines painted on tarmac might say), and he, as Tom Slick, had barely fought his way up to the middle of the second pack of cars, Jared figured that he'd played the underdog long enough and cast Haste on himself and his automobile, doubling their speeds and granting each of them additional actions.
They tore off like they'd been standing still.
Beside him, whoever was driving KITT hesitated about half a second, before that car switched over to Super Pursuit Mode and followed after him, both of them tearing up dust from the roadway with their speeds.
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"Mush!" Dinah ordered, uttering the traditional phrase used to order a team of dogs to start moving, or hurry up, while cracking her whip over their heads.
They were already going quite fast.
"Mush!" she repeated, cracking the whip again to urge even more speed out of them.
Sixteen big dogs were an unbelievable amount of power on a personal scale. Of course, it had nothing on full-blown race cars for speed.
But Dinah wasn't racing for *speed*, now was she?
Hallways whipped past her, doors and windows, counters and big rooms filled with ranks of uncomfortable chairs, all visible only in brief flashes as they passed.
No, she was racing through the airport terminals.
After all, there were *plenty* of time bubbles planted there by elderly Asian ABB affiliates who'd worked there, and the airport could hardly be declared 'cleared' if they could not use the terminals, could they?
A metal detector shrieked as her dog team and sled shot through it like lightning, ignoring its warning against the metal traces in her dogs' harness and the metal of the sled, gone in a second and unconcerned as its continued wail faded out behind them.
She had a map, an exact floorplan with locations for all of the indoor bubbles carefully marked out. Before the race she and Lisa had labored for a few hours together plotting out her optimal route. She knew exactly where she was going, and how best to get there, for optimal speed and results.
"Haw!" she shouted, turning the team left around a set of pillars.
Rigging up poles, so tiny, handheld and battery powered television sets hung out before even the lead dogs was the hard part, but they'd done it. Now she was doing her racing indoors, safe from all of the violence and mayhem going on outside, and racking up 'bubbles popped' alongside the best of them.
Sure, there were a lot fewer time bubbles indoors, but it's not like she had a lot of competition to share them with, now did she?
Her dog sled shot up a stalled escalator, snaking along behind the stream of furry dogflesh running before her, as she shouted "Gee!" the traditional command for turning right, and the team slowed down to bank around a corner, breaking out into the main baggage claim area where a dozen time bubbles hung suspended, before heading straight for them.
This or middle school? How could ordinary life compare?
"Mush!" she repeated, cracking the whip again.
OoOoO
Among the front-runners, Taylor was so focused on the race that she had managed to lose herself completely in the moment.
There was no past. There was no future. There was only the present, the flow of motion as dozens of vehicles jockeyed against each other for space in the front ranks and the privilege of taking time bubbles.
For Taylor, there was only the race.
Before the race had even begun, while waiting at the starting line, Taylor had sent bugs into every vehicle that would be participating, using spiders to cocoon live bugs (so they would remain in place, even if the spot they were anchored to should exit and re-enter her range several times during the race), mostly mosquitoes, to the undersides of every gas and brake pedal, then to every steering column as well as to the insides of every body panel. So she knew, without thinking, the exact dimensions of every car around her, their direction and distance from her, as well as how fast they were going and every twitch of their controls.
So she knew exactly where they were, how fast they were going, and could predict every move they made as fast as their drivers made them. She had also secured bugs to every corner of every building and obstacle along the race course, so she had wire-frame outlines of everything she had to avoid.
Predictably, that level of situational awareness paired with infinite multitasking, one of the most maneuverable little cars on the road, as well as superhuman driving skill, meant she was often moving through the pack of cars like smoke, pulling off changes in position that appeared suicidal to any outside observer, appearing and disappearing, vanishing and relocating as she wove among the pack.
Of course, having learned how to use her bugs' senses to detect cordite, the aftermath of gunpowder explosions (even small explosions like from firing bullets), and the fact that most people don't clean their guns so well as to absolutely eliminate all traces of it, she had also previously marked every weapon she could find, so she knew without even looking when those less-than-honest racers were aiming guns in her direction - and she had a bug near the front and back of each such weapon, so she could even tell if they were going to hit or not.
This made her an absolute terror for anyone trying to eliminate her, as she could dodge before anyone could even draw a bead on her.
The Love Bug had yet to suffer even a ding to the paint job, even while pulling off both crazy and suicidal maneuvers all of the time.
All of this, coupled with the fact that Taylor was driving one of the smallest cars in this race, that could go places no larger vehicle could go, and she was really racking up the points, popping time bubbles among the best of them.
Winning. Losing. These concepts had no meaning. There was only the flow of motion and making the most possible use out of every second.
Taylor drove on.
OoOoO
Victor's voice filled the racetrack with excitement, as he exclaimed, "Time bubbles are now being popped faster than I can announce them, folks, and by all kinds of racers. There are too many for the front-runners to get them all. In fact, people are outright leaving the track to chase them down, and some of the slowest racers, the buses and RVs, trucks and semis, have started to round up quite a few that were near-ground airbursts that only the cabs of the taller vehicles are high enough off the ground to reach.
"Amid this, New Wave's professionals are driving ahead with reckless ferocity. The tiny Love Bug keeps weaving in and out of calamity like a pinball, somehow, miraculously unhit by anything while snapping up bubbles left and right. The Mystery Machine has gotten up near the front rank again and is now popping bubbles, and would you look at Tom Slick and KITT zooming up out of nowhere at frankly ridiculous speeds! I wish I knew how they got that kind of acceleration, folks. My daily commute would take five minutes, tops.
"Now the leaders are coming up to the next turn, and Menja jams a spear deep into the ground, hanging on for dear life to both the cart and her spear as the titanic forces involved slew the cart around to point almost the right way. They'll have to stand back up, adjust its heading a bit and then start again, and it looks like the whole pack of frontrunners will have passed them before they do.
"Dirk Dastardly and Baron Otto Matic are now in first and second place, and start making use of the various tricks built into their cars. Two oil slicks, some caltrops, and a smoke cloud are now on the track as they pick up their first two time-bubbles, one each - having been too busy dealing dirty tricks around the racetrack to put any effort into actually winning until this point.
"Zoom! There goes the go-kart, on full JATO power, rocketing past everybody again. They hit a small bump and catch air! Aaaand they're still airborne! The JATO nozzles seem to have angled slightly downward when it hit the bump. They're steadily rising, headed towards New York, and just may reach it before they touch ground again. What a great spectacle! And the crowd are loving it!"
"YAY!"
OoOoO
Down in the Big Black-Topped Mean Machine, Alec, currently cosplaying as Baron Otto Matic, leaned forward and shut off the radio, silencing Victor's ongoing narration of the race.
Alec was having fun - real fun, an emotion that had been blocked, like so many others, for so long, but was now available after that Heart's Ease potion Jared had given him.
He liked having fun - he could do this all day.
He'd been asked to play a classic bad guy from a cartoon, mainly just for maximum silliness and to see how much they could lift the spirits of the townsfolk and prank the PRT at the same time. And he imagined some of the folks at the PRT would have smoke coming out of their ears from trying to figure this out and quantify all the new capes and powers they were seeing here today.
That was fun too.
While looking out for the pack of top-tier racers in front of the race currently trying to get past him, Alec absently stabbed the button on his console to randomly lob around some more of the special ordinance his boss had provided. Alec did not know what Skysaber called them, but Alec called them Poodle Bombs. Each were about the size of a walnut and looked innocent enough, except for the fins. But whomever touched one instantly grew hair six feet long from all parts of their body simultaneously.
That made for some interesting moments, as other racers encountered them and found themselves unable to race - eyelashes and eyebrows each six feet long will do that to you.
New Wave dodged again - they had learned well to be cautious of anything coming from his vehicle, and Taylor was, of course, nowhere near being hit by any of it. But with that attack he had managed to clear away about half of those challenging for first place.
Then Alec saw his moment and pulled the trigger on the steering joystick he had had Jared build specially for him. As he did so, a stream of liquid shot out from the front of his car, touched a previously invisible Squealer Special car just as it pulled in front of him, and instantly solidified into a foot-thick strand of bright pink Silly String.
He would never even have seen it, if not for the six feet of hair streaming like a pennant out the driver's side window.
The Squealer Special responded almost instantly with a rear-firing flamethrower.
But the Silly String still jerked the monster car backwards before it burned away, giving Alec the opportunity to use his enhanced driving skills and excellent car to surge past it and into the lead.
But Taylor in the Love Bug had seen that same opportunity too, and beat him to it by a whisker.
Alec knew she had bugs on every fender, bumper, gun barrel and terrain feature anywhere near her, and that the real-time perfect awareness of the positions of everything relevant was giving Taylor a huge advantage in the race.
But Alec didn't have long to think about that as he noticed an incoming Rocket Punch from another one of the Squealer Specials. He blocked that with what had looked like a large oriental-style decorative fan but was in fact a durable steel shield, positionable by high-speed servo motors.
While the deflected Rocket Punch sailed harmlessly off into the distance, Alec responded by firing his last two guided mortar shells - one at the Squealer Special that had shot at him, and one at the Sherman tank that was being such a nuisance.
He was too busy driving to watch and see if they both hit, but as he made the next turn, he could see, out of the corner of his eye, that the shell aimed at the tank had indeed hit, and instantly turned into a Barrel of Monkeys as planned. Rude Smurf was almost covered by monkeys, biting him, screaming in his ears, pulling his hair, stealing everything they could reach and flinging it away, and smearing him with monkey-Smurf.
Sudden movement caught his eye as Taylor in the Love Bug dodged nearly being run over by Fenja and Menja in their pump-powered train cart.
She was good at dodging - knowing exactly where everything was helped.
But while the train cart failed to ram her, her dodge did cost her a little speed and the invisible Squealer Special still trailing a banner of hair edged past her and took over the lead position in the race again.
Alec figured that the time was about right to change things up and give the second-tier racers a chance by using the Equalizer. All the tier one racers had been trading the lead back and forth for a while and each had enough points to win.
So he judged his opportunity, hit his jet assist, and surged past the other racers into the lead. Then immediately started laying down a big cloud of enhanced laughing gas.
The invisible Squealer Special, the Love Bug, Menja and Fenja, all of New Wave, and several others, had no warning of the need to dodge and drove right through the invisible cloud before the wind of their passage began to disperse it.
All the affected drivers immediately began laughing. The laughter started strong, only grew in intensity from there, and so was a severe distraction to them.
The first ranks of cars all had to slow down, or crash.
As they slowed, the second rank of racers seized the opportunity and started to take the lead.
Near the front of that pack was the new kid on his lawnmower hovercraft, which dispersed the remaining gas very effectively. Alec reflected that you don't normally see that kind of speed or acceleration in a hovercraft, but it looked like Tinkertech, so anything was possible.
Proof that the cloud was dispersed came a moment later when the Super Kawasaki ridden by Cricket sped by. She was either a really good driver or had some kind of situational awareness like Taylor did, because she was really making that bike perform.
Just behind her was a Ford Mustang with the biggest Supercharger Alec had even seen poking out of the hood. Stuck to it by some kind of hook and chain arrangement was HookWolf on a skateboard, doing the equivalent of waterskiing.
Those all showed the gas had been dispersed.
Not that that mattered much, Alec thought, since the gas would lose potency in less than a minute anyway.
It was designed to add a little chaos, shake things up a bit - not eliminate racers.
Alec affected to lose control and spin out, to cut himself out of the lead too. Baron Otto Matic had had his share of time in the lead so far, and was now in it for the whimsy. He would work to catch up again about when the rest of the tier one racers did.
In the meantime, the group he had been thinking of as the tier two racers, miscellaneous sports cars and capes with powers that were only moderately helpful, finished moving into the lead and started popping time-bubbles.
A moment later, Alec had just used Silly String to fasten two other cars together, when his radio came to life.
"Clutcher to Baron," said a familiar voice over the radio - one he knew Jared was faking.
"Baron here," Alec answered staying in character, since they were transmitting in the clear, hoping to be intercepted and listened to.
It was a great prank.
"It's time to use the Eliminator Ray - shoot the tank first. He is annoying me."
"Yes master," replied Alec.
He hit the switch and a large ray gun styled like something from a low-budget 1950's movie rose out of his trunk, and aimed at Rude Smurf's Sherman tank. The tank was still speeding along near the front of the tier three racers, or rather, it was rolling along on its remaining wheels, propelled by Skidmark's acceleration fields despite having lost its tracks and drive wheels due to acceleration it was never designed for - and it was rapidly losing that advantage, losing speed and falling back fast while Rude Smurf himself was busy fighting monkeys.
Still, that tank had abused their tolerance long enough.
Alec fired and the big ray gun emitted a pulsing and sparkling purple beam. The beam hit the ground in front of the tank, and a pair of spells went off: Dig, and Major Image. The Dig opened a 20 feet deep, wide, and long cubical pit in the ground. But nobody saw that. What they saw was the illusion of an enormous burrowing vehicle surfacing in front of the tank, grabbing it and burrowing away again, but losing its grip as it burrowed, so the tank was left in a pit.
The burrowing vehicle was prominently labeled, "The Underminer - I am always beneath you."
The Sherman tank plunged into the pit, and slammed to a halt. There it would be unable to bother anyone.
Then another illusion materialized an arm holding a wrench above Alec's head, and smacked him on the head with the wrench. He knew to play along as if it had hit him, and did so, while Crusher's voice crackled over the radio again saying, "You idiot! You aimed it wrong. Do it right next time!"
"Yes master," Alec said. He recognized the code phrase meaning no other targets for the Eliminator Ray were planned, and so he hit the other firing switch that would 'misfire' the ray gun and dissolve it in a shower of sparks.
With another illusion of a wrench hitting him on the head, their charade ended, and he concentrated on racing again.
Later, he would enjoy contemplating how much time the PRT would waste searching for the Underminer, and wondering why the relationships of Baron Otto Matic and Clutcher were reversed from the way it was shown in the cartoons.
OoOoO
Tom Slick bounced his Thunderbolt GreaseSlapper through a dozen time bubbles in one second, popping them all as he ricocheted around the racetrack like a pinball, somehow still under control.
It was taxing both his enhanced driving abilities as well as his magically multiplied speed to do this - but it was exhilarating!
Under a Haste spell, the superior 3e version anyway (which his table specifically allowed), a caster had enough actions to throw two spells per round. This was so good that Jared privately suspected the existence of it had been one of the primary reasons that the game had been revised into the 3.5 version, whose reprint of the Haste spell specifically did *not* allow that.
Frankly, it seemed to him every edition of D&D since Third had been written specifically to lower the power level available to players.
Thankfully, nobody could force his table to give up the edition they enjoyed.
Able to cast spells twice as fast as before, now, the elf did not hesitate an instant, as he figured with the car able to handle the driving for the moment that this was a good time to cast some illusions to insert some extra silliness into the race.
And he knew just where to start.
Off in the airport's terminal, where the dog-sled was racing along collecting hard-to-reach time bubbles in an attempt to win by points, Dinah the sled driver was suddenly startled by a loud "Meep Meep!" as the Road Runner from the cartoons of that name shot past the sled and, in an eye-blink, reached the terminal's far wall, on which a painted mural of a countryside briefly had its train tunnel opened up to life size to allow the bird to pass.
The abundant security cameras, whose feeds had been tapped for scoring purposes, caught the whole thing.
Jared smiled and cast his next illusion.
At the front of the pack of racers, Herbie the Love Bug popped a time-bubble, and the resulting shower of glitter hid the appearance of Jared's next illusion, masking it so it would seem to have been trapped in the time-bubble and just released with the glitter.
It was important to be careful like that with illusions, to maintain believability. If they obviously came out of nowhere, people tended to suspect them.
And they were going to suspect this illusion anyway.
It was a German staff car from World War II, driven by what appeared to be (but would never quite be proven either way) Director Piggot, wearing the uniform of a corporal in the SS, her helmet and driving goggles obscuring just enough of her face to make positive identification not-quite possible.
The illusion of Piggot drove like a madwoman, and soon careened off-course and into another time-bubble, where the glitter was dense enough so the vehicle and its occupant could not be seen.
Jared then dismissed the illusion.
When that bubble got popped, they would not find her, and so would always wonder what had happened.
Next Jared made an illusion of Wile E. Coyote (SuperGenius) climbing up out of a sewer-access manhole, aiming himself at the racers, and firing off his rocket-propelled roller-skates.
Jared had that illusion careen madly all over the field, mostly out-of-control and doing insane things like catching up to a car from behind, doing a slight hop onto the top of the car, racing across its roof, down its front and leaving it in the dust.
Then he had the illusion careen off the field and into a ditch, followed by a large dust cloud, and an explosion, as if the coyote had crashed into the ditch.
He had the illusory dust blow away soon so he could concentrate on another illusion.
Jared considered he had time for a couple more before he needed to take back control, as KITT was coming up fast and soon it would be occupying all of his attention to compete with whoever was driving it, when he got taken out.
It was surprise that did it.
After all, who expects a PRT van to come flying out of nowhere?
Much less three of them?
Jared's car was every bit as well armored as Lisa's, or any of the others he'd made for his team. Still, the light weight did them no favors in resisting huge amounts of force shoving them around, like when several tons of armored van come crashing down on top of you.
The Thunderbolt GreaseSlapper got struck out of nowhere, with no warning, and was lodged in the side of one of the airport buildings under a rather large, upside-down, PRT troop transport vehicle before he even knew what had hit him.
Now out of the race, Jared dismissed his car and costume, teleporting both back home, then in his Rick disguise and invisible teleported to the top of the airport control tower so he could see what had been going on.
He saw very quickly that the airborne truck that had hit him was but one of three. One nearly hit Taylor as he watched, only she dodged it rather adroitly, having bugs and therefore better senses than he had, and the improvised missile went on to hit one of the giantess twins, frankly he could not tell them apart at the moment, rather obviously breaking the woman's foot.
Another had impacted earlier, striking the KITT car, which was still flipping end over end as he watched, until a second later it wound up on its roof upside down, taking it out of the race.
A mere glance at the source told him where all of these unusual missiles came from, as the flaming reptile responsible was standing by the perimeter fence of the airport, howling and roaring while battling the PRT.
From that it was easy to deduce all three flying trucks had been flung by an outraged Lung.
In an ironic state of affairs, despite 90% of the adult population of Japan knowing how to drive, and similarly impressive figures out of China (that may or may not have been lies issued by their ministry of propaganda), Lung, as a half-Japanese, half-Chinese hybrid was one of the exceptions, having been a teenage hoodlum who joined a gang and triggered, dropping out before learning under the Japanese education system, and was in China only four months before being caught and imprisoned there.
So Lung was one of the few from either country who did not know how to drive.
Since he also did not like losing, that made the odds of him even entering this parahuman race, much less winning, remote to say the least. However, he had a long-established paradigm of 'See, Want, Take', employing his strength to just take whatever he wanted.
Lung had simply decided that he wanted the prizes of this race, so shown up to take them by force.
Ironically, the PRT had had the exact same idea, taking all of the race prizes for themselves without entering, and shown up as well, the two forces encountering one another not far distant and shortly into the race, and had begun a running battle that had Lung rather severely ramped up.
How annoying.
Jared scowled, irritated at having to deal with them now. This was supposed to be a happy occasion, not an excuse for the humorless party poopers to come out and rain on everyone's parade!
Oh, Lung would be getting payback for this, of that the elf had no doubt.
He'd see to it personally.
The elf slipped invisibly from the roof of the airport's control tower, down over the side and in one of the windows, finding Victor at the announcer station, several other Empire capes in attendance, but all horrified and not knowing what to do.
Jared could see why, as Lung had stepped across the boundary fence and entered the race zone, grabbing up a BMW that the redhead recognized as the one driven by Max Anders, the civilian guise of Kaiser, the leader of the Empire gang. The ABB leader, unaware of what exactly he held, had the car raised to fling as a missile against the presently-cowering PRT, who were all huddled behind cover, and not presenting any good targets.
Now that they were aware of him, no other cars were coming near the rage dragon, so that BMW represented his last good projectile, and Lung was obviously waiting for a good shot.
Clearly realizing that, it was plain to see that if any of the Empire types went out now, that would only give the raging Lung a new target to throw that BMW at, killing Kaiser.
Jared dropped his invisibility while he was still behind them, outside their view as they all stared at the developing scene, then making sure of his Rick disguise, stepped close to Victor, asking, "Where is Krieg?"
Victor glanced over his shoulder, surprised to see Rick there but not making any issue out of that. "Overseas," he answered, turning his attention back to the action going on outside.
'Rick' then nodded. "And Stormtiger?"
"Unavailable." This time Victor did not even turn around to answer.
Rick frowned. "So the telekinetic who can decelerate missiles, causing them to land softly, and the aerokinetic who could catch flying cars are both missing. Great."
Victor blinked, not having thought of that aspect of their powers, or how useful they could be in this situation. He checked something on his phone very quickly. "Stormtiger won't be able to get here for at least another hour."
Rick shook his head. "So not until this situation is over. Not even worth calling him back, then. Okay, we have Rune on the racetrack. Call her in. Tell her to drop out of the race discretely and park that car someplace it won't be seen. There have got to be barrels of oil somewhere around here. Get to them. Have Menja and Fenja throw some at Lung from over the tops of buildings, indirectly so he doesn't have a straight shot to just throw that car at them."
"Burning oil won't bother Lung," one of the assembled capes snorted.
Rick shot the man a sly smile. "Fire is not what we are after. Burning oil causes smoke. Smoke obscures vision. Smoke makes it particularly hard to see other clouds of smoke, like say Fog, moving against the wind, while providing visual cover for Rune, flying in on one of those wheeled creepers a mechanic uses to slide under a car, or a manhole cover, or a stretcher, whichever is handy. Anything low-profile would do. All she has to do is get, unseen, to that car, and tag it. Then it doesn't matter where or if Lung throws it, she can control it so it lands safely."
A whole lot of tension drained out of that room.
They had a plan.
Several Empire men and women ran off to begin arranging things.
Victor, however, was still tense. "That could work," he admitted. "But we have seconds. We very much don't have minutes, and minutes is what that plan would take. What we need is a way to take down Lung. Rune could do it, except we haven't got the anchor or the chains she needs, and no time for her to fetch some. Kaiser did not prepare another hammer-ball in advance, so the twins can't do it..."
Suddenly realizing who he was speaking to, Victor stopped his ranting and turned to the youth. "Unless you know another way?"
Rick snorted. "Of course I do. You've got five capes here already who could defeat him. However, this information has earned a great deal of money for me before. I'll still give it to you, but what's in it for me?"
"We're not taking any more bets. We can't afford it," Victor told him seriously, before offering, "Can we offer you a cut of the future action?"
Rick just raised an eyebrow at him. "That would work. Say five percent of the house take? It was my idea in the first place, you know. And you also know you interfered in my last bet, ordering Fenja not to take the victory I'd predicted for her when she had it literally in her hand. So come clean and admit to your little cheat, then pay out on my Fenja and Menja bets, and I tell you how to spare your leader's life."
Suddenly recalling that little conversation where this kid had proved he knew Kaiser's secret identity, and knowing they had no time to bargain, Victor simply took out his phone, hitting a speed-dial. "Numberman? Victor. I cheated on the Empire's bet against Rick Belmont on Fenja being next to defeat Lung. He wins. Pay out on the Menja bet as well. Then put him in for five percent of our income on that betting stream as our apology."
There came a click as he hung up the phone, staring seriously at the kid.
"Fog." Rick answered. "All he has to do is get inside of Lung's lungs, then not let any air in. He'll suffocate, and that's not something that the rage dragon can stop via regeneration."
"That's one," Victor agreed, crossing his arms defensively. "You said five of our capes here and now could do it. I believe I paid for all five."
"That you did," Rick nodded his head, agreeing. "Glory Girl has already defeated him, but we won't count her. You paid for Empire. Othala could easily give someone super speed and have them wrap Lung up in chains, then grant super-strength to another who disposes of him in water. Cricket can defeat Lung by focusing the disorienting aspect of her power on him. It's enough to make normal people nauseous and dizzy - but it is a sonic attack and Lung has super-hearing when he is ramped up. Super-hearing, with all kinds of sensitivity and no extra defense. She'll snuff out his mind like a candle. Then all she's got to do is walk up and shove his own tongue down his throat the wrong way, so he chokes on it. How is he going to regenerate from that? It's not torn off, only in the wrong place. We get people in hospitals who die from that because even having doctors on hand doesn't always mean they can save a patient who accidentally swallows his own tongue. She merely does that to him on purpose. It's easy when his head is the size of a garbage can with a tongue the size of a bath towel. Catch him just after an exhale, and he won't have any breath in his lungs to force it back out, even if he could - which most people can't."
Cricket, who had been standing by glaring suspicously at this new kid, now rushed off in a hurry.
Rick affected not to notice. "Kaiser could easily grow a 'cone of shame' around Lung's neck - the same type applied to animals who have been neutered so they don't lick the injury after surgery. Then grow ever more metal around it until he is in an airless box. Doesn't matter how strong Lung grows, more metal can be applied faster and is stronger. You put a narrow ring around someone's neck, all thick and strong with a wedge-shaped inner surface, and growing larger just means getting squeezed tighter. Do it right and you could get Lung to pinch his own head off."
The young man eyed the elder. "Stormtiger could do it, but he's not present, so I won't charge you. I'll just throw him in as a freebie and goodwill offering. But I've been told the Empire aerokinetic has enough control to stop bullets. I'm sure, if he'd thought about it, he could create low-pressure or even no-pressure zones. Just enclose Lung in a bubble where there is no air, and he'll suffocate and die."
The boy opened wide his arms and shrugged. "Lung's weakness is, ironically, his lungs. The man's got to breathe. Heck, Mush, one of the most despised capes in the Bay, even HE can defeat Lung! His power gives him something akin to a power suit made out of literal garbage, which, being honest, can be arranged to be relatively fire-resistant, and is always disposable. All he's got to do is walk up to Lung, shove his arm down Lung's throat (Mush is a little goblin of a man, his real arm is not in that garbage limb, so he risks nothing) then he directs that material to fill up Lung's lungs, and walks away. All Mush risks is a temporary battlesuit made out of garbage. Lung chokes to death. End of story. And Lung, being the idiot he is, is always opening his mouth wide and roaring, making for an easy target."
Rick then smiled, looking directly at him, "And you yourself have skills. Use a slingshot or wrist-rocket to shoot a can of pepper-spray into Lung's face, where the heat will cause it to explode, distracting and disabling him for long enough for a follow-up shot to then administer a very large dosage of curare, a paralytic poison that I know you can get from Medhall. Lung's regeneration does not help him against poisons."
Rick handed the cape a business card. "Here, my contact there. They'll set you up. I wouldn't tell people this ordinarily, but you and I have done business together, so I know I can trust you with the secret that, occasionally, things can be had under the table and off the books there."
Jared knew full well Victor did not need that contact, as Medhall and the Empire worked dangerously close together sometimes. But it was good theater, and sound tactics, to pretend to know less than you did. And all they'd find from his purchase history as Rick Belmont was a heck of a lot of actual medical stuff, like forceps and medical tape, sutures and bandages, for treating injuries living out in the woods might give you, in amounts for covering about a hundred families.
He did those purchases under the table for the tax break, not because they were inherently illegal.
Victor accepted the card wryly, relaxing a bit as he figured the kid must not know how intertwined the Empire and Medhall were. "You know, I think I'll plan on that for another time. But now I see Cricket about to beat us all to the punch." He gestured outside the window, where the woman had almost reached Lung, approaching from behind while he faced the PRT to his front.
"Now wouldn't that be a headline: Cricket Beats Lizard'," Jared snarked, beginning to look out over the action himself.
Once Cricket found her range it was obvious by Lung's reaction, as he stopped everything he was doing to clutch suddenly at his head. He began reeling about, as it was obvious she was disorienting him. He went to his knees, and his fingers went nerveless. Max Anders dropped roughly ten feet, which was annoying and damaging but not deadly - except to his car, which was totaled.
Cricket played with her power for a bit, fiddling with the frequencies until she found one that really bothered Lung, causing the rage dragon to simply pass out, whereupon she calmly walked to his head, reached deep inside of his mouth, adjusted something, then turned about, posed on his body as if for a war statue or a photograph (Jared himself took several, with a zoom lens), accepting some minor burn damage as she calmly hopped down, bent and did something, then walked away from the simmering rage dragon as he lay on his back drooling.
His pyrokinesis did not have all that much power without his mind to direct it. She'd picked up some minor burns that Othala could have fixed in ten minutes, but dealt a defeat to Lung that would be remembered over the lifetime of some viewers.
She did not even spare Max Anders a glance, which was brilliant, as she did not have to in order to assure herself that he was alright, as she had sonar sense to do that for her, while her pretended indifference served as a strong disconnect between them, protecting the man's secret identity.
Rick turned to Victor, asking, "So, what is her size?"
"What?" Victor did not understand the non-sequitur.
"Well," Rick allowed. "I owe that woman a T-shirt."
Then he smiled, "And you should probably get back to announcing."
Victor keyed on the microphone he'd been using. "Excuse the minor distraction there, folks. The race goes on!"
OoOoO
Author's Notes:
The PRT figure they can wave the excuse of, 'Untested, Potentially Dangerous, Tinkertech' and take it all for their own use. Like most petty tyrants, their only concern is those who have enough lawyers to actually call them on it when they skirt (or outright trample) the laws.
And they figure amateur race promoters haven't got a few hundred million to spare in legal fees - or that they could arrest the 'Dangerous Parahumans' for their illegal race promoting if they did, then freeze that money along with all other assets as 'having been used in a crime', until their victims are behind bars, then quietly enrich their budget by taking it all for themselves.
Just like the PRT are doing now to Canary.
As was correctly raised as a major issue when those seizure laws were getting passed, letting law enforcement take money from suspects - then keep it for themselves (or their department), is a major conflict of interests.
You can't have police departments making up budget shortfalls by deliberately beating people up, then taking their money - as several IRL departments have since been CAUGHT or ADMITTED DOING!
That's just too close to a mugging.
As for Victor saying, "We can't afford it," when referring to bets against Rick, he is lying. Pharmaceutical companies like Medhall make billions each year, and the Empire gang controls the most prosperous parts of the city. What he means is they are tired of losing bets to this person, so chose not to make any more of them. 'Can't afford it' is simply an excuse that is hard to challenge - as it represents a choice, a priority. "This costs us, so we choose not to do it." is the only operative part of "Can't afford it."
And Rick sinks his claws deeping into the Empire, coming one major step closer to destroying them.
Beta work by Dogbertcarroll.