This was written a while ago, and this chapter is paced terribly because I didn't care to spend more chapters than necessary before I started the story for real.
Tomorrow.
Winter break ended tomorrow, some parents would be relieved while their kids would be dismayed.
Taylor Hebert was one of those kids, but it wasn't because she hated learning, in fact she rather enjoyed it. What she was dismayed about wasn't school work, but rather her classmates, more specifically her bullies. She didn't remember all the faces and names of those who occasionally bullied her, but she did remember the big three.
The Trio, if you prefer they had a catchy name, was made up of her ex-best friend Emma Barnes, of a track jock Sophia Hess, and the 'cute one' Madison Clements. All put together they had beauty, brawns and brains. A triple threat that had zeroed in on her. Those three were at the center of a campaign to make her life difficult at every corner, and she couldn't do anything without some 'proof'.
She was grateful for winter break, she was able to relax for a while, until she realized just how much her life has changed. When the last night of break came, tonight, she couldn't bring herself to even think she'll go to school tomorrow. She just knew that if she went to school, she would hate herself for it, for willing going back and letting herself get tormented.
She had spent most of the night since getting into bed just thinking of what they would do to her, she had imagined scenario after scenario about the ways her bullies would welcome her back.
Would Emma use something Taylor had confided in her friend to humiliate her? Again. Would Sophia finally go too far and cripple her?
She just didn't know what to do anymore. her best friend was now her worst enemy, and no one who went or worked at the school cared about what was happening to her. It felt like it was just a short while ago when Emma was her BFF and Taylor's mother was alive, but it also felt like it was forever ago.
She wanted to know what happened.
What she could do to fix their friendship, but Emma wouldn't tell her.
She was all alone.
No friends, no loving mom, and her dad was just a husk of his old self.
The whole world was conspiring to take away her happiness.
And they succeeded.
When she woke up she didn't remember going to sleep, but the sunlight leaking through the curtains and blinds on her window confirmed that time had definitely passed without her noticing.
She turned over in her bed and looked at her clock, she was surprised to find the time was 8:23 am. She would be late for school. She jumped out of bed and tripped over her blankets in the process, she counted herself lucky her fall hadn't been excessively violent.
Laying there on the floor, she reasoned with herself that this was for the best, and that she deserved an extra day off.
She almost dozed off, trapped tightly in her covers, but then her eyes snapped open when she felt something tickling her brain. Taylor sat up and thought about what she felt, it wasn't something physical, no it was like something had brushed against her thoughts themselves.
As she pondered, it happened again, this time it lasted a little longer, and she saw things. Light, movement, reactions, waves, shapes and other things she quickly forgot about, she could only recall her reactions to seeing them, and that she knew what she was seeing. Glimpses of technology were swimming on her brain.
She brought a hand up to hold her dizzy aching head and slumped against her bed, she saw technology more clearly. The headache faded and she took a moment to wonder what the fuck just happened, her first thought was that she had an aneurysm or stroke, but then the hopeful thoughts came, like did she have a superpower?
She knew Tinkers existed, they had the superpower to make advanced technology, she never really wondered what that meant, but now she did. She knew they didn't create things from nothing, so that meant they built it, so their superpower had to be the tech they make. So one could conclude that having vague imprints of technology brush against your consciousness meant you had powers.
Taylor needed to test it, she needed to see if she could actually make something, so she got off the floor and changed her clothes before going downstairs, she cut through the living room and made her way into the basement. A flick of a switch illuminated the basement, the dust in the air was visible.
Her father's toolbox was stored down here, she has only seen him use it a few times, mainly just the hammer and screwdriver. It didn't take a lot of searching to locate it, she could tell it was old, the faded red and rusty corners painted a clear picture. She opened it up to find a few wrenches, a handsaw, some pliers, a hammer, plenty of screwdrivers, a power drill, a measuring tape and a lot of loose screws and nails.
These tools were great for fixing things, but she wasn't going to repair, she was going to create. She needed different tools, or better tools.
An idea appeared in her head, there was a weird sensation that flowed through her mind. It was like a cartoon light bulb lit up above her head, and her brain was channeling the electric current that powered the bulb. Her attention wavered, she could feel her body move, it knew what she had to do.
When she was done, the tools hardly looked different, aside from a few dents and grooves, but they felt better in her hands. She had hit parts of the metal bits with a hammer, tightened some parts with the wrench and fiddled with the screws and bolts. She was just doing what came instinctively, so either she was delusional or she had powers.
Taylor wanted to actually use her new powers, if she wasn't delusional that is, so she needed to make something but she would require materials. She turned her head to look around the basement, and she realized she was sitting on the floor. She pushed herself up with her palms and inspected the junk that had gathered down here.
She didn't bother looking through the boxes, she knew those contained old clothes and paperwork, so she just moved those aside. After about ten minutes of searching, she hadn't found a lot, which made sense, but she did find an old microwave, a toaster, and a car battery.
Taylor also found an old bicycle, it was small and she remembered riding around the park with Emma, they laughed and played for hours, it was memories like those which made her insults sting harder. She had also found a box with christmas decorations, she didn't think her family had used them since before her mom passed away, her dad and her didn't really celebrate much of anything anymore.
She was struggling to lift the microwave before she realized she had no reason to, the best place to tinker would have to be down here. It was away from prying eyes, her dad didn't come down here often, and there was a workbench down here, it was perfect, but not in this state. She had to clean, she opened the small window to let the air in and went upstairs to get some things. She found the broom, and after a little bit of checking cabinets, a duster.
She also got a new lightbulb from the hallway closet, she took two extra so she would have more materials to tinker with. Then she went on a hunt, she scoured every nook and cranny looking for materials. In the end she found a few disposable cameras, never used, a few batteries, ranging in sizes and volts, and a lot of electric toys that she never played with anymore, and a box cutter, she dumped everything into a cardboard box before going back to clean the basement.
When she finished her descent into the basement, her first thought was to replace the bulb, but then she realized she had left it on and it had heated up considerably. She had to go back up and find oven mitts or wait until it cooled, she chose the mitts.
It was probably an hour later when she stopped and considered herself done, satisfied with her area, she moved on to her tools. She took the toolbox out back and washed the tools down with a hose and a rag. When she was done drying them and while taking them back downstairs, she saw the time. It was 1:00 pm, she had about eight hours until dad got home, eight hours to prove to herself that she had powers.
Her station was complete, she set up on a workbench with big materials to the side, a box of materials underneath and the tool box sitting on top.
It sure looked nice, but it was nowhere near her image of a true Tinker's workshop, but that didn't mean anything she told herself that she had to start somewhere, but then she asked herself where she could go from here if she had powers, eventually he dad would catch her and make her join the Wards.
Taylor didn't want that, she could see the benefits of joining the Wards, she wasn't blind, she could have an actual workshop and materials, if only she signed up to another place filled with teenage drama and adult oversight. She was already struggling to just stay in school, and she wanted freedom, so she was okay with her basement, but she didn't want to be caught by her dad.
If she wasn't crazy, then she needed to keep her tech small, stuff she could easily hide when she was not here, and when she did get some momentum in building things she would have to find someplace to build bigger and better things.
Now that she was done, cleaning and thinking, and maybe stalling, she could try to build something that was actually Tinker tech.
She stood in front of her workbench, cleared her head and waited until an idea came to her mind, nothing happened.
She stood under the light and tried to focus, to call upon the feeling she felt earlier, still nothing happened. Worry grew in her heart, she had no idea what to build, maybe she should have read up on Tinkers, she only knew what she remembered from cartoons, gossip and mentions in class, that Tinkers built things that couldn't be built through normal means.
She tried thinking about Tinkers, there was obviously Hero, Haywire and Dragon. Then she remembered the discussions she had overheard, Kid Wid was a Tinker, and Squealer was also a Tinker, and she guessed Armsmaster was a Tinker too.
Tinkers built power suits, portals, hoverboards, bikes, lasers and halberds with plasma cutters. Tinkers made weapons and vehicles, so she guessed she could make a weapon. She decided to start small with something she could build fast and use to take down a villain non lethally.
She felt the current run through her brain, she had an idea and hope. She took apart toys and a camera and cut open the christmas lights, she took small bits that handled power from the toys and camera, and some wire from the lights.
Time passed by unnoticed, she only stopped because her stomach growled at her. Snapping back to the real world, she felt incredibly hungry and her hands hurt, which wasn't surprising, she recalled the small shocks from wires and the knicks from metal, luckily she hadn't drawn blood.
Looking down on her unfinished project, it appeared as if a child had made it, though that was mainly because she was reusing a casing from a toy. If you ignored the childish plastic container, it just looked messy, with too much wiring and connected bits exposed, but she didn't care about its appearance too much. She only cared that she was one step closer to proving she had superpowers, if what she built could do things that conventional science said it shouldn't be able to, that would confirm her hopes.
Her stomach growled again, reminding Taylor that she hadn't eaten since dinner last night, too engrossed in testing her potential power to notice throughout the day. She stretched and let out a yawn before climbing the stairs. The clock revealed the time to be 5:00 pm. Four hours had passed since she started working, absently she heated up some leftovers from dinner and ate her food quickly.
She didn't bother washing her dishes, just left them in the sink, and went back down. She had shocked herself a lot, so she considered wearing some gloves but threw that idea away, since she needed her nails to hook on to the loose wires.
As she closed the casing, she felt the metal current fade, she was done. It wasn't pretty, but it was finished, and about the shape of a thick tv remote, but with the top and bottom opened. It was pastel pinks and dark blue with silver screws running down its length. She picked up the second piece, it was wires, junk and a battery all exposed, she slotted it into the bottom of the first piece.
It emitted a rising high pitched whine, and she could feel the energy thrumming inside it, her thumb was hovering above a button, if she pressed it, it would connect the circuits. This was it, either she mashed bits and pieces together at random and would seriously harm herself, or Taylor was a Tinker and this was her first piece of Tech.
She pointed the thing, which would crush or make her dreams, at a wall and pressed the button. It buzzed, crackled, and then shot out a horizontal arc of electricity. A smile grew on her face as she watched the electricity stop after two feet and loosely sustain itself mid air.
She did it, she did it. She had superpowers.
The Tinkertech in her hand started feeling hot, and she noticed the electric arc starting to lash outside its designated zone, so she relaxed her finger on the button. The electricity shrunk and disappeared.
She looked at her Tinkertech stun gun and felt pride, even though she didn't completely understand how it worked she was glad. She doubted regular stun guns could shoot and sustain electricity from a distance. She will have to watch out for strong magnets when she uses it though.
Taylor imagined a mugger and pointed her weapon at him, she pretended to press the button, the imaginary mugger spasmed and fell to the ground. For the next minute she aimed at imaginary villains and pretended to fire.
Her heroic fantasies abruptly ended when she heard the front door open, her dad was home. She was torn, she wanted to show him her technology, she wanted him to be proud and congratulate her with a smile and a hug. But she knew he wouldn't care, that he would only be concerned about her safety, and her heart raced with panic at the thought of being caught.
Disappointed and panicked, she froze. She faintly heard the creaking of the stairs, of him walking up to the second floor, she had time. She quickly and quietly packed away the tools into the toolbox and scooped the toy scraps into her materials box, then she closed and moved both boxes away from each other and snuck up the stairs.
Her stun gun was tucked into her waist and covered by her shirt, she turned off the light before slowly opening the basement door, then she sneaked her way around the kitchen. She had a choice to make, stay in the kitchen and find a reason as to why she was down here, or sneak into her room and not have to lie.
Maybe she was still riding the high, but she decided to sneak into her room.
As the seconds seem to drag and her heartbeat grew louder by decibels, she walked along the edges of each step as she ascended, she could see the bathroom light on, and knew this was the final stretch. She took a gamble and walked, she tried to straddle along the tightrope of quiet and slow or loud but fast.
One minute later, she was panting and exhausted, but she made it to her room without being detected. She hid her Tinkertech in a drawer and flopped on her bed, then she dozed off, and was woken up by her father at dinnertime.
They ate and said good night, then she went to bed for real.
This morning her alarm had woken her up on time, she pressed the button and rolled her legs off the bed. She sat on the edge and rubbed the sleep out her eyes, a yawn escaped her mouth. She knew today would be the same as always, and then she remembered.
Taylor was a Tinker now.
She was completely awake now, and she rushed over to the drawer which should contain proof, she slowly opened it. It was there, her Tinkertech was there. It was real and not just a dream.
She knew being a Tinker wouldn't change much at school, but now she had something she could escape to, and when the time came, she could even be a hero. She went through her morning routine with a little pep in her step, not enough for her dad to notice, or maybe that just said something about how little he paid attention to her.
She reluctantly left her Tinkertech behind, and caught a bus to school.
She knew something was off as soon as she walked through the doors, whispers and snickers followed her everywhere, she grew uneasy and tried to distract herself with Tinker ideas, but that ended when she got to her locker.
It was open and empty, the stench of bleach was prominent in the air, it didn't make sense that a student would use bleach, so she guessed the janitor had been here. And if the janitor had to clean her locker, that meant it had been dirty, which she doubted she left it like that so that meant someone else had done something.
Now she was suddenly very glad that she skipped school yesterday, until she realized how it looked. Every time she tried reporting an incident without any proof, she was written off as an attention seeker, and since she couldn't prove anyone had access to her locker, she was no doubt blamed for this too. She quietly fumed, and walked away, she hoped, she knew it wouldn't, but she hoped if she failed to acknowledge it then it would go away.
Instead of a peaceful walk to class, she crossed paths with a pissed off Sophia Hess, Taylor did her best to ignore her, tried to block out what she said to her, but she couldn't control her body's reactions, so she winced and flinched with every verbal jan. She was shaking, Sophia probably thought she was shaking in fear, but in reality she was bursting at the seams with mildly restrained anger.
She didn't really understand Sophia, the girl who had met Emma while Taylor was at summer camp and became her best friend. And then the girl turned Emma against her, and while she used to wish and hope Emma would come to her senses and be her friend again. She didn't really care about Sophia.
She knew the girl would beat her in a fight ten out of ten times, however it would be so very cathartic to just punch her once, but Taylor didn't. She was going to be a hero, and heroes didn't harm civilians.
Sophia eventually got bored and left, and Taylor didn't go to class until she finished calming herself down. Her first class was computer science, a class she was doing fairly well in, and when she finished her computer assignment, she took a quick trip to Parahumans Online, and looked up Tinkers.
What she read could be summed up as: Tinkers had a power that allowed them to create and alter devices beyond what could be accomplished through normal means, sometimes ignoring physics. They also had a specialty, which meant they were very efficient in certain fields of technology.
The most common thing Tinkers made appeared to be Power Armors, they seemed to shove all their tech inside it, she didn't think that was going to be possible for her, she doubted she could assemble, and sneak around, a hulking suit of metal in her current workshop.
A little more reading revealed just how moronic she was acting by not joining the Wards, apparently it's notorious for Tinkers to cannibalize their home appliances just to scratch the itch to build, and for them to run low on resources and energy. They eventually joined someone, heroes or villains, just to get materials.
She also did a little bit of research into the current Cape scene in her area, the major players for the hero side were the Protectorate ENE, the Wards and New Wave, the major villains gangs were the E88, the ABB, and the Merchants.
There were also lesser known capes, for the heroes they're Sere and Dovetail, and for the villains there's Coil, Circus, Stain, Über and Leet, Trainwreck and the Undersiders. There was also Parian, a rogue, and the Palanquin Crew who were mercenaries.
The rest of the school day continued like normal, harassment and neglect, she was able to deal with most of it by focusing on her new powers. During lunch she was able to make a projectile launcher out of a few school supplies she had in her backpack, which wasn't that impressive but she was able to focus on it and ignore reality for a bit
She dismantled it shortly after, because she didn't want to get in trouble by being caught with 'weapon' but she kept the pieces in her bag.
And during gym class, the insults she got made her think that maybe they were right. She was pretty weak and had almost no stamina, if she wanted to be a hero, she would have to change that. At the end of the day, she rushed out and she made sure to take a new route, she didn't want to deal with the Trio anymore today.
She took a bus home, but she was in and out a moment later, she traded her bag for her wallet, she had formed the outline of a plan. The mall was busy, teenagers just released from their schools were crowding the floor, so she had to worm her way through them and into a shop.
From her research one of the main problems for Tinkers were resources, that was materials to tinker with. And since her dad would notice if all of their home appliances were gone, she had to buy some things but since she didn't know what she needed, she decided to buy things that could be taken apart for parts. There was one thing she was certain she needed, a game station. From what her classmate, Greg Vender, has said the parts were top of the line.
She bought all the money she had saved up, most of it came from her grandma, today with her just so she could buy parts.
The sun had started to set as she walked through the doors of her home, her hands full of bags. She knew most of the space was being taken up by packaging, so she dropped them in the living room and went to get some scissors.
Getting home had been nerve wracking, she probably looked like such an easy target, but luckily she was able to navigate her way home without any complications.
She walked back into the living room and got to work unpacking everything.
Her haul was okay, she didn't buy too much and still had some money left over, she had bought a game station, a few cheap disposable phones, a phone charger, a watch, two flashlights, a few laser pointers, some batteries, a hot glue gun, glue sticks, some electric tape, a few pens, paperclips, a small rotating fan, an rc car, and two handheld radios.
She threw away all of the instructions and packaging, then took multiple trips downstairs to organize her workshop. She finished at about 7:00 pm, and she wasn't in a rush to build anything. Fortunately the weekend was tomorrow, so she could spend the entire day tinkering away then.
She ate dinner before showering, then she went down to the basement, she put on the watch and looked at the time, she had about an hour and ten minutes before her dad got home. It could be enough time to start something simple, she had already built something, now she had to see if she could alter something.
She looked around and chose the flashlight, she could feel the current again and she lost herself as she unscrewed the screws. The current rescinded and she examined her work, it was hard to tell the difference at first glance, but if one was to open the shell, they would find it hard to see the thing as a flashlight.
A glance at her watch informed her she had a few minutes before Dad got home, she pointed the altered flashlight at the far side of the wall and clicked one button, the entire area in front of the light was lit up, the reflection was nearly blinding. She clicked a different button, the cone shrunk to the size of a dot, an incredibly bright dot. She clicked the third button, and the intensity of the light dropped.
She built a very bright flashlight/laser-pointer, she could probably blind someone for a while if she aimed for their eyes. As she started packing away her things, she thought about the thing she would have to worry about, similar to her stun gun, it was battery powered and overheated if left on for more than a few seconds.
She used batteries as a power source and until she made a new power source, if she could, then that wouldn't change soon. But for now she would just have to make sure she didn't overwork anything. And her tech mostly overheated because she was shoving too many things into small casings, but she only did that so it could work effectively, if she had better materials then she would fix this.
The rest of her night went smoothly.
And when her alarm went off the next morning, she didn't waste any time getting up. Today was Saturday, she could spend the entire day working on something, she ate her breakfast faster than normal and impatiently waited until her dad left for work.
As she set up her workshop, she decided to make a big project, she had the materials and time. She wasn't going to do anything too wild, just something that would help her build more things. She took apart the microwave and the toaster, and she grabbed some bits from the material box and went to work.
After hours of nonstop work she was done. It took up the entire space on the table and looked like trash. If she had to guess what it appeared to be, she would probably say a miniature football field made of scraps. She grabbed the loose cables dangling off the edge and connected them to the car battery and she heard it start up with a low pitched hum and sparking.
She started small, and placed a screw on the center, a few seconds later it was glowing red, them after a minute it was just a blob of heated metal. It worked.
Great, it was great, now she could work with metal. She dropped a piece of plastic off to the left and waited, it didn't change. Good, it only affected metal. She unplugged the machine and waited until the red metal turned gray, then she scraped it off with the hammer.
She checked her watch, the time was 7:37 pm, she had spent the entire day working on this. She packed up her things and went through the motions until bedtime.
The next day she decided to try her hand at a power generator, the result had cost her a large chunk of her materials, big and small, but it worked. While building it she was reminded of her stun gun, but more stable. Like her other works, the pieces were exposed, and looked like something you would find in a junkyard, it had cables running off and let out sparks that crawled along the metal. It was too big to carry and she had to build it on the floor.
In front of her were the bicycle pedals, she couldn't say how it worked entirely, but she knew it would change kinetic energy into electrical energy and store some of it. If she held a light bulb near the generator it would lit up, which was neat.
Taylor was a Tinker now, and she needed to think of her future. She was obviously going to be a hero, but what did that mean? She had to stop crime and save people, that was what a hero did, but how would she do that?
Her stun gun could stop a normal criminal, but against a Cape she was screwed. She needed to build better weapons, but that meant she needed a better workshop. This was why Tinkers joined up or became thieves.
She needed resources, but she didn't want to join the Wards or become a criminal. It wasn't stealing if she took from villains, right? Who would they report her to? They might develop a grudge against her, but she was going to be a hero, why would she care what villains thought of her?
On Monday, after she finished her computer work, she researched the villains a little more. The villainous Tinkers in Brockton Bay were: Leet, Squealer and Trainwreck.
Leet and his other half, Über, were two video game themed idiots that live-streamed their crimes, his Tinkertech was all over the place with what he could build, but they also had a tendency to go explosively wrong.
Squealer was a Merchant and a crackhead, her specialty was vehicles.
Trainwreck was a Monster Cape that made crude suits, there wasn't much else about him.
Taylor decided to go after Squealer. Über probably had security measures and Trainwreck offered her as much help as going to an actual train wreck would be, but Squealer made vehicles, so she definitely had resources and she doubted she guarded them well.
She read some more about the Merchants, Skidmark and Mush, and she mentally prepared herself. She had to hype herself up, she knew she was essentially attacking the Merchants on their home ground with just a stun gun and a flashlight.
Crossposted from my Spacebattles account: Krak-Quinn.
And yes her speciality isn't supposed to be clear.
To address a [jager]'s review, yeah she knows about them but she hasn't been paying attention to what they were currently doing. Also thanks for correcting me, I mixed their names up when typing. They're called 'Über and Leet' so it didn't feel natural to type Leet first.