Sidekick
Chapter Four
Waking up without Shadow Stalker's powers was nothing worth noticing. Sure, being able to fade out of reality was interesting, but it didn't change anything fundamental about her. It was the same with Gallant's powers. If anything, being able to see people's emotions was awkward, and she didn't miss leaving those abilities behind.
But waking up without Tinker powers? Being able to understand the world on a whole new level, take it apart, and put it back together again, and then having it just be gone? Her brain felt like cotton stuffed inside her skull as she stared at the ceiling, trying to come to terms with the fact that she was already awake and lying in bed for another fifteen minutes wasn't going to make her more awake.
So she got up and looked at her three pieces of Tinkertech with new, much dumber eyes.
A pair of shock gloves. Or stun gloves? Taser gloves? Maybe she could upgrade them later to shock gauntlets that would ... shoot lasers too? Was that feasible?
For now, they wouldn't do her any good unless she could get in close, and that was where the skates came in. They had been fun to use, and she had plugged them into an outlet next to her bed. Were they fully recharged yet? She picked one up and turned it around in her hands. Tinker Taylor would have known how to tell, but she had likely considered it too obvious to bother remembering, and now normal Taylor was stuck with the guesswork. But Tinker Taylor hadn't thought that the skates would wreck her power bill, so it was probably fine? She made a mental note to add a power gauge later.
Then came the glasses. She picked them up carefully, not sure how fragile they were, only that they were the only thing she had made that had impressed Armsmaster. The function was cool. Everything else she had made could be replicated by normal hands, while glasses that could see people's emotions were definitely in sci-fi territory.
But why had she made them? She hadn't even liked Gallant's power, so why did she spend a few of her precious Tinker hours recreating his empathic sight? Fights with gang members or super villains weren't emotionally nuanced, and she would have been much better off making some kind of protective gear. Maybe some kind of forcefield, like Lady Photon and Dauntless had.
She shook her head. There was probably some Tinker reason for that. She got dressed for her run and went outside. The fresh air, the movement, it all helped focus her in ways not even Tinker powers had. Did she have enough to go on patrol? She imagined herself facing a normal guy with a gun. It didn't go well.
Actually, how did that work? Some of the heroes could take a bullet, like Armsmaster or Aegis, but what about the others? Vista, the youngest Ward, didn't have power armor or super durability. Was her costume made of kevlar? Or did she just carry the promise that the hammer of justice would come down on anyone who hurt the heroes' favorite preteen?
Something to think about. Something that, after returning from her run, she didn't have an answer for.
She ate breakfast, bacon, eggs, and pancakes, waiting for the phone to ring. This was around the time when Armsmaster had called the day before. Or was he expecting her to call him? Or was there an implied open invite where she could come over whenever she had time?
"So about this mentorship study program," her dad said over the breakfast table. "I never signed anything about that. And if you're going to be gone for so long, I'd like to know who to call in case of an emergency." He took a bite of bacon and crunched it thoughtfully. "So is this a Winslow program, or ..."
Taylor shook her head. The night before, she had kept her answers vague and her lies minimal, but there was only so much she could hide without revealing she was hiding something. She considered for a moment just telling him the truth. She had kept her powers secret for this long because she didn't even have powers half the time and so there wasn't much to tell, but now?
She still didn't want to. This was her thing, and if she told him, he would want to be involved. Maybe that wasn't a great reason, but it wasn't like she was in any danger.
"No, it's, uh, it's complicated. It's connected to Arcadia's program, but not quite?" She stalled with a mouthful of pancakes. Think. Could she get the PRT to print out some faux paperwork for her? Did they have a department for helping teenage superheroes weave huge webs of lies for themselves? Of course they did. They had to. "I'll bring back a form next time I go." Or stall until she was ready to come clean. Or until she slipped up and he found out, forever tarnishing their relationship with lies and deceit.
"And when is that?" he asked. "Next Saturday?"
She hesitated. "Hopefully today. It was kind of up in the air."
Finally the phone rang. Taylor jumped out of her chair and grabbed it before her dad could even move. "Hello? Taylor Hebert speaking."
A pause.
"Hello?" she said again.
"Hello, homeowner," replied a mechanical voice. "We at SMD Securities are offering a one time deal on a six month subscription to—"
Taylor hung up. Damn telemarketers.
WWW
Taylor spent the morning catching up on homework. Just homework. She did not get distracted playing with her Tinkertech gadgets or staring longingly at the phone or drawing designs for her superhero costume. Just homework. After all, she had some to catch up on, and when Armsmaster did call, she didn't want to have to leave early to finish that math assignment due Monday.
The phone didn't ring again until after lunch time.
"Hello?"
"Hello, is this Taylor Hebert?"
Armsmaster! "Yes, do you need me to come over?"
"Thank you, but not today. I won't be able to spend much time in the workshop."
"Oh." Would she sound too desperate if she offered to come by tomorrow after school? Was next Saturday too far away? "Some other time, then?"
"Of course. Actually, I wanted to know if you would be willing to help me with something else."
"Sure!" With what? If he didn't need her in his workshop ... Taylor had a sudden mental image of herself going on a patrol with the Protectorate hero, Armsmaster with his halberd and power armor, and Taylor ... with her handful of comparative trash.
"First off, what do you know about Tinker specialties?"
She hesitated. There were Tinker specialties? "Not a lot."
"I told you about my hybridization abilities yesterday. That wouldn't matter if all Tinkers were the same, but some of us specialize in vehicles or chemicals or specific materials. We can operate outside our specialties, but we often end up with inferior products."
"Okay."
"Which brings me to Kid Win. I want you to work with him today. I hope that either you'll be able to strengthen his power to manifest his specialty clearly, or your simpler version of his power will make his specialty more obvious."
Kid Win. What did she know about him? "His specialty isn't laser guns?" She remembered that he used guns at least. And a hoverboard.
"He uses spark guns," Armsmaster said. "Hard electricity, but they're derivative, based on another Tinker'sother Tinkers' work, Capacity. Perhaps that is the best he can do, but I would like to know either way."
She took a deep breath. She didn't want this. She wanted to work with Armsmaster's powers again, not ... fix one of the Wards. And she was pretty sure Kid Win wouldn't want to be fixed either. She wasn't even on the team and Armsmaster was already giving her jobs!
But beggars and choosers and blah, blah, blah. Besides, she had already agreed to help, and even a second rate Tinker was better than no Tinker at all.
"So where would this be?"
"His workshop is in the PRT building. He'll be there all afternoon."
Great. She wondered what the odds were of her running into Shadow Stalker there. She wondered if it even still mattered.
"Wait, that's Boost?" she could imagine Sophia saying to her friends. "She goes to my school! Oh, you will not believe how much of a loser she is! Why, this one time ..."
Taylor grit her teeth. It didn't matter. She dealt with Sophia every day at school. Besides, she wasn't going there in order to make friends. She didn't care what the Wards thought of her. She just wanted to build some better tech for herself, and be left alone.
WWW
Nobody confiscated her Tinkertech or checked her for weapons when she arrived at the PRT building. Which made sense. They were trained to deal with actual threats, while Taylor was still just Taylor.
She had a backpack with her this time so she could bring home whatever she made, but that also made her feel like she was at school. Not the mindset she was hoping for. She tugged her scarf further up over her face, which she had added to her "costume" along with her hood and mask. Maybe she looked ridiculous, but .. yeah, she just looked ridiculous.
A trooper led her to the elevator which dropped down to the now familiar Wards HQ. So much for the hope that Kid Win's workshop was somewhere else.
You're not going to run into Shadow Stalker. It's the middle of the day, and her power makes her more effective at night.
Right. And Murphy's Law did not have a personal grudge against her.
The headquarters were well lit, but it still made her feel like she was traveling through deep, underground tunnels. Which she was. And that everyone was watching her. She glanced up at one of the many security cameras.
Then they finally reached the door to Kid Win's workshop. She had expected something like Armsmaster's workshop, but Kid Win's was about as close to the opposite as could be. For one, it was a mess. Where Armsmaster kept everything meticulously organized, every table and much of the floor of Kid Win's workshop was covered in half finished gadgets and spare parts, loud music blaring from a soundsystem. Then there was Kid Win himself. He wasn't in costume, just jeans and a t-shirt with a mask over his face.
But when he saw her, he smiled.
"Hey, you must be Boost!" he said, turning off his music and getting out of his chair.
The trooper spoke before Taylor could. "I'll need you to confirm that."
"Sure." He extended his hand as though to shake hers, but pulled away at the last second when he saw her glove. "Woah, did you make that? What does it do?"
"Oh, sorry." Maybe shaking the kid hero's hand with a shock glove wasn't a great idea, even if it wasn't on. She tugged it off and tucked it under her arm. "It's just something I threw together last night." She took his hand, and once again, her mind exploded.
Even when she knew what to expect, it was still overwhelming. The workshop that had at first seemed cluttered had turned into a vibrant display of possibilities. Power sources, regulators, controllers, all laid out on display like pieces of a puzzle of something incredible. She wanted to ... she wanted to ...
She was still holding Kid Win's hand.
She pulled away as he turned to the trooper. "Yup, you can go. She is the genuine Boost." The man left, and the door closed behind him. "So, can I see the gloves?"
Taylor hesitated, but what was she supposed to say? No? "Okay, but like I said, I didn't spend much time on it."
He laughed. "No worries. It's way better than my first project." He turned a glove over in his hand, peering at it from different angles. "What was it again? I can't remember. All I can say is that when my dad came home and found out I had taken apart the microwave, the DVD player, and the TV? He wanted to kill me. I never did end up finishing it, whatever it was." He snapped his fingers. "Right. A holographic projector." He turned the glove over in his hand. "Now this is discreet."
"Yeah, that's what I was going for. What gave them away?"
"The wiring in the cuff here. Most people wouldn't notice. Most Tinkers wouldn't notice, unless they were expecting to see Tinkertech. What else do you got?"
Taylor hesitated, thinking about her pair of empathic glasses. Armsmaster had seemed to think that they were the best tech she had made, but she pulled her skates out of her backpack instead. "They're, uh, skates." She tried to come up with a way of presenting them that sounded better than, "They have wheels. Wheels go fast."
But Kid Win snatched them out of her hands like they were actually impressive. "Ooh! Oh, I can tell that these are going to be fun! How fast do they go?"
She found herself blushing. She had made them for a practical means of transportation, but when she had tried them out the night before, yeah, they were pretty fun. "Thirty or so miles per hour on a good road."
He chuckled. "Good luck finding one of those in the city. That's why I stick with my hoverboard. Hey, want to take a look?"
"Sure!" She knew she was imitating his enthusiasm, but it was only fair with how positive he was about her own tech. For a moment, she wondered if even second-rate Armsmaster junk looked good compared to what Kid Win could whip up, but then she got a closer look at his hoverboard, and that idea went out the window.
It was ... Armsmaster's tech was perfect. It was effective, efficient, and it got the job done. But Kid Win's tech? It was better than perfect. It was fun. There was style to the hoverboard, music—metaphorically, of course. It was light, lighter even than a normal skateboard, with sensors on the top so that it could be controlled entirely with one's feet.
"Hey, you know the difference between antigravity and lift, right?" Kid Win asked.
"Of course," Taylor replied, flipping the board over and looking at its underside. "Lift counters the force of gravity with a greater force." With an aircraft, that usually meant pushing down a large amount of air each second, or shooting small particles downward at high speeds. "Antigravity inverts the flow of gravity, so something falls upward." It was in the name.
Kid Win grinned at her. "You have no idea how refreshing it is to talk shop with someone who speaks English. Usually everyone just stares at me like I'm spouting gibberish."
"What about Armsmaster?"
His smile faded. "Armsmaster ... focuses on his own projects. Hey, want to try it out?"
Taylor hesitated, looking from the hoverboard to the workshop with its low ceiling and half finished projects scattered all over. "I would crash." She could crash a skateboard. A flying skateboard in a small room surrounded by delicate, potentially volatile objects? She'd be like a bull in a china shop, if that bull was also made of glass.
"Not here." He walked out of the workshop, forcing her to follow him. "In the test room."
The test room was the size of a gymnasium. There were some targets built into the wall as well as some dummies, but for the most part it was a wide, open space with, most importantly, padded floors.
"I still don't think this is a good idea."
He laughed. "Don't worry about it. No matter how badly you wipe out, it won't be as bad as when I first tested this thing. Before I added stabilizers. And passenger sensors. And brakes. My point is, you couldn't fall off this thing if you tried."
Taking a deep breath, Taylor stepped onto the hoverboard, and in defiance of Kid Win's highest expectations, she fell off immediately.
Lying flat on her back, she glared at the ceiling. "That doesn't count."
She tried again. And again. There wasn't any trick to it, no form or method to flying the hoverboard. She just kept going until it felt right. And when it was right, it was more than perfect.
She leaned into the curves as she flew, crouching low for balance on a thin plank of metal over a twenty foot drop. The wind blew her hood back, her hair and scarf streaming behind her. She was flying, about to fall, so alive, about to die. She ...
She wanted to do a loop de loop. Did she have enough room? She did some ... not calculations, but visualizations in her head. Centripetal force, gravity, velocity, arc. Should work. She dove down and pushed the board as fast as it could go, turbines humming so close to the floor, then yanked it upward. Her own momentum forced her down into a crouch, up and over and back. She reached down, gripping the edge of the board with both hands. Then she crested the top of her arc and came down like a meteorite, pulling up just in time to miss the floor—and to crash into a wall.
"Boost!" Kid Win said, rushing to her side. "Are you okay?"
She had managed to slow down enough so she didn't feel any pain, just an overarching sense of foolishness.
"Don't get yourself killed just yet," he said, helping her to her feet. "We haven't even had the chance to build anything."
Build. Right. Tinker. "How long did it take you to build that?"
"Ugh. Forever. Why, you want one?"
Yes. "No," she said, straightening her glasses. "I'm trying to work with simpler gear that's easier to maintain."
He nodded slowly. "Simple and basic. Alright, let's hit the workshop again and see what happens."
She took one step after him, and lost her footing. The floor threw her off by not shifting with her weight, and she stumbled, grabbing onto his shoulder as he caught her. "Sorry!" she said, pushing away from him. "Just ... getting my land legs."
Really? she thought to herself. That's the best you could come up with? Make a pirate joke while you're at it. Yarr!
To his credit, Kid Win didn't laugh at her. "Yeah, it takes some getting used to. Come on."
Back in the workshop, Kid win began scribbling out schematics on his notebook, and Taylor offered what input she could. It started with her skates, stripped down to just the wheels and the motor. There wasn't enough space to work with, so they modified them into boots. The power had to be reduced, the system programmed to act with minimal input, and the two of them got to work.
She found out pretty fast that her version of Kid Win's powers didn't work like Armsmaster's. She went from her tools to the schematics and back again, trying to figure out how to make the gravitational inverter, before she decided to just break it down. She made a series of small, simple gadgets, then stuck them together. Maybe it wasn't the most efficient way to make something, but it worked for her.
Kid Win glanced over from his side of the table. "They're like legos."
"What?"
"Legos. Well, I guess the plural form is lego, but ... yeah, legos. Hey, if you don't mind the boring stuff, you keep building the legos, and I'll put them together."
Boring? Maybe it would feel that way eventually, but it didn't now. It was soothing in a way, just letting her hands work as her mind wandered. She had never liked group projects at school, maybe because her group was always made up of the people no one else wanted to work with. People who couldn't focus, people who didn't care. Working with Armsmaster had been comfortable because they weren't working together, just working in the same room. But with Kid Win? Not only did he do what he could, he did what she couldn't, putting the bits together with an experienced hand, programming the system, and doing some things that Taylor couldn't even follow.
He added one of those things to the boots when they were finished, a thin, metallic film to cover it all, which he programmed with a radiation gun.
"What's that?"
He grinned at her. "Mimetic polyalloy," he said in a German accent. "Liquid metal." He hesitated, seeing her lack of reaction. "You know, from Terminator?"
"Oh, right." She had seen parts of that movie. "So what does it do?"
He grinned again, then blasted her boots with his spark gun. She yelped out a scream as the boots they had both been working on for the past hour or more bounced off the walls and smoldered on the floor. They were still in one piece—Kid Win's weapons were nonlethal by design—but still. "What the hell was that for?"
He shrugged. "Testing." Like that was an explanation. He picked up the boots with a pair of tongs and set them on the table, studying them as though he expected them to do something.
"Well?"
"Give it a minute." He plugged a power cord into them, and the cracks and dents in the boots began to repair themselves.
Her eyes widened. "What? How?" It wasn't nanobots, but something far more elegant. She had only glanced at his side of the table a few times, and whatever he had made left her baffled.
He gave her a satisfied grin, then shrugged again. "You said you wanted something low maintenance, right? What could be lower maintenance than tech that repairs itself?"
She stared at him.
"It eats up the battery, though."
"I'll keep that in mind." Tinkertech that didn't require maintenance? That didn't need a Tinker? If she could get an entire suit coated with that substance ... she wouldn't need anyone else ever again.
She wasn't sure how she felt about that.
"Of course, I can't really call it that," he mused. "It doesn't imitate, it remembers, so ... memetic polyalloy?" He frowned. "Still close enough to get me sued." He shook his head. "I still want to build a killer robot out of the stuff, but I'll worry about that later. You want to try them out?" Kid Win asked, and they went back into the testing room.
Gravitational repulsors, periphery sensors, automatic activation. Not nearly on the same level as Kid Win's hoverboard. Armsmaster might be able to cram that much tech into the soles of her shoes, but neither of them could, and sustained antigravity would drain the battery in no time. But what could they make?
Jump boots.
She jumped, and her boots activated, making her next to weightless for a second as she shot ten feet into the air. They activated again as she landed, and she hit the ground with barely a sound. She jumped around the testing room, knowing that she probably looked like an idiot, but God it was fun.
But it wasn't done yet. It needed ... what? A tweak in the programming so she always landed on her feet. A catfall program. She had seen something similar in Kid Win's hoverboard, an automatic stabilizer, to—
"Seriously, Kid? You're not even dressed yet?"
Nails on the chalkboard, ice in her veins, and a punch to the gut. Taylor knew that voice. Shadow Stalker swaggered in through the door in full costume.
"Oh, is it six o'clock already?" Kid Win asked. "Shoot. I lost track of time making boots for Boost. Have you met her yet? She—"
"Yeah, yeah, I saw Bunny Girl bouncing around." Taylor looked away, wanting to hide behind something, or ... she didn't know what. She knew it was stupid, but she wished she was still wearing her shock gloves. She settled for pulling her hood back up and her scarf higher on her face. "Look, could you hurry it up? There's no reason for you to practically live here and still be late."
"Yeah, I know. Just give me five minutes."
"Whatever."
And with that, she was gone, phasing through the door with a completely unnecessary cape flourish. Kid Win gave Taylor an apologetic look. "It's time for the evening patrol. Do you want to just ... I don't know. You could hang out in the workshop if you want to keep building things."
"I'm not sure that's allowed. Being unsupervised in the HQ." She wanted to leave. Suddenly this entire underground facility felt like ... it felt like school.
Kid Win shrugged. "I won't tell anyone if you won't. Or ... how do you feel about going on patrol with us? It will give you a chance to field test some of your tech, and you'll get to try out hero work."
"With you and Shadow Stalker?" God, in some ways that seemed worse than going out with Shadow Stalker alone.
He shrugged again. "Don't read too much into a first impression. She's ..."
"Not that bad after you get to know her?" She managed to keep the tremor out of her voice. That surprised her.
He hesitated. "It's more like, she's not so bad when she has something to focus on."
Taylor stared at him, not fully believing that he really said what she had heard him say. The room felt too hot with her hood and scarf. "I should be heading home."
He nodded. "Yeah. Sure." They walked together back to the workshop where she grabbed her backpack, and they walked together to the elevator. Kid Win suggested possible modifications to her boots, and she gave noncommittal answers.
"Kid Win, I've been wondering."
"Yeah?"
How to put this? Running into Sophia was the last thing she could have wanted. Taylor had dreaded even the possibility of it, but when it happened, Sophia had ignored her. "Yesterday, Armsmaster called through my home phone number, and he knew my real name, but you've only called me Boost. Do you ... know my real name?"
"I ... no, but I could look it up. Why? Do you want to know mine?"
"No, it's just ..." Idiot. Best case scenario, she was already screwed. Worst case scenario, she was screwing up everything herself. "The whole cape thing is new to me. Do you remember if my real name was ever mentioned?"
"I don't remember anyone using it. I just remember Clock and Gallant arguing about whether they should put you down as Boost or Supercharge." He grinned. "I guess Aegis decided that a boring name would be easier to shake off than a stupid one in case you didn't like it."
Supercharge? With her shock gloves ... no, no, it still didn't fit, and it didn't matter anyway. Gallant, Clockblocker, Aegis, and Kid Win. It sounded like the entire Wards team had been discussing her, but if nobody used her name, maybe Sophia didn't ...
She thought back to the few words Shadow Stalker had said. Dismissive. Disinterested. If she knew who Taylor was ... there would have been more of a bite to her tone, wouldn't there? Some taunt. Or ...
Ugh. She couldn't think about this. "One more thing. My dad doesn't know about any of this. Armsmaster told him that I had gotten accepted to a mentorship study program, and ..." Why was she bringing this up with him? She should just stop by the library and BS her way through—
"Oh, you want the Alibi Department."
She blinked. "You have an Alibi Department?"
He nodded. "Ninth floor, room twenty-one A. Don't tell them that it's for your legal guardian, and they won't ask. Oh, and before you go ..." He pulled out a notepad and flipped through several pages of half-finished schematics. Carrying one around made sense. An idea could pop into his head anywhere, not just when he was in his workshop.
He tore off a page and handed it to her. It was a number, too large to be an amount. A code or ...
His phone number.
"If you ever need anything, or just want to work on something again." His smile looked nervous. Why? Why would he be nervous?
She realized that she was supposed to say something now, and it probably didn't matter much what. "Thanks, Kid Win, I—"
"Chris." That smile again. "People might ask questions if they hear you talking to Kid Win on the phone."
That would have been the perfect time to tell him her name too. Not that it mattered. Like he said, he could look it up whenever he wanted. A gesture of trust, and nothing more. But that, but anything would have been better to say than, "I have to go," and step into the elevator.
But she didn't think about that until much later. At the moment, all that was running through her head was the whole day, working together, talking together, it all would have been perfect if Sophia hadn't come in at the very end. Just by being there, in the building, on the team, she tainted the whole experience. She tainted the dream.
She's not so bad when she has something to focus on.
Taylor slumped against the side of the elevator as it rose to the surface, and she choked out a laugh. Almost perfect. Completely wrong. She wanted to hit something. She wanted to hurt something. So she did.
After dinner, after giving her dad a packet of bogus documents, she snuck back out with her gear and went out looking for trouble. On an almost perfect night like this, she was bound to find something.
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A/n And that's another chapter! It looks like Taylor's ready for a nice, relaxing night fighting crime. The editing has been done by the fabulous Eschwartz, and it has been bought and paid for by my amazing Patrons, Exiled, Prime 2.0, Sphinxes, Hubris Prime, Janember, Yotam Bonneh, Lord of Edges, LordXamon, Victoria Carey, Kurkistan, Christopher Harris, Luminant, Jan, Jamie Hayes, Ian, Ryan Cosly, Elayda, Alex Beard, and Helena.
Thank you all for reading, and I'll see you next chapter!