Brockton's Celestial Forge

by Lord Roustabout

The Celestial Forge is the greatest combination of crafting powers in Jumpchain, meaning it is the greatest combination of crafting abilities in all of fiction. In Brockton Bay a forgotten side character's trigger event ends with him linked to the Celestial Forge rather than his intended shard. His expanding collection of tinker abilities drag him into the city's cape conflicts.

36. 30 Crescendo - Addendum Missy

30 Crescendo

I somewhat shamefully retreated to the garage where the partially upgraded motoroid was waiting for me. Looking down at the combinations of technologies I wondered if it symbolized the unfocused nature of how I'd been handling things. The systems had been subjected to repeated sequences of upgrades and augmentations. Only the modular nature of my current technology stopped it from being a nonfunctional mess.

Even with the help of my duplicates it felt like projects had been piling up faster than I could manage them. That was mostly because I'd been stuck in the 'build the tools to build the tools' stage of tinkering. My workshop upgrades were coming along to the point where I had the capacity to produce higher end technology at decent speed in decent volume. It had been a huge project to reach this point, and wasn't even finished yet.

Even with my manufacturing approaching a decent level I now had two new types of enchantment to factor in. And they were skill-based powers, even more so than runecraft. As I worked and improved with those skills everything I'd built would become out of date. I looked into my future and saw a piecemeal trickle of gradually improving components with nothing truly being my best work. Nothing actually being good enough.

Maybe I would have been better off just building a swarm of replicating nano assemblers from the start. Given my other world-ending technologies, using gray goo as a shortcut to atomic engineering didn't seem that outlandish an idea.

Okay, the serious flirting with doomsday technology was probably a good indication of the serious condition of my current mental state. My mind kept drifting back to that aura weapon, the edgy nonsense item that functioned as an undeniable expression of my inner self. It was so over the top I would have been embarrassed to be associated with it in eighth grade, much less as an adult.

But it also meant access to serious superpowers. And unlike life fibers those powers didn't come with a rush of energy so distracting that any technical work became basically impossible. It was weird to think that I had multiple options that would take me to the level of a higher end brute but each of them had drawbacks that I'd rather not deal with.

Still, power was power. Even if it didn't make the difference for me it could end up saving someone else. Actually, it would probably make a significant difference for me. Bakuda still had a host of bombs that wouldn't care about how durable my body was, and those effects were still a serious challenge to counter.

There was a word for this kind of thing. 'All or Nothing' powers, also known as annihilator capes. It was an informal classification for capes who operated beyond the conventional scope of damage and durability. Exotic effects and exotic defenses. Plenty of invulnerable capes were only invulnerable until they ran into a specific counter. I think the joke went 'Invincible, invincible, invincible, dead'.

Dealing with Bakuda was like dealing with an entire convention of annihilator capes. A basic personal force field would protect me from a lot of potential effects just by preventing physical contact. Aura could do that as well, if I had the right understanding of the effect. A lot of direct-action bombs, toxins, corrosives, and more would be completely negated.

The real problem was space, time, and matter. Time stops, space warps, and any level of transmutations or disintegrations. They were both incredibly powerful and absolute hell to defend against.

I could come up with some countermeasures, but that required research and development. I might be able to build blindingly fast, I mean the duplicates covered about ninety hours of work from a team of anywhere from ten to a hundred during their limited duration, but that didn't extend to design and development. There were a lot of advanced concepts in Skills: Physics that I couldn't apply until I worked out all the necessary engineering.

Not even using the neural interface to speed up the design process would fix that problem. This was something that would need testing and experimentation, not just abstract design. It was a harsh shift from the powers that handed me a pile of fully developed technology. Suddenly I actually had to go through all the intervening steps of technological process that a normal tinker would need to tackle.

Which was something I really didn't have time for. I pulled up Survey's preliminary evaluation of Tattletale's ABB data. Along with the list of suspected properties and front businesses were profiles of the major players. Oni Lee was something of a non-factor, a pure follower with suggestions of some mental deterioration, possibly power related or possibly attributable to some injury in his past. The real problems were Bakuda and Lung.

Based on the analysis there was a good chance that Bakuda suffered from manic episodes. Her injuries may have taken her out of the fight, but that kind of mentality would have her pushing for retaliation. Her entire psychological profile screamed that some horrible event would be coming as soon as she could manage it.

Lung was worse.

I missed a connection to the Magitech constellation and considered the depth of that metaphorical timebomb. Nothing in Tattletale's profile of Lung's character was encouraging, and my passenger was backing her up on most of it.

Lung ruled through fear. Pretty basic principle as far as gang leaders went, but he took it to a whole new level. The entire gang basically hinged around the impossibility of defeating him in any drawn-out conflict. Every fight with Lung had a mandatory 'retreat point' where your assembled forces were outmatched and your only option was to fall back and let him claim victory.

The obvious strategy was to hit him hard and early, but Lung wouldn't have lasted this long if he wasn't able to counter obvious strategies. It still happened fairly often, but he was an experienced cape who was still dangerous through effective use of his powers even when he couldn't automatically win on raw strength.

I personally wasn't at serious risk from him. I probably could have taken everything but his strongest forms with my previous loadout, and that was before my last round of upgrades. Right now I was approaching the point where the amount of force necessary to injure me would devastate the surrounding area just from spillover energy. That might sound excessive, but I had insane durability when I was just using hyper alloys and ceramics, which were nothing compared to my current set of enchanted, Skyforged, and G-compressed armor plates.

Unfortunately, the rest of the city wasn't as durable. Lung had received a black eye with his capture. The break out and attack, aside from the small amount I'd been able to counter, had made a strong impression, but not strong enough to counter what he would certainly see as a personal insult.

Lung was going to do something to assert his personal power and status as a crime lord. Almost certainly something both dramatic and messy. Prominent ideas were a strike on another gang's territory, an attack on the Protectorate, or a major hit to some lucrative or symbolic target.

My options were either to launch my own investigation or do my best to be ready to counter him when he tried something. How well the second option turned out would depend on how long it took me to deploy and what support he was receiving from Bakuda, Oni Lee, their new thinker, or even Uber and Leet.

Tattletale had provided some limited data on them as well. With her analysis and my passenger's insight I was pretty sure she was correct about Leet's limitation. Prototype technology. The closer he came to repeating himself the more failure prone he became. It was typical of the kind of limit that could spring up on a free tinker, and a particularly brutal one.

Obviously he hadn't known his limit when he started. Given that he'd become progressively more failure prone over the last couple of years he must have been scraping the bottom of the barrel. Additionally, still having options didn't help if you were held back by resources limitations. A lot of good technology had probably been poorly executed early on thanks to the inherent buildup period.

It was weird thinking of Leet as a free tinker. Everything suggested he was one, but having it confirmed was something else. Free tinkers tended to trigger from broad conceptual problems that were drawn out over a serious amount of time. I did wonder what could have caused Leet to trigger, and if it had anything to do with his gimmick.

Still, that wasn't relevant to the issues at hand. With the new thinker's support Leet could bring out and reliability use all of his previous technology, even potentially developing new gear without worrying about catastrophic failure. More concerning was how he had acted towards the end of the fight. I don't know exactly what he was talking about, but it sounded like some aspect of his power was becoming easier to manage. If that was the case it would be bad news for everyone.

It was crazy to think, but with this one change Leet could become one of the most frightening tinkers in the city. It was basically everything that made Bakuda a frightening opponent but applied to a wider range of technologies than single use bombs. If he also started taking advantage of Oni Lee's technology duplication to stretch his technology further…

God, I really needed to step up my game.

If I was in a situation where I couldn't negate every exotic effect I could expect to encounter then I needed to be able to exert enough control over the encounter so that I'd never have to take one of those attacks head on. That meant better utility, better information, and better agility.

Gear upgrades would cover me for the first item. My motoroid was just the start, I had upgrade projects for every piece of equipment I used. Some would take more time to bear fruit, but just the improvements to my omni-tool were a massive advantage.

Information was easier to obtain and process as well. Survey was almost too enthusiastic regarding analysis of sensor logs. Between that and my neural implant giving me direct access to the information without needing to check interfaces I had a constant near perfect link to all the data my sensors could obtain. I didn't even need the planned improvements to my visor since I could just connect to my sensors directly.

That left agility. That was the big one. The best way to avoid being damaged by an annihilator effect was to not get caught in an annihilator effect. Either dropping the other cape first, or evading them or their power.

Previously that wouldn't have been my go-to option. I hadn't really had time to develop a preferred strategy, but I probably would have leaned into long range combat using alchemy or projectiles. Even with my durability I've been concerned about getting swarmed or overwhelmed in melee. Suddenly that wasn't as frightening a situation as it used to be.

Just from the rounds of life fiber exposure I had built up a physique that could counter any cape without a Brute or serious Striker rating. Not just in raw power, but in speed, reflexes, endurance, and any other area. When combined with my new martial training not only could I take any normal person in close quarters combat, but I could control the dynamics of the encounter beyond what I previously considered possible.

That was my base level. Life fibers took me to a level where I could probably dominate any encounter with local capes using nothing but speed and power. It would have been the ideal way of approaching combat, if not for the adverse impact of raw life fiber energy.

My medical nanites were able to counter the incredible strain that raw life fibers inflicted on a living host. My cranial implant and neural interface were able to monitor any mental effects. None of my technology could do anything about the raw rush of power that came from interfacing with a borderline impossible alien lifeform.

It wasn't even a mental effect, not really. It was like driving a car with too much horsepower. Thrilling and empowering, but not exactly something that you could easily parallel park. It was getting easier, the energy wasn't affecting me like it had at first, but between the surge of power and the need to focus on activating my nanites delicate work was pretty much off the table in that state.

That left aura. The legitimate superpower that had been freely handed to me by a tinker power that specialized in making weapons that could fold up or turn into other weapons. And just in case that wasn't an obscure enough connection there was this whole self-expression thing tied up to using it.

Every instinct I had screamed at me to avoid that power. There was an aspect of it that was inexorably linked with expressing your true self. I had never expressed my true self. I didn't like my true self. Honestly, I didn't even know what my true self actually was.

I never had a stage of making bad fashion choices and embracing fringe subcultures. There just wasn't the opportunity for something like that growing up. On the plus side I didn't have any collections of embarrassing pictures I'd have to hide and be ashamed of. On the down side, it was mostly because I was already running a surplus of shame.

God damn it, I hated even thinking about this. I had a legitimately fantastic superpower and the only way I could use it was to go through an edgy teen angst phase more than half a decade after it would have been anything like appropriate.

I checked in with my duplicates via my implant. They were in the process of rebuilding the… weapon. That is, adding new technology and materials, not amending any of the design choices. No changes that would impact my ability to use aura.

Well, it might be an edgy piece of crap, but at least it would be a technologically advanced edgy piece of crap. Variable weapon crafting had been unlocked with the power that granted me aura, and it could be pushed a lot further than the basic design displayed in that item.

In its base form it was made of sturdy materials and combined two weapons that could be shifted between as easy as breathing. High end variable weapons could support transition between four different modes, handle explosive munitions with extraordinary skill, be optimized for either speed or power, and be designed to function exceptionally with both Dust and aura. Most significantly it could be collapsed into a miniature form that was even resistant to detection systems.

The materials currently in the process of being switched out. Mithril was generally a terrible metal for weapons, even if it enchanted wonderfully. Too light for anything but the slightest blades and completely useless for any kind of blunt instrument. Still, it was exceptional for defensive and structural uses. Modular technology and my latest simplification power made the modifications trivial to integrate, and they were able to leverage Weapon Modification, Fingers of the North Star, and Customized Weapons to perfectly tailor it to my use.

It still looked like a spiky mess, but at least it would be a combat effective spiky mess. There were still some questions regarding the addition of new weapons, what runes to add, and potential hybridizations that were being shelved for the moment. As it stood I would have something I could take with me and use if the situation called for it without constantly being burdened by the implications of that design scheme.

Those implications. That was the real problem. Well, the problem was that it wasn't letting me ignore my problems. I needed to start dealing with things in a meaningful way if I wanted to be able to use aura without Hot Topic training wheels.

So, what had I been avoiding? Well, everything. Everything to do with my cape appearance, the Undersiders, Taylor, and people outside my workshop in general. Twenty-four hours without even glancing at reactions or talking to someone should have made that clear. I had that probable nightmare waiting for me in the threads and inbox of PHO, while there were multiple levels of mess with the Undersiders and Taylor that I needed to deal with.

At least I didn't have to deal with them alone. I took a breath and called up Survey.

'New task. Document mentions of Apeiron from PHO forums and begin categorization of inbox. Refrain form in depth analysis and research on this subject until initial presentation of data is complete.'

The reply came shortly, 'Acknowledged. Beginning scanning and analysis.' The overlay of voices Survey used to communicate was becoming more streamlined with each interaction. Apparently some kind of elimination process was being conducted to finally arrive at a singular voice. The A.I. wasn't there yet, but progress was being made.

With respect to the mess that was PHO, I didn't expect Survey to be able to provide any insight or recommendations, but the program could at least save me from having to slog through everything personally.

As I was considering what else I could do I felt the Celestial Forge connect to a mote from the Clothing constellation. This power was called Juggernaut and acted as a kind of armor enhancer. The exact dynamics were complicated, but basically amounted to a fifty percent improvement to the effectiveness of any armor I wore.

Of course, since every piece of armor I wore applied that durability to my clothing and body this meant I was fifty percent more durable on every level. Just a couple of enchanted Skyforged pieces and I was as close to invincible as reasonably possible.

Of course, that did nothing for my earlier concerns. Invincible, invincible, invincible, dead. It didn't address exotic effects or annihilator capes. I really doubt anyone was going to think larger caliber weapons were the secret to damaging me. There were a lot of weird effects to be had from parahuman powers and I needed to be ready for them.

It really says something when I get a power that takes me from 'probably invincible' to 'very invincible' and my reaction is 'okay, wish I'd gotten something actually useful'.

Alright, Survey was dealing with the preliminary PHO mess. What else had I been putting off?

The Undersiders.

Right, that. I'd been avoiding dealing with that particular issue. I needed to set up a meeting, deal with their absolutely ridiculous debt, and speak with Taylor about the misconception I had created and then ignored. It wasn't something I wanted to do, but it had been hard enough to justify putting this off when I didn't know the stakes. And when I didn't have superpowers riding on it.

Time to call Tattletale. I really did not like dealing with her. I fully accepted it was my own fault for getting caught up in this mess, and most of the problems I'd run into face first could have been avoided if I'd been a little more proactive. That said, I couldn't ignore Tattletale as a contributing factor.

My passenger continued to have a high impression of the strength of her power, but what I'd seen just didn't measure up to that impression. Yes, she was clearly highly perceptive and had some skill and planning and analysis, but she seemed to make disastrous mistakes as often as brilliant insights.

It could be that normally she was a top tier thinker, but was just running into unusual opposition. It could mean my anti-precog strategies were more effective than I thought. It could be the effect of this new unidentified ABB thinker. I still had no information on them, but based on Director Armstrong's statement they would probably announce something at the upcoming press conference.

The problem was that I had to treat Tattletale with caution, but couldn't rely on her analysis. Basically, I had to be careful about what she could pull from me, but then wouldn't be able to bank on any insights she provided. To say it was a frustrating relationship would be a drastic understatement.

Well, there was no point in putting this off any further. I called up the phone emulator on my omni-tool and selected my work phone. I also had my personal number and a half dozen disposable sim cards programmed in, so no more losing track of things during a mission or not having a safe avenue of communication.

The call was answered on the second ring.

"Hello Joe." Her voice was tired. I was reminded that the unreliability of her power was probably bothering her a lot more than it irritated me. Based on her initially smug and confident attitude she was probably used to it carrying her. Having that pulled out from under her must have been a deeply unsettling experience.

I tried not to take too much pleasure in it.

"Hello Lisa." I checked the line for monitoring and general security, a task laughably easy with the direct interface provided by my new implant. "Line is secure. We need to talk business."

"I take it you've seen the reactions to Saturday night?" As she spoke she started to slip back into what I considered the classic Tattletale voice, complete with undertones of smugness.

"The broad strokes. I'll be digging through the online reactions shortly. Anything to add?"

I was putting more confidence into my voice than I really felt. I still hated all of this, the nature of the reactions and the obligation of dealing with them, but I wasn't going to show that to Tattletale. Between my delay in getting to them and anything she could pick up from my tone there was a decent chance she already knew, but in her position admitting to digging into something like that wouldn't help her with debt negotiations.

There was a pause before she spoke. "Okay, you'll probably catch this as soon as you start, but there's a lot of talk about your rates for mercenary work and healing." Which might influence the upcoming meeting regarding debt. 'Market rate' wasn't that much of a discount when you had to get into experimental surgery. "From the PRT side reactions are split between the local office and the rest of the organization. Local policies aren't adopted nationwide, won't be as long as they don't declare a state of emergency or crisis situation."

I did have to give her credit for including that detail. Of course, if she knew about Weld and my talk with Armstrong then she couldn't count on being my sole source of information. Actually, on that point…

"I got that sense last night. Pulled Weld out of the bay and had a brief chat with the Boston PRT director."

"Right. I… heard about that." I could practically hear her bite down on her tongue as she replied. "I would have appreciated knowing you were planning something like that ahead of time."

Well, that was careful phrasing. And a lot more reserved than when she had berated me after the Panacea incident. It was almost as if Tattletale could be actually tolerable to speak with when she wasn't actively trying to show off or insult everyone in the room.

"I haven't followed up yet." I assured her. "What have you heard about it?"

There was a sigh before she replied. "Well, they've had him under medical observation since he got back. Did the debrief there as well, and have been really tight lipped about the whole thing. He is listed as participating in this afternoon's press conference, so whatever is happening it's not worth the PR hit they'll take for losing a Ward. I'm guessing the whole thing has something to do with your healing?"

Well, it would be clear something was different come the press conference, and Tattletale would probably figure it out herself. No harm it being upfront about this.

"He was kind of a wreck when I found him. I healed him up before he got to the surface."

"I figured, but that shouldn't explain the level of caution they're showing."

Well, here goes. "I was also able to treat a bit of his case 53 condition." There was silence on the line, which I kind of expected. "Just a minor improvement, and it was mostly because he had metallic anatomy."

"What. Exactly. Did you. Do?" Tattletale spoke very slowly as she asked the question. I took a breath before responding.

"I was able to correct some of the changes to his anatomy, minor stuff involving the distribution of nerves. Some of his diminished senses saw a slight improvement. It also has a minor effect on the autonomous parts of his power so there's a fraction of a second before he absorbs metal now."

"You… you do understand what this means? If it gets out… When it gets out, the city is going to be swarmed by every Case 53 in the country!"

I found myself picturing that situation, dozens of Case 53s hoping I could be their salvation and repeatedly having to explain the limits of my abilities. It wasn't something I was looking forward to, but I put aside my concerns and pushed forward.

"I told Weld that my healing was limited and only was able to help because of his specific situation. He knows it probably won't be able to help anyone else."

"That's not going to stop them! You don't know how desperate some of these people are."

"I spoke with Weld. I think I have a good idea."

"So, you're ready to deal with this? Some of them aren't going to accept no for an answer. It could get messy."

I let out a sigh. "I think I'm getting used to messy. And I have something else I need to talk to you about."

"What? What's more important than this?"

"Khepeiron."

Silence hung in the call after I said that stupid word.

"You think online cape shipping is more important than the city getting overrun by an army of desperate monster capes? Wait, of course you think online cape shipping is more important than the city getting overrun by an army of desperate monster capes."

It wasn't that I had no concerns about that scenario, but I had time before that particular problem came to a head. I needed to deal with the issues I'd been putting off. "I need to talk to Taylor about this. Make sure things are at least clear with her and find out how she wants to deal with this. How is she doing?"

Tattletale aborted some kind of come back, took a breath, and then spoke. "Taylor is doing better. Still recovering at home and resting up. She'll probably be alright for a meeting for the day after tomorrow?"

Ah, the 'debt repayment' meeting. I suspected she was using Taylor to put that off as much as possible, probably so she could come up with some scheme or deal to present to me. It was a little manipulative, but not unreasonable. As long as they didn't cause any trouble in the meantime I could live with delaying the meeting that long.

"We'll meet on Wednesday. If Taylor wants to talk sooner give her my number. I don't want to leave her with the wrong impression about what happened."

Maybe it was just my desire to get through this as soon as possible, but constantly pushing forward seemed to be a working strategy. It felt nice to be able to direct the conversation, something I suspected was only being tolerated because of the massive debt and power disparity.

That was something I wasn't that comfortable leveraging, though Tattletale probably knew it. Fulfilling an agreement was one thing, but I wasn't going to lord threats or base intimidation over the Undersiders. I had made enough of an impression when I accidentally pulled off a tactical strike with a hand weapon. If anything, I needed as gentle a touch as possible.

"Taylor knows that. I mean, she knows there was another reason for it, not the one that's being thrown around. I'll get her your contact number in case she wants to talk, but I think she'll be alright until Wednesday."

"Good." It meant I had a legitimate excuse for not addressing those particular reactions. The impact on Taylor was my prime concern, followed by the obvious horrible implications, and then the reminder that I had once again blindly blundered into romantic implications, though somehow from the other side this time. The last one was a personal concern, so as long as this didn't blow up in my face from the first two problems I could afford to put it on the back burner.

And there was a missed connection to the Magic constellation. Suddenly I was heading for the level of being able to secure one of the largest motes. I put my excitement aside and focused on the conversation.

"Have you found anything else about the ABB's new thinker?" I called up the portion of Survey's analysis on that topic. The guests from the Gallery had been secured before the villain arrived, so they had nothing but speculation posted on the matter. The PHO threads were even less helpful on the subject. It was a nest of wild speculation that made the theories about my own debut look reasonable by comparison.

"No, the PRT is keeping that locked up." She sighed. "The attack disrupted my usual lines of information for the PRT and I'm still trying to secure new ones. What I can tell is they are trying to minimize how much of the attack they attribute to her."

"What? Why?" I knew from personal experience the PRT wasn't stingy when it came to assigning blame. There was something particularly off-putting about this considering that whatever blame was shifted from the new thinker was probably going to end up dumped onto me.

"The sense I got was it was some minor cape, practically a joke villain. Whoever they are they're a known quantity, or were assumed to be so. They don't want to hold them up and say the entire city was brought to its knees by someone people never took seriously." She sighed again. "I have some theories, but it's going to be announced at the press conference. Straight from the director, so I haven't been able to get the info ahead of time. I can get you some analysis once the name is announced. I mean what I can manage given the anti-thinker stuff."

"I'd appreciate that." Though it might not be that useful. My passenger had been silent on the subject, so I might be under the same blocking effect as Tattletale. It was more than a little concerning and I was looking forward to filling this blank space.

So, meeting set, at least taking a step forward on the mess with Taylor, and the mystery thinker would be explained later today. All in an incredibly short phone call that I should have managed earlier. Pretty much a lesson that the crap I'd been avoiding was never as bad as I built it up to be.

That said, this was just entry level. I still had to have those conversations. And deal with my inbox. And there was the whole thing with a potential swarm of Case 53s rushing to the city in the hopes of salvation. And the massive amounts of bad blood and dangerous assumptions from the local heroes.

I took a breath and forced myself to at least physically relax. I could deal with this. Probably. I felt a wave of reassurance from my passenger. That's right. I wasn't alone in this. I would be okay.

"Is there anything else we need to cover?" It would definitely be a power move to end the call, but as much as I enjoyed not getting bogged down in Tattletale's schemes I wasn't going to arbitrarily piss her off or miss something important.

"No… no, nothing we can't get into at the meeting. Uh, thank you for telling me about Weld." Her voice was a little strained there. I had a feeling whatever analysis she'd been losing sleep to complete just got expanded significantly. "Just to check, are you planning anything else like that in the near future?"

I looked down at the upgraded motoroid I'd been tinkering with through the call. It wasn't the kind of thing you built just to leave sitting in a garage gathering dust. "I'm going to be making a move against the ABB at some point, but there's nothing planned at the moment. Not until I know more about their thinker."

There was a sigh of relief that a more composed Tattletale would probably have concealed. "Same with us. We're holding off on any jobs until we get a chance to talk with you. After Wednesday we can figure out what's happening next."

There was an edge to her voice that suggested she really hoped I would agree to stand down until then. I made a non-committal noise and replied. "Sounds good."

It was a deliberately vague response. I didn't have any current plans beyond managing the previous mess and getting my technology in order, but I wasn't going to make a hard commitment, if just for the principle of the thing.

"Great." Her voice was flat in response. "We can set up a time for Wednesday after things settle down. I'll get you some more analysis after the press conference."

"I'll send you another web storage link. Good luck." Easy and untraceable file transfer was trivial to set up with my abilities.

"Thanks. You too."

The call dropped and I took a moment to review the situation. The titanic mess that was Khepeiron was at least being dealt with. I had no idea how Taylor wanted to handle this. The possibilities could be anything from a public statement denying things to just distancing our cape personas until things died down. I had a couple of days where the Undersiders would stay out of trouble. I'd have the identity of the ABB's thinker by this evening and could start on specific counters.

The ABB was still my primary concern, but there were other problems in this city that would need to be dealt with eventually. None of them really measured up to the combined threat of a thinker leading coordination between a chaos and free tinker. That was a pressing issue and one that needed my full attention.

But that would have to wait until after I dealt with my PHO mailbox. Survey had finished the initial categorization, so it was up to me to deal with things. My duplicates had entered their 20% time while I was on the phone, so I swung towards my Alchemist's Lab to refresh the potion. I got the chirp of their final data transfer before their transponders winked out.

My next set of duplicates shared the somewhat grim determination I had been building since the reveal of the secret behind aura. Some dour looks were exchanged before they left to deal with the last of my personal equipment and check on the Laboratorium analysis.

With obvious trepidation I moved towards the outdated laptop I had first used to set up my account. Yes, I could manage everything through direct mental links, but this was the kind of thing where I would appreciate a bit of arbitrary distance.

I started by skimming Survey's summary. The inbox had gotten a massive surge of messages on Saturday, slowly trickling off as time went on with no activity on the account. Interestingly some of the messages had been read, the work of the duplicate who chased me to bed on Saturday night. Which meant he had known about the whole Khepeiron mess and said nothing.

Which was probably the right decision, seeing as I wouldn't have been willing to go to sleep if I'd been privy to that particular revelation. I might be severely late to the party here, but at least I wasn't coming into it with 3am thinking.

The vast majority of the messages were just requests for confirmation of my identity. Checking related posts from the forums the consensus was leaning towards the account being unaffiliated, with the only crack in that theory being the fact that it was created before my debut. It seemed I was such an enigma on the site that people were considering the possibility I had created an unverified account just to lock down the name.

Which I kind of had.

Digging past the dross of confirmation messages and borderline trolling I got to the real meat of the inbox. That stuff was hard to read. Requests for services, pricing, and capabilities. Some of it was about mercenary work or selling technology. Survey had sorted that into a rather impressive set of categories. The really hard part was the healing requests.

Judging from the time stamps they had started almost as soon as the Undersiders reappeared whole and uninjured on the Uber and Leet broadcast and didn't let up. Worse, there was a spike following the reports from the healed conscripts, which confirmed just what my healing could manage. These were messages from desperate people, often making desperate offers. I could only make it through so many before I dumped the entire category onto Survey for sorting.

Maybe once things calmed down, and I got the PRT off my case, I could set up some kind of program to deal with this. Maybe I could find some way to work around restrictions and blacklists for the most severe cases. There were a lot of maybes in this situation. I'm guessing this is what Panacea had to deal with on a daily basis, only she had been slogging through it for years.

Healing would bring another problem, and not a minor one. Given the volume I would be able to handle and the good it would do, and the fact that I'd be doing it as a tinker, it would pretty much guarantee a visit from Doctor Alan Gramme.

There was a time in my life when I would have been ecstatic at the prospect. But that was the time of proposed moon bases and off world colonies. Not the time of Mannequin. And if Mannequin showed up, so would the rest of the Slaughterhouse Nine. Hell, Bonesaw might double up to get me on their schedule.

That was just about the last thing I needed to deal with at the moment. My passenger was at least able to provide some insight on the Nine, and there were practical steps I could take to avoid being instantly shut down. Still, it was a new massive threat to prepare for while I was already dealing with the current nightmare scenario.

I didn't really use silicon-based semiconductors anymore, so my technology would be safe from Shatterbird. Well, I didn't build anything with silicon. Some of the provided technology by my power still used it, and unfortunately that included my brain implant.

Oh God, I would need to upgrade the implant hardware. That meant brain surgery. That meant I needed to rely on my duplicates to perform brain surgery. The prospect was only slightly less frightening than performing the act myself, and wasn't helped by my comparative novice abilities as a doctor. I would be leaning into Grease Monkey for this, and that was understandably terrifying for me. That particular power was a lot more focused on the construction of cybernetics than on their installation.

Well, looks like I'll be trying out speed learning in the neural interface. It would be roughly equivalent to reading textbooks, but I could at least cover everything possible from a theoretical perspective.

I still had some serious concern around messing with my brain, even if it was just to switch out parts of an implant. Still, there was nothing like the threat of a grenade going off inside your head to help you push past your reservations, and there were a lot of improvements I could make once I got in there.

I'd have to cover how to manage the rest of the Nine as well. I would need to get creative in countering Crawler. Experimental weapons weren't the way to go with him. Fortunately, I had more than a few of those 'all or nothing' options of my own.

Mannequin and Bonesaw were tinkers, and that meant all the variability and headaches I was dealing with from Leet and Bakuda, just with a different theme. My options were really limited to covering as many bases as I could and hoping I could put them down before they pulled out something I couldn't handle.

Burnscar I at least wouldn't need to be directly concerned about. As long as I had self-contained oxygen and reinforcement there was nothing she could do to touch me, even at full power. Full power Burnscar was still a nightmare for everyone else, so I needed to get some countermeasures in place.

Hatchetface was going to be an interesting problem. He wouldn't affect my technology, and if his suppression worked on the 'magic' principle I'd seen in parahuman powers then it would leave most of my abilities untouched. It would still gut any of my equipment that was powered by magitek, so that was something I'd have to be careful about over relying on.

Jack, well Jack was a nightmare. I didn't know why, but there was a depth of concern around him that exceeded any other member of the team. His power shouldn't be a problem in terms of physical threat, but my passenger suggested there was more to his power. Not something that I specifically needed to worry about, but something that was significant and generally overlooked. Whatever it was the potential damage it could cause was apocalyptic. It was a universal threat, something I'd need to deal with even if I didn't have a target on my back.

Then there was the Siberian. She sat there as the unmovable object, the final opposition for anyone who thought they would be able to deal with the lesser members of the Slaughterhouse Nine. She killed Hero. She wounded the invincible Alexandra. Ultimately there would be no way of stopping the Nine without countering her, and based on my instincts and every vs debate on PHO they were likely to lead with her.

Oh, yeah. I was being considered on the 'vs boards'. That was a trip to review. So many erroneous assumptions about my strengths and weaknesses. And the stances were all over the place. You had one person putting forward a case for me soloing the Empire while another had written an essay explaining how Circus had the perfect counter to all my abilities.

Fortunately, when it came to the Siberian every plan and countermeasure I was preparing for other annihilator capes should apply to her. It was even more reason to step up life fiber training and deal with the issues around aura use. That would save me, if not anyone else in the area. The impression I got from my passenger suggested there was some trick to the Siberian, some hidden aspect that would get past the invincible woman, but I couldn't piece it together from the information at hand and our limited connection.

I added a subtask for Survey to compile reports and records on the Nine. Chuckles had been killed recently, good riddance, so that meant a membership drive. The idea of adding that to the mess of this city was horrifying, but even if they started heading towards Brockton the moment Saturday's broadcast aired it would take them ages to cross the distance, and they weren't exactly subtle in their work. As long as I took preparations seriously I would be ready.

The really terrifying thing was the idea of the Slaughterhouse Nine in Brockton Bay triggered a particular feeling from my passenger. Kind of a grim understanding. Not certainty, but not anything like a rejection of the idea. This was something that could happen, and I needed to be ready for it.

On that cheerful note I turned my attention back to the cluttered mess of my inbox. The categorization provided by Survey included any messages from confirmed accounts. Nothing from PHO moderators, apparently they wouldn't try to verify unless someone made specific claims. As it stood I didn't even have an 'unverified cape' tag. No, the messages I was looking for were anything from an official account.

Corporate teams, Rogue groups, the occasional independent, and even a couple of international teams.

There weren't many of them compared to the sea of PMs from regular members. They also lacked any specific details. I guess if your corporate reputation is on the line extending a formal offer to a random account is an unacceptable risk. Surprisingly, there weren't any messages from the PRT or Protectorate, local or otherwise. Not even from Weld, not even after I confirmed the account for him.

I was considering how to handle the situation when the Celestial Forge connected to a mote from the Toolkits constellation. Once again I had enough reach for one of the largest motes. Once again I lost half of that reach to secure a connection to a smaller mote. And once again I didn't care.

The power was called Advanced Materials Upgrade Kit and was aligned with the Laboratorium and my Armourer power. Specifically, it provided working quantities of nearly every advanced material used in either the Laboratorium or called for in the construction of armor. Suddenly I had supplies of plasteel, adamantium, armourplas, synth-leather, and more, all without needing the slightest bit of transmutation.

The materials were all incredibly useful in their specific applications, but adamantium was undoubtedly the star of the show. Without Dwarven Craft's ability to forge mystical metals it would be almost impossible to work with. With that power I could shape it into any form I wanted, though with considerably more effort than had to be expended for something like mithril.

I immediately received messages from both duplicates.

'I'm taking my 20% time early and heading for the material stash.'

'Yeah, pretty sure all this personal equipment work will need to be re-done. Heading for the stash as well.'

I felt a sudden wave of dread at the idea of leaving them unsupervised with that kind of resource and closed the laptop, double-timing for the Upgrade Kit.

I found it nestled in a fresh locker in the hallway, arriving just as the first duplicate was opening it up. Everything was there, the ridiculously easily worked plasteel, the flexible armourplas, durable synth-leather, maybe a half dozen other rare and valuable materials, and then finally, the dull gray block of the strongest material I had ever encountered.

This was invincibility. Unless you were warping space or fundamentally altering matter this material could stand up to any conceivable force. The energy necessary to damage it was so titanic that its broken pieces would probably be lying in the center of a significant blast crater. Or, more likely, its completely undamaged form.

Mithril was supernaturally light, durable, magically resonant, and had properties that defied conventional mechanics. Adamantium didn't have any of that fluff. It was just a giant middle finger lifted to the force of the universe that expected material science to behave in anything like a reasonable fashion.

What's more, unlike mithril, this was an ideal material for weapons. All weapons, from knives to artillery shells. On its own it would produce weapons of legendary quality and durability. With my skill, magic, and technology behind it the weapons would be in a class unto themselves. Everything would have to be upgraded.

Wait, didn't I just make a comment about materials becoming obsolete less often than technology? Damn it, at times like this it felt like the Forge was deliberately trolling me.

"So," the first said with a sigh just as the second duplicate arrived. "Complete rebuild?"

"Looks like it." I conceded with a sigh. I considered the dull gray block. "Any thoughts on Dust infusion?"

I called up the notes from the combination experiments at the same time as my duplicates. Stable mixes had been found for water, rock, and steam Dust. There were also some interesting interactions between lightning and rock Dust that seemed to have an effect similar to a mass field, though with a different mechanism, though the precise mix for that mass Dust, or possibly gravity dust, hadn't been nailed down. Of the infusion possibilities there wasn't a universally perfect answer available.

"Match to the enchantment for weapons? For everything else wind or ice for either weight or thermal regulation?"

It was as good an idea as any. I stuck with the duplicates through the initial examination of the materials and planning stages. After their duration expired I was sent off by the next set as they worked on the project while I attempted the onerous task of managing my inbox.

I hadn't even liked managing a backlog of normal email. Suddenly I was dealing with nationwide organizations and multi-million-dollar corporate cape teams. If I was going to use this account in anything like an official capacity I needed to at least have a courtesy reply ready for official inquiries.

That proved to be a harder task than I expected. I tried speeding it up using the throne, but that just made me cycle through anxieties twenty times faster. I'm kind of ashamed to say that I struggled through the issue for more than the duration of a set of duplicates. Not the longest I've ever spent trying to draft a reply, but I'm even more ashamed of that particular fact.

It was kind of weird how duplicate duration had become the most relevant unit of time in my workshop. Ninety percent of this place had no clocks or natural light, so the preferred measure of time was how long a potion lasted. It was a lot easier to deal with since it climbed up to twenty minutes. Regular as the tides, only finishing with the constantly unnerving thought about what was done with their 20% time.

The big problem I was banging my head against was how to actually function as a mercenary. That has never been more than a token label and was even less useful now. There was basically nothing I could purchase that would be better than what I could make in a trivial amount of time. I didn't even have resource limitations anymore. I was quite possibly the only tinker on the planet who didn't need financing.

What I did need, and what I'd been completely neglecting, was some level of social leverage. If I didn't have any public presence I was yielding things to a combination of the PRT's public relation's department and the theories of crazy people on the internet. Frankly, even a token message to the official accounts could make a difference.

I was thinking in circles until and getting nowhere until Survey decided to offer to help. The A.I.'s suggestion was a convoluted mess. It was overly technical. It cited the forum bylaws of PHO regarding solicitation of services, the state and national guidelines for parahuman contract work, and advisories from the local PRT regarding interaction protocols dating back to my first conversation with Panacea. All together the response looked like it had been autogenerated by a particularly litigation averse public relations firm and then edited by anal retentive experts in cape law.

It was perfect.

It said basically nothing but looked incredibly official. It showed a frankly ridiculous understanding of the legal framework around any official requests without even acknowledging that any request might have been made. And it looked incredibly official and carefully assembled despite having been thrown together on a whim.

I sent it as a mass reply to every verified account regardless of the nature of the messages. Anyone serious would come back with some more detailed response. The main point was it created the impression that the account would actually be an avenue of communication. By attaching an automatic response, it at least appeared that I was taking the matter seriously.

Given the lack of even a contact attempt from the Protectorate I had to wonder if they were waiting for Weld to reach out. Actually, I had asked him for some level of confidentiality. Had he even told the PRT about my account? It was possible he was tied up with tests and debriefs. It was his decision to rush into the treatment, so I didn't feel that bad about him dealing with the aftermath. Still, it might be worth reaching out to his account if I didn't see any messages after the press conference.

It was starting to get close to the scheduled time of the conference. The afternoon had been whittled away by dozens of small projects and discoveries. Not universally pleasant discoveries, but still useful and necessary ones. And I had seen a continuous stream of results from them.

My duplicates had been busy upgrading my equipment and motoroid with new materials. Mostly Dust-infused adamantium, but synth-leather was actually a useful material in a lot of applications, and armourplas could be subbed into components of the motoroid where mithril and adamantium didn't work.

For weapons every striking surface was adamantium with mithril providing structural components in any application where weight was a detriment instead of an asset. Adamantium had the advantage of functioning as a conventional material, rather than a mythical one, with the obvious exception of its durability. That meant it reacted normally with mass fields rather than attempting to remain supernaturally light in defiance of a concentrated bubble of dark energy.

Or course, if you tried to make mithril lighter it would almost go too far in that direction. It was a nuance to a substance for which I was still learning the fine details. It did present an interesting possibility of how a predominantly mithril starship would behave with a mass effect core.

Between those constant upgrades some progress had also been made in analyzing my salvaged tinker tech. Not enough to fully recreate it or apply the principles to other technology, but I was getting closer. For me research was a great deal slower than construction. I at least understood the general principles behind Leet's broadcasts, the telekinetic sword, the personal plasma shield, and more than a few of Bakuda's bombs.

It felt like good progress. Slower than my own technology, but it should be enough to somewhat counter the ABB by the time of our next encounter. With what I could learn from the upcoming press conference maybe I'd finally be able to compile a proper strategy.

I was checking over the upgrades to the motoroid when I received a signal from my omni-tool. Incoming phone call. This wasn't my work phone; it was my personal number.

I didn't recognize the incoming caller. A quick search showed it was a prepaid cell phone. How the hell was it calling my personal number? My best guess was someone connected to the gym. God I hoped no one had found that truck and had some uncomfortable questions about repair timetables.

Well, if they had there was no sense putting it off. I connected the call and answered.

"Hello?"

"Jozef?"

The voice was weak and I could hear panting before and after it spoke my full name in that over-pronounced manner. I was right, it was someone from the gym. Just not someone I expected to hear from.

"Aisha?"

"Yeah." She panted again. "I need some help." A feeling of dread crept up my spine. "I'm a little… impaled right now."

"Where are you?" Survey immediately responded with a triangulation of the signal, currently coming from one of the better areas of the Docks. "Never mind, what happened?" I was on my feet and moving before I even had an idea of where to go.

"I was spying. ABB. Found something, but stuck. Uh, got a chance to call, but they'll be back soon. Need to get my power back on. No one will remember I'm here." I heard another unsteady breath through the phone. "Think you can do that magic throne thing and come get me?"

"I'm coming." I mentally signaled Fleet and the motoroid shifted into motorcycle mode. I clung on for dear life as it peeled through the workshop at blatantly unsafe speeds. "Keep the line open and keep your power off. I'm almost there."

That wasn't an exaggeration. One of the features of Simple Scientific Solution was the ability to upgrade normal vehicles. My motoroid's bike form counted, and had received a traction improvement that directly manipulated the Van der Waals force. It was strong enough to take a sharp corner at top speed. If you extend the implications of the forces involved suddenly all kinds of driving surfaces became possibilities. My trip to the throne involved more than one shortcut straight up a vertical wall.

The Celestial Forge made another Toolkits constellation as I vaulted into the throne. More rooms. Research lab. Magic specialization. Normally I have been ecstatic about the addition, now the rumbling of the workshop as more space was added was an unwelcome distraction as I tried to connect to the throne.

As soon as I was linked I felt the cognitive acceleration grip my mind like the best caffeine in the universe. As seconds crawled out I was finally able to breath. Well, metaphorically breathe. I also had the time to wonder how the hell Aisha had gotten herself into this mess and how she could have been so stupid.

The answer to both of those questions was of course 'because Aisha'. That didn't change the fact that there was a critically injured girl facing either capture or death, or capture and death, or capture and then something worse than death, and I was the only one who could save her.

And I had to rush into an ABB base in order to do it. Well, I'd been building up for two days, so I wouldn't exactly be the unprepared mess I'd been on Saturday night. I didn't know who was there or what kind of defenses they'd have, so my only choice was to gear up like I was storming the gates of Hell.

I went to work updating my memory tags to avoid the effect of Aisha's power and started assembling resources.

I linked to the implants of my duplicates. Fortunately, the lack of respect for my privacy that had them listening to the call had them up to speed and were therefore already assembling my equipment. I confirmed their tasks and shifted to open a line to the textile area.

"Garment, Aisha is in danger. I need you to get my costume and the life fibers and meet me in the entryway."

In slow motion I could see her leap into action before the message had even finished. Garment could move quickly when she needed to and I could see she was taking this with the seriousness it needed.

Maintaining cognitive acceleration while dealing with the normal world was a challenge, but I pushed through it and spoke through the painfully slow audio link to Aisha.

"I'm in the throne. Memory protected and coming for you. What happened? Capes?"

I distracted myself while waiting for her reply by calling together every resource I possibly could. Duplicates and drones were scrambling from every corner of my workshop to amass an arsenal that was sufficient for this rescue operation.

"No capes." She answered in short gasps. "Was careful, but messed something up. They blew a guy up. I was too close."

By the time she finished speaking I had tracked the signal to an older style office building near the edge of ABB territory. It was on Tattletale's list as a potential ABB front, but not part of their primary operation.

"Activate your power and keep the call active. I'm coming for you." Without waiting for her response, I made a final sweep to secure my memories and disconnected from the throne. Fleet has positioned the motoroid so that I could grab on as soon as I rolled off the seat, then clung on for dear life while the motorcycle peeled for the exit room.

I arrived just as Garment was exiting the Laboratorium with the spool of life fibers and my costume. Without even asking, my clothes started to fly off my body, sometimes being split at the seams to facilitate faster removal.

For some reason, despite clearly taking every step to speed up the process, Garment had taken the time to change her outfit. Instead of the color shifting evening dress she was wearing the wrap dress I had helped her make. Whatever the reason for the decision it didn't seem to have meaningfully slowed her down and I didn't have time to consider it as I pulled on my micromanipulators.

Garment raised her hands and I pressed my palms into hers, allowing her gloves to fold over mine. My senses expanded as the life fibers rapidly spun off from the spool and wove themselves a fraction of an inch above my skin, immediately followed by the rest of my costume.

My duplicates sprinted up to us with the rest of my equipment and began loading it without even being asked. Armor plates with built in defensive systems. Advanced scanners built in or hybridized to my visor. My full loadout of weaponry including upgraded sidearm and the collapsed form of the aura focusing variable weapon.

I stood there like something between a lord being dressed for court and a racecar with a very enthusiastic pit crew. My duplicate's hands blurred with the benefits of speed powers as the final adjustments were made. My motoroid transitioned to robot mode and opened its armor compartment.

For a reason I couldn't comprehend Garment's dress was hanging in the air in front of me rather than folding itself up or finding a hangar. I finally understood the reason once the final piece of equipment was in place.

The outfit released a set of ties and the wrap dress unwrapped itself. The shimmering gray fabric flowed out and attached itself to my collar, billowing around me like a massive living cape. As soon as it secured itself the already tough material was instantly strengthened to the combined durability of every piece of armor on my body. A flexible and lightning fast barrier that was as strong as any defense.

It seemed Garment wasn't going to let me go into this alone.

My duplicates took a step back as soon as they were done and I sank back into the motoroid, allowing it to close around me. Communication between us had been entirely digital up to this point, but they gave me a final nod.

"Good luck."

With that both duplicates struck their own chests. A single impact was enough to dispel a duplicate, sacrificing their remaining duration to allow me to use other potions. I swallowed as I engaged the motoroid and stepped out of the workshop.

My apartment wouldn't have been able to handle the weight of a walking motorcycle without serious protest, but the motoroid's mass core meant those kinds of concerns were trivial. I stepped out onto the questionable carpet with the delicateness of a mouse. A fraction of a second was spared to seal my workshop, then I downed the potion that had required my duplicates to dismiss themselves.

The invisibility potion took hold and my body and equipment, including the motoroid, faded from sight. I rushed to the front door and practically leapt out into the late afternoon of Brockton Bay. Hopefully a mysteriously opening apartment door wouldn't attract attention, but I had bigger concerns at the moment.

My motoroid's flight system had been rebuilt, upgraded, miniaturized, and streamlined multiple times since Saturday night. The pair of shoulder mounted wheel turbines had been replaced by a half dozen micro thrusters that were smaller, more powerful, and allowed more precise control. Mass fields artificially increased the inertia of the thruster's exhaust, allowing a tiny flow volume to provide tremendous force.

That tremendous force was currently launching me across half the city like a depressed trajectory ballistic missile. The speed would take me to my destination in less time than it had taken me to suit up. Barely enough time to prepare for what I was diving into.

Satellite maps and sensors confirmed the target, a six-story office building, practically a skyscraper by the standards of the docks, and something that had probably been a fairly prosperous company center before shipping shut down and Downtown took over as the commercial heart of the city. As I approached I could trace the signal from Aisha's phone to the fifth floor, near the center of the building.

I memorized the building's blueprints and considered my options. Situated like that there was no way I could extract her quickly or subtly. This was going to be loud and messy, and my only defense would be overwhelming offence. I was going to go in as hard as possible and fuck anyone who got in my way.

As the building approached I triggered a slight impact to dispel the invisibility potion and downed a duplication potion from my motoroid's reservoirs. Without a word my duplicates launched themselves into a sharp ascent and began high detail scans of the building and area, linking the data to my implant. As they reached their peak each triggered their omni-tool fabricators and two quintets of drones appeared in the air around them.

As the drones were formed each duplicate channeled energy into their creation, drawing upon our Elven Enchantment power. The result was a construct that went beyond the perfect creations I had previously used to something truly wondrous. Enhanced in every way, from speed, to sensors, to attack capability, they were legitimately magical creations. They soared out into the sky, providing an impossibly detailed account of the target area.

I held my original course, directly towards the side of the building. As I neared the outer wall both tonfas were deployed from the motoroid's arms and crossed them across my chest. At the instant I reached the building I swung both in opposite directions, cleaving an opening as I dove into the building's interior.

This wasn't a modern building with a solid wall of mirrored glass. It had probably been built back in the fifties, well before those kinds of designs caught on. As such the front of the building was a mess of brick and cement with smaller recessed windows that would have been too small to fit a motoroid through. Thus, the use of tremor tonfas as an ad hoc can opener.

Or battering ram.

Or breaching charge.

These weren't the rushed, sloppy weapons I had deployed at the storage yard. They were bars of rock Dust-infused Skyforged adamantium, inscribed with tremor runes written in mithril, optimized in function through multiple weapon modification abilities, and wielded with the mastery afforded by my Maliwan Intern power.

The strike opened the side of the building. Not in some chaotic explosion or uncontrolled earthquake. The strike parted the wall like a stage curtain, peeling back six stories of steel, glass, and stone over the front of the building.

I had made the strike carefully in an attempt to avoid compromising the integrity of the structure. Despite the six-story tall gap in the building's face none of the key structural supports were damaged. I was fairly sure it would be fine, and because the Celestial Forge likes to be funny sometimes it suddenly elected to connect to an architecture power from the Knowledge constellation.

Build That Wall. Mundane construction and information on how to reinforce structures with Mantic energy. Also, some other applications I didn't have time to consider, but enough to know the building would be fine.

I dove inside, sensors sweeping for any possible threat. Any concerns about this not being an ABB stronghold were dismissed by the assorted power signatures coming from the heads of panicked residents of the building. More conscripts, or possibly just people who were associated with the gang in more mundane roles and became subject to the new universal cranial mine policy.

Seeing it in practice twisted my guts. Maybe I'd been focused on how I fixed everyone at the storage lot, but I hadn't been thinking about all the people still living under Bakuda's thumb. Or the ABB's thumb, depending on how much control she still had. Here was a building nearly full of people with bombs in their head. People who I couldn't help both because Aisha needed me and because Bakuda was no longer distracted and could start popping people, either randomly or en mass as soon as I started pulling bombs.

I pushed through desks and cubicles, but the motoroid wasn't built for enclosed space maneuvering. I would probably be faster without it. And with life fibers I would definitely be faster without it.

The thought of Aisha was all it took to convince me. I signaled Garment and opened the armor. The life fibers made full contact with my body as I burst out and activated my nanites. Blue lines traced across my costume contrasting with the burning red threads visible through the material of my costume. The intoxicating surge of power flowed into me, but I stayed focused on my target.

Between the mental effort of activating my nanites and dealing with the life fiber energy I had to delegate most analysis tasks to Survey, relying on the A.I.s guidance. The building wasn't totally undefended. Many of the doors had bombs wired to them, either triggered by improper access or set up with controls based in some central command system. It was nothing I wouldn't have been able to disable given enough time.

I didn't have the time. Fortunately, there was an easier way to bypass the trapped doors. The system had been put in place assuming someone would actually be using the doors. Then again, most people probably don't plan on dealing with life fiber enhanced hyper durable tinkers on a warpath to a specific area of their building. At my current level of strength interior walls were basically a film of sheetrock-based mist.

There was something immensely satisfying about drawing a line from point A to point B and just powering through everything in my way. I burst through walls like the Kool-Aid man, offhandedly tossing desks and filing cabinets out of my path. With each breached wall Garment flared the cape around me, clearing dust and creating an impression that had the residents either slack jawed or fleeing for their lives. The contents of the building parted before me like the Red Sea as I cut a swath towards Aisha's signal.

I was paying little attention to what and who I was pushing through. It was clearly ABB, but higher tier than the street level rackets the gang was known for. I guess a gang that ran a third of a city the size of Brockton would need some level of support for finances and money laundering. Aisha had apparently stumbled into some kind of white-collar gang office.

Those suspicions were pretty much confirmed when I burst through another wall and emerged into a meeting room that wouldn't have looked out of place in the penthouse office of one of the Downtown corporate headquarters. A dozen frightened men in various levels of business wear stared at me, stunned.

All except for the hulking form of a single security goon who turned and charged directly towards me. It was a display of either bravery or loyalty that bordered on suicidal. This was like the sequel to the guy who decided to shoot at me after I had fought off half the forces of the ABB and made me once again wonder about the possibility of chemically enhanced bravado.

With my body drowning in life fiber energy the instincts of T'ai Chi Chuan took over and I shifted smoothly out of his lunge. Garment's help wasn't even necessary, though it was amusing to see his face when his blow stopped dead against a billowing cape. Garment pulled back before he could react and I grabbed his exposed arm, spinning him into a throw. A throw that would have put down a normal man if done with my previous strength. A throw that would have caused injuries with my current Olympian build. A throw that, when combined with the overwhelming power of raw life fibers, ended up considerably more dramatic.

The thug went through the wall, into a hallway. Then through the wall on the opposite side of the hall. And into a pile of cubicles and office furniture, ending up in a collapsed mess with what was clearly several broken limbs. Survey confirmed he was still alive, though not likely to move anytime soon.

Any chance of me feeling bad about the level of force was banished by the lack of a bomb in his head, or the heads of anyone in the room. Whoever these people where it seemed they were in positions that put them beyond Bakuda's mad schemes, and as such I felt no guilt over their fates.

I pushed through the room, shattering the conference table on my way, and breached the next wall. As I left I raised my omni-tool to fire a quintet of enhanced flashbang grenades into the room. Fully enhanced, master crafted with Elven Enchantment. The bursts of the grenades and screams of the men echoed behind me as I pushed through the final walls to the source of Aisha's signal.

Those were the unpowered elite of the ABB and deserved worse than tinnitus and temporary blindness, but I couldn't spare the time to deal with them. Even my motoroid trailing after me didn't have options for capture or containment. Maybe something could be done later, but now I was focused on breaching the final wall between myself and Aisha's signal.

The room I entered was not what I expected. Of course, I didn't really know what to expect and had been entirely focused on getting here before something terrible happened. It didn't leave much time for contemplation beyond immediate tactical concerns.

The room had rows of computer terminals, all facing a large wall covered in screens. Some displayed business news, some showed stock tickers, some specific financial information. I recognized one of the computers towards the front of the room as a Bloomberg terminal, a rather excessive addition for a gang hideout.

Looking at the place it could have been any business center in the city with two exceptions. First, the two workers in the room had bombs in their heads and were crawling over each other to get away from the life fiber enhanced cape who just burst through the wall. And second, there was a dead man at one of the computer stations.

I signaled Garment to disconnect the life fibers. As the crimson energy died away my head cleared and I was able to focus again. From a quick glance at the mess it was obvious that the man's cranial bomb had gone off. The sea-urchin-like mass of crystal needless extending from his neck was exactly Bakuda's style. Each was about the width of a pencil but had extended nearly ten feet from the man, punching through anything in their way. And because of the positioning, that 'anything' mostly included the man in question.

As a small mercy most of the spikes had penetrated his head from their origin point in the base of his skull. He was saved from the slow drawn-out death that would have come from getting hit in non-vital locations. It was a monstrous reminder of what Bakuda was capable of, what she had in line for everyone I'd blown past on my way here.

I remembered Aisha's call. 'A little impaled'. Those were the words she'd used, and seeing the effect in question left little doubt to what she was referring to. The signal from her phone was coming from near the nest of spikes, but her power was preventing me from pinpointing it. Even computer assistance barely helped. I could get a vector, but was unable to even hold the idea that something was there.

Thankfully, as the last conscript fled the room, Aisha appeared. And then I saw the blood. The idea was chilling, but her power had actually concealed the blood from her injuries. From the way she was impaled it must have been building for some time. I didn't want to think about how long she had been holding out until the opportunity to make that call presented itself.

I put that out of my mind as I rapidly assessed the scene. She was wearing a short purple and turquoise dress with matching leggings. A kind of scarf was serving as her mask and the outfit included a stylish set of boots and gloves. I could recognize Garment's work. I also recognized one of the more durable hyper fabrics my workshop could create. And I recognized from the design that the outfit had been made with the clear purpose of functioning as a cape costume.

Garment had given Aisha a cape costume, a very durable cape costume, probably at least as good as Taylor's suit. It was something I had specifically avoided because I was afraid it would lead to Aisha deciding to go out and pull something exactly like this.

Still, this being Aisha she could easily have done this without the basic security afforded by Garment's work. The costume hadn't fully protected her, but from the looks of things it may have saved her life. A couple of the needles seemed to have shattered from catching the fabric at a bad angle and the penetrations that did get through weren't nearly as deep as on the unfortunate conscript the effect originated from.

My guess was she had been hovering near the conscript when his bomb went off. The result was about a half dozen needles buried in her body, but thanks to the resistance of her outfit she had been mostly pushed away from the blast rather than completely perforated.

"Hey." She struggled to get the word out and let the cell phone fall from her hand. From what I could tell she hadn't taken a hit to her lungs, but there were enough needles in her torso that that luck had probably just taken things from 'quick death' to 'slow death'.

Without asking I stepped forward and laid a gloved hand on her shoulder. Blue lines traced themselves across her body and I got an inside look at the extent of the damage. Yep, slow death was about right. That kind of organ damage would not have been a fun way to go. At least it was simple to fix. I had dealt with nightmares of spatial distortions, and that was without One Thing at a Time improving my healing skill and speed.

As I finished the process my motoroid finished following my trail of destruction through the building, batting away the occasional brave, foolish, or disoriented gang member that got in its way. It reached the financial room and took a defensive position by the hole in the wall. Survey scanned the room for surveillance devices and came up clean. Apparently, in the ABB it wasn't common practice to take video documentation of your financial crimes.

I received a data feed from my duplicates. They had taken positions high in the sky above the buildings using their mass cores to essentially float while they scanned the area. There was no sign of incoming support, but the building was looking like a kicked anthill. Instead of interfering with the frenzied evacuation they were interfacing with their copies of Survey to record and track as much of the activity as possible.

Aisha dropped away from the spikes as my nanites dissolved the intruding matter, leaving unblemished skin visible through the holes in her costume. She sucked in a deep breath like it was the sweetest feeling in the world. Her mouth was still covered, but from her eyes I could tell she was smiling.

"Thank yo…"

"What the hell were you thinking?"

She reeled back as I cut her off, but there must have been something about my tone or expression that hamstrung whatever automatic response she would have given in the situation. Instead she seemed to actually consider her response before speaking. She looked up at me, taking in the billowing cloak that added even more to our height difference, then pushed forward.

"I was trying to help." She looked at me as if expecting some dismissive statement. I gave her a level look and she took a breath before continuing.

"You said how important it was to find Bakuda or Oni Lee or the thinker. I, uh, I knew some people who were low level ABB." From her tone I guessed she didn't have the friendliest relationship with them. "So, I started hanging around them with my power, listening in and stuff."

It was stupid and dangerous, but I got the sense that pointing out either of those details wouldn't be helpful right now. "How did you end up here?"

She stood a little straighter. "Followed one guy, then went up the ladder when he reported to someone. Eventually I found out about this place. They manage the legal stuff here, businesses and shit. I came to check it out. Apparently it used to only be part ABB before Bakuda conscripted the whole building." She saw my expression and shifted to a defiant posture. "I was careful. Not like last time. I took it slow, watched how they got through rooms and stuff."

I grit my teeth. "I assume you got my number from my cell phone?" She made a small nod and diverted her eyes. I bit back my outrage at the violation. She had been in my apartment when I had messaged Dr. Campbell. Having that exposed felt considerably worse than the intrusion into my workshop. But that was Aisha. She was thirteen, an age of peak stupidity. Add passenger influence and the effects of her home life and it was probably an accomplishment that she at least seemed to feel guilty about the act.

I let out a slow breath before continuing. "Why didn't you call me before you came here?" If I didn't have to bust into this building like a rogue missile I could have set up enough surveillance and infiltration tech to pick this place apart a dozen times over.

"Because you wouldn't have let me come with you." The look in her eyes was plainly defiant. I didn't insult her by trying to refute the statement. Passenger, power, immaturity. There was no way I would have let her in this place. At best she could have watched from a safe distance. "I told you, I was being careful. I was doing fine until this guy exploded."

That was the real concerning point. "What happened when his bomb detonated? What brought that on?"

"I don't know." Her voice was embarrassed and hurt. "He was doing something on the computer, some stock stuff. It looked important, so I took a look. Then he turned into a pincushion."

I turned towards the PC. The screen and keyboard had been shattered by the bomb's spikes, but the computer was still running. I leveraged Survey, my omni-tool, and my neural implant to pick through the data. It didn't take long for things to fall into place.

"Stocks." I announced.

"What?"

"Stock trading." I indicated towards the wall of screens. "They were doing some kind of stock manipulation, timed trades and set just as the markets closed to cover their tracks. It looks like he missed one of his cues for a trade. I'm guessing their bombs were set to go off if any of them messed up."

It meant the thinker was getting into higher level manipulation. She must have been really confident in her abilities. Not many thinkers tried to go against Watchdog. It's possible it was a short-term scam, a quick cash grab to pile onto the already impressive amount of funds the ABB had secured.

"This is the new thinker's work." I turned to Aisha. "Did you learn anything about her?"

The girl shook her head. "Not many people have worked with her. They're calling her the Rabbit?"

She looked to me but the name didn't trigger anything. It was possible some zodiac reference, and Survey quickly provided dubiously helpfully insight on the matter.

'Rabbit. Forth animal of the Chinese zodiac. Associated with the Earthly Branch, yin, and the hours of 0500 through 0700. Assumed personality traits include earnestness, kindness, reasoning skills and attention to detail in spite of no natural or parahuman explanation for the association. Additionally…"

I could tell there was an entire rant on astrology being prepared and quickly worked to cut off the A.I. before it could get sidetracked. Instead I turned my attention back to the system in front of me.

As I realized just what I had access to I couldn't keep a smile from my face. The smile grew until a laugh began to bubble forth. I'm fully prepared to blame residual life fiber energy for whatever manic edge it might have had.

"What?" Aisha was looking at me with an excited gleam in her eyes.

"This is their financial center. What's more, the deals they've been pulling mean even more of their assets are tied into this system. Every front, every shell company, every source of laundered money. There's a trail to everything. With this I can choke off every legitimate asset the ABB has to its name."

Her eyes shined in the light of the screen and I could tell she was grinning behind her scarf. "You can do that? Don't these things have crazy security and encryptions on the accounts or something?"

"What, this human crap?"

There was an awkward moment when I realized what I said, she realized what I said, and we slowly came to a silent agreement not that neither of us would mention it. It felt like that kind of slip up should cost more than twenty-five cents. Like somewhere between a dollar coin and one of those $10 rolls of quarters.

"So, uh, we can bring them down?" She finally asked.

"Not completely." I admitted. "They still have their forces, cash assets, locations not tied in with their businesses, and any off the books income sources. This will hobble any attempts to do things legitimately." I reviewed her question. "Also, 'we' won't be doing it."

"What?" She took a step back.

"If the ABB capes aren't on their way now they will be once I start messing with this. You almost died once today. I'm not dragging you into a firefight."

"I can sneak around. No one will see me." She tried to sound convincing, but there was a pleading edge to her voice.

I just shook my head. "This place is booby trapped to Hell and back. You're lucky you made it in alive, and there's no one you can shadow out of the building. Also, bombs don't care about whether they can see you or not."

Her eyes slid back to the pin cushioned corpse. I suddenly realized that she had been making an effort to avoid looking at it. It occurred to me that someone without military training and a mechanical disconnect from their humanity might have a hard time dealing with something like that.

"So, you're sending me away?" There was an uncertain tone to her voice.

"Sort of." I did a more detailed sweep for surveillance, double checking Survey's original result. When I was sure it was clear I approached the door and slid my key into the lock. Aisha's eyes widened as it opened into an empty closet instead of the outside hall, then the hologram flickered away to reveal the entryway of my workshop with two of Survey's new drones floating in the door.

"You can do that from anywhere?"

I nodded. This was an iffy decision, but it was the one I'd settled on when securing my memory at my throne. I was in the uncomfortable situation of needing to either go through with it, or be tripped up every time Aisha's power flickered.

Aisha swallowed. "You'll come for me as soon as this is done, right?"

"Absolutely." I did my best to sound reassuring, reminding myself that Aisha was probably very good at pretending things didn't bother her, but had just nearly been killed and needed a hail Mary to save her life. "Listen to the drones. They'll keep you away from anything dangerous." And also wouldn't hesitate to tase her if she pushed her luck too far.

The girl nodded and glanced at me, then her eyes drifted towards the body before she forced them back to the Workshop entrance. "Uh, is Garment in there?"

Aisha flinched as my cloak flowed out and brushed against her cheek. She looked up at the billowing mass of cloth, then at me. I raised one white glove and wiggled the fingers.

"No way." Her eyes were wide with wonder.

"Go." I handed her back the phone she dropped earlier. "I'll make this as quick as I can, but go now."

The girl nodded and hurried through the door. The corner of my cape flowed up and waved at her as she rushed past. Aisha returned the gesture, then cautiously approached the drone. I gave her a nod, reactivated the entrance defenses, and closed the door.

As soon as she was cut off my awareness of her faded. It wasn't as bad as when she was actively using her powers, but it was hard to remember my interactions with her. I looked down at the key in my hand and clearly remembered opening the workshop. I wouldn't have done that if I hadn't found her and secured her in the workshop.

She was safe.

And I had work to do.

Before I started I looked over at the unfortunate trader. It struck me just how callous I had been. It was a human being and I had been treating his body like a point of tactical information. Now I was preparing to dive into his system, the system he had been killed over, without giving him a second thought.

I took a few seconds to remove the needles and lay out the body. His wallet revealed he was Michael Won, 32 years old, organ donor, and employed at one of the investment firms downtown. It gave a more personal edge to this mess, something I could follow up on later. For now it just hardened the resolve for the actions I was about to take.

Actually hacking into financial records, even from a point of central access, would normally be a challenge. It was significantly less so with my skills and technology. If you add in the fact that I had absolutely no respect for the integrity of their systems it suddenly became trivial.

Of course, tearing into still running systems to install bypasses or copying entire hard drives to extract records and log in information isn't exactly something data security consultants can prepare for.

While I worked the Celestial Forge made another connection. It was the midsized mote from the same cluster in the Alchemy constellation that had provided my Simplified Formulae power. This was called Alkahestry and was a major step forward in that particular style of alchemy.

Rather than that tectonic forces business this style focused on flows of energy, both through the world and through living beings. That meant that not only could I perform transmutation at a distance with nothing but a very simple circle and set of relays, I could sense living energy. It worked like a life sense, I could already feel the energy of the people in the building, running and near panicked. Specifically I could tell they were panicked by the way their energy shifted. That was a huge level of insight, as it would allow me to use transmutation to heal and assist other medical practices.

Of course, it also improved my skill with normal transmutation. In contrast to the complicated circles and arrays I'd been using, the majority of alkahestry transmutations could be accomplished with a simple pentacle. Higher level application, particularly when combined with my previous knowledge, could get extremely powerful.

As I took a moment to get a feel for it I could tell the life sense, something the power regarded as a 'Dragon Pulse', was more detailed than I initially thought. It wasn't limited to humans. I could feel Garment's presence, even beyond what our normal connection would have allowed, her presence extending out through the animated cape.

The connection even extended to the life fibers. It was like a more detailed and intimate version of the connection I'd made during my first experiment when I tried to link through my nanites. I could feel the intense energy circulating through the fibers of the creature and the complicated patterns underneath that represented the beginnings of complex thoughts. This close I could get a rough sense of mood and outlook, the satisfaction at both having been fed and at being useful.

Also, for some reason, Alkahestry included a basic understanding of martial arts and an unusually proficient skill with throwing knives. It made sense, as that was necessary to deploy alchemical relays at range, but it was odd to suddenly be able to throw five knives at once in a perfect pentagram pattern using only a single hand.

It was something to think on as I systematically dismantled the financial backing of the ABB and worked to stay ahead of their feeble attempts to stop me. If I had been trying to steal their funds or secure account access it could have been a challenge. Fortunately, all I was trying to do was ruin their shit, which was a much easier prospect.

The trade scheme had been an attempt to take advantage of flaws in automated computer trading, manipulating stock activity to send the programs controlling the trades on exploitable paths. It didn't take much work to ruin the careful arrangement that kept the activity from being flagged and thus getting every account connected with the scheme locked and under investigation.

That was the first time I encountered action from the other side. Someone, presumably the new thinker, was attempting to reverse the actions with precisely timed commands and activity designed to reinforce the innocuous appearance of the original deals.

I tried to stay hands off for as long as I could, but something tipped them off and they cut their connection before I could trace their location any more precisely than 'somewhere in the city'. It was possibly more evidence of that timing power at work.

It may have saved them from discovery, but it wouldn't prevent the damage I could wreck on their organization. I was so deep inside the financial system I could practically feel the monitoring programs WEDGDG used to protect the markets. With gleeful abandon I started tearing into the finances of the ABB.

Shell companies were exposed, fronts were torn down, holdings were flagged and frozen. I was tearing back layers of deception leaving a burning trail severe enough that automatic actions were being taken against them. Years of accumulated blood money was being dragged into the sunlight and pounced on by a plethora or regulatory agencies.

Regrettably, my work wasn't universally successful. I could tear into trades, investments, holdings, stocks and real-estate freely. However, when I tried to draw attention to the source accounts of the ABB I encountered unexpected resistance. By tracing the funding source for an illegal trade or the purchase of a shell company it should have been enough to freeze the account. Likewise for the repositories of the ABB gains from their various legally gray enterprises. However, unlike my attempts in every other area, this didn't go smoothly.

Tracing an account would find it emptied and its funds split over a dozen accounts in four different countries. Trying to trace those would show the accounts I went after to be decoys and the money from the actual accounts scattered again. Trying to track the mechanism behind the counter actions only resulted in more dead ends and false starts.

It was infuriating. I just couldn't keep up with the process. It was clear that this was being directed by someone who made their home in the world of finance, not an uncertain visitor like myself. I was chasing after a ghost who had the home field advantage.

But I wasn't giving up. This was the last point of failure. If I could accomplish this it would reduce the ABB to operating solely on a cash economy. Not only would it limit their ability to leverage their resources it would deny them most of their ill-gotten wealth. I interfaced with my duplicates, parallel processed with my omni-tool, integrated with Survey and went to war.

I never thought I would miss my neural interface throne this much. It felt like I was trying to fight through mud. Minutes seemed like hours as I combated the mystery financial guru, who at this point I was absolutely certain was some kind of parahuman. Every victory was paltry compared to the effort needed to secure it. Shell accounts held only a few thousand when they weren't complete dead ends. Even with all my advantages, with three minds operating twice as fast and twice as skillfully, I couldn't keep up. I couldn't win on this battlefield.

It wasn't helped by the mounting distractions. The ABB were rallying their forces. It was just too bad that their current forces consisted of a bunch of coerced white-collar workers. Whatever boldness that thug had displayed was in drastically short supply amongst the other residents of the building.

To be fair, they might actually have had a chance if I hadn't suddenly gained the ability to sense lifeforces. And didn't have a totally unoccupied and slightly bored A.I. piloting a battle suit of unbelievable power. And a suddenly fabricated flight of elven enchanted drones.

Occasional breaks to direct Fleet and Survey to a particular area were all it took to reduce the planned offensive to shambles. It probably didn't help that their first attempts, cutting the power and then cutting the network line, were completely useless. By that point I had torn apart the system thoroughly enough that they were basically vestigial to my efforts and easily transitioned to connections through the wireless network. The financial duel continued while Fleet found enjoyment completely ruining the ABB's attempts to mount an offensive, mostly through the motoroid's use of basic area denial strikes.

The building was beginning to look like swiss cheese, but the A.I. was following my lead of avoiding structural components. That did leave some areas basically nothing but structural supports, but that was besides the point. The few paths they had available to them were covered by surprisingly agile and durable drones that probably could have outmaneuvered their forces even without my help.

Mercifully, Bakuda or whoever had their finger on the detonator didn't decide to start executing people for their failure to defeat a physically and technologically superior foe using only what appeared to be the kind of the combat skills one developed at corporate team-building seminars. Apparently they decided it was more useful to keep their men alive then kill them for failing an impossible task. That did suggest that someone saner than Bakuda was holding the reins.

My attempt to ferret out the last of the gang's finances was proving futile. Eventually the mounting dead ends and convoluted financial landscapes became too much and I had to admit defeat. The entire operation had taken less than ten minutes, but it was clear I wasn't going to be able to prevail. Besides, my duplicates had spotted something that needed my attention.

As I withdrew from my pursuit a string of data was sent from an untraceable point in the final trail I had followed.

6E756D6265726D616E4062616E6B2E636F6D

The seemingly random string of characters was a contact address. An invitation, or possibly a challenge.

I had obviously made an impression. I just wasn't sure I wanted to reach out to someone who protected the money of a gang that put bombs into children's heads. But that was something I could consider later. Right now I had to put some assholes in their place.

The knowledge constellation missed its connection as I planned my intercept. My duplicates were getting close to what would be their 20% time, so they were more than willing to take some risks. I agreed to their engagement plan and moved to get into position. That was when I received a message from Fleet.

'Proposed alteration to plan based on modeled parameters.'

I looked at what was being proposed and nearly refused on the spot. That was when my duplicates decided to weigh in on the matter.

"Oh, we should totally do that." The first radioed me while moving to position.

"No, it's pointlessly excessive. They already slipped away once. I'm not giving them another chance just to be able to show off advancements in A.I. driven motoroid control."

The second spoke up to counter me. "Last time you didn't have us. We have them outnumbered, out teched, and outclassed. You can show off with us covering you."

"Think of it as a development exercise. Fleet has made a tactical suggestion with high confidence in the ability to complete it. The situation can bear the demonstration without compromising objectives. Do you have a good reason for rejection?"

I didn't like being ganged up on, but they had a point. Fleet was eagerly waiting for a decision. It wasn't something I would have risked before, but my duplicates could cover me. I reviewed the parameters one more time and gave my answer.

"Proposal accepted. Begin planning of entry maneuvers."

There was a tangible sense of excitement from the A.I. as we moved into position for intercept. I smiled along with it and reviewed the situation once more.

There hadn't been any capes at the office building, most likely protecting their physical assets and tinker tech. Also, my attack had been brutal, direct, and come out of nowhere. With my previous demonstration I doubted they wanted to throw assets at me blindly, which is probably why the usual rapid response of Oni Lee hadn't surfaced.

Good thing for him. My duplicates would have snipped him from high altitude the moment he dared to show his face.

It seemed that, not wanting to risk their own capes, the ABB had once again decided to contract out the matter. Thus, the presence of a pair of overly angular robots speeding through the docks towards the office building.

I was mildly impressed that Leet was both able to build things that size and keep them running with the limitations of his specialty. Either he had a major breakthrough or his synergy with 'The Rabbit' was better than I anticipated.

The robots were nearly three times the height of my motoroid and kind of skated across the ground as they moved, propelled by thrusters on their backs. Uber and Leet were taking advantage of the lack of traffic in the area and a surprising amount of agility from the robots in question. My duplicates waited until they cut a corner by veering into the parking lot of an abandoned store before striking.

Two motoroids dropped from the sky like comets. Unlike the last time this was attempted both had pilots. Pilots with my precise control of their elemental weapons.

Instead of the indiscriminate crater from Saturday night they channeled the force forward in a rising wave of earth. As the ground lost all stability the suits went head over heels, their thrust systems working against them in the chaos of the upturned parking lot.

At the same time, I was peeling towards them from the opposite direction with my motoroid in motorcycle form. This particular maneuver was excessive, but Fleet had made the request and I agreed to it. That said, ramping off a moving wave of earth to launch over your opponents while your motoroid transforms midair and you kick off to land precisely on the sole remaining lamppost in the lot and glare down at your foes with your cloak dramatically flaring around you with three motoroids hovering around the enemy forces like vengeful angels… that was just excessive.

The flaring cloak was actually a necessity. My balance was a bit better following all the life fiber training, but it wasn't perfect. I was relying on Garment to act as a regulating factor to keep me on stable footing.

It wasn't all show either. My motoroids, two of which contained duplicates, had them surrounded. Multiple weapons were at the ready as well as three potential sources of Evermore Alchemy. I was more durable than my motoroids and between Garment, life fibers, and even aura if I really got desperate, I could outfight or evade any attack. I was ready to take them down, either permanently or in a fashion that would get me the information I needed on the rest of the ABB.

At least that's what I'd been hoping for. I was badly disappointed. I looked down at the pair of machines, which Survey informed me were called Virtuaroids, as they struggled to their feet and a single word came to my lips.

"Pathetic."

The sound carried across the devastation, causing the blockier of the two robots, Apharmd, thank you Survey, to scramble to its feet. Leet's voice came from the machine.

"You haven't seen anything yet. Think you're the robot master? Well you haven't faced the power of Virtual On!" He hung on that word as if expecting a reaction. When I didn't give him one he continued in a somewhat strained voice. "I thought you'd appreciate someone giving you a proper challenge."

"And I thought you'd have the courage to challenge me in person." Both robots stopped moving for a second. Those suits were too dense to completely scan through, but there was no blocking my ability to read the dragon pulse. I could tell there was nothing alive inside them.

"Preposterous. This is the age of Super Robot Wars, not Karate Champ." Uber cut in, hamming up his performance as usual. His robot, Temjin, even posed while he spoke. "You seriously expect us to get out of the robots?" He was clearly trying to call my bluff, and not doing that convincing a job of it.

"I expect you to get out of your basement. Though I suppose hiding behind a controller is your natural environment. And yelling at someone through a headset will finally let you use those skills developed from hours of screaming homophobic insults on Xbox Live." As I spoke I worked with my duplicates to assess the equipment on display. Integrating my Diagnostic Tools into my scanning systems gave me a way to assess tinker tech in the field, and let me turn this pre-battle posturing into an intelligence gathering exercise.

"If you're afraid to face us just say so." Leet scoffed in a somewhat unconvincing tone. My scans confirmed his high power plasma cannon and large complement of missiles and Uber's hard light rifle integrated in a sword with a plasma projection system along the blade. That robot also was carrying some kind of large cluster bombs. Heavy ordinance, and probably a serious threat to any other cape in the city, but not to me. All said there were no signatures of the kind of annihilator tech I'd been worried about.

"I would happily face you if you weren't cowering in a hole somewhere." I checked my scanner data and saw the expected fluctuations in the background EM signals. "Are you using the same sub-wave system to drive those things that you use to hide your broadcasts?"

"What?" Leet's voice almost broke as he spoke. "What are you talking about?"

"That EM pulse medium thing you do to hide your broadcasts from being detected. Use of background signals as a carrying method for information. Kind of clever, but I'm surprised nobody's figured it out before…"

Uber swung up the sword/gun thing his robot was carrying and launched a brilliant beam of energy at me. It seemed they were defensive enough regarding that particular system that they were willing to jump straight to combat in order to keep more details from being revealed. It made sense, since it was the single piece of technology that had kept them broadcasting for years while everything else failed around them. The system was hell to track, but could potentially be disrupted if you went deep enough into the technology.

Garment had swung half of the cape in front of me even as Uber aimed the weapon and fully intercepted the blast. A beam of energized light with the power of one of Purity's stronger blasts broke against the cloak like it was nothing but the glare of a spotlight. That was the result of more than just durability at play. One of the defensive items my duplicates had built was a plate of adamantium with a simple mass field generator. It had a single purpose. It was very, very heavy.

Inertia is a defensive property. Attacks that do no damage can still be debilitating if they hit hard enough to send you flying. However, if you have an incredibly dense and heavy plate as one of your defensive items, and a power that applies that property to your entire body then suddenly you have a resistance to knockback that makes lead look like styrofoam.

Of course, that slip of a plate did weigh about twenty pounds whenever the mass field was activated, but it was centrally located and well balanced, so not that much of a problem compared to the benefits it yielded.

Really, I could have taken the hit myself, but Garment intercepting it prevented even a moment of distraction as I drew my upgraded pistol and prepared to leap forward to counterattack. Not that it was really necessary, seeing as Uber was learning why you don't push your luck while covered by multiple angles from an elevated position.

Maybe he had been hoping that these motoroids were as bereft of ranged options as the previous model had become. As he was quickly learning, that was definitely not the case. In fact, the only reason this wasn't over in an instant was because I was still hoping to salvage something from the wrecks and I wasn't convinced that primary weapons energy output could be regulated enough for safe deployment against urban centers.

My duplicates had kind of swung for the fences when they designed that one.

Instead the deployed tonfas on each motoroid opened up in a manner only a variable weapon could, shifting into large caliber mass effect firearms, because the theme of variable weapons was always 'It is also a gun'. I would be tempted to refer to them as man portable artillery, except weapons that size weren't exactly man portable. The artillery part was actually dead on.

Six Earthshaker Cannons opened up on Leet's robots, firing flecks of rock Dust-infused tungsten magnetically accelerated to supersonic speeds before having their mass amplified to the level of a field artillery shell. The mass shift would only hold for a moment after leaving the weapon, but at the speeds the rounds were traveling that was more than enough.

I had to give Leet's workmanship credit based on the fact that the Virtuaroids, and I hated using that name, were not immediately reduced to piles of scrap. That was largely due to the fact that Leet seemed to have embraced the 'layered forcefield' approach as a necessary part of future engagements, and that the weapons were still using the somewhat less damaging tremor runes even in cannon form. Hence, Earthshaker Cannon.

Each strike from the cannons triggered a flare of energy from the fields surrounding the machines. Glowing yellow fields, rippling distortion, interlinked hexagons, or areas of blurred space flared into existence as the heavy ordinance rained down on them. The protection wasn't perfect, at least not under this level of assault. Certain effects became less prevalent under the strain and the odd round managed to transfer enough energy to dent the outer surface of the machines.

The defensive fields might have been somewhat holding up to the barrage, but the tremor effect was causing the ground around them to writhe like an angry snake. I could tell their shielding had some kind of method for negating momentum transfer. Without it they'd be spinning in place under the force of the impacts. Instead there was just the persistent lightshow of the shielding systems as they struggled to absorb the titanic amount of abuse being rained upon them.

The sustained bombardment was quickly becoming more than the 'Virtuaroids' could handle. Tremor rune empowered artillery was opening rifts and fissures under the machines and the rock Dust-infused rounds were causing jagged spikes of stone to spawn from every ricochet. Leet's machine was already buried to its knees and pinned down after mere seconds of bombardment.

I missed a connection to the Alchemy constellation as Uber used a glowing edge projected from his sword for cover. Burning blue plasma extended from either side of the narrow sword in a blade wide enough to shield the robot from the aerial bombardment. With the moment's respite his blue and white machine engaged its jets and launched into the sky. It was a clumsy launch compared to my motoroids, but clearly a skillfully piloted one. As he reached the peak of his initial boost he lobbed a polygonal device towards the nearest motoroids. I was already drawing a bead on it in the middle of my leap before the device even left his hand. Garment used the cloak to steady me as I lined up the shot. Compared to sniping one of the grenades from Bakuda's launcher this was a cakewalk.

The current pistol was much better than its previous version. Mithril casing with engraved runes and a block of wind Dust-infused tungsten providing ammunition took the weapon's quality to a whole new level. The data systems had been drastically improved as well, with the recently added smartlink between my neural implant and the pistol's sights made keeping the gun on target trivial. The shot launched with all the skill of my elemental weapon mastery and tore through the device in a swirl of supersonic vortexes.

Rather than trigger an explosion or just fall apart the device's casing was torn away and about a dozen small devices flew out of the scrap, launching towards the motoroids. Micro-missiles. I could recognize the look of Bakuda's work. If I was anyone else I might be in trouble. Fortunately, I kind of was someone else in that I was my duplicates. Both of my duplicates had all my abilities and equipment. They knew what was coming and were more than capable of defending themselves. Before the weapons could approach a pair of overload bursts launched from the duplicates omni-tools precisely guided to short-out the incoming projectiles.

Their guidance systems and power sources died on the spot, burned out by the precisely targeted electrical energy. The guided bombs scattered off trailing electronic smoke behind them. I snatched one out of the air as Garment guided my descent towards Leet's Apharmd. At close proximity my Diagnostic Tools were able to examine its function in exacting detail.

Survey assisted by informing me that this kind of munition was not accurate to the video game source material the Uber and Leet were depicting.

I frowned as I dropped the final distance and raised the glowing orange blade of my omni-sword.

"So that was your plan?" I swung the sword. With the improvements from Tinkerer's Variable Weapon Crafting it was more than just a pistol with a blade mount. The weapon transitioned into a perfectly balanced and elegantly shaped sword that was ideally matched to my grip, build, and combat style. Three quick slices reduced his plasma cannon to scrap. "Hide behind drones while you try to steal my technology? Or is this Bakuda's desperation at play?"

The device was a frightening example of just how far Bakuda was able to push the idea of what counted as a 'bomb'. It attached to an object and aggressively scanned it, charging it with the effect of ludicrously energetic active sensors and transmitting every reading. Eventually the object fractured from the forces being induced, and then blew apart from the strain. By that point the scan would have extracted enough information for insanely detailed blueprints and even pulled data from any conventional hard drives.

It simultaneously destroyed technology while giving its user a full breakdown of the object's design and stored information. A reverse engineering grenade. It was something that would only have been built if she was specifically going against a tinker, or possibly performing some kind of data theft.

Still, it wouldn't have made a difference to me. Maybe it could have been a problem on Saturday night, but now my kinetic barriers and shielding would block it from ever making contact. Of course, they didn't know that. So far they hadn't presented enough of a threat to even necessitate the outer layers or my improved defenses.

"Fuck you." Leet's machine scrambled back and missile ports began opening and tracking on me. "I don't need that shit. I can build anything. And this is just the beginning. We're reviving the franchise!"

A concentrated barrage of earthshaker fire threw off his aim and sent him scrambling to recover. Garment whipped my cape into a crescent above me, just in time to intercept the glowing blade of Uber's sword.

"Uber and Leet: 2011. The next gen update everyone's been waiting for!" Even mid combat Uber kept his voice in the excessively grandiose tone and dramatic register.

The plasma projection coming from the blade was insanely intense. The effect was powerful enough that it might have actually caused some problems for me before my latest round of upgrades. I remembered the sting of that Spartan sword from the storage center, probably the only conventional armament I had actually felt during that fight. This thing was like its angry older brother.

The thought of that incident, how I'd been fooled, brought any enjoyment of the confrontation to a dead stop. Instead I shifted position and raised the blade of my omni-sword. Uber's Temjin was four times my height, though according to Survey that was still only half its official video game size. Despite its size Leet's engineering and Uber's piloting had it maneuvering with deadly grace. The robot didn't have the inertia a machine its size should have struggled with. As such it was able to conduct itself like a swordsman rather than a walking tank.

It would have made for a difficult opponent, but I wasn't exactly playing by the conventional laws of physics either. Uber's lightning fast strikes were blocked by Garment's masterful control of my cape, leaving Uber open for counterattacks. Projected slashes from my omni-sword were launched at blazing speed and sparked dramatically off of failing force fields. The blue and white mecha struggled to get past my defenses while I out maneuvered and whittled it down.

Leet was doing little better. He was shifting to a wide stance to try to keep his feet under the barrage and struggling to bring a launcher to bear. The two times he did manage to fire a missile the projectile was shredded by Fleet's precision accuracy of the cannons before it had a chance to cross half the distance to his target. All through this damage was piling up and protective fields were sparking out.

They were playing defensive. I'd seen this before and I wasn't going to fall for it again. Luckily I was better prepared this time. Before I could even set the task Survey reported the reason for their delaying tactics. The real threat that would have been able to punch through my durability in a way Uber and Leet's loadouts never could, spotted early thanks to the web of fifteen drones in high position over the battlefield.

It took barely a moment of conference with my duplicates to decide on the strategy. They rose higher into the air, maintaining their barrage as they ascended. A familiar beeping sounded and Uber's robot launched back under the power of his jets while tossing aside the now sparking blade-rifle.

"Well, this has been fun, but all good things must come to an end. And it looks like it's about time…"

"For the missiles, right?" I cut Uber off as I shifted to catch the discarded weapon. As I suspected it was a lot less bulky than a twenty-foot-long sword should have been. Mostly empty space held together by structural fields that were in the process of going critical while leaking a concerning amount of smoke.

"No…" Leet replied in probably the least convincing tone I'd ever heard. "Why would you say that?"

"Because of the large barrage that's just been launched from the other side of the city." I made a vague gesture in the direction of the launch site as I fixed the overload in the weapon's stability drive. The remotely controlled robots couldn't emote but they both went dead quiet.

"We don't know what you're talking about." Uber was at least somewhat convincing in his attempt to obscure the truth of the situation.

"I'm guessing the plan was to bog me down, steal my technology, and keep me distracted from noticing the missile strike, probably based on the assumption that I couldn't do this." I gestured upward without taking my attention off the repairs and modifications I was making to the giant sword. The advantage of having a neural connection and duplicates to handle the situation for me.

Uber and Leet seemed to have finally noticed the barrage of earthshaker rounds had stopped. The robots shifted their view upwards to see my three motoroids hanging in formation while facing towards the rapidly approaching barrage. A barrage of what was presumably composed of warheads consisting of the worst effects Bakuda's tinker tech could manage. Apertures opened on the chests of each motoroid, revealing the baleful glow of magitek energy in its purest and most deadly form.

The magitek laser was an offensive function I'd know about since I got my first Magitech power. It was incredibly simple to implement, though very bulky and power hungry. There was a good reason I didn't include it in the first design of my motoroid. It would have taken up enough space to either prevent me from using it as armor or drastically changing the suit's profile, and it would have completely drained a call bead in a handful of shots.

The new motoroid was running from a much larger power source. The new motoroid was constructed with weapon modification and optimization powers. The new motoroid benefited from both miniaturization and simplification of its systems. The new motoroid had a mass core to effectively ignore recoil, even while flying. The new motoroid was constructed with magically resonant mithril. The new motoroid did have a masterwork magitek laser as its primary weapon.

The sky turned red and, with a sound like air being tortured, three crimson beams erupted from the formation. This was an untested weapon. I wasn't worried about it failing, but I only had estimates for how that kind of energy would present itself. The numbers skewed high enough that I was averse to using it against any target where there was even the potential for collateral damage. Or against any target where I would want to recover physically intact remains.

I thought I would have to sweep the lasers through the swarm of missiles that were bearing down on my position. It turns out that relative proximity to three beams of that level of power is not exactly a friendly environment for delicate tinker tech. Even missiles not directly struck by the energy warped and melted before being torn away in a cloud of debris.

The energetic bloom from the attack was something I hadn't totally accounted for, particularly the multiplicative factor of clustering the shots. The beams had been angled to avoid direct impact with any part of the city, catching the missiles at the peak of their trajectory and continuing up into the sky at a shallow angle. While that prevented any direct damage, readings from the drones suggested there were some unfriendly effects on the upper floors and rooftop equipment of some of the taller buildings directly under the beams.

Still, that was less damage than would have been caused by a clustered tinker tech missile strike in the middle of the docks, so I wasn't going to let it bother me. My hands continued to work on the sword, stripping out Leet's transponder systems, fixing overcomplications in the design and altering the blade's profile and controls.

'We have a location for the launch point. We're both on short time here. Let us scout the site.' The second duplicate relayed through my implant, and the first confirmed his message.

'Go.' I responded. This was something I'd be concerned about blundering into myself, but with my duplicates on the last minutes of their existence and willing to take a tinker tech bomb to the face I wasn't going to deny them. 'I'll mop things up here.'

Ten of the drones dropped out of the sky and fell into position with the duplicates' motoroids. They linked their mass fields, creating a kind of tethering system that would not have been possible before Eleven Enchantment, and trailed behind the suits in a tight V formation as my duplicates launched themselves towards the site of the missiles.

Both of Leet's robots dropped their gaze back to me. My own original motoroid remained floating high above us, quickly joined by its drones. I took a stand before the two damaged but functioning mechs and hefted the repaired rifle-blade, which I continued modifying.

Leet's robot focused on the augmented sword and shifted awkwardly. It was Uber who broke in first.

"So, you've sent your robots to their destruction while you prepare to meet your end at our hands." He drew a pair of smaller pistols from somewhere on his machine. Leet, seemingly emboldened, set his machine in a more aggressive stance and deployed the array of launch tubes peppering his robot.

"The days of people underestimating us are coming to an end." There was a vindictive edge to Leet's reedy voice. "You're in for the reckoning of your life."

I smiled under my mask as the Knowledge constellation missed a connection. My hands finished the last of their work on the stolen rifle-blade. As long as I focused on the task in isolation modifications to personal equipment were conducted about 800 times faster, and operating at twice my skill level and working as if a team of a hundred were assigned to the project. Every second was nearly fifteen minutes of effort for a 'normal' tinker. I had already spent the equivalent of several hours of dedicated work on this, with my micromanipulators and other powers making any difficulties associated with field construction irrelevant.

The finished result was a hybridization of the hard light rifle/plasma blade with my omni sword pistol into an immaculate zweihander. The casual repair, upgrade and integration of his technology elicited a stuttering gasping sound through Leet's audio connection, but I wasn't done yet.

Without Uber and Leet actually being present on the battlefield my new life energy sense had nothing to focus on. Instead, as the battle progressed, I was left with the awareness of only two beings, Garment and the life fibers.

The link to Garment was phenomenal, but still familiar. Before, when I wore the gloves I had an inkling of Garment's presence, her senses and the reach of her power. Now I could physically feel the extent of her presence as it flowed through my clothing and cape. The exact way she exerted herself to animate fabrics and the unique way her perception extended and was interpreted. It had made coordination with her in combat as natural as breathing.

But the truly revolutionary aspect of this sense was how it connected to the life fibers. The thing was, energy types from certain powers had a strange way of relating with each other. For instance, every power that specified 'magic' treated parahuman powers as if they were exactly the same kind of effect. Other powers, such as my Fashion reinforcement, had no equivalence to anything in or out of the Forge. Then there was the strange middle ground, the powers that functioned on the same principles as other powers without any explanation for the connection.

It was something I didn't notice until I was sparring with Uber's robot. T'ai Chi Chuan allowed me to flow between attack and defense, shifting through fluid strikes even as Garment absorbed or redirected Uber's thinker assisted offense. A core principle of that particular art was chi, the flow of life energy. Before today I had dismissed that as meaningless mysticism or some shorthand for guiding more complicated aspects of the style. That was before I could feel my own chi.

With Alkahestry I could sense the dragon pulse, the flow of energy through the world and everyone in it. When I moved through stances designed to channel energy from an absorbed attack into an offensive strike or draw energy up from the ground to reinforce the strength of a blow I could actually feel the movement of chi through my body. More than that, I could feel it through the life fibers.

Life fiber energy wasn't chi. It was something distinct, but there was more to it than physical effects. There was some aspect of the nature of life fibers, of their cosmic origin, that resonated with chi. Maybe it was because the flow of energy was intrinsic to the existence of life fibers. Maybe there was a secret shared origin between the powers. Maybe it was just a quirk of the Celestial Forge. Whatever the reason, it was a language the fibers understood.

Whatever fledgling intelligence they had been developing had latched onto the patterns of energy flowing around my body. They were no longer a blind mass trying to interpret the world through a tenuous connection to my central nervous system. As I felt the flow of energy I was able to channel it more efficiency. The life fibers felt it too, and recognized it. Pattern recognition. As they could feel my life energy I could feel theirs. It was a loop of information that connected us, even without a direct physical link.

I could feel their excitement at the situation, eagerness for new experiences, concern for what the development could mean, and anticipation of the next time they would be able to fully connect to me. It had reached the point where I couldn't actually think of them as just 'the life fibers' anymore. It was Tetra, and Tetra wanted to participate in the fight. Not just in the sense of a chance to feed or a destructive urge, but out of a desire for inclusion. It was something I felt compelled to indulge, and right now it was just about the best way to neatly tie this up situation and put a bow on it.

Okay, not literally. I was working with Garment, so those things needed to be said. With her in play bows were actually a very real possibility.

My hidden smile grew wider as I signaled to Garment. The resonance of the dragon pulse clearly conveyed the unbridled excitement streaming from Tetra as the fibers closed the fraction of an inch that separated them from my skin. Power surged through me, bleeding out from the points of contact. The red glow of crisscrossing red lines became starkly visible through the deliberately porous material of my costume.

Before the connection could become draining I focused on activating my nanites. Blue circuitry traced over the crimson veins and any sense of weakness was gone, replaced solely with the incredible power of the fibers.

A wave of indeterminate force spread through the rubble around me, casting dust and debris outward like a heavenly wind. Uber and Leet's robots stood stock still, staring at the spectacle. Finally, whatever combat proficiency Uber was embracing took over and shocked him out of his stupor. His robot flinched into action and opened up with the pair of energy pistols.

The pistols were larger than most crew served weapons and fired dangerous looking bolts of green plasma. From an outside perspective, courtesy of my motoroid on overwatch, the blasts appeared to pass harmlessly through my body. That was quickly revealed to be nothing but the afterimage of my previous location and was followed by the ground exploding in a delayed reaction to my dodging leap.

It was an incredibly impressive effect and I had no idea how it worked. The mechanics of what happened made no sense from what I understood of life fiber energy, much less conventional physics. It was possibly some exotic application of life energy/chi dynamics, but that would suggest Hong Kong filmmakers actually had an in-depth understanding of theoretical power mechanics. I decided to file it under the general strangeness of the Celestial Forge as I effortlessly wove through the sustained barrage that Uber was laying down with the stance and precision of a wild west gunslinger.

I cannot overstate how wonderful it felt to be using the life fibers, I mean using Tetra, in combat. The experience was beyond any level of training, any acrobatic routines played out through my workshop, any practice matches with Fleet. I was finally bearing the might of my earliest major power and directing it against people who fully deserved it.

Or at least their remote-controlled drones. That put a bit of a damper on the situation, but not enough to actually kill the excitement. I grinned widely as I closed to striking distance of Uber's mech so quickly it almost looked like teleportation.

It was probably a good thing I had elected for a full-face mask. It wouldn't do to have pictures of me rushing into deadly combat while grinning like a loon. With my face concealed I didn't have to restrain any of the excitement I was feeling from showing on my expression.

Laser targets from Leet's missile systems were futilely chasing after my previous location and Uber struggled to bring his pistols to bear. Before either could act I swung my upgraded sword, spinning in a blazing arc. The burning weapon caught Uber's machine in the back of the knees.

The interaction between the forces at play was a testament to the integrity of Leet's layered defense. A plethora of defensive fields struggled against the concentrated strike of a plasma edged, mass enhanced, rune enchanted, HF blade that was being wielded with the strength of a high tier brute. There was a fraction of a second where things seemed to stop as the combined effects battled against each other, waiting to see what would give first.

It turns out that the weak link was the mech's inertial damping system. There was a popping sound from somewhere inside the robot and suddenly its legs were swung out from under it as the machine pinwheeled. As it spun wildly through the air I leapt up and caught it with a jump kick. Without the inertia system the robot barely had any mass and what was basically a punt sent it launching straight upward in a high arc.

I landed and readied the blade again, overloading the HF capacitor for a split second before sending a projected slash screaming into the sky. The arc of plasma infused HF wind magic caught Uber's mech in the side with the sound of crumpling and rending metal.

That's when I noticed the multiple targeting lasers that had locked on to my briefly stationary position.

As Leet's mech opened up with every rocket at its disposal I had a brief thought. Somehow, despite planning the project since the moment I got the ability to brew a duplication potion, despite getting the ability to carry over a hundred in a single plane, despite getting a hanger bay full of said munitions, I had shown up at this fight without a single missile to my name. And apparently I was the only one to arrive without rocket accompaniment.

Somehow it made me feel underdressed.

Avoiding a full barrage of missiles was a different matter than dodging Uber's plasma shots. I dove into the task with singular focus, enhanced speed and reflexes briefly taken even further by Do One Thing at a Time. The dozens of rockets quickly tracked to my position and accelerated to blinding speed, but not nearly fast enough to deter me.

I wove. I dodged. I sliced rockets out of the air. Towards the end I'm pretty sure I used a couple of them as stepping stones, but that might just be the life fiber energy affecting my perception. What I do know is it ended with Leet out of ammo and me diving towards him from above, a burning plasma sword extended with all the strength of Tetra's enhancement behind it.

The blade impacted Leet's mech with a focused precision I never would have expected to be capable of. Feeling the dragon pulse and channeling energy with T'ai Chi Chuan allowed for brief focused moments of unbelievable power. Wasted energy that would normally spill off or work at cross purposes was concentrated. Every system on the upgraded sword was dialed to the maximum level, flaring like a comet as the blade made contact.

A dozen layers of defense were countered in an instant. The blade carried through the mech and buried into the ground, sending up a shockwave that echoed around the devastated crater of a former parking lot. Two halves of Leet's mech went flying in different directions, landing in crumpled heaps just as Uber's machine crashed back to the ground.

Looking at the remains I was able to see exactly how Leet was able to construct a pair of mechs of this scale on such a short time frame. It turns out, the secret was that he hadn't.

The robots were nothing but a façade. Under the defensive fields there was only a rough collection of technical components. Most of the superstructure was a combination of force fields and holograms. Uber's mech was so light after it lost its inertia field precisely because there was almost nothing there. A light framework, some metallic casing for the armor, and a pile of recycled technology clogging the inside.

Leet's was spread over the lot like the beginnings of a junkyard while Uber's was partially crumpled inside its own defensive fields, making it look like a clear plastic case half filled with machine parts. The remains of Leet's systems cracked and burned, while Uber's mech made a rough attempt to climb upright.

That's when Survey alerted me to messages from my duplicates, ones specifically tagged to be delivered after my own combat concluded.

'Oni Lee spotted.'

'Oni Lee engaged.'

I flicked through the records from their combined sensor feeds, seeing the pair of motoroids dive into combat with the teleporting assassin. Targeting systems blazed at their limits as shots were taken as quickly as the man could duplicate himself. The force of the earthshaker cannon when applied to a target not excessively shielded, was terrifyingly lethal. Dark Alchemy was being used to a level I had never dreamed, with explosions, energy blasts, and conjured objects flying freely. Omni-tools fired near continuous streams of fire, ice, and electricity. Surfaces and walls throughout the area were streaked with ash as cloned ninjas died in droves.

Oni Lee used the landscape expertly. The fight was in one of the less built-up areas of Downtown, though the buildings were still tall enough to prevent full air superiority. The duplicates had to take the motoroids on low runs to hunt down the assassin and pull back in time to avoid exotic blasts from his grenades.

They had one advantage. Oni Lee was defending the launch site, the upper floor of a small building hidden between office blocks. It was an underused industrial holdover scheduled for demolition later in the year. The roof and upper floors had clearly been used to mount the missiles and exhaust trails were still faintly visible around it.

The assassin would try to lure the duplicates away while setting up ambushes, going so far as to threaten collateral damage. I caught up to the current situation just as that tactic was being attempted as my duplicate's warning blared through our link.

'Time Bomb!'

A duplicate had taken a low run to get a firing line on a cluster of Oni Lee clones in a nearby courtyard, only for the tell-tale slowing effect began to take hold as every copy activated a time grenade simultaneously. Taking in the size of the effect and the rate of onset the motoroid full thrust should allow the duplicate to just escape the pocket before time set permanently.

He wasn't going to.

'Less than a minute left. Sending full sensor readings for analysis. Going in heavy.'

The message came as a text string rather than voice to save time. Trailing its drones behind it the motoroid overdrew power from its core and dove towards the surface. The immense strength of the impact, combined with the upgrades to the weapons, was enough to create a massive blast crater in the center of the courtyard that I watched play out in slow motion.

A blast that just so happened to catch every one of the dozen civilians caught in the area of the time bubble and send them flying. Flying out of the effect before it could fully set. Watching the scene from the other motoroid they floated like leaves, gradually speeding up as they approached the edge, then instantly speeding up and painfully tumbling across the ground once they were clear.

They were injured, some badly, but they were alive and free of the time stop. The same couldn't be said for my duplicate, currently freezing in the center of the courtyard, fully encased in armor and raising one tonfa in a strike against an Oni Lee clone while his cannon fired on another. The precision of his elemental control had cleared the civilians from the blast while the clones happened to be trapped in freshly opened fissures, against walls of the crater, or just miraculously missed by the effect.

I watched the effect fully set, cutting off the streams of data from the duplicate, motoroid, and five drones, and more than a dozen Oni Lee clones all caught in the effect. I had more data on the effect than I ever dreamed, possibly enough to duplicate my own copy of the bomb or build a countermeasure. In the final data transfer there was a sense of satisfaction from the duplicate in how his last moments had been spent.

The final duplicate's counter was running down as well. Maybe he didn't want to be outdone, but he committed to his own final rush. His drones linked their mass fields to his motoroid and he launched directly towards the missile site. Clones appeared in midair with active grenades in attempts to stop him, only to be intercepted by drones that gladly sacrificed themselves to open a path.

The duplicate burst through the roof of the building, landing in a depleted armory. Scattered munitions and a few computers littered the room. Quickly, the duplicate's omni-tool linked to the systems and started copying data.

There was a panicked signal that lit up every remaining weapon in the building. The duplicate glanced towards the exit, then focused on transferring data as the world exploded around him.

From my own motoroid's vantage point it appeared as a pillar of blue light reaching up into the sky from deep in Downtown. Consolidated readings from the drone confirmed it. The building was gone, and so was my final duplicate. Just before the duration expired there was a spatial effect that punched through his durability and ended the duplicate's existence. In exchange I had a partial copy of the site's computer records.

"You think you've won?" Leet's voice came from Uber's crippled mock virtuaroid in a tone seething with contempt. "You just lost two robots. The Tripredacus Council's not looking so good, is it?"

I glared at his own shattered machine, then closed the distance to the final construct with a burst of life fiber enhanced speed, freezing with my burning blade raised above the machine's head. Five drones dropped from the sky to form a glowing perimeter around us, crackling ominously with electricity.

"Is that where you want this to go? A proxy war between robots? You think you can win that way?"

"Robots!" his voice was contemptuous. "You have no idea. No idea the kind of technology I've been holding back. What you've done in nothing! When this gets going you'll wish it was just robots. We've Suffered Losses, but We've Not Lost the War. I WILL WIN BY ANY MEANS! AT ANY COST!"

The last two sentences were spoken in an odd tone, like he was quoting something, which I really hoped was the case because the implication was otherwise decidedly unnerving. And just to drive home what a bastard Leet could be he lifted the mech's working hand to reveal a larger and definitely active version of the false bomb Uber had used earlier.

Garment flared my cloak as the device detonated in a wave of plasma. The roiling heat from the ionized air spilled around me, baking the rubble and debris and reducing the mech to slag.

I stood completely unharmed in the aftermath. Garment took a moment to shake out the coat, dislodging a few still glowing bits of material.

So, durability checks out. Unfortunately, nothing else in the area was as sturdy. My drones were gone and the lot was a smoldering ruin. That is, except for a somewhat comical streak of unburnt dirt extending directly behind me. I stood in the smoking wasteland trying to figure out my next move.

There was an ABB stronghold that hadn't been secured. There was a section of Downtown that had seen a titanic detonation. There was a ninja assassin probably rapidly disappearing. And I had Aisha stuck in my warehouse. Was there anything else?

A red beam of light burned into the ground in front of me, sending a plume of dirt and powered concrete into the air. I looked up to see a blond woman in a white costume with red highlights, quickly joined by a similar looking older woman who mirrored her outfit in purple, and finally a younger teen in white and blue trailing behind.

Right, apparently half of New Wave had decided to show up, just late enough to cause problems for me. Wonderful.

I was being stared down by the most coordinated team of fliers in the city. These were experienced heroes who knew how to support each other. What's more I was in an open area with no cover or obstructions. It was pretty much the opposite of the situation Oni Lee had dragged my duplicates into.

Still, I wondered if I could take them. The life fiber energy was easily enough for me to cover the vertical distance to them, and probably faster than they could react. The plasma blade integrated to my sword neatly negated the weakness to force fields I'd been struggling with since my first generation of knives. If I timed it right I might even be able to launch into a grapple and springboard between the members of the team.

I blinked and relaxed my grip on the upgraded sword. Planning a coordinated takedown of one of the city's few remaining hero teams was not a good thing. Even as a mental exercise it wasn't appropriate for this time or place. That wasn't me, or it wasn't entirely me. I had gotten caught up in the rush of the life fibers.

A quick check of my neural implant and Survey's monitoring of my brain confirmed that there was no intrusion into my thoughts. This was good old fashion endorphins piled on top of an entirely new sense running away from me. As it was my first time using and detecting chi in combat the sensation was a bit much to deal with. You couldn't really prepare for sensory overload on a sense you didn't have an hour ago.

I signaled Garment and felt the fibers separate from my skin, along with a sense of disappointment but acceptance from Tetra. After the red glow had receded I relaxed my focus on my nanites and the blue lines disappeared from my body. The display dropped the level of tension being expressed by the flying capes, though it was mostly replaced by confusion and reluctance. Not the best outlook to be opening a discussion with, but better than hostility.

Actually seeing them without the haze of red, both literal and metaphorical, was a bit shocking. Lady Photon looked terrible. That might have been a bit unkind, but she just projected the impression that something was terribly wrong. She was wearing all the stress of her domestic, team, and professional problems on her face. Tired, unkempt, and generally burned out, it was a wonder she was still in the air. The situation was made even worse by the sharp contrast from how the leader of New Wave usually presented herself.

Her kids were in better shape, but were clearly displaying a level of their own stress in addition to spill over from their mother. Shielder had an uncertain look and kept glancing at his mother as if watching for some signal that had been missed. Laserdream was better put together, but still came across as sleep deprived and anxious.

It was a big difference from the last time I saw her in person.

That was a mildly embarrassing moment from more that two years ago, when I got to a parahuman studies lecture late and took the first open seat I'd seen. I didn't realize it was empty because of the class giving the visiting member of New Wave her space. I completely failed to recognize her, said maybe four words over the course of the lecture, and was mocked thoroughly by my study group afterwards.

I think it was also the closest I'd ever been to a cape before I triggered, and here I was, coming full circle. Only this time she had shot at me. I glanced down at the still smoking burn in front of me. Laserdream's offensive strength was no joke. She didn't open up that often, but I'm guessing she wasn't that far behind Purity in terms of raw power.

Of course, I had just tanked enough plasma to bake a parking lot, so I wasn't exactly cowering for my life.

I felt another connection from the Celestial Forge. Crafting constellation, the power was called Bandit Gunsmith. Rapid salvage power, lets me build working tech from junked equipment. Bit more versatile than directly repairing an item, but the exchange rate was worse. Or it would have been if not for my other powers. Normally five to one for the same type of item and fifteen to one for an upscaling, Workaholic took that to one to one and three to one respectively. It actually kept the power relevant in the face of all my other repair abilities.

"Stand down!" Lady Photon's voice called. Her children had taken a defensive formation around her and energy charges were forming around their hands with multiple small barriers surrounding Shielder. An edge of fear had crept into their expression. Actually, I wasn't sure if she was talking to them, me, or all of us. "We aren't here to fight you!"

It took me a second to realize what was happening. I zoned out over a new power, not enough to compromise my defenses, but enough to be noticeable. Aisha had said people assumed that was a strategy trance or some kind of power switching trump effect. Apparently those rumors reached New Wave and were being taken seriously enough to put them on edge when they saw it in the field.

I slowly extended the sword to my side before collapsing it back into its pistol form and put it away. The additions of Leet's technology made it a bit bulkier, but that wasn't a factor with magnetic holstering. At my signal Garment reduced the flaring of my cape from dramatic billowing (despite a lack of wind) to elegantly sweeping behind me.

I got the sense she resented the compromise.

With that display the tension drained out of the flying capes and the energy around their hands dissipated, though Shielder maintained his barriers. It really drove home what had happened to my reputation if looking briefly contemplative was enough to send heroes into borderline panic. I would have to step carefully if I didn't want to make things worse.

Still, I wasn't going to totally back down. They had started this, and I wasn't sure what they were trying to accomplish. I looked back down at the smoking pothole in front of me, then back up at the assembled capes. Talking from an elevated position was a basic intimidation tactic and a fairly juvenal one, but that didn't mean it was ineffective.

"Are you sure about that?" I focused on Laserdream as I spoke and she wilted slightly. Some quick glances were exchanged between the family members and I began to suspect this wasn't exactly a sterling display of the expert coordination New Wave was famous for.

Oh God, had they just rushed in here when the bomb went off and decided to make things up as they went along? That was a troubling thought.

"You're taking action against the ABB?" By some silent agreement it seemed Lady Photon would be the spokesman for this encounter. Shielder seemed more comfortable with that arrangement than Laserdream, but Lady Photon did give the impression that she was being held together by frustration and caffeine. I'm not sure I would be comfortable with someone in that state leading the discourse with a new villain/mercenary.

"I thought I had made that intention clear during my talk with your niece. I understand our discussion was very thoroughly transcribed and circulated."

And I immediately felt bad. I was still frustrated at the mess that had cascaded from that incident and the idiocy of so many people involved, but Lady Photon wasn't one of them. The way her face fell when I mentioned it made me feel like scum.

I tried to push forward in a way that wouldn't be a total retreat from the discussion. "It seems the only warning I actually intended to convey was the one thoroughly overlooked."

"You didn't exactly make it easy." Laserdream, Crystal Pelham, floated forward, giving her mother time to recover. "You know how much trouble you caused."

And for a second I could have been back in that Parahumans Studies lecture. It was eerie. I pushed aside old memories and pressed on.

"This city has trouble to spare. There's no cause to seek out more."

Shit, did that come off as a threat or a peace offering? Actually, when dealing with Capes was there even a difference?

"Why did you move against the ABB?" Lady Photon had recovered enough to reengage me, but her voice was far from the steady tone that characterized New Wave press events. She, well, she sounded broken. It made me feel even worse. "Did the Undersiders send you here?"

Right, because mercenaries didn't take their own initiative. Wait, I actually didn't take my own initiative on this. Well, lie by staying close to the truth. "No, this is a separate contract."

As the remnant of New Wave absorbed that statement I was greeted by the unwelcome interruption of one of my latest powers. This time confirming that my life was completely out of my direct control, as evidenced by Comm Chatter activating while I was in the middle of a negotiation.

"We can't entertain those restrictions at this point. Half of New Wave has Apeiron engaged. We need all forces to move in now." The voice was vaguely familiar, recognizable from press conferences and the occasional news interview.

Of course, my current situation didn't put itself on hold just because my implant was picking up a radio transition I was fairly sure was excessively encoded, out of range, and possibly actually carried by a landline.

"What were you after? Are you just striking out randomly" There was heartfelt concern in Lady Photon's voice and I wished I could have focused on it in place of having the radio response talk over her.

"Director, this is exactly the situation those restrictions were intended to avoid. You are asking for Youth Guard consent to send Wards into an area that you admitted was just exposed to an 'unknown plasma explosion'. You can't expect me to consent to this."

I did what I could to offload some of the mental load to Survey as I focused on replying to Lady Photon.

"There is nothing random about this. I will not divulge details of my client's contract, but I can say the ABB was using the office block at 57 Grove street to manage their business interests."

The director replied as I was speaking.

"Precautions are being taken, but Clockblocker and Vista are essential to containment strategies. Protectorate forces are on the way and I can guarantee their safety."

Protectorate on their way. Possibly for one of those 'polite' conversations where you were surrounded by all the parahuman muscle and support teams that could be mobilized. I didn't have time for that. This needed to be wrapped up. I pushed forward in my response. "It is a building full of civilians with implanted bombs, records of ABB activity and at least recently held several corporate officers of the gang."

The Youth Guard representative, an older sounding woman, replied to the PRT director. "Director, the answer is no, not unless you want an immediate critical audit of your Wards program. You don't have the state of emergency declaration that would bypass these restrictions and I'm not going to consent to send more Wards against the architect of your previous disaster."

"Additionally, Oni Lee was recently in the Batchelder Square area of Downtown." Not that there was much of Batchelder Square left usable after those time bombs. "I think you have bigger concerns at this point than me."

"I can guarantee safe distancing from the engagement. Vista's support is essential for this operation."

"Please, explain that to the Protectorate." Lady Photon called down. "This will escalate, and we can't afford to work at cross purposes." She seemed to be struggling to get the words out, fighting through exhaustion and about a dozen emotions. I was seriously impressed that she hadn't just opened up on me for ruining her life and marriage. I suppose she had enough targets for that without blaming the messenger.

"What exactly do you consider a 'safe distance'? Apeiron's Final Slash was visible in Concord. Until you show me an emergency measures proclamation those children aren't going anywhere near him." Yeah, I wasn't going to hang around while Director Piggot desperately negotiated for permission to deploy a time stopper and space warper against me. Not with Aisha still unsupervised in my Workshop.

Okay, she was supervised by my A.I., but that was only marginally better.

"I'm afraid I have other pressing commitments. Weld has my contact information if the Protectorate feels they can be reasonable about their communication policies. For now, I'm afraid I'll have to depart."

This was showing off, no argument, but Fleet had been working on the mechanics of it through the entire conversation and I hated to waste all that effort. I signaled the start of the maneuver as soon as I finished speaking.

The micro turbines were much quieter than the previous wheel-based ones and as such the capes could be forgiven for not noticing the motoroid until it dove directly in front of them. That wasn't the maneuver that had taken so much calculation. No, that started when Fleet activated the transformation while still in midair.

An unbelievably sleek motorcycle dove directly towards the crater that used to be a parking lot with the speed of a meteor. Rather than crash the dive brought the motorcycle to the lip of the crater, letting its traction enhanced wheels bite the earth. With that technology even loose gravel functioned like a professional racetrack, allowing the bike to transition from diving to roaring across the devastated ground directly towards me like an insane version of a skater on a half-pipe.

This was the tricky part, helped along by my improved reflexes, neural implant coordination, micromanipulators, and a little bit of Garment's natural instinct for the dramatic. As the bike roared past at a speed that broke every traffic law in the country I grabbed the handlebar and swung into the seat.

It was the kind of experience that really drove home how significant my reinforcement was. I could feel the strain on muscles, tendons, ligaments, and I swear even in my very bones. At every level the insane amount of durability afforded by my armor plates held me together with Garment's reinforcement of her glove ensuring that my grip didn't falter. That and a bit of stabilization with the cloak had me perfectly settled just in time for Fleet to ramp the bike out of the crater and into the sky.

There was a moment at the peak of my launch when I looked back at the stunned expressions of the New Wave capes, having just enough time for a slight wave before the bike folded around me into the motoroid armor and launched me into the city.

The chatter with Director Piggot had continued, but with the report of my absence from the scene she relented her arguments and there was an exceptionally smug response from the Youth Guard representative, a Mrs. Garrick, before the call terminated. In the meantime I took a low pass over one of the higher buildings in the Docks. It blocked my profile from the street, letting me down another invisibility potion without giving away that particular ability.

There were other capes in the city who could deal with the developing situation. I was the only one who could deal with Aisha Laborn.

The Forge moved again and I was immediately grateful for my decision to depart and redoubled my efforts to return, flying back to my apartment on full afterburners. There was absolutely no time to spare, I needed to get into my workshop as soon as possible.

Because I had just gotten a volcano.

Previously I had concerns about how I was going to deal with Aisha long term, how I was going to prevent her from getting herself killed, how much I could reveal to her, and how to deal with the after effects, and was more than a little frustrated at having this entire situation dumped on me. Now I had a much more pressing concern.

A volcano had just appeared in my workshop. Aisha was in my workshop. Aisha was in my workshop with an active volcano.

The power was actually called Volcanic Forge. It added a 'small' volcano to my workshop, though that was small by volcano standards so it was still a fucking mountain. It had serious applications to metallurgy, speeding up my working of metal and minerals while increasing their quality and inherent strengths. It even let me take my time while forging to create unique combinations of materials, forming an alloy that had all the properties of one material while incorporating a specific quality of the second.

It was incredibly useful, but it was also a lava spewing mountain that had just appeared in the place I decided to stash the most impulsive girl I had even met. I didn't even want to think about the worst case scenarios that were possible in this situation.

Also, on a much less serious note, I now had to redo all of my metallurgy. What was it I said about material science becoming obsolete less quickly? I really needed to stop taunting the Forge.

Given my state of panic it was an accomplishment that I managed to restrain myself to the point where I actually opened the door to my apartment rather than barreling through it in a mess of splinters. I jumped out of the armor as soon as I was inside, dispelling the invisibility and diving for the closet, leaving Fleet to lock the front door.

I practically flew across the apartment with my key extended. It slid into the lock and I wrenched open the door to my entryway. My implant connected with the main copy of Survey and one of the A.I.'s new drones floated in the entrance. I practically screamed the digital request for an update.

The volcano, in the grouping style of the workshop, had been added to the Skyforge. Convenient for both metallurgy and the general aesthetics and landscape. With the updated map I quickly requested Aisha's location.

Survey happily replied that she was drinking tea with one of the drones.

At the scenic overlook table.

At the Skyforge.

A string of profanities flowed through my mind as I called Fleet. The motoroid transformed and I clung to it as the bike launched through the workshop, covering walls, ceilings, and finally the stairs to the Skyforge at breakneck speed. At my signal Fleet braked the motoroid at the top of the stairs and I leapt off, allowing momentum to carry me the final distance onto the platform.

I launched out of the staircase to the sight of the sprawling mountain vistas of the Skyforge, only with one more mountain now present. A towering stratovolcano rose behind the eagle statue of the Skyforge. Black volcanic rock was veined by active lava flows creeping down the sides. One particular flow linked directly with the lava pool of the Skyforge and ran parallel to a path cut into the mountain. I could see openings and caves dotting the surface, some glowing with dull red light. The path snaked all the way to the active caldera at the summit.

A trail of volcanic smoke was rising from the peak, carried away by the cold mountain winds. Occasional bursts sent showers of molten rock into the sky where they shone like fireworks. It was a striking addition, but not a destructive one. I'd been worried about it opening under Aisha's feet or burying her in a pyroclastic flow. Instead it was ordered and managed, even adding a striking element to the view rather than detracting from it.

On that note I turned my attention to the table on the outlook. The tea set was on the table and one of Survey's new drones floated nearby. It was projecting one of the interface holograms I had developed from Space Command Engineer, a partially transparent and color limited version of the image profile the A.I. used. The flat picture had been extrapolated to a three-dimensional model of a person and projected to appear to be sitting in one of the chairs.

A second later Aisha was sitting across from the hologram. The girl was loosely holding her teacup and alternating her gaze between me and the newly arrived volcano. Her expression was a mix of wonder, confusion and fear. I wracked my brain, but couldn't figure a way out of this other than honest disclosure. I guess intellectually I knew I'd have to explain things at some point, I just never foresaw this particular situation.

"Hello Aisha. You probably have some questions?" The girl nodded slowly, then looked back to the active lava mount. I sighed internally and braced myself for the impending conversation. "We should probably have a talk."

I looked at the scene again, the smoking volcano, the semi-transparent A.I. avatar, the unsettled girl at the table. And the completely untouched cup resting in front of her.

I smiled slightly at that.

"Come on, I'll make you some tea."

Addendum Missy

Missy sat in the locker room of the Wards headquarters feeling useless. In the two days since the fight at the Gallery she'd had precisely nothing to do.

Well, nothing of consequence. Daytime Boardwalk patrols didn't count, not when the city was burning every night. It was infuriating. They'd pulled double shifts before just to manage dust-ups between the Merchants and Empire. Now they were entering Brockton's darkest hour and half of the Protectorate forces were being sent home every night with a pat on the head after doing nothing more significant than walking around safe areas while in costume.

It was particularly insulting in that they got to tour the damaged areas after the fact without being able to contribute anything. Just see what everyone else had been struggling against, then get sent home before it gets dark, like all their hero work was no more significant kids playing in the street.

Even today's patrol, if you could even call it that, had been cut back early so that they could 'rest up' before the press conference. The rest of the team had gone home, or scattered to some other commitment, just leaving Missy alone in the headquarters.

Even more alone than usual. Even the casual patrols didn't feel right. Not without Carlos or Dean. She swallowed at the thought. They had been cycled out so quickly they barely had time to say goodbye. Carlos had been ashamed through the whole process, like it was somehow his fault Khepri had attacked him. Dean had been, well he'd been Dean. There for everyone and always optimistic.

And then they were gone.

At least Dean would be back some day. Everything was pointing towards Aegis being a permanent transfer. Apparently he had done well in the Boston Wards. There was a video of him fighting some plant monsters during the blackout and doing exceptionally well. She'd tried to call him to congratulate him, but between the move and all the regional chaos she'd had to leave a message and hope he got it.

Dean was even more unreachable. She didn't even have an excuse for checking in with him, and apparently he was deep in negotiations regarding his new armor. Even after that it would be a while before it was completed and he got back into the field. Power armor didn't get thrown together in a couple of days, no matter what a certain mercenary villain claimed while he was attacking the city's best healer.

She was prevented from diving into that particularly dark train of thought by locker room doors slamming open, announcing the return of Flechette and Shadow Stalker. Both capes had been excused from the evening press conference, since it was as much an award ceremony as an official update on the state of the Protectorate's efforts.

The two of them were in a surprisingly good mood considering the event they just returned from. Missy had been to more than her share of informal press events. At best they were awkwardly coordinated but still somewhat orderly. At worst they were disasters that had to be glossed over with press connections and inflicted months of comportment lessons just because some preteen Ward happened to say 'God damn it' on camera.

Things obviously hadn't gone that way at the gym. Sophia was the happiest Missy had seen her since the Youth Guard representative first showed up. Vista wasn't overly fond of that woman, but Sophia had particularly detested the extra attention her case was getting. Missy seriously hoped the older girl would end up called to task for her numerous protocol breaches and brutality, but it seemed the Youth Guard was only interested in going after the administration, not the Wards themselves.

The woman had even started digging into their civilian lives. She'd heard talk about a potential visit to Winslow. No doubt Sophia was going to have some kind of academic trouble smoothed over while her delinquency was dumped onto Piggot's shoulders, who would make sure the rest of the Wards suffered for it.

Whatever those issues were the tall girl wasn't letting them bother her now, not from the way she bustled to her locker and shifted into her civilian clothes. Flechette took a more sedate pace as she meandered over to her own locker and took off her visor.

"Clocking out." Sophia called, hauling a gym bag over her shoulder. "I'll see you tomorrow, or whenever they decide we can actually be capes again. She brushed by Missy without her usual 'unintentional' sideswipe, but still quipped "Later midget." as she passed.

Missy turned to see Flechette watching the other girl depart. She was running a hand over the material of the new cape she'd received on her night out. It was the kind of costume alteration that flew in the face of every policy Missy had struggled under since she joined the Wards. Couldn't change the color, couldn't alter the skirt, couldn't add any details, couldn't compromise the 'character of the outfit'. But when new girl gets handed a cape they greenlight it immediately.

She wished she could say it was just an attempt to get on Garment's good side and boost the recruitment pitch, but that would be an insult to the design. Flechette already had one of those sleek futuristic costumes, the kind it looked like Missy might have been headed for before she got stuck with the 'cute' identity, the kiddy brand. And just from adding the cape Flechette's costume had shifted from 'daredevil acrobat' to 'hero of legend'.

Missy had sat through enough image classes to recognize what was happening. The item had changed her silhouette, altering appearance and giving her more presence in the field. She even carried herself differently when wearing that cape. Wearing the item meant she stood differently to account for it, which made her take up more space in a more commanding way. She didn't even look like a Ward anymore.

It was like the rebranding they do when you leave for the Protectorate, where they strip off the overly family friendly elements and add something to let everyone know you're an adult hero now. Missy dreamed of that day, despite the five years and eight months separating her from it. Now Flechette had just been handed it out of the blue and everyone was okay with it.

She struggled to swallow her jealousy and at least put on a neutral face for the other girl.

"So, how did it go?"

Flechette smiled again and ran a hand over the cape's material. "Really well. Garment didn't sign up, but I think she's on good terms with the Protectorate. Dauntless and Miss Militia got her to register. From what I got she wants to work as a Rogue, probably open a business."

Missy nodded. It could be like what happened with Parian. She's been in the Wards for over a year when the fashion cape started operation. There had been an initial fuss over Protectorate recruitment, the possibility of her being snatched up by a gang, or even the Elite moving in. Instead the woman had kept her head down and stuck with designer clothes supplemented by the occasional mascot work with her animated stuffed animals, effectively flying under the radar.

It sounded like Garment was on the same track, which was a bit disappointing. She had to admit to taking personal satisfaction from the pictures of red-faced muggers and skinheads trussed up with pink ribbon.

"How was the rest of the event?" Even if things had gone well with Garment dealing with the public was a whole different challenge. Vista doubted a neighborhood gym had much experience with large press events.

"Really good, actually." Flechette admitted. "Like, it wasn't professional or anything, but they knew what they were doing. Someone there had a good sense for things. Like, good lighting, sound, crowd management. I've been to Protectorate events that were less coordinated."

Missy considered things. It must have been a small turnout to be managed like that. Not surprising, with an unknown cape and the city in its current state. Probably meant the upcoming press conference would be even more important.

"Glad it went well." Missy offered as sincerely as she could manage.

"Yeah." Flechette cracked a smile. "You know, someone showed up with merch from my debut for me to sign. Two years old and in another city and they just handed it to me."

Missy's smile became a little more brittle. She knew Flechette probably wasn't showing off. If someone showed up with a years old Vista collector cup she'd want to share the story too. Plus, she was from New York. They probably put their Wards on t-shirts the day they had their costume approved.

"That must have been nice." Missy swore she would never complain about public relations training again if it could get her through this with a straight face. "What was it?"

A nostalgic smile appeared on Flechette's face. "It was the action figure from when they launched my energy drink. Variant color too, I don't think it was even sold outside of that window. The girl had it, mint, still in box and everything."

Missy's teeth bit down on her tongue as she kept the smile frozen on her face and nodded mechanically. She had just, only just gotten her own action figure. It took years. Shaker 9, highest Shaker rating of any Ward on the east coast, and she only got an action figure for the 2010 Christmas season.

The precise sales numbers for the toy and any presence of the figure in post-holiday clearance bins was not important.

New York. She kept repeating that. Resources to burn. They probably all had action figures, and energy drinks, and probably branded cell phone games or whatever. It wasn't worth getting into it.

"Uh, do you know if Weld's been let out of medical yet?" Flechette asked. "I wanted to check in with him before the conference."

The question jarred Missy out of her contemplation on the unfairness of the Protectorate's merchandise practices and somehow into an even darker subject.

"I don't know." She admitted. It was the truth. She'd been staying well clear of that entire subject since she learned about it this morning. As horrible as the idea of Weld being trapped underwater was, the circumstances of his rescue were more concerning.

It didn't help that she felt particularly useless around the subject. Flechette had been the one to explain his situation to her, practically begging Missy to use her powers to save him. It wouldn't work. There was too much life in seawater. Even discounting the larger animals every tiny organism that went unnoticed fought against her powers. Affecting the ocean was like trying to warp space in a crowded stadium.

So someone else had taken the initiative. Someone who just happened to have the recovery technology he'd need for the task, because tinkers did not work that quickly. Someone who used the opportunity to cause unspecified problems between the Brockton and Boston PRT directors. Someone who had done 'something' to Weld. Something that no one was talking about. Something that had her quietly dreading his presence at the upcoming press conference.

"I guess there's still time." Flechette checked the wall clock. "Do you know why they scheduled it so late?"

Missy swallowed and shifted her thoughts back to a more familiar subject. "Probably so it can be picked up on the local news right after. You know, just enough time to have all the sound bites ready, but not enough for anyone else to seriously weigh in."

"Huh." Flechette replied. "Never thought about managing media that closely."

Missy reminded herself it wasn't a dig at the size of Brockton Bay before she responded. "The director is actually really good at that kind of thing. There's a term for it, media tactics or something like that."

"Right." Flechette smiled and turned to close her locker. Damn it, the cape even swished perfectly as she moved. "I'm going to check if he's taking visitors. Good luck at the conference, in case I don't catch you before then."

"Right." Missy responded with not entirely forced good humor. "Thanks."

It was at least one thing she could look forward to.

Later that evening, under the setting sun, Missy found herself on another foot patrol of a 'safe' area, though this time it was actually because they wanted a cape's presence rather than just being assigned busywork.

She took a slow pace around the edge of the barrier as the shadows grew longer, matching her mood. They had been so close. So close to getting back in the field. When they'd been pulled away from the ruined press conference and mounted up for a response. She had been physically inside the PRT van with Clockblocker, Kid Win, and Browbeat when it had all fallen apart. Delays due to Youth Guard negotiation took them past the window of opportunity.

She sighed to herself, but kept her expression professional as she made another circuit. Civilians were being kept further back from the immediate disaster area, but small crowds were forming at the police line, cameras and raised cell phones trying to capture the scene.

She wished she could just shrink the entire mess to the size of a grape and stick a trash can over it, but there was too much concern about power interactions, and whether Manton effects would persist in the current conditions.

So instead she had been posted as a guard to this monument to Protectorate ineptitude, in a Youth Guard approved display of Protectorate forces, tasked with the incredibly important duty of walking in circles. She never thought she'd wish she was back on a Boardwalk patrol.

A fluttering sound drew her eyes upward and her resolve to hold her professional posture for the distant cameras briefly cracked. She quickly schooled her expression and fell into the carefully practiced demeanor she had cultivated for dealing with her least favorite hero who didn't shoot muggers with crossbows.

"Hey." Glory Girl greeting was reluctant and unusually soft-spoken. She seemed apprehensive before deciding to drop the final distance to the ground.

Missy felt the girl's aura settle over her, but in its diminished capacity, the way it felt when she wasn't focusing it one way or another. She wondered if Victoria knew how telling the behavior of that part of her power was, how much insight it gave into her current state of mind.

Not that you needed supernatural powers to tell the girl was a mess. Missy didn't like seeing her like this. The combination of unkempt exhaustion and contained frustration was unfitting for the girl. It didn't match the shining beacon of a flying Barbie doll that Vista had learned to hate.

She could admit, the real thing that bothered her about seeing Glory Girl like this was it made it hard to hold onto that resentment. Maybe she had been enjoying wallowing in the injustice of the situation. Having to deal with its effect on someone for whom she had cultivated a decent case of disdain made it hard to hold to that particular mindset.

"Hey." Missy responded. "Passing by?" She added. It was about all she could manage.

Glory Girl gave a tired nod and the two capes stood there in silence in the fading light of the city. As it grew darker the light from the display behind them became more pronounced. Vicky looked at it contemplatively.

"How does that work? I mean, how are they still glowing? Shouldn't that have stopped?"

Missy shrugged. She wasn't thrilled about speaking with Glory Girl, but this was something of a neutral topic, or as close to one as there were likely to get.

"No idea. I mean, it's a time stop. We shouldn't even be able to see inside it. Somehow light can interact with everything. I don't know why stuff that was glowing when it went up is still emitting light."

She took another look at the frozen scene in the center of the square. A collection of robots fighting clones of Oni Lee stood frozen in time. Somehow the exact positioning at the moment of the time stop seemed to have been aligned for maximum drama. It looked like one of those oil paintings of battle scenes that used to be in the Forsberg Gallery before it was destroyed.

Another tragedy in this entire mess. She loved that place, and now it was just gone. Memories of visiting it with her parents before the divorce, of school trips that actually felt mature and sophisticated rather than juvenile, of all those fundraisers where she had helped support the Protectorate, all gone. She had been surprised by Dennis's reaction when they talked about it at the press conference. It was hard to tell with the full-face mask, but she could see the way he responded when the director talked about its destruction. She had never realized it meant so much to him as well.

The scene before them was like one of those paintings cast with capes and tinker tech and recreated as a life-sized diorama. The transforming robot stood dead center, striking one clone with an arm club while leveling a cannon at a second that was frozen mid-shot, the glowing projectile still shimmering in the growing twilight.

The clone he struck was in the process of collapsing into ash. Other clones were scattered around the scene, either still mid-flight from the impact that shattered the ground or being harassed by those crystal sphere drones. The orange light from the drones, along with the occasional electrical discharge that was frozen in time, was enough to cast a warm radiance across the darkening square.

"Do you think he like, tried to set it up like this?"

Missy frowned at Victoria's question. She didn't like talking about the tinker. She didn't even like thinking about the tinker. It brought bubbles of anger welling inside her. She hated the experience, more for the lack of control over her emotions than for the way her feelings responded to the mention of the villain.

She swallowed her frustration and tried to answer. "I don't know. I mean, it doesn't look random, but how the hell do you set up something like this?"

And she immediately hated herself for asking the question. Hated that specific question, because there were no good answers to it. That was because the overarching theme to any explanation was 'power'. His power, someone else's power, or just a lack of power from anyone who opposed him.

This was a monument to that distance in power levels. It should have been an embarrassment, valuable assets destroyed at no cost to the ABB and cemented as a permanent remainder of his failure. Instead it was a beautiful work of art, a display of daring and heroism that spit in the face of every actual hero trying to hold the city together.

And they wouldn't even let her try to get rid of it.

"Have you heard anything about Amy?" It was hardly a better topic, but Missy needed to get her mind off of this mess.

Glory Girl slumped before responding. "Nothing certain. They're finally bringing in the specialists, I mean if this mess didn't cause another delay. That should at least get a ruling on what happened to her. And…" Vicky's voice caught in a way that made Missy's heart wrench.

"And what?"

The blond girl took a breath before continuing. "There's something going on about that case. My mom's been on the phone pretty much constantly since last night and she won't talk to me about it. Whatever it is it seems bad." She swallowed. "I'm worried about Ames."

"Yeah." Missy offered. "Me too." Victoria was the last person she expected to offer comfort to, but pain had a way of bringing people together.

The city sank slowly into darkness in a way that Missy found disturbingly ominous. She could see the lights of the emergency vehicles clustered around the destroyed building in the distance. It had been removed as cleanly as if someone scooped it out of the ground. Every emergency effort had been focused on containing damage to the surrounding areas.

Glory Girl glanced around at the settling twilight and quirked a half-forced smile at Missy. "It's looking like a long night. I'm going to grab some coffee. Want a cup?"

Missy smiled back. Shortly after they were sitting on a nearby bench holding steaming paper cups from a nearby chain.

"Thanks for the coffee." She took a sip. "And for not assuming I drink cocoa or something."

That got a smile in return. "Please, you've been doing this as long as I have. I know you can put away the caffeine."

That warmed Vista in a way that had nothing to do with the beverage in her hands. She hadn't triggered long after Victoria did. As it stood the only cape in the Wards with more experience than either of them was Dean. She'd been treated like a rookie for three years, while Glory Girl was assumed to be a professional hero from day one. At least the girl recognized the time she had put in.

"Hey," Victoria asked. "You remember, around when we started, how Squealer's tech still looked kind of normal? Like demolition derby stuff rather than junkyards on wheels?"

That did take her back. God, there were established villains in this town who were rookies or hadn't even triggered when she joined the Wards. "Yeah, what about it?"

"Well." She gestured at the scene in the square. "Have you heard the anti- Squealer theory?"

Vista's fingers tightened slightly around the paper cup. "Uh, no. I think I missed that one."

Victoria took a breath. "Idea is, the quality of his technology is based on how good he can make it look. Like, build anything as long as it's pretty."

Vista frowned. "There are a lot of theories floating around." She did not like that idea. Villains and heroes, they should look different. Most of that was part of the system, Protectorate heroes had image consultants and costume departments backing them up. Villains threw together whatever fit their theme, if they even bothered to go that far.

But looking at the scene in the square none of that lined up. The workmanship was beautiful, and she hated herself for having to admit it. She hated that there was a testament to the monstrous tinker sitting in the middle of the city like a memorial.

She hated that the display might fool people, make them let their guard down. Make them accept the tinker. Make them forget about the real heroes who had protected the city, just because they were out of sight.

Victoria cleared her throat. "So." Missy could tell from the tone she wouldn't like this question. "Did you see the broadcast?"

She managed to keep herself from flinching and bought time with a long sip from her coffee. "Yeah." She finally answered.

Theory was Uber and Leet had broadcast without delay to draw attention away from ABB assets. Sadly, it had worked, with free assets and even part of New Wave scrambling. Though they didn't need much effort to point people towards the tinker, not after he interrupted the press conference by shooting down missiles from half a city away.

"Um, what did you think?"

What did she think? She hated it. She hated everything it showed and everything it represented. She hated how she had given three years of her life to the Wards, years of dedication, sacrifice, and pain, pushing to develop her power to the limit of what it could manage and then see one man claim he had come further in three days than she had in three years.

It felt like they were losing. Not being defeated, just being so outclassed that it didn't matter. It was worse than having an enemy. It was like he didn't even consider them worth his attention. Side characters in his little games and ostentatious pageantry.

What did she think? Her thoughts on the matter could be summed up in two words.

Fuck Mammon.

"Do you think you could beat him?" She asked Victoria seriously. "With all that, everything he showed, could you handle it?"

Vicky looked grim and let out a slow sigh before she replied. "Maybe? Maybe if we were all together? With Uncle Neil in action and Amy as a fallback. Maybe, if my Dad was on point and we got the right situation, and everything was coordinated again, then maybe?"

It sounded desperate and hopeful, and Missy suspected she was talking about more than just defeating Mammon. It reminded her too much of when her own parents split up. She'd had the Wards to fall back on. More than once she'd spent the night in the Ward Headquarters while each parent thought she was staying with the other one.

Now she didn't even have that anymore. The Wards weren't the same, and the Youth Guard was clocking all the time they spent on site or in costume. Vicky didn't have that either. More fallout from the attack on Amy, and Vicky didn't have anyone to fall back on.

Or maybe she did. Missy took another sip of coffee. She still hated Victoria, but that was on principle. She could still like her as a person, and be there for her now.

She sighed and set down her coffee cup before turning to the other cape. "We'll get through this. We didn't make it three years as capes in this city to fold to something like this."

The older girl smiled back and nodded at Missy. In the distance the sound of something exploding could be heard. Things were heating up and they could only try to be ready for them.

Jumpchain abilities this chapter:

Juggernaut (Terraria) 200:

Your armor is a lot more effective at doing what it does just by the sheer virtue of it being latched onto and wrapped around your fleshy bits. Not to get too far into the math of it, your armor is about half-again more effective than it would be otherwise.

Advanced Materials Upgrade Kit (Light of Terra 4 - Lords of the Iron Line - Warhammer 40,000) 300:

Plasteel, adamantium, armourplas, synth-leather and other sophisticated materials are used for all sorts of purposes within the Imperium and are typically far more resilient than their archaic equivalents. Archaic styles of armor are seldom effective against advanced weapons, and rarely used in any case, but many of those who hail from primitive cultures favor the styles of wargear they are accustomed to. Wrought from plasteel and armourplas instead of bronze, iron and steel, a suit of chain or plate can be a quite effective defense, often the equal of more modern armors.

Workshop (Samurai Jack) 200:

A small base filled with all the equipment you'll need to work. This lab can be used for your choice of scientific or magical research.

Build That Wall (Bastion) 100:

You know the basics of Caelondian technology. You understand how to harness the semimystical power of Cores and turn it into usable Mantic energy, to power basic machinery, shortrange flying machines, computers, and a variety of other uses. More interestingly, you can use Core power to reinforce existing structures, running a Matic current through it to enhance whatever physical properties it possesses usually durability, though other uses are possible. This is what allowed structures like the Rippling Wall and the Bastion to survive the Calamity as well as they did. You also gain basic skill for mundane construction.

Phonograph (Bastion) Free:

An old fashioned hand cranked phonograph. Very sturdy, gives much higher quality sound than you'd expect. Has a single record with the full OST for the Bastion game, as well as several additional Caelondian and Ura folk songs.

Alkahestry (Fullmetal Alchemist) 300:

You can feel The Dragon's Pulse. You understand how to perform basic Alkahestry, an art from Xing which can perform transmutation from a distance using linked circles, and can heal wounds of many kinds by following the pulse of the body. With practice or tutoring you can make a real skill from it.

Bandit Gunsmith (Borderlands) 100:

You have amazing technical insight and when shown to a pile of broken weapons or energy shields you can use parts from some to reassemble others into decent condition. Don't expect it to be pretty, but you can nail 15 repeater pistols together to make a functional shotgun, or use bits of five shields to make one that works.

Volcanic Forge (God of War) 300:

The Smith God's power is great, but it is not by his will alone that his works are forged. There is also his tools to consider, and with this you have one such tool. Attached to your Warehouse is a small volcano, a fiery beast that will never fade and never falter. Its power is great, reducing the time you need to break down metals and minerals, reworking them into new forms while increasing their quality and inherent strengths. Should you choose, you may also take a significant hit in forging time to experiment with different metals and minerals, melting and combining them to create a different, newer resource with one quality from the second object in question. Rise, craftsman. Rise and begin your work.