Tinker Effect
Most people in my situation are there due to vaguely defined ROBs dragging them into a malfunctioning game. In my case, I think its because of a group of interdimensional nutcases out to defeat a golden Superman. Oh well, at least I'm not as helpless as some of them.
And we're back. Nothing to say here, other than enjoy!
Chapter 2
It had been six months since my debut as Arsenal and I was still finding it hard to believe that I was basically a superhero now. I mean, I know that I'd probably have ended up doing something similar if I'd ended up on Bet, but I was on the Citadel running around punching crooks in the face and using them as live dummy's for my less lethal tech (or even my lethal stuff in some cases). Hell, I'd even taken down a gang of degenerate drug dealers operating in the lower sections of the Wards led by an odious little degenerate who went by Skidmark. It was at about that point when I went back and checked the names of some of the idiots I'd taken down and realized I'd somehow managed to take down half the Capes in the E88 and most of the Merchants. None of them were Parahumans of course, but there were a few Biotics. I'd spent a few minutes trying to decide how to feel about that, before I gave up and hacked the CEO of ExoGeni's computer to blow Max Anders shitty actions all over the internet. I'd have felt more guilty about that, except that Anders wife had nothing to do with her husbands gang and took the reigns of the company to turn it back in the direction it was supposed to go.
In addition to dealing with the surprising number of gangs that operated in the seedy underbelly of the Citadel, I also took down three batarian slave rings, an illegal dog-fighting ring that was somehow a thing and an illegal Vorcha strip club. Don't ask. I also spent a lot of time dodging C-sec since Executor Pallin had decided I was a menace to public order and had ordered my arrest. Unfortunately for him, I'd hacked C-secs comms and, even if they did manage to corner me, I just left the officers floating helplessly in a Singularity. I think it helped that most of the street level officers actually liked me for helping to bring in a good number of wanted crooks.
As an added bonus, there was a great deal of goodwill from the public as a result of my more public heroics, although there was a bit of grumbling about the fact I was apparently a Quarian. I did have the side effect of making everyone be a lot more polite to the visiting Quarians after I pitched one annoying moron who tried hassling me when I went out in my civies off a bridge and into a pond.
I also made it a point to keep an eye on the news to try and ensure I could tag along with Shepard once she (colonist and Lion of Elysium) showed up for the start of the story. Some people might be worried about convincing her to take them on, but considering I could probably build a weaponized Mass Relay out of spare parts, I wasn't that worried.
I was in the middle of my latest attempt to create something similar to Dragons Containment Foam (which wasn't going well) when a loud alarm from my Omnitool made me jump. After wiping foam from the resultant explosion off my goggles, I activated my Omnitool and found that the alert had come from one of the bots I'd added to C-secs systems meant to alert me to any shootouts occuring in Chora's Den. Admittedly, they happened about once a week, so I'd stopped rushing down after the third turned out to be a false alarm and got me into a fight with a Krogen, but considering I knew for a fact that I'd also received an alert regarding the Geth invasion of Eden Prime, I was willing to bet that this was what I was waiting for.
I quickly suited up, attaching my Halberd to my back, my guns to my hips and snatching up my helmet and recently built hoverboard (because why not?) on my way out. As I left my workshop, I sent a signal that would cause all my equipment to fold up into easily transportable modes for later retrieval and put on my helmet, the armour plating snapping into place as I jumped onto my board and shot down the street at high speed.
It didn't take me long to reach the alley leading to Chora's Den where I found a sight that would work much better to endear me to the crew, namely, Tali's meeting with Sarens would-be assassins. I bought my board to a stop above them and drew my guns.
"Oi, dipshits!" I shouted down, making all three jump and look up, "Leave the poor girl alone!"
"Oh shit, its Arsenal!" yelped one of the Salarians.
The Turian scoffed.
"You mean that so-called hero whos been running around causing trouble?" he sneered, "I've been wanting to…"
BANG!
SPLAT!
"Sorry, he was getting annoying," I said as the now-headless Turian collapsed, "So, are you two gonna try anything?"
The Salarians glanced at each other, before sprinting away. I rolled my eyes and raised an arm to point at them. There was a loud bang and a large net shot out, sweeping both of them up and shocking them hard enough to knock them unconscious.
"Well, that was anticlimactic," I said as I holsted my guns and lowered my board down to the stunned looking Tali, "Are you OK Miss?"
Before she could answer, a round bounced of my shield making her jump and me sigh. Like all my gear, my Kinetic Barriers had received the full Tinker Treatment and could now tank a tank shell without going down.
"Hold fire, hes a friendly!" shouted a familiar voice.
"Hey Garrus, long time no see," I said, turning to the approaching group.
"Arsenal, I see your as efficient as ever," said my Turian friend with a grin, "And you have yet another new toy."
I grinned and dropped down to sit on my board like a floating bench.
"Yep, although its still got a few bugs I need to sort out," I said.
As if on cue, the ME field keeping me aloft vanished and I dropped straight down.
"Bugs indeed," said Garrus, clearly smothering his laughter.
I glared at the Turian as I got to my feet, rubbing my behind.
"Um, not to interrupt, but who exactly are you?" asked Shepard.
"Oh, sorry," I said, "Names Arsenal, Tinker and resident hero."
"Hero?" asked Ashley.
"Hes been running around the Citadel for the past six months cleaning up street level crime," said Garrus, "Hes rather good at it, both in dealing with criminals and avoiding any C-sec patrols the Executor sends after him."
"What, you mean hes like Batman?" asked Ashley with a raised eyebrow.
"Kinda, but with a lot less brooding," I said distractedly as I tried to get my board working again, "Oh fuck this, I'll fix it later."
I pressed a hidden switch that made the board fold up to the size of a large phone and slipped it into a pouch on my belt.
"Wha...how did you do that?!" spluttered Tali.
"Hmm? Oh, with excessive amounts of ME fields, some technology I only vaguely understand and by bending physics over the table and giving it a good rogering," I said.
"Wait, what?"
"Alright, thats enough!" yelled Shepard, "Sorry to interrupt, but we're kinda on the clock here."
"Your after intel on Saren and his Geth, right?" I asked.
"Alright, how in the hell do you know that?" asked Garrus.
"I've hacked into C-secs systems," I said blandly, "Its not that hard to figure it out considering some of the information on there."
"Anything we can use?" asked Garrus, apparently well used to my brand of bullshit that he didn't ask questions.
"Not really," I said, "I did manage to find Sarens ship movements that indicate he was in the Exodus Cluster at about the same time the attack went down which might be useful as circumstantial evidence."
"Maybe if you didn't obtain it illegally."
"Eh, semantics."
Garrus just rolled his eyes.
"Right, lets get going," said Shepard, "We need to meet Udina about the upcoming trial and he'll need this evidence. Arsenal was it?"
"Yep."
"Right, do you mind coming along to? It might be illegal, but that intel might still be useful."
I shrugged.
"Sure thing," I said, "If it means I get to fuck with the Council and that bastard Saren I'll happily eat my helmet."
"You don't like the Council?" asked Alenko as we started heading back towards the Presidium.
"No, I don't," I grumbled, "Those assholes confiscated my first base and a full two months worth of hard work. On the up side, I'm pretty sure my tech gave at least two Salarians mental breakdowns and I got a message from the STG begging me to stop doing horrible things to the fabric of reality. I also intercepted a message to the Council flatly refusing to have anything to do with my tech ever again."
"I'm more curious about those," said Williams, indicating to the guns on my hips, "How did you even get your hands on such oldschool weapons?"
I grinned and drew one.
"They aren't actually handguns," I said as I removed the side from the gun, revealing a bright, blue glow inside, "They just look like them. Their actually highly advanced firearms that use ME principles to fire bolts of highly compressed plasma."
"Y-you've built viable energy weapons?!" spluttered Tali, "How!?"
I shrugged as I rebuilt my weapon and returned it to its holster.
"I'm a Tinker, its just how I roll," I said, "You'll find that all my techs the same. Ridiculously advanced to the point where no one can replicate or even maintain it in most cases."
"How is that even possible?!"
"Fuck if I know."
The rest of the trip was spent in silence.
The meeting with Udina went about as well as you might expect. I think the fact I got bored and started tinkering with my Omni Tool might have annoyed the good Ambassador a little considering he want an interesting shade of purple that nearly matched my own skin. I think its probably a good thing that I outright refused to go to the Council meeting due to worries of 'accidentally' shooting the Councillor or Udina might have had a stroke. I did tag along to the Council Chambers though, if only to offer my assistance to Shepard once he got made a Spectre. I used the time to try and fix my board.
"Do you mind?" I asked, glancing back at Tali who was craning her neck over my shoulder.
"Oh, sorry," she said, "Um, what are you doing?"
"Trying to figure out a way to improve the power connections to the ME field generators," I said, "Currently, theres a problem where the capacitors keep overloading and triggering the emergency shut off after being in use for a while. Not exactly what you want in the middle of combat."
There was a spark and I closed the board back up.
"That'll do for now. I'll need the rest of my equipment to fully fix the issue though."
Tali looked like she was about to ask something else, but before she could, Shepard and Anderson came over. Shepard had finally taken off her helmet and I ended up having to take a rather large double take. I had been expecting her to look like the default fem-shep, but instead she had wavy, black hair, pale tanned skin and a soft, gray eyes. She was beautiful, there was no doubt about that, but something about her was pinging my instincts and tickling my buried memories. For some reason, I felt like I'd seen her before.
"Are you OK Arsenal?" asked Garrus.
"Huh? Oh, I'm fine," I said as I realized I'd been staring at Shepard for a couple of minutes.
Thankfully, my mask made it impossible to figure out where I was looking. I cleared my throat and stepped forwards as Anderson and Udina hurried towards the lifts.
"Anyway, if you need some extra tech support, I'd be happy to offer it," I said.
"Don't you have work to do here?" asked Kaiden.
I gave him a funny look.
"No, I only acted as a Hero so I could stress test my gear," I said, "C-sec is good at their job, they can do it."
"I'm not going to turn down offered help," said Shepard, "Especially if your as good some of the reports say."
I grinned.
"Oh, I am, believe me," I said, "Plus, I can upgrade the teams gear to give us even more of an advantage."
Shepard nodded.
"Alright, in that case, gather your stuff and meet us at Dock 68," she said, "Williams, you go with him."
"Yes Ma'am," said the Gunnery Chief, although she didn't look particularly happy about it.
"Well, some help shifting my equipment would be handy," I said, "Right, I'll see you back at your ship then. Later Shep."
I hopped onto my board and floated away, ignoring Williams spluttering as she hurried after me.
"So, why exactly do you have a spear?" asked Williams as we headed through the Wards in the direction of my workshop.
"Its a Halberd actually," I said, "And I use it because its handy for close quarters fighting while not being immediately deadly. Most of my targets in the past have been criminals and C-sec tends to get snippy if random people start killing crooks."
"You do know that the people we face will be trying to kill us, right?" asked Williams.
"Of course, even the crooks tried to kill me," I said dismissively, "But I only kept to my non-lethal equipment here to keep the law enforcement happy. I have plenty of deadly weapons at my disposal. Here we are."
I stopped in front of a seemingly abandoned warehouse in the Wards and brought up my Omni Tool.
"Here? But theres...nothing...holy shit!" said Ashley, her eyes going wide as the doors opened and revealed the shiny and well maintained interior.
"I have to keep the curious folk out somehow," I said as I walked inside and put my weapons in their places, before pushing a button that made the whole rack fold up.
"What is all this stuff?" asked Williams, examining the metal boxes that were placed apparently randomly around the room.
"I designed all my equipment with mobility in mind," I said, "As such, it can fold down to an easilly carried size and uses ME fields to make it so it weighs about the same as a briefcase. Of course, theres still a lot of it, so we're gonna need my truck."
"And all that?" asked Williams, pointing at the stack of crates in the corner.
"My supplies and materials," I said, "I'll need that to since some of its kinda expensive and hard to come by."
"Bloody hell, is this all Eezo!?" gasped Williams as she spotted the label on one of the crates.
"Not all of it, but I do need quite a bit for my tech," I said, "I confiscated all the weapons from the gangs I took down and dismantled them to get it. It took me a while to build up that stockpile, so I don't really want to lose it."
I walked over to a control panel on the door and pressed a button, causing it to open and reveal a skytruck with a flatbed.
"Help me load up and we can get it all over to the ship," I said, picking up one of the crates.
Thanks to a combination of the easy to move designs of my equipment and the ME fields making them weigh practically nothing, it didn't take us long to load the truck. Once it was all away, I removed the outer armour of my costume, retracted the metal plates from over my visor and hopped into the cab.
"Why did you do that?" asked Williams as she climbed in next to me.
I shrugged.
"The armours good for keeping me from getting shot, but I don't need it right now," I said, "Besides, the plates make it hard to see."
Williams couldn't really argue with that.
Considering it was about lunch time, there wasn't much in the way of traffic and, other than a short argument with a guard in charge of keeping random mooks out of the loading yard for Alliance ships, it wasn't long before we arrived at the Normandy. I whistled as I got out of the cab.
"Nice, very impressive," I said as my power started feeding me ideas for upgrading the ships...everything.
I shoved the urge to start Tinkering aside and followed Williams over to where a man was barking orders. As we approached, he finished berating a hapless worker and turned to us.
"Ah, Gunnery Chief, we're nearly done restocking the ship," said the man.
"Good work Adams," said Williams, "This is one of our new crew members, Arsenal. Hes got some...equipment that needs to go on the ship."
Adams turned and raised an eyebrow at me.
"A Quarian?" he asked, "Well, we certainly won't say no to your expertees."
"Thanks, I'll help where I can," I said, "My equipment is over there. If you and your men could get it on the ship and put it somewhere with a bit of space I can use, I'll sort it out later. Don't try and open any of it please, I've installed some rather nasty security features and I don't want anyone getting hurt."
Engineer Adams nodded and shouted at a couple of workers stood nearby who jumped to start unloading my truck. Leaving them too it, I followed Williams onto the ship through the cargo where I quickly found a suitable place out of the way that I could set up my lab and directed the workers to put the stuff down where I needed it and Williams headed up in the lift.
I was in the middle of setting up my workbench when Shepards voice came over the PA with a rather Paragon speech about doing our best to take down Saren and other stuff. I was in the middle of a slight Tinker Trance at the time, so I wasn't really paying attention as my Agent provided me with some rather interesting plans for a weapon that would be perfect for Wrex. I pushed the idea aside for now though as my stomach rumbled loudly, reminding me that I hadn't eaten since breakfast.
With that thought, I left my new lab in search of some grub, whistling happily as I headed upstairs and into the mess, I grabbed a tray and some food and headed back towards the lift, passing Alenko as I did.
"Um, you do know thats Levo food, right?" asked the Biotic Lieutenant.
"I do indeed," I said as I entered the lift and hit the button for the cargo hold.
Two minutes later, I was back in my lab, which I had intentionally hidden behind stacks of crates and a few fold up walls. I didn't really intend to keep hiding the fact I wasn't really a Quarian from the crew, but for now, I didn't feel like explaining. I tapped the side of my helmet and, with a series of metallic clicks, it loosened and I lifted it off, putting it to one side as I took a bite from my plate and started grabbing the tools and parts I needed for my latest project.
Before I could get started though, a sudden scream made me jump and spin around to see that Tali had just rounded the corner.
"Oh hey Tali, need something?" I asked, ignoring her obvious shock and horror.
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?" shreaked Tali as she sprinted across the room, already with her Omni Tool active to scan me, "DO YOU WANT TO...di...WHAT THE…"
My translator neglected to translate the last word.
"Yeah, I ain't exactly normal," I said, cleaning out my ear with a finger.
"I...who...what are you?!" spluttered Tali, "Your not a Quarian."
"True," I said, "I may look like one, but my immune system is stronger than a Krogens, my biology is capable of using both Levo and Dextro based proteins and my brain is capable of coming up with technology and innovations that I only vaguely understand at the best of times. And thats when its not simply messing with the fabric of reality in a way that would make Albert Einstein cry and beg for mercy."
"Who?"
"Human physicist from the 20th century," I said.
"But...the medical scanners registering you as Human," said Tali.
I gave a thin smile.
"I am aware," I said, "The problem is, I have no idea how I ended up like this. I know that I used to be a normal Human, but my memories from before about six months ago are extremely fragmented. I remember a few bits and pieces, like the fact I was a University student and a few details about the town where I grew up, but most of it is just blank."
"But then how…"
I shrugged and spread my fingers.
"Who knows?" I said, "Although I suspect it involved a shadow organization and excessive experimentation."
I tapped the Omega tattoo on my cheek.
"This has got an ID number hidden in it and its not a normal tattoo. I have no idea what its made of, but I do know that its far more heavy duty than normal tattoo ink. I doubt it'll ever fade and nothing I can think of has been able to remove it."
"Some kind of tracker chip?" asked Tali.
I shook my head. The Cauldron didn't need anything like that, not with the Clairvoyant and Contessa on their payroll.
"No, its nothing like that," I said, "Its just ink under the skin, just really unusual ink."
There was a moments silence, broken only by the sound of my tools as I kept working.
"Why tell me all that?" asked Tali.
I shrugged.
"Why not?" I said, "I don't intend to keep my origins, or lack thereof, from the crew, mainly because I don't really want to spend 24-7 in my armour and its not like theres any harm in telling you."
Tali winced and I quickly figured out why.
"Sorry, that was…"
"Its fine," muttered Tali, a little sullenly, "Although I do have one question though."
"Shoot."
"Why are you taking apart your hoverboard?"
I blinked and looked down.
"OH FOR FUCKS SAKE!"
Poor Arsenal, this is why Tinkers can't have nice things.
I did say that there'd be more folks from Worm showing up in various guises, but I never said that they'd have a big role. I suspect that Coil will make an appearance as a member of Cerberus...or possible his own organization bent on taking over Novaria or something. There is one regular on the cast with her own alternate though.
Why did I give him a hoverboard? Because why the fuck not? Why did I have him take it apart? Because Tinker. Also, its kinda funny. As for his guns, their basically Blaster pistols from star wars that look like modern handguns.
Normally, I'd make Shepard a Paragon, but this time things will be a little different. Mainly because, although she isn't technically a renegade, shes not the type of person who'd hesitate pulling the trigger. Plus, she HATES Batarians. Her reputation will come out in the not too distant future.
Anyway, time to wrap this up. Don't forget to leave a review on the way out!