"I don't get it," Leet said, kicking his workbench.

"What, man?" Uber asked, pausing his game – a classic, of course, Halo all the way. "The usual, or something else?"

"The usual," Leet replied. "And it sucks that I've even got a usual for something like this… but yeah, it's the usual."

He rubbed his toe. "Because this sucks, man. I don't get it. It's like I get more careful about what I do and more things go wrong."

Uber frowned, then looked at him.

"Are… you sure that's not it?" he asked. "I mean, uh… you said it like it was a ridiculous exaggeration, but I remember the things you used to make and they were way more risk-taking, and they did work more often."

"Yeah, I know," Leet replied. "Then it turned out I couldn't make the same thing twice, remember?"

His voice had a dark edge to it, and Uber held up his hands – one of them still holding the controller.

"I remember, man, I remember," he said. "Just… it's been getting worse, I know that. You know that. But you've been getting more careful and it's not like that's worked."

He sprang upright, rummaging around, then brought out a CD. "Maybe you need to think more like… classic Fallout."

"What, botching all the time?" Leet asked.

Uber winced. "Not quite that," he said. "But kind of like that. You've got a perk with a flaw, so what do you do? Try and balance it out, or min-max?"

"Min-max, obviously," Leet replied, then looked down at his hands.

At the workbench.

"Uh," he added. "Hang on, I need to work something out."

He snatched up a piece of paper and began scribbling. "So, uh… right… no, can't do that, but if I do that… that's a cool idea, haven't done that before… pretty sure that will work…"

"You okay, man?" Uber asked.

Leet didn't respond.

"I'll get pizza," the combat-Thinker decided, then reconsidered. "Actually, I'll give it a few hours…"

Armsmaster parked his bike, and stared.

"What," he said. "Um. What happened here?"

There was a soft thud, and a young woman in a costume walked towards him.

"You're Armsmaster – uh, right?" she asked.

"Yes," Armsmaster replied, noting that her costume didn't match any known cape. "Did you see what happened?"

"It's my first night out," the teen said, instead. "I – yes, I did see what happened. Lung was telling his gang to kill some kids."

Armsmaster blinked, and focused more closely on the crater in the middle of the street.

Yes, that was Lung in the middle of a large crater. Made of small craters.

"I was going to get involved," the teen added. "I couldn't let him – but then – this huge thing made of metal came flying up the street, and Lung's gang all started shooting it. But it just stopped them with, uh, a disc of metal that kind of grew out of nowhere?"

She frowned, thinking to herself. "It was like… it was a shield that was made out of thousands of little bits of metal, maybe coming from the… aircraft, I think it was shaped like an aircraft, or maybe it was some kind of walking robot. And the bullets all bounced off it, one of them nearly hit me."

Armsmaster took notes.

"And then?" he asked.

"Then it just tased everyone at once," the teen told him. "With, bright blue beams? Except for Lung, it kind of dodged one of his fire blasts and then fired about a hundred missiles at him at once, they all flew around in a cloud and then zoomed in to hit him from every direction. Then it flew off. It definitely looked like an aircraft then."

Armsmaster suddenly had an odd thought.

Tapping some controls on his armour's wrist, he connected to the internet, then printed out a small card.

"Did it look like this?" he asked.

"Yes," the teen agreed. "At least, some of the time."

Armsmaster looked at the picture of a YF-21, then at Lung.

Then decided to ignore the implications for now.

"I'll tranquilize him and bring him in before he wakes up," he decided. "From the way you're talking, you're a parahuman? Have you considered the Wards?"

"That was kick ass," Leet said, as the aircraft disintegrated back into fifty thousand little metal parts.

"That was scary, is what it was," Uber replied. "That thing might look like a badass Macross robot but it's not."

"Still," Leet replied, glancing over at where his Part Maker was chugging steadily away and dropping Parts into the bin – mostly little linkage components, but occasionally an electric taser gun or a high impulse microthruster. "The spare Parts worked great as a shield, right?"

Uber nodded. "Yeah," he agreed, taking off the neural link interface. "Smooth as butter. Great replacement for hard light."

"Kick ass," Leet repeated. "This is great so far. I got the recording, nice and crisp, want me to edit it for the channel or should I work on a new design for the combined Parts?"

"Second one," Uber decided immediately. "I'm way better at the editing part and I want to see you make an X-Wing."

"X-Wing?" Leet asked, shocked. "The A-wing is the superior Rebel fighter!"

"Okay, we're firing up Rogue Squadron and I'm making you eat those words," Uber said. "Then we're going to fuck up the Merchants."

"Why?" Leet checked.

Uber shrugged. "Why not?"

"Fair," Leet admitted.

AN:

At least Leet's moving in the right direction. And if he gets the idea that Going Big is the way to go, he might even satisfy his Shard.

Or go out in a blaze of glory involving a giant robot and Leviathan. Could be either.