A Cloudy Path (Worm/Supreme Commander)

LacksCreativity · May 30, 2014

Index and authors notes.

This is a fanfiction crossover of Worm and Supreme Commander. I claim no ownership of either property, nor any connection to those who do own them. This work is meant for entertainment only. Any similarities to any people, situations, or properties beyond those linked are purely coincidental.

(Iconoclast): 1.1 -- 1.2 -- 1.3 -- 1.4 -- 1.5 -- 1.6 -- Interlude 1-1 -- Interlude 1-2
(Apostate): 2.1 -- 2.2 -- 2.3 -- 2.4 -- 2.5 -- 2.6 -- Interlude 2-1 -- Interlude 2-2
(Heretic): 3.1 -- 3.2 -- 3.3 -- 3.4 -- 3.5 -- 3.6 -- Interlude 3-1 -- Interlude 3-2
(Apprentice): 4.1 -- 4.2 -- 4.3 -- 4.4 -- 4.5 -- 4.6 -- Interlude 4-1 -- Interlude 4-2
(Priest): 5.1 -- 5.2 -- 5.3 -- 5.4 -- 5.5 -- 5.6 -- Interlude 5-1 -- Interlude 5-2
(Templar): 6.1 -- 6.2 -- 6.3 -- 6.4 -- 6.5 -- 6.6 -- Interlude 6-1 -- Interlude 6-2
(Paladin): 7.1 -- 7.2 -- 7.3 -- 7.4 -- 7.5 -- 7.6 -- Interlude 7-1 -- Interlude 7-2
(Cleansing): 8.1 -- 8.2 -- 8.3 -- 8.4 -- 8.5 -- 8.6 -- Interlude 8-1 -- Interlude 8-2
(Design): 9.1 -- 9.2 -- 9.3 -- 9.4 -- 9.5 -- 9.6 -- Interlude 9-1 -- Interlude 9-2
(Testing): 10.1 -- 10.2 -- 10.3 -- 10.4 -- 10.5 -- 10.6 -- Interlude 10-1 -- Interlude 10-2
(Implementation): 11.1 -- 11.2 -- 11.3 -- 11.4 -- 11.5 -- 11.6 -- Interlude 11-1 -- Interlude 11-2
(Deployment): 12.1 -- 12.2 -- 12.3 -- 12.4 -- 12.5 -- 12.6 -- Interlude 12-1 -- Interlude 12-2
(Engagement): 13.1 -- 13.2 -- 13.3 -- 13.4 -- 13.5 -- 13.6 -- Interlude 13-1 -- Interlude 13-2
(Recuperation): 14.1 -- 14.2 -- 14.3 -- 14.4 -- 14.5 -- 14.6 -- Interlude 14-1 -- Interlude 14-2
(Buildup): 15.1 -- 15.2 -- 15.3 -- 15.4 -- 15.5 -- 15.6 -- Interlude 15-1 -- Interlude 15-2
(Strike): 16.1 -- 16.2 -- 16.3 -- 16.4 -- 16.5 -- 16.6 -- Interlude 16-1 -- Interlude 16-2
(Incursion): 17.1 -- 17.2 -- 17.3 -- 17.4 -- 17.5 -- 17.6 -- Interlude 17-1 -- Interlude 17-2
(Onslaught): 18.1 -- 18.2 -- 18.3 -- 18.4 -- 18.5 -- 18.6 -- Interlude 18-1 -- Interlude 18-2
(Corruption): 19.1 -- 19.2 -- 19.3 -- 19.4 -- 19.5 -- 19.6 -- Interlude 19-1 -- Interlude 19-2
(Vagabond): 20.1 -- 20.2 -- 20.3 -- 20.4 -- 20.5 -- 20.6 -- Interlude 20-1 -- Interlude 20-2
(Vagrant): 21.1 -- 21.2 -- 21.3 -- 21.4 -- 21.5 -- 21.6 -- Interlude 21-1 -- Interlude 21-2
(Wanderer): 22.1 -- 22.2 -- 22.3 -- 22.4 -- 22.5 -- 22.6 -- Interlude 22-1 -- Interlude 22-2
(Seeker): 23.1 -- 23.2 -- 23.3 -- 23.4 -- 23.5 -- 23.6 -- Interlude 23-1 -- Interlude 23-2
(Warrior): 24.1 -- 24.2 -- 24.3 -- 24.4 -- 24.5 -- 24.6 -- Interlude 24-1 -- Interlude 24-2

eBook version -- [Google Drive Link] [MEGA Link]

Canon Compliant Omakes: Shrapnel by Ridtom, Enthusiasts by Ridtom, What's Up Doc? by Ridtom, I'll Live by Ridtom, Inevitable by Ridtom, Time Out by Ridtom, Lazy Day by LacksCreativity, Leafs by LacksCreativity

Omakes: Green-Eyed Dragon by zergloli, Tanks for the Warning! by wkz, Time to Get Organized! by Mackon, Time Travel by Eidolon94, Caesar Salad by IchibanSamurai, Tip of the Spear by OmniTracker, Tip of the Spear part two by OmniTracker, General Hebert Reporting by Habeed, Campaign Begin by Habeed, All Four One part one by WhoAmEye, All Four One part two by WhoAmEye, All Four One part three by WhoAmEye, Boardwalk, Negotiations, and Operation Begins by Habeed, The Good, the Bad, the FANfiction by Mantech1, All Four One part four by WhoAmEye, Balance by Empiricist, Your Base is Under Attack by Runek, Any Sufficiently Advanced Technology... by Eidolon94, UEF Riley by Always late to the party, Path to Dakka by Sora Neki, Path to Wendy's by Randy the Black Knight

2017 Writing Contest Omakes: RWBY and Ranma 1/2 snips by Sora Neki, X-Com/D&D crossover snip by Wizig

Fanart: Aeon with deconstructor beam by CrashLegacy, Aeon and Pinnacle in flight by Jamly, Aeon with shield by Jamly, Aeon being healing by Aldon, Taylor and Danny by Jamly, Aeon's Armor by CrashLegacy, 19.6 by utherdoul, Aeon with anti-Endbringer drones by Cyrix, Aeon Charm by somdudewillson

Supreme Commander recommendations by LockedKeye
Supreme Commander Unit Scale by Senteth

TV Tropes page started by Lavanya Six

Taylor's Lab as of May 10th, 2011

Taylor's Lab as of May 18th, 2011

Taylor's Shelter as of June 25th, 2011

Taylor's Shelter as of July 3rd, 2011

Brockton Bay as of June 1st, 2011

Brockton Bay as of June 30th, 2011

Legend
Territories - Blue = PRT. Yellow = New Wave. Green = Aeon. Red = Teeth. White = Purity. Black/White = Kaiser. Black/Blue = Undersiders. Black/Red = Travelers
1 - The Docks
2 - The Bay
3 - Downtown
4 - Taylor's House (destroyed)
5 - Taylor's Shelter
6 - Pelham Residence
7 - PRT Headquarters (current houses Protectorate and Wards)
8 - City Hall
9 - Brockton General Hospital
10 - Refugee Camps
11 - Endbringer Memorial
12 - Leviathan's Tail Research Center
13 - Leviathan's Arm/Leg Research Center
14 - Teeth Headquarters

Aeon's Graviton Rifle courtesy of CrashLegacy

Aeon's Graviton Projector Drone, courtesy of Somedudewillson

Aeon's Anti-Endbringer drone design, courtesy of Somdudewillson

LacksCreativity · May 30, 2014

Index and authors notes.

(Iconoclast): 1.1 -- 1.2 -- 1.3 -- 1.4 -- 1.5 -- 1.6 -- Interlude 1-1 -- Interlude 1-2
(Apostate): 2.1 -- 2.2 -- 2.3 -- 2.4 -- 2.5 -- 2.6 -- Interlude 2-1 -- Interlude 2-2
(Heretic): 3.1 -- 3.2 -- 3.3 -- 3.4 -- 3.5 -- 3.6 -- Interlude 3-1 -- Interlude 3-2
(Apprentice): 4.1 -- 4.2 -- 4.3 -- 4.4 -- 4.5 -- 4.6 -- Interlude 4-1 -- Interlude 4-2
(Name goes here):

Omakes: Green-Eyed Dragon by zergloli, Tanks for the Warning! by wkz.

Thread Two!

LacksCreativity · May 30, 2014

1.1

back -- next

Class ended in five minutes and all I could think was, an hour is too long for lunch.

I glanced up at Mr. Gladly for a moment, walking back and forth at the front of the classroom, waving his arms at the blackboard and talking excitedly. All semester I'd been looking forward to the part of his World Issues class where we'd start discussing capes, but now I couldn't focus on it at all. I lowered my head again, hair falling in front of my face as I pretended to stare at my binder, absently doodling on the page as I flicked my eyes back and forth, moving icons across the inside of my glasses.

This was the first time I'd brought anything I'd built with me to school, and I was incredibly nervous. The clock on my interface read eleven forty, five minutes to lunch. I could feel my heart beating in my chest as I continued to move through the functions I'd added to my glasses over a month ago, getting to a wire-frame view of the school from above. Hundreds of triangular gray icons appeared on it, in ordered rows or moving through the halls. Amidst the clutter of gray, three icons in red stood out, labeled as Emma Barnes, Sophia Hess, and Madison Clements. Four feet away from that last one, my own icon stood out in green.

I hunched my shoulders, refusing to turn around and look when Madison's icon, along with a few others near hers, shifted. The text informed me they had acquired a lock on me. Being stared at by a group of people always made me nervous and the terminology of the interface didn't help my mental state in the least. The clock on my glasses shifted again. Eleven forty three.

I started slightly as Mr. Gladly raised his voice. “Let me wrap up here,” Mr. Gladly said, “Sorry, guys, but there is homework for the weekend. Think about capes and how they’ve impacted the world around you. Make a list if you want, but it’s not mandatory. On Monday we’ll break up into groups of four and see what group has the best list. I’ll buy the winning group treats from the vending machine.”

I ignored the noise that statement started. Students cheering, standing up, or packing their bags for when the class ended. I focused past my interface to the page I'd been doodling on. It was full of smooth circles and graceful curves, intersecting each other at precise points with increasingly tiny details filling in the areas between the larger shapes. I sighed, closing my binder and putting it in my backpack as I shifted my eyes around, making sure nobody saw what I'd drawn. I'd have to get rid of this page too, it was too dangerous to let anyone see it. I couldn't keep doing this in class, but it was getting to be a nervous habit that was very hard to stop.

When the bell rang I saw that Madison and her friends were looking away from me, hopefully chatting with each other rather than planning anything. I took the opportunity to quickly stand up and hustle out of the room while they were distracted, already checking where Emma and Sophia were going. I did my best to head away from both of them, up the stairs in the opposite direction of the cafeteria. I usually ate my lunch in a bathroom to stay away from them. Hide from them really, as much as it made me angry to have to do it. But today I had a different plan.

Reaching into my pocket I felt two small silvery spheres in a simple setting, something I'd planned to wear as an earring. In the end I'd been too afraid of anyone noticing it and trying something, so I'd hooked it into my pocket instead. This wasn't something I could afford anyone else to get their hands on. This was my trump card against the bitches that were making my life miserable. Two tiny balls of quantum circuitry and temporal machinery spinning almost imperceptibly against my fingers, one sending power to the other in order for it to project the most delicate energy field possible. It spread around me for dozens of feet in every direction and returned information about everything in it's range, transferring it as data to my glasses. It had allowed to me to tag and track my primary tormentors. Hopefully it would remember their data for later, after they left my range. I'd designed it to, at any rate.

With this I hoped I would be able to stay out of their sight. Keep moving through lunch anywhere where they weren't. It meant I'd have to eat my lunch basically on the run, taking bites whenever I had a moment alone in the halls and drinking from water fountains if I got a chance. I was also worried about being out in the halls for so long, and about where I might have to go to prevent them from seeing me. There were hallways and stairwells in Winslow that just weren't safe, usually tagged with gang graffiti from one of the two major gangs that recruited here. Getting caught by an aspiring skinhead or something wouldn't be much more fun than the three bitches, I imagined. At least I had a bit of early warning if anywhere I was headed was occupied.

My hands were shaking. God I hope this works, I thought, so many things could go wrong. Someone might notice the energy field, if it was less subtle than I thought. Maybe the interface on my glasses wasn't as invisible from the front as I thought it was, or someone might catch sight of it from behind. The energy source might not be stable enough at this size to function long term. Or it might just breach and rip up my pants, but that wasn't likely. I hoped.

Deep breaths, Taylor, I told myself.

I kept walking, sticking near the walls and glancing between the people in the halls and the display on my glasses. Most people ignored me, but it was really hard to find anywhere empty enough that I'd feel comfortable enough to eat. Maybe tomorrow I'd find an empty classroom, but I hated the idea of being trapped if I didn't notice someone in time. At least I'd avoided Emma and company. From the looks of things they were in the cafeteria together now. I had a bit of a scare when I passed one of Emma's other friends, Katherine I think, chatting with some girls I didn't really know. But she just gave me a nasty smirk as I hurried past. I guess I wasn't worth bothering with when Emma wasn't around to suck up to. Still, she was a potential threat if she told anyone where I was. I tagged her with a lighter red, not bothering to stop long enough to add a name as well.

I started tagging other people as I went along. If I kept doing this it would be nice to have an idea of who might cause me trouble, although it would probably get pretty complicated to stay away from all of them. I tagged potential gang members with light blue, The bitches friend's in a light red. Teachers and staff in yellow. I planned to add anyone that might be a help in a lighter green than mine, but after thinking about it there really wasn't anyone other than Greg who qualified enough to bother with. Depressing, but not really surprising at this point.

In the end, nothing too bad happened except that I didn't get to eat any of my lunch. At twelve forty three I walked into my Computer Science class, still shaky, and sat down. I'd done it. My sensor had worked and I'd managed to keep away from them all lunch, and nothing went wrong. Sagging in relief in my seat I barely paid attention to Mrs. Knotts as she gave out the assignment for the day, rolling my shoulders to work out the soreness of carrying my full backpack for an hour. I started in on the days assignment, working half on instinct as I thought about how I might improve my plans for the rest of the day. Which routes I could take to Art class and which exits I might use at the end of the day.

I managed to finish my assignment in good time and send it off, letting me get to the part of the day I looked forward to most. Cape research. I didn't have the internet at home so computer class was the only time I had access to Parahumans Online without taking a bus to the public library, and it was important to get as much information on local heroes and villains as I could. Plus none of my tormentors were in this class with me, so nobody bothered me here most days. Thinking of that, I glanced around, tagging a few more people in light reds and blues.

I'd been working at increasing my knowledge of the cape scene for months now and I thought I had about all the information I was likely to get on the locals. At least as much as the wikis and message boards had, anyways. I was painfully aware of how much I might not know, despite my best efforts. In any case I was more or less limited to keeping up on current events at this point, trawling through the message boards about recent sightings and the occasional cape fight. Mostly it was just public appearances by the local Protectorate and Ward teams, or who was spotted on patrols.

I hadn't found anything new since yesterday by the time the bell rang. I swallowed, moving my attention back to my map of the school, quickly looking for any red icons that might be able to intercept me on my way to Art class. None of them seemed to be moving with an real purpose other than getting between classes, but I hesitated to leave just yet. If they weren't setting a trap for me in the halls I'd rather arrive as soon before the bell as I could since I shared Art with Sophia and some of her friends from the track team. I really didn't want to spend any time in the same room with them when a teacher wasn't around, if I could help it. Giving them the chance to put glue, paint, or juice on my seat was a small price to pay to avoid getting tripped or pushed into a wall. I'd brought kleenex for that anyways.

I left it as late as I thought I could, hurrying through the halls. I took a bit of a long way around to avoid Emma and Madison, who were walking together, so I walked through the door just after the bell rang. Mr. Fender looked my way and frowned slightly. “Take a seat, Ms. Hebert” he said, curtly. I heard Sophia snort out a quiet laugh. I blushed, looking around the room, but the only seat open was my regular one. I walked over, face down and holding my backpack in front of me with both arms. Just as I expected, they'd poured a bunch of soda over my seat, and left the can too.

I put my backpack down and got my kleenex out of it, wiping down the seat to the sound of Mr. Fender tapping his foot. My blush got worse. I was sure everyone had to be starting at me and... yep, my interface agreed. I felt my stomach clench, but I got the seat sort of clean and sat down, wincing at the dampness. I hid my backpack between my feet and clutched it with my knees. Our mid-term project was due today, and I wasn't going to let anything happen to it if I could at all avoid it.

Mr. Fender sat down and motioned for the class to go about their business. I wished he'd just done that before I arrived, although I'd have probably got a tardy for it. I normally didn't mind Mr. Fender too much, but I almost hated him right now as I waited for people to stop looking at me, and for my blush to die down. He was an old-school teacher, big on discipline and order. Normally that worked in my favor, except for his habit of getting into class just before the bell which of course gave Sophia time to set up any sort of prank she wanted, although she usually kept in down in Art. But at least he would call out Sophia if she made a fuss during class.

The class itself was boring but nerve wracking. Sophia spent the whole time just staring at me, her icon on my glasses never wavering once. Most people spent the time putting finishing touches on their project or getting help from Mr. Fender. I'd finished mine days ago since I was positive that Sophia wouldn't let me finish it in class. I was also sure that if I left it alone for even a moment she'd manage to do something to it. She had often enough in the past. My clock read three thirty seven by the time Mr Fender finished with the last student and cleared his throat. “As you all know, your mid-term assignments are due by the end of class today. I'll be accepting them any time starting now, and anyone that hands it in early has my permission to head home early.”

I was sweating, Sophia's constant stare having sent me to the edge of panic, but this was what I'd been waiting for. I grabbed my bag, with my project right on top, stood up sharply and rushed to the front of the class. A few people looked my way and Mr. Fender looked a bit surprised as I came to a stop in front of his desk not two seconds after he closed his mouth. I pulled a cardboard box out and opened it as quickly as possible, taking out a model of my house and yard, placing it on his desk with all the speed and care I could. My heart was beating like crazy, this was the first really big project I'd managed to hand in without something going wrong in months.

I tried to talk, but my throat was too tight. I cleared my throat and tried again. “C-can I go now, Mr Fender?” I managed to get out, as I zipped up by backpack and slung it over my shoulder. Hardly eloquent, but the best I could do. Sophia's icon blinked and moved towards me. Mr Fender must have seen something in my face or heard it in my voice because he just looked at me for a moment and nodded his head. I didn't waste any time in getting out into the hall, walking as fast as I could towards the nearest exit. I saw Sophia move towards Mr. Fender's desk for a moment, like I had, before she started towards the hall.

I just ran, head down and not even looking where I was going, tracking myself and Sophia by the map on my glasses, I sprinted towards the nearest corner. She obviously knew what I was trying to do and was planning something. But I had an advantage this time. I knew what she was doing too, and I always knew where she was. I took the first stairwell up I could, moving away from the obvious paths to the exits I might use and up to the second story. I continued my sprint down the halls and around another corner, but Sophia took the same path up I did, clearly either hearing me or guessing what I was doing. She stopped at the top of the stairs for a moment before heading off at a slower pace in the direction I'd gone. I gulped and doubled back, running as hard as I could down a different hall, praying that what I planned worked.

It did. I managed to get around behind her and head down the stairs I'd just come up the moment she rounded a corner and got out of sight. She clearly didn't think I could have got behind her since she stayed on the second floor, searching the halls with what was honestly somewhat frightening efficiency and persistence. It was obvious with the clinical view my interface provided, seeing it essentially from above. I don't think there was any chance I'd have got away if I hadn't been able to keep track of her, no chance at all. I ran hard through the halls - slowing to a walk only once when a teacher was about to come into sight - and out one of the side doors, out of view of any windows Sophia might look out. I was already panting, and my sides ached, but I kept running until the school was out of my sensor's range behind me.

I didn't stop moving until I was well out of sight of the school, passing the waiting buses or any of the nearby city bus stops. They were just too risky to use. I ended up at a bus stop two blocks away from the school, sitting on the bench wheezing with my head between my knees. I finally started to relax. I didn't feel good, yet. I wouldn't until I was safely at home. But my heartbeat was getting back to normal and my hands weren't shaking anymore. My devices might not be the most flashy or impressive just yet, but they'd passed their first trial by fire and come through without any problems at all. Maybe things are looking up I thought. Maybe I can be a superhero after all.

back -- next

LacksCreativity · May 30, 2014

1.2

back -- next

My thoughts were on Sophia on the bus ride home. I'd got a good look at what she was like when other people weren't around, today. The view my sensor had relayed to me had been downright frightening. Before, when all I'd had was my eyes to see with, she'd always looked cocky but sort of bored. I'd only ever seen her smile, and a vicious smile at that, when she'd just tripped me or shoved me into a wall or something, both of which happened way too regularly.

But today, both in Art class and during the chase afterward, she'd shown a weird level of focus. When she was searching the second floor for me her pattern of movement had been quick, precise, and I think calculated. If I hadn't known where she was well enough to let me get behind her she probably would have caught me. I shivered at the thought. It had happened way too often in the past.

And that stare. Nobody stares at another person for forty minutes like that, without even taking a moment to look around or something. It was kind of eerie. I admit I hadn't actually seen her with my own eyes even once during the day. I'd kept my eyes on the floor when I entered the Art room except for my quick scan to find a seat and then she'd been behind me the rest of the time. So maybe I was just over-thinking this. Projecting the clinical, emotionless icons of my glasses interface onto someone I hadn't even looked at or something. Come to think of it maybe that's why she was so focused on me. She always seemed to enjoy looking at me when I was scared, or after she'd hurt me. I hadn't really given her that satisfaction today.

But I didn't really think I was wrong. She'd always struck me as a bit of a sadist, at least in regards to me, and this new behavior just reinforced that in my mind. Well, a new view of her behavior at least. Maybe she'd always been like that. I shivered again.

I didn't want to dwell on it any longer. With luck I could avoid the worst of what she might try to do to me in the future, although a little part of me was afraid that if she didn't get her daily dose of torment in she'd escalate. Again.

No, I didn't want to think about it.

I turned my mind back to Art class again. That was the first big project I'd managed to hand in since February and Sophia hadn't been able to do a thing to stop me. I'd put a lot of effort into it, too, and I was really proud. I'd used clay that I cut and baked into real little bricks in the oven, real wood, and real bits of metal to make a really, really good model of my house. Sure, it didn't have much real... artistry to it. I'll admit that I chose it to make sure nobody could say I copied them or stole their work. But it was a great piece, I was sure. I'm sure Sophia had been planning to ruin it, somehow or another, she'd tried hard with lots of other stuff I'd tried to hand in all this year. A little voice told me that she'd try to do something else to me for actually handing something important in for once.

I sighed. I really wasn't very good at turning my mind away from this sort of thing, especially when there was so much of it to dwell on.

The bus stopped about a block away from my house, and I walked the rest of the way home. I kept my glass's map function up the whole time, seeing new wire-frame images slide into view ahead of me, and slide away behind. Scattered all around were the little gray triangles that represented people and animals within my range. Vehicles too, but only if they were running. Bigger triangles for bigger ones, smaller triangles for smaller ones. That was about all I could tell though, size and position. I thought it should probably be possible to get some more details, like what direction they were facing or if someone was carrying something. Or if they were injured or damaged or something. But the... programming for it just didn't seem to be there. The only other functions I had were the ability to tag targets and notice a target lock, which was just when someone was focused on me.

When my sensor got in range of my house my glasses showed it in wire-frame along with another icon, a green square the same shade as my own icon, up in my room. It was kind of weird to see my house like this, seeing an outline of every floor and wall, and the spaces in between them. When I zoomed in I saw the basement, and all the pipes running in and out. When I zoomed in further I could even see some of the wiring in the walls, and the electrical main trailing up to the power lines between rows of houses. I realized I really should have tested this at home first, before taking it into school. I wasn't quite sure why that didn't occur to me before now.

I let myself into my house, letting out a big breath and leaning against the inside of the door as my stress level crashed. My legs started to feel a bit shaky. I'd run a whole lot harder today than I usually did, and I knew I'd pay for it soon enough. But I'd brought my first really practical creation into school and not only had it worked just fine, but nobody had even noticed it. I hoped. I thought back to Sophia again, but I didn't think there was any way she could have seen anything. Not really. I kicked off my shoes and headed inside.

I was hungry, but I needed a shower first. I was sticky with dried sweat and I felt gross. I headed right to the shower after dropping off my backpack in my room. I threw my school clothes in the laundry basket and turned on the water. I stood under the stream with my glasses on, not minding if they got wet. The water ran off them almost instantly without leaving anything behind. I took the time to connect to the device I'd left in my room. I'd built it at the same time as the sensor and it's connected power supply, along with a few other things I'd left in my secret lab. I smiled a little at the thought that I had a secret lab, even if it wasn't very impressive just yet. I was still a Tinker, and I had a secret lab.

Well, time for some more testing I thought. I put Sophia firmly out of my mind and twitched my eye, the green icon in my room expanding into a view through the camera I'd attached to the wall of my lab dozens of blocks away. I sighed in relief to see that everything was the way I'd left it, and then sighed again a moment later at just how ugly the machines lined up in my lab were. Ugly but necessary for now. I promised myself I'd do better later, as I scanned over the line of three bulky, angular and almost ramshackle looking devices.

I panned and zoomed the camera in, painfully slowly. Not that I could really expect better from the basic webcam I was using, but it still irked me after the smooth, responsive movement my sensor's map was capable of. I focused in on what was currently the absolute most important device I had made. My nano-forge, I was calling it. It was the basis of everything I did, turning any raw material into the thick, mercury-like liquid my technology relied on. A syrupy silver mass of nanomachines held in a suspension of fluid made up of various useful molecular building blocks. I called it nano-paste.

It was a shame that it only came out in tiny drips, like a clogged coffee machine. Still, I was proud of what I'd accomplished in building it if not really of the machine itself. It was a squat, ugly thing about two feet tall and three across. The upper half was made of rusty metal beams of different sizes that I'd scavenged here and there, connected by a bunch of springs to the bottom half to keep it as still as possible, and a big funnel made of bent aluminum at the top where I put whatever I wanted to make into nano-paste. The funnel lead into the only really beautiful part of the device, a pure white cylinder covered in glowing green traceries and connected to several silver spheres like the ones making up my sensor, but larger. The cylinder created two merged energy fields inside it that the raw materials slowly sunk into, being first disassembled and then reassembled at what I was sure was a molecular scale. The result dripped slowly into a holding container made of polished steel. I'd had to make sure there wasn't even a hint of contamination on the inside of the holding tank, since for all it's amazing potential nano-paste was really easy to ruin. Even being in the holding tank too long was a bad thing. I'd arranged a series of big magnets around the tank, held in place with metal brackets bolted to the lower frame. They were calculated to the best of my abilities to try to force the nano-paste as much as possible away from the walls of the holding tank. I'd really have liked to set up a vacuum inside the tank too but it just wasn't practical. I had to settle for a flexible collar between the disassembler/assembler and the holding tank, to keep dust or rust flakes out.

Next to my nano-forge was my more permanent holding tank. I hadn't given it a fancy name yet. Maybe the nano-containment-unit or something. It was a much more simple machine, although it took nearly fifteen times as much nano-paste to make the functional components. It looked like a simple three foot tall cylinder of aluminum held in rusty brackets with a white and green lid and a silver spigot poking out the side. The interior was laced with solid quantum circuitry though, and dotted with spherical quantum and temporal machinery. Most of my technology seems to rely on those two concepts, although from an outside perspective my specialty probably looked like nanotechnology. My naming conventions probably supported that too.

I turned off the water and got out of the shower, toweling off as I continued panning my camera across my lab. On the other side of the holding tank was the only reason I could run a lab at all. The first and biggest power generator I'd built. It was also pretty simple to look at, if you ignored the glowing silver sphere spinning visibly and erratically in mid-air above the blocky, foot high high base. At that size, around four inches across, the sphere was visibly faceted, with oddly angular channels in it's surface. It was also nearly twenty pounds and by far the biggest expense in nano-paste of anything I'd built, nearly twice what I'd needed for the holding tank. That wasn't even counting the concave disk below the sphere or the other bits and pieces scattered throughout the frame. Even so it was an absolute marvel, sending power to all the other machines in my lab without any sort of visible transfer of energy. To the best of my knowledge it sent the power through quantum tunneling, except through the fabric of space rather than a solid material. In effect, any of my machines in range of the generator were for all intents and purposes in physical contact with it, taking power the same way as if they'd been pressed right up against it. It provided all the light in my lab, too.

I wrapped my towel around myself, heading into my bedroom to change into my at-home clothes. I chose comfy pajama pants and a huge t-shirt for today, along with my slippers. I didn't think I'd be heading out anywhere until tomorrow anyways. I took a moment while looking through my closet to uncover the little device I'd hidden behind a stack of books on electronics, welding, and engineering. It was pretty simple compared to anything else I'd made, just a half inch wide sphere set in a thin net of wires embedded in a metal block, the whole thing hidden in a shoebox. It was nearly a twin to another one I'd wired to the webcam in my lab, just lacking the USB port. All they really were was tiny quantum gateways, connecting at long range to the other stuff in my lab, giving me what I hoped was an untraceable signal so I could look in on my lab from anywhere in the city.

After dressing I wandered downstairs to the kitchen, rummaging around in the fridge as I continued my survey. About ten feet away from my three larger machines sat my work-bench. It was covered with little machines of all shapes and sizes, the business ends of my construction pipeline. I called them nano-lathes, after the way they spread thin layers of nano-paste one after another, like shaving something away in reverse. They were my second generation attempts and unlike my first they were modular. At first I'd needed to make a new nano-lathe every time I wanted to make something and they'd been really hard to repurpose. These ones however could connect together in different patterns and make all sorts of things, although I still had to usually make one or two new ones for every new design. I was also able to separate the programming core, I wouldn't really call it a computer, from the lathe's themselves and just plug it in as needed. That had been a big step forward since each core took a fair amount of nano-paste to make and any savings was more than worthwhile considering how slowly I produced the stuff. Programming them with new patterns was still hard, though. It took days or weeks each time and I'd had no luck yet getting anything I made interfaced with a normal computer, which would have sped things up a lot. The best I could do was my webcam, and that had required some additional components to be added to it.

Sitting in the middle of the clutter of unused nano-lathes were the two assemblies I currently had at work. One was thin, about four feet long. The other was a roughly two foot wide cube. Between the gaps in the casing I could see the nano-lathes working away. Pale energy fields reaching out and moving across the surface of the two floating objects, layering them in shining silver nano-paste that slowly changed color and texture, becoming my two latest creations.

Finishing making myself a sandwich I sat down at the table and drew back my camera's view to look at the whole lab at once as I ate. Although not really very impressive, just three squat machines and a messy workbench, the lab represented three months of work. Three months of research into electronics and engineering, of scavenging whatever useful materials I could from junkyards or wherever I could find them, of testing and failure. Of constant disappointment as I realized just how hard it was to make my ideas reality. But now I was almost ready. Both of my current projects should be finished by the weekend, and then I could finally go out in costume for the first time. There were still a million and one things I could and probably should do but I was decided. I'd go out next week – no. No more delays. This weekend I would be ready.

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LacksCreativity · May 30, 2014

1.3

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I'd been spending a lot of time out of the house over the last months in my desperate attempts to get my production line up and running. I'd been hiding it by telling my Dad that I was going to the library, or the mall, or out on walks. Mostly though I'd claimed I was going to the Boardwalk, the most tourist-y part of Brockton Bay. It was a stretch of beach that ran north-to-south for almost a mile and was filled with little shops, cafes, restaurants, wooden walkways and beaches. It was even true, to an extent, although only because I generally passed through on the way to my lab. My lab was a few blocks north of Lord's Market, past the northern tip of the Boardwalk, in the bad part of town. Normally that wasn't so bad since I did my best to make sure to only come through during the day when most gang members were asleep or at least off the streets. Tonight though I was walking through the streets after dark and it was pretty intimidating.

At least I had my sensor with me though, so I wasn't too worried. Anyways, not many people would bother hassling someone wearing ratty jeans, a worn hoodie, and a dirty backpack. It was easy enough to avoid anyone else out and about without too much trouble and walking down pitch-black streets was simple with how much information I was getting. Anyways this wasn't like some areas of the Docks where the gangs were thickest, so it was easy enough to just stick to places where other people weren't. It was still a pretty nervous fifteen minutes before I got to a rusted open door in the alley between a tenement and the old abandoned warehouse which I'd chosen for my lab. I'd chosen it for a bunch of reasons but the main ones were that it wasn't too far away from the Boardwalk so it wasn't too dangerous to get to, that it was pretty much really abandoned since the roof had fallen in years ago, and that it had a basement level that looked like nobody had been into in years.

I still should have come in earlier I thought this was just too much of a risk. It was an idle thought, there wasn't really any way I would have been able to do what I needed earlier since my nano-lathes hadn't finished their work until an hour before my Dad went to sleep and there wasn't any chance at all that he'd have let me go out that late in the evening without staying up to wait for me.

I ducked into the open door without bothering to look around me. There wasn't anyone in range to see me at this point and I was totally certain nobody was following me. I had to pick my way carefully over the debris from the fallen roof as I made my way to a set of stairs leading down to another rusted metal door, connecting to one of the green icons representing my stuff down in the basement. It was strangely... right to see so many icons of my own color clustered together nearby. Comforting in a way. As I reached the bottom of the stairs the door swung open on it's own nearly without sound. A far cry from the raspy screech it had made a couple months ago. I wished I could claim I'd used my tinkertech to accomplish that, but it was just twenty bucks of WD40 and a ton of sandpaper. The two little disk shaped piece of white material bolted to the other side of the door were mine, though. A prototype for a hover-system I wanted to make and a simple but strong locking mechanism.

I pinged the icon again as I passed through the door and the hover unit started glowing, slowly accelerating the door shut behind me as I walked through the lightless hallways towards the room I'd claimed as my lab. I wasn't sure what this basement might have been when the warehouse was in use. I thought it might have been offices or something, since I didn't think there were any upstairs, but it didn't really fit. I'd more or less stopped thinking about it. I approached another door, this one unfortunately without any automatic systems to help me open it. I put my shoulder into it an heaved it open. I was rewarded with a flood of pale white light radiating away from my power generator and the sight of the rest of my lab.

I felt the same strange mix of pride and shame I got every time I saw what I'd managed to build. I couldn't really explain it. I knew how much effort I'd put in and how far I'd managed to get in so short a time. I knew that I'd done great work. But just looking at the bulky, ungainly, purely ugly machines filled me with a sense that they were wrong. That they shouldn't be like this. I stood staring at my lab for a few minutes feeling the sense of... incompleteness, the sense of almost hollowness I got every time I just stood back and contemplated my work, before shaking it off and moving towards my workbench. I had testing to do, testing I'd really hoped I could get finished yesterday. It was Sunday and the only hope I had of fulfilling my promise to myself to go out in costume this weekend was if both my new devices worked as I hoped they would.

I set down my backpack and started the careful process of disconnecting my nano-lathes from their programming core and from each other, unhooking the variety of door and window latches I'd used to keep them in the right shape. Of course as I started the first thing that happened was that the finished items fell with a clunk onto the nano-lathes on the bottom, no longer held up in the interlocking energy fields that were used to build them. I winced, as I always did when that happened. More than one nano-lathe had been broken that way, although these two items were small enough that I didn't think it was likely.

Once I was done taking everything apart and shoving it all to the side of the bench to make room, I took a moment to look over what I'd made. A long, thin object that was so obviously a gun that nobody could mistake it for anything else and two spheres, two inches wide each, set in a green and white base with a few triangular bits sticking out, and meant to hook onto the back of a belt.

I picked up the gun first, looking it over. It was kind of rifle shaped, three and a half feet long and colored white from the back to about half way towards the front – it didn't have anything that could be called a barrel – where it flared out into a collection of white and green panels, about an inch or two wide and very thin, arranged around a little silver sphere in a sort of cone shape, narrowing towards the front and connected to the body of the weapon by flexible arms that would let them shift and reposition. Which they did as I fiddled with some dials on the left side of the body, near the stock. I'd more or less based the back half of the gun off of military models I'd seen online. So it had a pistol grip, a stock, a trigger, and somewhere to put my other hand so I could steady it. Which was good since all together it was just under five pounds, and I'd found through practicing that I couldn't reliably carry or use something too much heavier than that for any length of time.

I held it, looking towards my so-called testing range. Really just a bunch of junk I'd found and hauled down here to get an idea of how powerful my weapons might be. I didn't have any real measuring equipment though, so anything I did was going to be partly guesswork. Still I thought, casting my mind back to my first weapons test it's certainly better than nothing. This gun was actually my second attempt at making something non-lethal, a concept that my technology didn't seem to have. I had over a dozen options for all sorts of weapons. Particle disruptors, graviton or tachyon projectors, quantum phase cannons, x-ray and gamma-ray lasers, exotic particle accelerators, and a whole host of bombs and missiles that worked on the same principals. The clear, precise blueprints in my head lead me to believe that all of them ranged from lethal to outright devastating. The only weapon designs I had that I though might have been safe to use on humans were a collection of sonic pulse emitters. They were also among the smallest of my designs so I didn't even have to scale them down as much to build. I'd had high hopes for them.

Sadly those hopes were completely dashed the first time I'd done any testing. My prototype was even smaller than my current gun, only about two and half pounds and about two feet long. Just about small enough to use as a big pistol. But the first time I'd fired it it had cracked concrete at it's maximum range, about thirty feet, in an arc almost ten feet across. It had put cracks in steel plate too. The worst part, though, was that it had liquified a watermelon in an instant. It was about as far from non-lethal as you could get, too dangerous to even bring as a side-arm or something. It made a truly hideous noise too. No, it wasn't anything I could use.

So I'd improvised. My current gun wasn't actually really a weapon at all. It was a modified shield emitter, designed to emit it's shield in fast, short pulses in a variable arc at a variable level of power. If it worked as designed. It was easily the furthest departure of anything I'd built from the plans in my head, and I wasn't totally sure it would perform as I hoped.

Only one way to find out. I dialed it down to minimum power and minimum arc and pointed it towards a department store dummy I'd managed to find. Just a torso on a stand. I took a deep, calming breath and pulled the trigger.

The gun jumped in my hands and a pale green beam shot out, hitting the dummy in the chest and causing it to jerk backwards, small cracks forming, and fall over.

I relaxed and let out the breath I hadn't noticed I was holding. It worked. Better yet, it was decidedly non-lethal. I could have done about as much with a punch. I wouldn't want to get hit in the face with it or anything, but that was fine. I could use it.

Over the next ten minutes I tried all the different settings. At maximum power it could hit pretty hard. Probably hard enough to break bones or cause some real damage, though I doubted it would ever be able to actually kill someone with just one hit. At it's maximum arc it could hit everything in a cone almost forty five degrees across, although it's maximum range was pretty heavily reduced. Down to just over twenty feet from almost fifty. Still, a cone twenty feet long and over ten across wasn't bad at all. Its power took a dive when the arc increased too, of course, in about the same proportions. So at minimum power and maximum arc it could still knock pop cans and stuff around, but I doubted it'd hurt very much if I hit someone with it.

Satisfied, I set my gun down. I wasn't sure what to call it. All my designs came with names attached, or at least labels. But “down-scaled modified shield generator” didn't have a good ring to it. Maybe something like “kinetic pulse emitter”. It sounded better, even if it wasn't really accurate. I was terrible at choosing names. I hadn't even come up with a good one for myself yet.

I put the thought aside for the moment, grabbing up my other new device and moving over towards the downed dummy, setting it back upright, putting my belt around it's waist, and hooking the device onto it pointy bits outwards. This one was much simpler to design. Like most of the stuff I'd built so far it was just a scaled down version of something I already knew, or in this case two somethings. A lot like my sensor it contained a power generator to run the other half. Except in this case the other half was a shield generator, a real one. I found its icon on my interface and turned it on, bracing myself for failure. If this didn't work there was no way I'd go out in costume tonight. I wasn't going to wander the streets, even with a sensor and a gun, if I didn't have something to protect me.

Luckily it seemed to work just fine, a field of green energy the same shade and intensity as my gun generated snapping into view around the dummy, coating it in a strange distortion effect. It was actually pretty cool looking, and I thought it would look great with my costume. But first I had to make sure it did what it was supposed to. I hefted a piece of two by four and swung it at the dummy, not too hard. It deflected off, ripples forming on the surface of the shield as the dummy rocked on it's base. Hmm, doesn't seem to totally stop kinetic energy I thought, a bit dismayed not quite what I was hoping. I hit it as hard as I could, and the dummy was thrown to the ground pretty hard, much larger ripples appearing in the shield. It bounced and rolled a bit before coming to a stop against the wall. I walked over, shutting the shield off and looking for any damage to the dummy. Luckily there didn't seem to be any, certainly nothing like a hit like that would cause, nor any scrapes in the soft plastic from the rough trip to the floor. Well, certainly better than nothing.

I set the dummy back up and spent another ten minutes hitting it with whatever I could find and throwing chunks of concrete and metal at it, but nothing I did caused any damage, although it was really easy to fling it around. The last test I could think of was to see if my gun could do anything to it. At maximum power it hit harder than I ever could. I leveled the gun, feeling confident, and pulled the trigger. My heart jumped as the dummies torso flew apart, as if the shield wasn't there at all.

I just stared for a moment, jaw hanging open, before the answer came to me from my power and I smacked my forehead in dismay. The shields were designed to interact with each other, sliding together to form layered barriers so they didn't interfere when they were too close. “Fuck” I said, with feeling. I felt like an idiot. At least that meant that the gun would work even when I was wearing the shield. I used my glasses to shut the shield off and reclaimed it from the wreckage. It didn't seem to be damaged at all, at least. I walked back to my workbench, plopping down my shield and gun, and grabbing my backpack from the floor. I unzipped it, grabbing the contents and placing them on the bench.

This was it, I had my costume and three of the four things I wanted for my hero identity. I had my sensor, my shield, and my gun. I'd wanted a hover-backpack too, but that wouldn't be done for at least a week, and I wasn't going to wait any longer. I stripped off my street clothes and started changing.

I'd spent Friday putting together my costume, based around a big green trench coat I'd bought in March. It looked a little cheesy, I thought, but it did a good job of hiding my thin frame. Also I loved the color. To go with it I'd bought a pair of somewhat baggy white jeans to hide how skinny my legs were. Unfortunately that was more or less where my money had run out, so I had to settle for my own sneakers and an old white t-shirt. To finish the look I had an old plastic Halloween mask. It was pretty featureless except for the eye-holes and it used to be of Alexandria until I painted it silver. It was also about three years old and a little small, but I could deal with it. I'd also replaced the old elastic strings with two much more solid elastics from some old scrunchies so it wasn't likely to fall off and I'd widened the eye holes. I finishing dressing myself, hooked my shield generator to my belt, picked up my gun and turned towards the webcam in the corner and took a look at myself.

I sighed. I looked pretty ridiculous. A skinny teen with gangly arms and legs, no curves at all, wearing a silly mask trying to play superhero. The jeans were too baggy and scrunched up by the belt, which was black and didn't go with the look at all. The shirt was loose. The coat was too big. It hung around my shoulders and covered most of my hands. The mask was tiny and didn't cover my whole forehead or chin. It also pushed my glasses against my face uncomfortably. Even my hair, which was my only really feminine feature and the only part of me I was really proud of hung in black curls around the edge of my mask and clashed with the light colors of the rest of my costume. At least the gun looked great. A sleek, futuristic shape of pale curves and silvery light. It didn't look like it belonged to me.

I wished I had taken the time to make some armor and a mask or a helmet out of one of the stronger armoring materials I could make. I knew I could do it, it would be trivial compared to anything else I'd done. But I couldn't afford the amount of nano-paste it would take, probably at least a few weeks supply. Besides, I knew nothing at all about making armor, I'd have no idea at all how to make it fit.

Well, I'd have to make do with what I had. I triggered the shield on and a pale green glow sprung up around me, hugging my body in a tight grip. I was a bit surprised, although I suppose I didn't really have any idea how it would feel in the first place. It clung to every part of me and my clothes but didn't press them against me, the coat floating as free as it had before. My breathing also wasn't impaired, which was a relief even though I'd made sure to check my designs to see if it would let air through. The best part though, for me, was how it affected how I looked. The soft green light and distortion effect blurred my outline and erased the sillier details of my costume. I couldn't tell that my mask didn't cover my whole face, or that my pants were too baggy. My coat almost glowed with light, the already excellent color enhanced even further. My hair's dark color was mellowed out too. Even if it didn't look precisely great at the very least it didn't clash as much. I couldn't even see the belt.

I felt satisfied. Nobody who saw me would mistake me for a gangly, bullied teen. I looked like a superhero and nobody could deny it.

I strode out of my lab, gun held across my shoulder, feeling more confident than I had in a long time. I checked my map as I got close to the stairs and ordered my door open, stepping through without slowing down and closing it behind me. Nobody was around to see so I walked straight out the door into the alley, only slowing to pick my way over the rubble, and into the street. I walked further into the Docks, scanning continually for anything that looked like it might be criminal activity.

An hour later it was after midnight, and I hadn't found anything of the sort. I knew, intellectually, that crime wasn't really all that common even in the worst parts of town. On most days nothing happened worse than drug deals and most of those didn't take place after dark. I suppose I had felt that as a new superhero I should be able to find something on my first night out. But it was getting late and I should probably think about heading home.

A new collection of icons appeared on my interface and I stopped. One of them was colored blue. On one hand, that meant that the long-term tracking ability of my sensor worked. On the other hand that meant that the tight cluster of twenty or so icons out in the street were almost certainly gang members. Judging by the tags I'd seen recently they were probably ABB unless the E88 was here doing a raid or something. But the way they were standing and milling around didn't give off that impression. I didn't have much to go on but I'd guess they were waiting for something. This wasn't an opportunity I was willing to pass up, but I also didn't want to just walk in and start knocking them around if all they were doing was planning to go out for a midnight snack or something. I needed to get closer.

I looked over my map, rotating it around to try to find the nearest alley or something within hearing distance. There weren't any really good choices, but I could cut across a few streets and hide around the corner of the building the were in front of. There looked like there might be a dumpster or crates or something there I could hide behind. I'd be close though, I'd have to shut off my shield or risk my glow giving me away. I wasn't really comfortable with that, but I didn't have too much choice. There simply wasn't anywhere else close enough that I could hide.

I switched off my shield and started running as quietly through the streets as I could, aided by my soft sneakers. Cutting through a few alleys I only took three minutes to get to the corner of their building. I slowed down and started walking toward my chosen hiding spot, which turned out to be a stack of wooden pallets. I zoomed in my map as much as possible to allow me to sneak past the debris in the pitch-dark and towards the sound of soft voices. I managed it without trouble, zooming my map back out and starting to listen. Unfortunately they all seemed to be talking in languages I didn't know, which at least meant I knew these were definitely ABB members.

Moving slowly around the pallets I peeked my head out to get a look at them. It was pretty dark out without streetlights, all I had to see by was the weak moonlight and a few nearby indoor lights shining through windows. I had to shunt my interface aside in order to see them at all and even then I couldn't make out much. They were definitely ABB though, dressed in greens and reds. A few more were coming out of the building as I watched.

I spotted their boss as they all moved away from the doorway to make room for him. I recognized him immediately from my research, and from the news. He was a bit over six feet tall and heavily muscled, which was easy to see as he went totally shirtless. He wasn't too huge though, like some parahumans you saw, but he was still was bigger and taller than me. He must have weighed twice what I did. All he was wearing was pants and an ornate metal mask, not even shoes. His chest was covered with tattoos of various Eastern-looking dragons, like ornate serpents twining around his body.

He went by 'Lung' and he'd taken on whole teams before and managed to keep himself out of jail. All I knew about his powers was what I'd managed to learn online, and there were no guarantees there. Most sites were pretty vague about what powers specific parahumans had, mostly just what people could collect out of what was caught on camera, mentioned in press conferences, and pure speculation. Lots of speculation. Lung apparently slowly transformed in a fight, although nobody agreed on exactly how it worked. What was known though was that he got stronger, tougher, bigger, healed really fast, and even grew armor and claws. Rumors said that he even got wings if the fight went on long enough. As if that wasn't enough he was a pyrokinetic too, able to create and control fires. That power also got stronger as the fight went on. Apparently he only changed back when the fight ended.

Lung wasn't the only parahuman in the ABB either, he had a scary flunky called Oni Lee who could either teleport or make doubles of himself. He had a pretty distinctive look and I didn't see him in the crowd. I brought my interface back up on my glasses and eased back out of sight as the talking started to die down. There were plenty of other people in range of my sensor but I couldn't tell if any of them might have been him or not. There wasn't anyone watching from the rooftops or hiding in the alleys, except for me, but that didn't really mean much since I had no idea how he might operate.

I turned my attention back to the group out front, tagging Lung's icon on my map in bright blue and inputting his name. I tagged the rest of the ABB there in lighter blue. He had been talking while I was caught up in searching for Oni Lee and I'd missed some of it. He had a strong accent too and I wasn't able to make out what he was saying at first. It helped that his mooks were completely silent though, and I got it quick enough.

Lung was snarling “…the children, just shoot. Doesn’t matter your aim, just shoot. You see one lying on the ground? Shoot the little bitch twice more to be sure. We give them no chances to be clever or lucky, understand?”

There was a murmur of assent.

I cowered in my hiding spot as I heard them flicking lighters and lighting up cigarettes. They started talking, shuffling around. They were clearly getting ready to leave.

I could hardly believe what I'd heard. They were going to kill kids?

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LacksCreativity · May 30, 2014

1.4

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I felt a chill. A part of me really wished I had a disposable cellphone. It was one of the things I wanted to carry on me that my tech couldn't easily replicate. But I just had too many things to buy and not enough money for all of them. I had a pen and notepad, bandages and creams and stuff, most of a first aid kit really, an old pair of binoculars, chalk, a utility knife and a swiss army knife, and more. Some I bought, some I scavenged from home. All of it stuffed into my jean's pockets or the pockets of my coat. But none of that could help me here, and I didn't have a phone. If I did I could call the real heroes and tell them that Lung was going with a score of his flunkies to kill some kids.

At least, that's what I'd heard. I was still in a state of shock, turning the words around in my head to see what ways they might fit. But nothing was coming to mind. It wasn't so much that Lung would do something like that. I just had a hard time thinking that anyone would.

I heard Lung talking again, but he'd momentarily lapsed into some other language and I couldn't understand him. They were still milling around, looking like they were getting ready to leave, but nobody was making a move yet and Lung was just standing there.

I didn't know what I was supposed to do. I doubted I could find anyone in the Docks that would let me use their phone without just breaking into their house. Which I could do, I supposed. I could even just find an empty room easily enough, although there were no guarantees that I'd find one with a working phone in time. If I ran back to the boardwalk I probably wouldn't find anywhere that was open, and I didn't have any change for a payphone. I'd left my wallet in my other pants, just so on the off chance it got lost of stolen I wouldn't get unmasked or anything. Or lose my library card.

Shit, I'd spent so long planning and gathering material and I was being tripped up by something so simple as not being able to make a call. I could have even made another set of communication arrays like I had for my webcam and just plugged them into an old home-phone or something.

My thoughts were still running in useless circles when a car pulled up. Thankfully not on the street next to me, since I was standing in full view of the road like an idiot, just hidden from Lung and his men by the corner of the building and a stack of pallets. Another three guys got out, joining the group around Lung. I was still trying to think of something to do when the whole group – around twenty or twenty five total – started walking down the street away from me.

This was it, I was out of time to think. I could leave and let whatever they were planning happen, maybe find a phone to report it when there wasn't anything anyone could do. Or I could turn on my shield and do my best to stop them, even though I wasn't remotely prepared to fight someone like Lung. In my mind though, I knew there was only one option I could live with afterward, whatever happened. Even if it terrified me to my bones.

I minimized my larger map and brought up my combat protocols. The familiar wire-frame view of my overhead map popped up, but superimposed over nearby terrain, giving me a good idea of what was around even through walls. The blue icons of Lung and the ABB members hovered just above where their heads probably were, moving away from me at a sedate pace. Another wire-frame image, this time in red, extended from the front section of my gun, leaving a thicker red line across any terrain where the shield was projected to intersect. Hopefully it would be enough for me to aim at least somewhat decently, because I'd never shot a gun before in my life.

I flicked the icon for my shield, seeing it's green glow pop up around me, and closed my eyes as I took a deep, calming breath. Well, it was meant to be calming but my heart kept hammering in my chest and I could feel sweat beading under my mask and on my scalp. This was it, it was time to step out and face my first ever villain.

I tried to stand, and couldn't. I tried again, with my hand against the wall, and managed it. I took two shaky steps around the stack of pallets, and three more slightly steadier ones around the corner. I could see Lung and his men with my eyes now. I kept walking towards them as I dialed my gun to about half power and it's widest possible range. I was still about thirty feet behind them, I'd need to close the distance if I wanted to hit them all at once. I also felt that if I stopped walking I wouldn't be able to start again. I sped up.

Apparently Lung heard my footsteps because he stopped and turned around towards me. His men took a moment to do likewise. Their icons all started to blink as my interface declared their lock on me. I wasn't quite in range, but I froze. I ended up staring at Lung's mask. I wasn't even sure what it was about him. I barely noticed what his men were doing. I tried to talk, to say something heroic or just tell him why I was there or what I could do, but I couldn't speak. My throat was locked tight. My hands and legs were shaking. My jaw moved silently behind my crappy mask. I didn't notice at all when the ABB troops started backing away from me, making room for Lung.

Lung just stared at me for a moment. I'd have thought he was looking into my eyes if I didn't know the shield's distortion made that impossible. We both just stood there. Him, calm and relaxed and me shaking with my gun pointing at his men, woefully out of range. Then he just calmly said “shoot him” and gestured towards me with his hand. For a moment I wasn't sure what he even meant and then the loud cracks of gunfire made it clear. I screamed, raising my hands to protect my face. I hadn't even considered that they would have guns. It never even crossed my mind. I'd never even seen a gun before, let alone been shot at.

I might as well not have bothered since the gunfire felt like light rain against my chest and the sleeves of my coat. Not even the loud roar informing me that one of them had something bigger than a pistol even so much as hurt. I couldn't tell it apart from everything else hitting me. My heart felt like a jackhammer but my arms at least had stopped shaking as I lowered my gun towards them again. My legs too I found out as I started towards the men shooting at me. I wanted to charge in at a run, but I wasn't up to that just yet. I started out at a slow walk, building up speed as I moved towards them, and they stopped shooting.

I could tell from the red lines projecting out of my gun that I was almost in range as some of the men started stepping backwards, still aiming pistols and maybe a shotgun or rifle at me. Lung opened his mouth to say something just as I crossed the threshold and him and his men came into range. “Wha” was all he got out before I pulled the trigger. The gun jumped hard enough that I almost dropped it. Dust kicked up in a semicircle in front of him as Lung and half a dozen of his soldiers were bowled off their feet in an arc of green light, almost as if someone thrown a huge ball into their ranks. The sound of their impact with the ground was the only sound for a moment. I noted absently that my gun was a lot quieter than theirs.

Lung was quickest to get back to his feet as I kept walking forward, bringing more of the group into my range. I pulled the trigger again, more prepared for the kick this time, and over ten of the troops went down. Some of those that hadn't started getting back up got sent tumbling down the road. I winced as one of them rolled backwards over their arm with a muted popping sound and a short scream that were both all too loud in the near silence. Lung went down again too, toppling as he sent jets of flame in my direction from both hands, but neither of them hit.

Lung sprung back up as I kept walking steadily forwards, roaring his anger. He was at least a foot taller this time and I could see him swelling further as he braced himself, leaning forward and clenching his fists, his bare feet set wide and his toes scrunched up, looking like he was trying to claw the ground. Some of the enemies had started backpedaling away from me, others stayed on the ground and defended themselves as they could, and more of them had raised their guns and opened fire again but I didn't pay it any mind. I pulled the trigger a third time and most of them went down or rolled across the ground with various thumping sounds and curses. I heard one of the one's out of my range yell “Who is this asshole!?”, the first coherent words out of anyone but Lung. Lung himself stayed upright this time, weathering the force of my shot with size and strength.

I kept walking forwards and triggered two shots in quick succession. Lung, well over seven feet tall now and with flames wreathing his hands, barely rocked back but the rest of the targets were thrown backwards, some even getting hit with the second shot while still falling from the first. That was apparently as much as they could handle. Those few still standing turned to run and the rest quickly followed suit as they scrambled upright. I dismissed them as they lost lock on me and gave them some time to clear the area as I cranked the power up to about three quarters and narrowed the field of effect to it's tightest beam. Ten seconds after my first shot Lung was the only target left in the fight, although a few others stopped down the road, taking cover and watching.

Lung, seeing that I wasn't going to start shooting again right away, took a step forwards and spoke. “I can see your fear, boy. I'm surprised you haven't pissed yourself yet.” Honestly I had been worried about that too. He continued. “If you had just walked away earlier I might have let you off with a beating, to show you how things work in our territory. But now you're going to have to be taught a lesson.”

He paused there, obviously waiting for some kind of response. I couldn't think of a thing to say. I just stood there for a moment, watching his limbs stretch and gain mass, the fire crawling up his arms towards his elbows, and silvery scales starting to poke out of his flesh at his shoulders, more emerging down his chest and arms and towards his neck before laying flat against his skin. I raised my aim slightly and shot him in the center of his chest.

He was bowled off his feet and landed on his back with an oddly metallic crash. He roared again, sending sheets of flame towards me in a wave. They washed over my shield without noticeable effect and he came charging in after them, apparently intent on using them as a screen to hide him while he closed the distance. It didn't work, of course. I could see his icon the entire time and shot him high in the chest before he came closer than ten feet. I kept stepping forwards, shooting him repeatedly as he tried to rise. He was hit in the chest, the hip, the legs. He was knocked backwards again and again, the thumps of his body impacting the ground and the whoosh of his flames the only sounds. I noticed that all the nearby windows weren't lit anymore. My glow and the targets flames were the only light as far as I could see.

He was still getting bigger, his scales growing and locking together as they spread down towards his waist and finished covering his hands, ending in sharp looking claws. He was nearly nine feet tall now and getting even more bulky. His flames were growing through to yellow now from their previous dull orange, which I knew meant they were heating up. He stopped trying to stand, plunging his hands down into the road as I kept methodically advancing, shooting as I went. My shots kept rocking him backwards, but he had his feet under him and withstood the blows easily. He raised his head towards me, eyes glowing behind it's mask. I shot it in the face.

It's head jerked backwards and it grunted, mask flying off. It turned it's head back towards me. It's features were inhuman, stretching forward slightly. My target smiled, wider than should be possible, and spoke. “Too late now oo ittle bissh” The voice was partly distorted from it's transformation.

I had a sinking feeling in my stomach, as I turned the dial to full power, raising the gun again as the target stood straight, towering over me. It rolled it's shoulders and smiled, it's back distorting with a wet sound, followed by a long metallic rattle. I raised my gun again and shot, but full power wasn't much better than three quarters and the target didn't fall, merely grunting and bending forward as the shot hit it in the pit of it's stomach. I wasn't even six feet away from it, it could probably reach out and grab me.

Why did I walk so close? Did I really expect him to go down?

I didn't get a chance to think on it as Lung moved forward violently. He brought his arm to his waist and then swung a vicious backhand blow at me way too fast to dodge, a fireball detonating as he struck me in the shoulder. The light dazzled me for a moment as I flew away from him. I rapidly lost track of where I was as I flew down the street away from Lung, spinning freely with my wire-frame view streaking across my glasses. I heard a loud thump but didn't realize until I felt my gun pressed against my chest that I had hit the road and rolled.

I raised my head and looked frantically around, catching sight of Lung over twenty feet away, stalking arrogantly towards me. I quickly stood, my heartbeat accelerating wildly as I realized what I'd just done. I leveled my gun and took three quick shots as I rapidly backed away. My aim wasn't really up to it, even with my interface helping me, and I only hit him once. Luckily I hit him in the knee, and he stumbled, falling to one knee and bringing his hands down in support. I turned my back on him and ran. I ran straight away, holding my gun under my left shoulder and aiming it behind me, taking shots as best I could. I rapidly switched my interface back to map mode so I could see where Lung was behind me, and hopefully help my aim slightly. It didn't seem to do much good as Lung stood and started moving towards me. I dialed it to a wider arc.

I flinched as a wave of flame roared out from behind me, pushing me forward hard enough to stumble for a moment. I could hear Lung's heavy footfalls accelerating behind me and I saw his icon start to catch up terrifyingly quickly. I needed a plan, there was no way I could outrun him. I'd got in pretty good shape over the last three months of hauling scrap and scavenging all over the city, but Lung was a Brute, and super-strength counted for a lot of things, especially at that size. I ducked into the first alley I saw, weaving around the junk that filled it. He lost lock on me for a moment before I heard a crash as Lung's icon stopped sharply before turning down the alley and speeding up, locking on again. At least I seemed to be more maneuverable than him.

Suddenly I flew forwards, my neck snapping backwards as something heavy shoved against my lower back. I tumbled to the ground along with a dented, half-full trashcan, trailing burning garbage as it rolled to a stop. He'd thrown a trashcan at me hard enough to throw me fifteen feet. I started standing up, shooting wildly, trash flying through the air away from me, but Lung was on me in a moment, his fist hammering me into the ground and detonating in a huge fireball, lighting up the whole alley like the sun.

He stood up slowly, clearly expecting me to be hurt. But my shield had held and I scrambled between his legs in a fast but undignified manner and kicked myself upright, already dashing away from him back the way I'd come. He started turning around, but he wasn't very fast. I guessed his size was hampering him in the narrow alley. He still managed before I was out the other side, sending a brilliant yellow wall of flame my way. I was momentarily picked up off the ground, legs kicking the air, before I fell back onto the street, carried right out of the alley by the blast.

I turned sharply to the left and ran perpendicular to the alley, down the road, to get out of Lung's line of sight for a moment. I needed an idea. My gun was clearly useless now and nothing I had on me was going to be any use either, I knew that right away. Chalk or a utility knife weren't going to do anything for me at all right now. I really wished I had brought my sonic pistol with me. I was sure it would at least hurt him, even if it wouldn't put him down at this size. But I didn't have it, no matter how much I desperately wanted it. I also wish I'd built a sling for my gun, carrying it around was getting awkward and I was sure it was slowing me down. I'd never run while carrying a gun before.

My mind turned back to the alley for a moment. I thought I might stand a chance with my sensor mapping a route for me if I could get into tight enough terrain. The only thing that came to mind were the surrounding buildings, but I could see on my map that most of them had people inside. I wasn't going to lead this kind of fight into someone's home. I quickly zoomed out to my maximum range, a bit over seventy feet. The first thing I noticed was Lung rushing out of the alley behind me. The second was a group of seven gray icons on a nearby rooftop overlooking the road. The third was a gratifying number of nearby empty buildings. It was the first time I was grateful that the Docks were in such bad shape.

I didn't know if I could get to any of them in time, but I had to try. I sprinted hard towards the nearest one, crossing the street and heading towards the door, my gun easily blowing it off it's hinges. I didn't make it through. Lung hit me from behind like a freight-train, sending me crashing through the brick wall like a battering ram. I bounced off a wall and smashed to the floor in a hallway of some kind and Lung sent a stream of fire in after me. It ignited the wooden banister I was lying against, but luckily it didn't burn very fast, and nothing else caught. Although low fires were guttering here and there around me in the rubble of the wall. Worse, I saw to my horror that my shield's light had started to flicker, edging towards yellow from it's normal pale green.

I had no idea how much longer my shield would last like this. Lung had only hit me three times, and a few more with his fire, so I doubted I'd get more than one or two more hits before it gave out if it was already flickering. I got up in a panic, Lung already shouldering his way through the wall he'd knocked me through. I was breathing heavily. Although I was pretty sure I wasn't hurt I knew I was getting tired, even if the adrenaline didn't let me feel it.

I ran down the hall as fast as I could, shooting another door as I went. Again, I didn't make it. Lung threw another wave of flame and I was picked up and hurled into the far wall with a crash, falling to the ground at the end of the hall with the paint around me crackling and peeling. I didn't waste any time, rolling around the corner and getting to my feet. If I could only just get through a few of the nearby rooms I knew there was a door leading out the back that I could use, and maybe lose Lung in another nearby building if I could get a bit of lead.

I ran again, down the hall, around the corner, and through a door I blasted open, through another door, and down another hall. I could see Lung's icon moving slower through the halls. He'd been over ten feet tall when I'd last seen him, moving inside couldn't be easy. I was almost to the back door when I heard a terrifying crash, and another. Lung was smashing through the walls towards me, barely slowing down as he went through each one. I shot off the door in a panic and ran through even before the splinters had finished falling, but it was no use. Lung burst through the wall behind me, crouching low, and slammed an immense fist and a wave of fire into my back, sending my flying.

I flew through the small area between buildings, crashed through a fence and landed hard in the alley beyond it. I gasped in pain, coughing behind my mask.

My shield had failed.

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LacksCreativity · May 30, 2014

1.5

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I lay on the ground for a moment, dazed. I didn't feel too much pain. That might be a bad sign, maybe I'd broken my neck or something when I hit the fence. I could be dying. A moment later the pain rising in my hands and knees told me otherwise. I was further convinced when I was able to roll onto my back and prop myself up on my elbows. My shield must have been up after Lung hit me, and only failed after I flew through the fence.

I was snapped back to reality by the heavy thump of footsteps coming towards me. Right, Lung. Maybe hitting the fence without my shield would have been a mercy. I might be dead, or have broken bones, but I would almost certainly have been knocked out. Instead I had to deal with watching Lung stalk towards me. I'd thought I was as afraid as I could get when I was trying to force myself to walk toward the ABB thugs, but with a ten foot tall Lung covered nearly head-to-toe in silver scales and with bright flames covering his arms all the way to the shoulder closing in on me, I knew I'd been wrong. I whimpered and kicked my feet, pushing myself away as fast as I could.

I had to think fast. I hadn't really thought about it until now but I was confident my shield would recharge and come back on – the term that came to mind was 'rebuild' - eventually. But I didn't know when. I hadn't tested it that far. Yet another note for the future if I managed to survive. Make sure to test anything I make as exhaustively as possible before using it in a life or death situation. The original version should only take fifteen to thirty seconds to rebuild but with my drastically scaled-down version I had no idea. It might be any moment, it might be minutes. Either way I couldn't bet on it. I'd managed to hold onto my gun but it had been useless when Lung was over a foot shorter and still mostly skin rather than scales. I might be able to do something if I could hit his foot in mid-stride or hit him in the eyes or something, but I didn't hold out much hope. Cycling through the stuff in my pockets, if it was even still there, didn't give me any ideas either. If chalk, knives, pens, or binoculars were useless when all I had to think of was thugs, they sure weren't going to help now.

All I could do was keep backing up, I couldn't even hope at this point. The best I could do was to postpone whatever it was Lung decided to do to me. I knew this feeling. I hated it. I hated feeling helpless against someone I couldn't stop but it had followed me all the way here. I couldn't escape it even as a superhero. I started to cry. I kept it as quiet as I could but I guessed Lung still heard me. He stopped a few feet away, looking down at me as I desperately scrambled away. He might have been a bit smaller than he was a moment ago. I guess that meant he thought the fight was over.

He stayed still for a moment starting at me before speaking, slowly and carefully, his voice distorted and rumbling. “I 'ink thish ish your firsht figh'. I would 'ave heard of uh new 'inker like oo 'efore.” I opened my mouth to respond, to say anything I could think of, but he didn't give me the chance. He sent a searing blast of fire to the alley floor a few feet to my side. I gasped and rolled away, pelted by pebbles kicked up in the blast. The heat was scorching. It had been well over a minute now and my shield still wasn't rebuilt. I had to try to keep him talking. Unfortunately I had no idea how.

Luckily I didn't have to do anything, he continued on his own, stepping slowly towards me. I moved backwards again, out into the street. “Wha'ever oor reashon to wan' dish figh', oo chosh poorly.” He stopped for a moment to move his jaw around. He was definitely getting smaller. “I won't kill you, today. But you won't leave unscathed. You will be taught to fear me.” He advanced further, reaching his flame wreathed hands towards me.

Oh god, he was going to burn me. I was on the ground, five feet away from Lung, with nothing that could hurt him and nowhere remotely close enough to run to even if I could stand up without him grabbing me first. This was it. There wasn't anything more I could do. I thought of my Dad, there was no way I'd be able to hide burns from him. I'd probably have to go to the hospital again and I had no idea how to explain it. We didn't have the money for it either. I had no idea what I could possibly tell the police. I might be unmasked after just one night. I'd gone out to try to be a superhero, to help people, and the best way I could see this ending was my Dad in debt and me being watched by the police or PRT.

Without warning Lung stumbled to the side, then face-planted onto the street beside me. I had no idea what had happened but I wasn't about to waste any chance I could get to put off getting burned for as long as possible. In some ways the thought was even scarier than dying. I scrambled to my feet already running. I didn't know what I could possibly do, everything I'd tried had already failed. Plans whirled through my mind and were rapidly discarded. There wasn't anything overhanging the street I could shoot down to fall on Lung, and I wouldn't have the timing either way. I couldn't run through a building and collapse the ceiling behind me, my gun didn't have that much power. I was far too far from my lab to have any chance of getting there in one piece to grab my sonic gun. I couldn't really find a crowd at this time of night and I doubted Lung would stop chasing me just because there were people around anyways. I didn't know where E88 territory was from here or if that would stop Lung either. There weren't any vehicles moving in my range, so I couldn't try to catch a ride. I didn't know enough to hotwire any of the cars along the street and I didn't know how to drive anyways. Throwing myself on Lung's mercy or trying to bribe him with tinkertech weren't likely to work even if I could get the words out before he burned me.

I might be able to hide, I thought. If I could keep a bit of distance I could use my gun for a distraction and jump in a dumpster or something. If I kept quiet he might pass me by. The only way that could ever work was if I took the most winding path I could, forcing Lung to turn as many corners as possible. I hadn't had any real luck with that plan before but I couldn't think of anything else. I checked my map for likely locations. I saw a few possibilities, and picked one. I thought it was a dumpster, I could only hope it was unlocked or open topped, it wasn't easy to tell in wire-frame.

“Fuck! Motherfucker!” I heard Lung yell from behind me, in the mouth of the alley. I heard the scrape of metal against brick or concrete and then his pounding run behind me, his icon moving behind mine. I had about twenty feet of lead on him. I didn't think it would be enough. Shockingly he tripped again, I heard him hit the ground. I couldn't believe my luck. I turned down the first alley I came to, scanning the terrain around me for options. There weren't many good ones but my lead increased to over thirty feet before Lung found his footing again and continued the chase. I took every corner I could, moving the shortest distance possible in the open. But I was tired. Slowing down. I didn't have long to get to my hiding place. I heard Lung roar in frustration behind me, crashing into walls or grabbing corners with his claws to keep his speed. I probably had ten or fifteen seconds before he caught up enough to get sight of me and then any hope of hiding would be lost, if he didn't just roast me at range out of anger.

Luckily I was reaching my destination. I cleared the space between two buildings, too narrow to really call it an alley, and was out onto the street again. I took shots at every door I could see across the road, damaging several and sending two off their hinges. With that done I raised my aim and shot towards every window in sight as I half-stumbled towards the dumpster I had chosen. It was closed and I desperately tried to yank it open, praying it was unlocked. It was, and I scrambled up and tumbled inside, landing amidst garbage bags and other things I couldn't see as the lid fell back down, leaving me in darkness. With luck the open doors and the sound of cracking wood and shattering glass would cover what I had done.

I was exhausted. My heart was pounding. My legs were aching so badly I didn't know if I could stand up again. I desperately wanted to take in huge lungfuls of air, despite where I was, but I forced my breathing to be as quiet as I could. I tracked Lung by his icon and the sound of his scales scraping brick as he made his way out onto the road. This was it, again. There was nothing more I could do. Again. If my plan didn't work I couldn't count on a lucky stumble to save me a third time. My shield still wasn't back, although I'd totally lost track of how long it had been off. Maybe two minutes, maybe ten. I had no idea.

Lung didn't hesitate, he walked straight towards my dumpster. My lungs froze and tears came to my eyes again. I shook in fear. All I could do was watch Lung's blue icon move relentlessly towards me. He lifted the lid of the dumpster slowly, peering inside. I couldn't meet his eyes. “It's over. No more tricks. No more gadgets.” He ground out. I could hear the scowl he must be wearing. I curled up around my gun, hiding my face against it. I almost screamed when I felt his hand grab back back of my coat, but there wasn't any fire. He lifted me with casual ease and threw me onto the road. I rolled a bit and when I stopped I just curled up tighter. I couldn't think any more. I started sobbing. I heard him walk over and stand above me.

Whatever punishment Lung had planned for me didn't happen. He stopped and I thought he might have turned away from me. He had been silent for a moment when I heard it. The roar of an engine approaching fast. There was a roar of flame and I screamed, but nothing hit me. An instant later there was a deafening crash, the sound of metal on metal, and the engine sound passed by and moved down the street incredibly fast.

I couldn't process what had just happened. I uncurled and sat up. I knew there wasn't much hope that I could stand at this point, but I had to see what was happening. I looked down the road in the direction that whatever it was had gone. It wasn't much help.

Did Lung just get hit by a car?

I could make out what I thought had to be Lung's fire in the distance but it was too far. My map wasn't any help either, whatever was happening was far outside it's seventy foot range. Well, I did have my binoculars. I reached a shaking hand into the pocket of my coat and pulled them out. I raised them to my eyes and adjusted the knob to get a clear image, leaving my gun in my lap. It wasn't much help, I still couldn't really see anything. I put them away.

I didn't know what had happened but I was never going to get a better chance to get away. Whether Lung had got hit by a car or something else had happened it didn't matter at the moment, I had to escape. I got my feet under me and tried to stand. It wasn't easy but I forced myself upright on my shaking legs. My knees ached from hitting the ground after going through the fence and I felt the deep burn that meant I had probably strained my muscles at the least. I figured I was more or less done running for the moment, at least until I got my legs loosened up again.

I had just started to hobble down the road away from whatever was happening with Lung when I heard the same engine as before approach from behind me. A moment later it's icon entered my range. Another moment later it pulled up beside me. I blinked in surprise. I had thought it might be a car or a truck from the sound of it, but it wasn't. It was a motorcycle. A huge motorcycle, and one I recognized instantly. I couldn't believe it, I honestly thought I was imagining things. The chances that Armsmaster, the leader of Brockton Bay's branch of the Protectorate and by far the best tinker in the city, would come to save me from Lung wasn't something that had crossed my mind for even a second.

He sat his motorcycle wearing dark blue and silver body armor, with a sharply angled v-shaped visor covering his eyes and nose. His futuristic looking Halberd was held upright but tilted forward, like a knight ready for a charge. I could see dark fluid dripping from the point and the axe-like blade.

He looked me up and down for a moment before holding his free hand out towards me and speaking. “Get on, we don't have much time until Lung gets back. He's grown too much for me to have much chance against him, so I'd suggest we leave quickly before this escalates.” I took a few steps forward, not trusting myself to speak. My uncertain steps must have told him what a bad state I was in because he frowned for a moment before leaning towards me and wrapping his arm around my waist, lifting me by my belt and sitting me in front of him, sort of side-saddle. I squeaked in surprise, and blushed in embarrassment that I had.

He kept his arm around me as he revved the engine of his obviously tinkertech ride. If nothing else, the fact that he peeled away without either hand on the controls would have given it away. He drove with almost reckless speed through the streets of the Docks, quickly leaving the worst areas and heading generally downtown. I didn't pay any attention though. My mind was whirling, I was still in shock from my terrified flight and sudden, incredibly unexpected rescue. But I was safe. I had survived.

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LacksCreativity · May 30, 2014

1.6

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Armsmaster drove in silence for about five minutes before pulling over to the side of the street. We were downtown now, beside a small park. As soon as we stopped I realized that while we were moving I'd kind of curled into his chest, cradling my gun with both arms. I also might have been crying a bit, although I would have strongly denied it if it was brought up. I would have been embarrassed about it, but I was just too exhausted to care. Armsmaster stood up, swinging himself off the bike and helping me to my feet. He kept a hand on my shoulder and lead me over to a park bench, easing me down onto it.

He looked me over for a moment. “Alright, first thing's first. Are you injured? Do you think you need a hospital?” I shook my head, too tired to talk just yet. “Alright, that's good. I know how stressful a new cape's first fight can be, and you had a bad one.” he said. He sounded concerned, caring. Like my Dad did, sometimes. “It's over now, though. Just sit here for a minute, I'll be right back.”

I stayed sitting, holding my gun tight to my chest like I was afraid I might lose it. I thought for a moment about getting up and trying to sneak away. Armsmaster had saved me, and I didn't think he had any negative intentions towards me or I'd have been arrested already. All the news shows, magazine interviews, and press conferences I'd seen him in made him look like a genuine hero, too. Someone who worked tirelessly for the people of the city. But I had no idea what was going to happen now. I could think of too many bad ways this could end. But even if I could sneak away or Armsmaster let me go I was too tired to try.

I didn't want to think about it. I turned my attention back to my map to distract me, and saw the time. Twelve twenty two. I blinked. I wasn't totally sure, but I don't think more than ten minutes had passed since I started the fight. Taking the ride into account that would mean I hadn't even been fighting Lung and the ABB for five minutes. It had seemed a whole lot longer. I'd been less worn out after whole days of scavenging and tinkering, too. It was hard to believe. I'd read that real fights were exhausting but I hadn't expected it to be this bad. I focused on Armsmaster's icon. He'd crossed the road and gone into a building of some sort. There was another icon in there that he seemed to be talking with.

He was in there a few minutes before coming back out and walking towards me. I couldn't think of what he'd been doing. Maybe the person in there was a PRT operative or something, and he was reporting what had happened. I definitely didn't expect him to sit down on the bench of a few feet from me and offer me a paper cup.

“Hot chocolate. You don't really strike me as a coffee person just yet.” He stated, smiling at me. His smile widened a bit as I just started at him for a moment before slowly taking the cup.

“Uh... uh, no. T-tea, usually.” I said, faintly. This was not going in a direction I had expected, not at all. Had he mistaken me for someone? No, that wasn't possible, he'd guessed that this was my first fight.

“I almost live off coffee myself, sometimes.” I noticed he had a cup of his own in his other hand. His Halberd was on his back now, retracted or folded up or something, I wasn't sure. “It's part of the reason I didn't go with a full face mask, actually. It really helps to be able to eat or drink in the middle of a long patrol. Don't worry about yours, though, I won't peek.” He was still smiling at me.

I was struck with the ridiculous thought that I had once owned a pair of Armsmaster underpants. I quickly looked down at my cup. I stayed like that for a moment while Armsmaster started drinking his coffee. I was confused. But I thought hot chocolate does sound pretty good right about now. I put my gun on the bench beside me and considered what to do with my mask. I couldn't really push it up or to the side, I wouldn't be able to see. I settled for pulling it away from my face with one hand while I drank. It made a faint but embarrassing sucking sound as I did. I hadn't noticed before but a combination of sweat, tears, spit, and... a running nose had almost glued it to my face. Kleenex, I needed to bring kleenex next time. I brought it with me to school but I hadn't thought to bring it with me when I went out to fight crime. It was ridiculous. “Ugh...” I said, I couldn't help it. I took a sip of my drink as I glanced at Armsmaster out of the corner of my eye. True to his word, his face was turned part way away from me.

The hot chocolate tasted wonderful.

I kept holding my mask by the chin. I really didn't want to put it back on. Now that I'd noticed it, it was gross. I settled for ducking my head a bit and turning slightly away, and then turning back when I realized it would hide me better. Armsmaster noticed my plight and reached for a component on his armor which spooled out a a piece of kleenex. I put my cup down as he handed it to me, taking it and wiping down my face and the inside of my mask as well as I could before balling it up and putting it beside my gun, picking my cup back up.

We finished our drinks in silence. I could almost feel the life flow back into me as I drank. It wasn't that cold for April, even in the middle of the night, but the hot drink did a lot to get me feeling normal again. When I finally put my cup down and set my mask back in place Armsmaster turned to me and asked “So, what should I call you?”

I almost blurted out my real name before stopping myself. “Uh, I'm not sure. I- I haven't got around to choosing a cap name yet. I was thinking something green, to match my coat and stuff. But it's not as easy as I thought it'd be, you know?”

He shook his head. “It wasn't a problem for me. I got into the game early enough that I didn't have to worry about all the good names being taken.” We sat in silence for another moment before he asked “So, do you mind talking about the fight?” I might have flinched a bit because he held up his hand and went on. “Don't worry, you're not in any trouble. We don't arrest new heroes for fighting villains. I just want to get your take on what happened, and maybe offer you some advice.”

I really didn't want to talk about it much. There were too many subjects I wanted to stay away from. But in the end Armsmaster had saved, if not my life, then at the very least my health and he'd treated me well so far. “Alright. What do you want to know? I'm... I don't have any experience with this sort of thing. I don't know how they go.”

“That's alright, this isn't going to be anything formal. I won't ask you to come to the PRT building with me and fill out paperwork, if you're worrying about that. I'm just asking you to tell me what happened, in your own words, and maybe fill in some details when I ask. Alright?” He sounded more professional now, more focused. I suppose it was time to get to work, then.

“Yeah, I can do that. Sure. Um, I guess I'll just start at the beginning?” He nodded. I took a deep breath and rushed in. “Alright. This was my first night out and I was looking for something to do. I don't know, maybe stop a robbery or... or a drug deal or something. Although I hear they mostly don't actually happen in the Docks too much, or at least not outdoors? That's what I read anyways. So I was just walking around and watching my interface and”

“Interface?” Armsmaster interrupted “do you mind explaining that further? You're not required to if you don't want to, but it would help.”

“Oh? Um, alright, I don't mind. It's just... a thing I built into my glasses.” I said, pointing to my face before I realized I was wearing a full-face mask and feeling silly. “It's the first real thing I built, just kind of like a computer. I control it with my eyes and it lets me interface with my other stuff. I can have the information from my sensor displayed on it. Oh, I have a sensor too, kind of like a little radar. It's not very long ranged but it's pretty good, I think. It's what I was watching on my interface. I couldn't find anything for awhile though. But I eventually saw some gang members outside some building.”

“How did you know they were gang members?” He interrupted again. Shit, I hadn't thought about this. There was no way I'd mention that I tagged them in school.

I lied. “I uh, kind of noticed from the way they were standing together in the street. I didn't know for sure until I snuck around and got a look at them. They were ABB, um, obviously I guess. L..” I swallowed “L-Lung came out just after I got there and he said they were going to go shoot kids. I think. I mean, I'm sure I heard him say it, but I don't know what he meant.” I looked up at Armsmaster, hoping he'd have some idea that would help me make sense of it. I didn't want to believe this was some kind of normal thing. I was sure I would have heard if gangs were gunning down children. I didn't think Brockton Bay was so far gone that it would get swept so far under the rug that it wouldn't even make the news.

He shook his head. “I'm not sure what Lung might have meant by that. I strongly doubt he would have been out to shoot innocent civilians, if that's what you were thinking. It's not his style at all and there's no way we would have left him to run free if he had, even if we had to call in out-of-city heroes to do it.” I swallowed, it was a reminder that Lung had already beaten Armsmaster and most of the Protectorate in the city, before. “No, it's far more likely he was referring to another gang. Most gang members are quite young, and he might have meant it as a statement to make them seem less threatening to his own men. English isn't his first language, either, so it might have lost a bit in translation from his brain to his mouth.”

I hung my head. So I'd probably put my life on the line to save some E88 goons. If Lung hadn't just got his men back together and gone right back out. He might even be doing that right now. “So I just risked my life to probably save criminals. Great.”

Armsmaster put his hand on my shoulder. “Don't think of it that way. You attacked a villain and put yourself in harms way to save lives. It doesn't matter whose lives they were, it was a noble action. Not every new hero would have done as much, especially against Lung. You made the right choice.” The praise felt good.

I continued before things got awkward again. “So! Uh, after that I just kinda stepped out and shot them.” Armsmaster glanced down at my gun but stayed silent. “My gun just projects kinetic force, and I can dial it up and down, and change the width of the beam. I knocked a bunch of them down and got shot a bit, I didn't”

Armsmaster's head whipped towards me when I mentioned they'd shot me. “They shot you? You aren't hurt? It doesn't look like you're wearing armor.” Ah, right. I hadn't mentioned my shield. But the comment about armor reminded me of something that I had tried my hardest to put out of my mind. Without my shield on I looked ridiculous. It was probably even worse than before, since my white shirt and pants were stained, the knees of my jeans were ripped, and I didn't even want to think about what my hair looked like. I probably smelled like garbage, too. I did my best to put it back out of my mind.

“Um, yeah, they did. I'm not hurt. I have a shield generator. I forgot to mention it, sorry. I think it's broken anyways. It shorted out when Lung hit me, but it was supposed to come back on, and it hasn't. Maybe it just malfunctioned. I hope so, I just finished it today.” I said, the last with more than a little bitterness.

“A shield generator? That's impressive work for a new tinker. Not that many can build them, even with years of experience. Is it your specialty, do you think?” He asked it so innocently, but it was about as close to the biggest thing I wanted to hide as he could get. There was no way I was getting into what my specialty was.

So I lied again. “Yeah, I think so. Probably. My gun works on the same principal. It basically just shoots out a forcefield for a moment. I have a little hover-thing I made that works the same way too, I'm hoping to make some kind of hover-backpack as soon as I can.” That part was half true. My hover system didn't work like my shield generator at all, but I did want to build something to let me hover or fly. Hopefully it would muddy the waters a bit more, too. Much better if people thought I was just a forcefield tinker. “Anyways, I ended up knocking them around enough that they scattered, and it was just Lung. I kept him down for awhile, but he grew faster than I expected and... then I ran. I was stupid, I even have another gun that's strong, maybe strong enough to really hurt him but I didn't bring it because I didn't want to risk killing anyone.”

“Not a bad decision, really, no matter how it ended up. Too many new tinkers get caught up in what they can build and don't try to think about using it responsibly. Especially young ones. It's one of the most common problems tinkers in the Wards have, along with a lack of sufficient testing. I think you learned that lesson the hard way too, tonight, if your shield really did break.” He grinned a bit to lighten the sting of that, but I still felt stupid about it.

I nodded my head sharply. “No question there. I'm not eager to trust my life to anything I build again without a good, long testing phase.” I lowered my head into my hands. “I really could have died. I mean, if my shield had failed right away, when I was getting shot? I'd be dead. I didn't even think about it.” It hit me, all of a sudden. I'd been too hyped up to really think during the fight, but I honestly could have died. It was a surprisingly muted feeling, compared to how much I'd been afraid of being burned.

Armsmaster nodded, and said “Try not to think about it too hard right now. I know it can be a shock, but you have to remember that you survived. Sleep on it, and think about it more later, when it's not so fresh in your mind. As for testing, it gets easier to put up with as you get more equipment. It's not such a sacrifice to leave a new piece of tech behind if you already have a good setup. You'll get there. Now, you were saying?”

“Um, yeah” I said “there's not much more to it. I ran from Lung a bit, and he hit me a few times, until he knocked me through a fence and my shield failed. Then he uh, he threatened me, said I had to fear him, and then he tripped and I ran again.” Armsmaster tilted his head a bit at that, but stayed silent, so I went on. “So after that I knew I couldn't hurt him or outrun him, so I tried to hide. I got out of his sight and hid in a dumpster. I shot a door open beforehand so he'd think I had kept running, but he didn't fall for it at all. He found me right away and pulled me out, and that's when you arrived and saved me.”

“Not a bad plan, overall. It sounds like you thought quickly in a crisis. But so you know for the future, Lung is thought to have enhanced senses as well as his other powers.” He said. “Of course he does.” I muttered. Armsmaster chuckled at that.

“Alright, it seems fairly simple overall” Armsmaster said “it shouldn't be too hard to reconstruct the fight from that, thank you. Now, before we're done I have a few pieces of advice. First though, is there anywhere you'd like me to drop you off? I can't imagine you want to have to walk back home in costume.”

I hadn't even thought of that. “Oh, uh, if you're offering you could drop me off near Lord's Market. Um, that is if you have time.”

He smiled. “Not a problem, come on. We can finish talking on the way, it shouldn't take too long.”

He started standing up and I quickly joined him, grabbing my gun, my empty cup and the used kleenex as I stood. He threw his own cup into a nearby bin and I followed suit. We walked over to his motorcycle. It was probably more appropriate to call it something else, but 'bike' seemed too small a word and I didn't know if 'chopper' or 'hog' or anything applied. When we got there Armsmaster touched a button near the handlebars and a section behind his seat slid open to provide a second seat, complete with a seat-belt and a backrest and everything.

He sat down and gestured to the seat now behind him. “Take a seat. It's probably a more pleasant ride than being carried, I'd think.” I took a seat gingerly, and did up the seat-belt. I didn't know where to put my feet at first, but quickly found appropriate indents. “There's places to hold onto just in front of the seat, if you need. Are you set?” I grabbed the handles, nodded, then realized he wasn't looking and said “Yes. I'm good. Ready.” If I had been expecting another break-neck ride through the city, I was disappointed. Armsmaster started off at a fairly sedate pace, staying within the speed limit and stopping for red lights and everything. I hadn't really thought a superhero would be subject to that kind of thing, but I guess it made sense.

Once we had started up, Armsmaster spoke again. “First thing, since you're a Tinker with enough completed projects to go out on your own and a desire to be a hero, I have to assume you already considered and rejected joining the Wards. I'm not going to push you on this, I imagine you have your own reasons, but I'd urge you to reconsider. Out of all types of parahumans it's Tinkers like us who benefit the most from the backing the government provides to it's heroes. It's very difficult for a Tinker to make their way on their own, and any villain organization would eagerly snap you up if they got the chance. Don't answer now, think it over. The Wards will still be there if you change your mind.”

I hung my head. “I'll, I'll think about. But it's not so easy.” That was the best I could do. I really couldn't tell him my real reasons, no matter how much I might want to.

He shook his head. “It's fine. Like I said, don't answer now. You have time. But that leads into my second point. You fought Lung today and got away. That's not something he'll be too happy about, and he's not the only parahuman in the ABB. There's also Oni Lee and Bakuda.”

“I know about Oni Lee, or at least what I could find online. But I haven't ever heard of Bakuda” I said.

“No surprise. She's new, just joined recently. She's also a tinker, but her specialty is bombs.” I gasped. “So you see the danger? Good. While it's not certain, it's possible that any of them might end up targeting you for daring to attack Lung and getting away. Don't worry too much at the moment, they aren't likely to target you out-of-costume even if they could, that's a rare event in the cape community. You've also only been out once, so there's no worry about an ambush just yet, you don't have any set patterns. But if you continue to go out and be seen it's a distinct possibility they might try something. You'd be best served to avoid getting into any habits that might let you be tracked, and ideally to stay out of ABB territory for the moment. Of course we'll help you if we're able, but there's only so much we can do for unaligned heroes. Don't take this as pressure to get you to join the Wards, we'll do what we can. But it would be easier if you had teammates to look out of you and a safe place to return to.”

He raised some good points, one's I hadn't thought of. Even with all the uncertainties it involved I really did want to join the Wards. I wanted to be part of something more than myself, something truly meaningful. I craved it, sometimes. But I knew I couldn't. There was no way I'd be able to hide what I could do if I was part of an organization like the Wards or the Protectorate, and there was no way they would accept me if they knew.

We were both silent for awhile as Armsmaster drove, taking a somewhat looping path around the Docks to come up to Lord's Market from the south, along the Boardwalk. He pulled to a stop in an alley just a few streets away from the Market to let me off. As I was climbing down off he held out his hand, a card sliding out of a compartment in the wrist of his armor.

“Take this, it's my card. It has my number on it and a contact e-mail. Call me if you get into trouble. It's not easy to go it solo. Don't wait until you get too far in over your head to call for help. There are people in the city that want to help you.”

I took the card wordlessly and he nodded. Then he turned and started driving away.

I took a moment to tag him, name his icon, and set it to green.

Then I turned and started my walk home. I'd intended to go back to my lab and get my clothes and my backpack, but I was exhausted. I also couldn't bear the thought of moving closer to ABB territory right now. I'd just have to make do.

It took me over half and hour to walk back home. Partway home I ducked into an alley and took off my coat, wrapping up by gun, mask, and shield. I shouldn't have much trouble getting home. My Dad went to sleep even earlier than I did and he slept like a log, so I had nothing to worry about there as I ended my night.

Things could have gone a lot worse I thought, feeling the card Armsmaster had given me in my pocket. It had been terrifying and a constant series of reminders that I'd been far less prepared than I thought. But for my first night out in costume, it could have gone a lot worse. I used the words to comfort me as I started for home again, trying not to dwell on how tomorrow was a school day.

Suddenly I had a horrible thought. I stopped, putting my coat on the ground and grabbing up my shield generator. Oh please, please let me be wrong I thought, as I flicked through my interface and triggered the icon of my shield generator. A pale green glow sprung up around me.

“Fuck!” I yelled, and kicked the wall.

back -- next

Teal_Thanatos · May 30, 2014

Did Taylor's shield simply not turn itself back on?

LacksCreativity · May 30, 2014

Teal_Thanatos said:
Did Taylor's shield simply not turn itself back on?

Yep, that's more or less it. It was meant to reactivate itself when it was done recharging, but it didn't. It's an issue with the design and probably not one that's difficult to fix.

But, if she'd noticed or thought of it earlier she might have had her shield back when fighting Lung or at the very least to make her look less foolish in front of Armsmaster.

landcollector · May 30, 2014

I enjoyed the snippets in the fic discussion thread, and I'm looking to seeing where you take the story from here.

LacksCreativity said:
1.6

Suddenly I had a horrible thought. I stopped, putting my coat on the ground and grabbing up my shield generator. Oh please, please let me be wrong I thought, as I flicked through my interface and triggered the icon of my shield generator. A pale green glow sprung up around me.

“Fuck!” I yelled, and kicked the wall.

I'm ignorant of the Supreme Commander setting, so I don't know what's angering Taylor here.

Edit: Never mind, you already explained it.

Yanslana · May 30, 2014

Awesome to see this on its own. Can't wait to see where you plan on taking it.

And this snippet written by zergloli for the Armsmaster scene was hilarious, if you haven't seen it already.

EDIT: Just remembered, Armsmaster's lie detector: does he know Taylor's not being truthful about her specialty?

Crazy Tom 2.0 · May 30, 2014

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Seclorum · May 30, 2014

Carpet like complete!

Very much looking forward to more of this.

LacksCreativity · May 30, 2014

Yanslana said:
Awesome to see this on its own. Can't wait to see where you plan on taking it.

And this snippet written by zergloli for the Armsmaster scene was hilarious, if you haven't seen it already.

EDIT: Just remembered, Armsmaster's lie detector: does he know Taylor's not being truthful about her specialty?

I actually hadn't seen that snippet before, thanks. Omake'd.

And yeah, Armsmasters lie detector is working just fine.

biigoh · May 30, 2014

Much like. :3

LacksCreativity · May 30, 2014

Alright, I'm about to head off for an hour or two to write up a D&D adventure for tomorrow. Between that and Wildstar coming out tomorrow I'm not likely to get to the second arc until Monday. However if my adventure is written quickly enough I might have time to write the interlude tonight.

With that said, I'd like to hear what people would like to see.

I can do Armsmaster, to show his after-action report and first impressions of Taylor.
I can do Tattletale, to show the Undersiders perspective of the fight, and a bit of the aftermath.
Or I can Coil, to show what happens in his two timelines and their direct aftermath.

I'll also be following the thread on my tablet if anything else comes up.

Yanslana · May 30, 2014

On the title, since this is Taylor just starting, I don't think a military or industrial related title would work? Maybe after she got her momentum up and is cranking out /things/ like spring bunnies?

As for the interlude, I'm curious to Armsmaster's thoughts, because you took a rather different characterization of his initial meeting with Taylor, and I'm very curious to see his side of things. I feel Lisa's side would just be a 'omg reaction to blah Taylor's powers wut blah', given it's the first time she's seen Taylor, and Coil's has a high potential of him being a slimeball and wanting to grab Taylor like he did with Dinah...

EDIT: Well... I still pick Armsmaster.

landcollector · May 30, 2014

LacksCreativity said:
Alright, I'm about to head off for an hour or two to write up a D&D adventure for tomorrow. Between that and Wildstar coming out tomorrow I'm not likely to get to the second arc until Monday. However if my adventure is written quickly enough I might have time to write the interlude tonight.

With that said, I'd like to hear what people would like to see.

I can do Armsmaster, to show his after-action report and first impressions of Taylor.
I can do Tattletale, to show the Undersiders perspective of the fight, and a bit of the aftermath.
Or I can Coil, to show what happens in his two timelines and their direct aftermath.

I'll also be following the thread on my tablet if anything else comes up.

Man, all three sound good in various ways. The Coil one...hoo boy. Considering he kept this timeline, I'm guessing Taylor either was horribly wounded by Lung or died. Hmm, Tattletale.

Larekko12 · May 30, 2014

landcollector said:
Man, all three sound good in various ways. The Coil one...hoo boy. Considering he kept this timeline, I'm guessing Taylor either was horribly wounded by Lung or died. Hmm, Tattletale.

He wouldn't care about that. Taylor dropped in on them and her disruptor was way less than non lethal in an active fight.

NemuiKougi · May 31, 2014

Really digging this so far.
Also, why is Taylor worried about the PRT? Yeah her tech is crazy dangerous, but so was String Theory's and she was offered work from the PRT and protectorate plenty of times before being sent to the birdcage.

{EDIT}
I vote Armsmaster interlude, this version of him seems like a pretty cool guy.

LacksCreativity · May 31, 2014

NemuiKougi said:
Really digging this so far.
Also, why is Taylor worried about the PRT? Yeah her tech is crazy dangerous, but so was String Theory's and she was offered work from the PRT and protectorate plenty of times before being sent to the birdcage.

Mostly because her tech is self-replicating. If she built one engineering drone, it could build a factory complex by eating local resources like trees or buildings for raw materials. That factory could then build a bunch of engineers, some of which could build more factories while others built energy/mass infrastructure, etc.

It's not even necessarily that the PRT would actually be afraid of her, or give her a kill order or something. It's that every other cape with self-replicating powers is either dead, birdcaged, living under a kill order, or an S-class threat that people would kill if they could. That tends to color Taylor's opinions of her power.

Anyways! Looks like two votes for Armsmaster and one for Tattletale. I'll get to writing the Armsmaster interlude, but if I'm left with enough time I might do Tattletale's too. I'm generally going to stick interludes only at the ends of each arc, but I'm not going to stick to doing just one per character. I might do another Armsmaster or Tattletale one later, after this/these.

Peanuckle · May 31, 2014

Missed the vote, nuts. Would've preferred Tattletale, for the delicious infodump.

Armsmaster is probably more relevant to Taylor's immediate situation, though.

Seclorum · May 31, 2014

I think the PRT is more concerned with 'Uncontrolled' self replication.

I would expect Taylor to have command authority over her tech at pretty much all times. So it only replicates when she tells it to.

Matsci · May 31, 2014

Hey, someone who is writing a non-asshole Armsmaster.

A Cloudy Path (Worm/Supreme Commander)

Disgruntled Hunter

Disgruntled Hunter

Disgruntled Hunter

Disgruntled Hunter

Disgruntled Hunter

Disgruntled Hunter

Disgruntled Hunter

Disgruntled Hunter

I Scuba Dive.

Disgruntled Hunter

It's My Party And I'll Sing If I Want To

Disgruntled Hunter

Tanuki will be Tanuki

Disgruntled Hunter

(Verified Meme)

Disgruntled Hunter

Grash itsh griah! Rwar arr rawrrawrarar!