The Body Shop [Worm]

Sunday, March 20 2011

“Is that… bacon?” a sleepy voice murmured. “If it is, you’ll be my favorite Tinker forever.”

Taylor huffed in quiet amusement from where she was managing several frying pans worth of breakfast food cooking on the Stansfield’s unnecessarily large stove. Unlike Amy, who abhorred getting up early, Taylor believed in sleep schedules and went for a run every morning before school. Thus, Taylor had not been the least bit surprised when she was the first person awake following their night of debauchery and excess.

Of course, being awake meant dealing with the post-party cleanup, and that meant dealing with people. She didn’t mind Dean and Vicky so much — even if Vicky bore more resemblance to a zombie, which was about right for the morning after a Chroma trip. Dean, however, had immediately attempted to enlist Taylor’s help with Emma and the other two teens who had needed sleeping potions.

Taylor counter-offered to make breakfast, and Dean had agreed perhaps too readily.

She tried to focus on the pans and the food, but her mind kept floating back to last night. The abrupt intersection of her cape and civilian lives had been almost as shocking as her early attempts at designing an electrokinesis power, and it wasn’t until Dean confirmed that Emma was gone that Taylor released a breath she had not realized she had been holding.

It was too early in the morning to try to process the fact that for all of Taylor’s Tinkering prowess and cape successes, she was completely incapable of dealing with a single unpowered teenager.

“Bacon, potatoes, sausage, eggs,” Taylor replied, glancing at the table to see some of Vicky’s hair tumble into her coffee when she nodded. It really wasn’t fair how good the hero looked, even hungover and barely awake. Though she would never admit this to her, Taylor could totally see why Amy had been infatuated with her sister.

Taylor was thankful that her first interaction with Victoria Dallon had been in a work context, because she had absolutely no idea how to handle Amy’s ex-sister otherwise. She would have been content to simply ignore the other girl, but this was her boyfriend’s house and Taylor was making breakfast, so instead Taylor simply took solace in the fact that Vicky was too asleep to socialize.

Not for the first time, Taylor envied Amy’s audacious plan to quit school and just be a cape full time. Even with Sophia gone, there were still days at school that made Taylor want to just get on the bus to the lab and never go back. Then she would be able to focus on her Tinkering and experimenting without having to deal with the depressing mess that was her civilian life.

After all, being a cape was fun, in some ways even more so than when Taylor had imagined it as a kid. Only in her wildest dreams would she have a power like Eidolon, one that let her go out as a different hero each night and was only limited by her own imagination. Actually helping against an Endbringer and meeting the Triumvirate were even more outlandish than that.

The whole ‘Tinkertech drugs’ part of Taylor’s cape career was completely unexpected, as was the Sophia realization. Luckily the first paid for the costs associated with avoiding the Protectorate on account of the second, even before taking into account how intensely enjoyable their creations had become. The latest purple plant bore only superficial resemblance to the first orange plant, something that Taylor was proud to have achieved.

She was pulled out of her reminiscing when Dean materialized a few minutes later with a sleepy Dennis on his heels. “How’s the food coming?” Dean asked, dropping into the chair next to Vicky and rubbing her back.

Taylor flipped the bacon currently in the pan with her fingers, silently thankful for the upgrades that made her heat resistant. “Nearly done. Grab a plate and dig in.”

The promise of food finally roused Vicky from her zombification, and Taylor followed them back to the table with the unclaimed food piled high on a serving platter she had found. They ate in near silence, as all of their available brainpower seemed to be tied up in ensuring as much food got into their mouths as fast as possible.

“So, um,” Dean started, trying and failing to buy some time with a gulp of orange juice, “Did you get whatever you were looking for last night?”

Taylor tapped the pocket holding her notebook. “More or less.”

It was the truth, mostly. Chroma was totally safe from a toxicity point of view, and the party had verified that their own experiments were not too far off-base when compared to normal humans. More importantly, large numbers of people on the drug didn’t turn into some sort of wild, out-of-control mess — they really did just want to sit around and look at the pretty colors.

“Good,” Dean said, squirming slightly. “I’m still really uncomfortable with this whole situation and I wish that both you and Amy would consider joining the Protectorate, but I guess what you’re doing is technically legal and safer than… most other stuff, I guess.”

Dennis flashed Taylor a wide smile. “It was a lot of fun watching people just stare at the grass.”

The much more important aspect of the party — helping Amy try to get her head screwed on a bit straighter — had not been in Taylor’s original plans. That had been Crystal’s idea, actually, though it had not taken much convincing to get Taylor and Lily to help. Luckily, all they had needed to do was give Amy the opportunity to unwind while not encumbered by her self-inflicted duties.

Of course, getting Amy herself to agree had been the hard part, but based on her laughter and smiles as she rolled around on the lawn-turned-lightshow, it had worked.

Taylor was very careful not to mention to the others that Amy was onto something about her power, however. Her first attempt to make a potion to copy another parahuman’s powers had worked perfectly, but Taylor had not been prepared for how enjoyable shaping life with Amy’s powers had been.

Something strange was happening, and Taylor was determined to figure it out.

Further musings were interrupted when the doors to the kitchen opened and revealed a confused-looking Amy, still in her incredible glowing costume from the night before. Taylor could never pull off a costume like that, but Amy was rocking it. “Oh, hell yes, breakfast,” Amy said, making a beeline for the table. “I knew I smelled bacon.”

“Try not to eat all of it,” Dennis said. “Lily told me about your opinions on breakfast food.”

Amy slid into the last open chair; the spot was between Taylor and Dean, and Amy was seemingly undeterred by Vicky sitting on Dean’s other side. “Did everyone survive last night?” the ex-healer asked, pulling her goggles up so she could wipe her eyes.

A resigned expression passed over Dean’s face. “Yes, they did.”

“Good,” Amy said, shoveling food onto her plate with a fork.

Taylor rolled her eyes. “What about you, Amy? How was your night?”

“I had fun,” Amy replied, then pointed a grease-soaked finger at Taylor. “If you say ‘I told you so,’ I will turn you into a raspberry bush.”

Taylor opted to say nothing, though she met Vicky’s eyes and raised her eyebrows, sharing a small quirk of her lips with the hero. Unfortunately, Vicky then took that as an invitation to change the subject. “So, Taylor… from what I’ve figured out, your power is awesome.”

“Uh, thanks,” Taylor replied, instantly regretting making eye contact with the other girl.

“So you can grant powers,” Vicky continued, excitement creeping into her voice despite her weariness, “but can you do anything else? What sorts of powers can you grant? Do you have a list, or do they mimic other known powers? Can you copy powers? How many can people use at once?”

Taylor blinked at the onslaught of words. “Can we talk shop after breakfast? I doubt everyone is excited as you right now.”

“Hear, hear,” Amy said, gesturing with her glass. To Taylor’s surprise, her orange juice didn’t smell like alcohol yet.

The conversation shifted to discussing specific people that the Arcadia students had seen at the party, and their various uncharacteristic antics. Taylor tuned that out and cast her mind forward to the next few weeks. School was starting again, which would eat into her home time, and they had to find an opportunity to visit the Palanquin. Her experiments with the Wards’ powers, almost certainly more work for Toybox, more Kleos patrols…

Taylor eyed Amy, who was busy restoring her frizzy hair and freckles. She idly wondered what her life would have been had she not met the grumpy biokinetic. Amy was the best friend Taylor could have asked for, to the point that Taylor still sometimes wondered what she had done to deserve her friendship. Hopefully going forwards it would be a bit easier to coax smiles out of her partner.


***

A/N: And with that short epilogue, arc 1 draws to a close. Thanks to Slider and Atlasofremembrance for help on this short chapter.

When I first started working on this story, I had no idea that people would find it as enjoyable as they have. I was worried that it was too slow, that the drugs would be off-putting, that the AU characterizations would be unbelievable, and so on, which makes it all the more heartwarming every time I read a positive comment. Of the stories I've worked on, this one is by far my favorite, despite it being the most 'out there' in terms of narrative.

In any case, I want to thank everyone who has read this fic and taken the time to comment or recommend it to others. Arc 2 is a bit more involved, plot-wise, and the outline is kind of a mess right now. However, there are several scenes I have been itching to present since this project started, so hopefully it won't take me too long to get things started.

 

A/N: And so begins Arc 2, with a short interlude from one of the poor souls that has to clean up Amy's most recent mess. Thanks to my betas, Thoth19 and Atlasofremembrance for their boundless patience while I hammered at the outline for this arc.

Monday, March 23 2011

Colin was conflicted.

While he would prefer to be back in his lab, a surprise call from a panicked sheriff had dragged him out to a far west suburb of Brockton Bay at nearly midnight. Middleburgh was far enough away from the city proper to have its own train station, which translated to roughly half an hour when driving. Colin had arrived in slightly less than fifteen on his motorcycle, but it was still dramatically further than his usual patrols extended.

The reason? Glowing tree monsters had come charging out of the forest and…

Well, not really done much of anything, it turned out. This was the source of his conflict.

On one hand, he wanted nothing more than to figure out where a certain migraine-inducing teenaged biokinetic had vanished following tonight’s most recent disaster, and do his damnedest to make literally any consequence stick to her. Circe running around without supervision deeply offended his professional sensibilities, even before considering what the girl was capable of creating on a whim.

Colin had been legitimately shocked when he had finally been given permission to view Circe’s Threat Report, as not only had the file changed dramatically since he last read it, basically all of it had been redacted once the special investigation started. Her reluctance to associate with any heroic organization made much more sense following an explanation of her history and powers, though Colin had expressed his displeasure in the strongest terms to Legend about the Protectorate’s inability to accommodate Circe.

If he thought it would do any good, Colin might bring up the whole series of incidents from earlier today to whomever was heading the special investigation. But with Legend’s unapologetic stonewalling and the Chief Director’s repeated mantra of ‘classified,’ it had been made abundantly clear to Colin that there was something very suspicious about this whole situation.

Circe’s partner was worse. Oeneus’s file was completely redacted, and he had not been granted permission to view the blanked out sections. A hunch and some digging into Hess’s past had yielded a very good guess as to the Tinker’s identity, but much like Miss Lavere, Miss Hebert enjoyed the enthusiastic protection of an highly unusual and secretive investigation that inexplicably excluded the local Protectorate leader.

Having to clean up their messes but not being able to even collaborate remotely with the two Tinkers was frustrating in the extreme.

And that brought Colin’s thoughts back to the other side of his conflict: the incredible things Circe could create, even in a severely compromised mental state, with no visible effort on her part.

“Are you seeing this, Dragon?” he asked, ensuring that his compact field microscope was scanning the correct features.

“It bears a striking resemblance to muscle tissue,” the Canadian replied, her Newfoundland accent barely registering after so long. “Except no muscle tissue I have ever studied has included cell walls in that fashion, nor has it had the extreme internal optimizations present in this sample.”

Looking at the screen displaying the microscope’s output, Colin’s mind was filled with designs for cybernetics and biotechnology that could launch his career to new heights, and that was only by examining the various parts of the single glowing tree-mech that Circe had left behind. Even her now-signature bioluminescence spawned dozens of ideas for efficient biological power sources and miniaturized organometallic signalling arrays.

For not the first time, he considered quitting the Protectorate solely to collaborate with Circe.

His deliberations were not helped by the astounding set of upgrades that Circe had gifted to Flechette. The Ward had faced a great deal of scrutiny and paperwork over her unauthorized activities, but in the end her vastly improved biology had fallen under the ineffable jurisdiction of the special investigation.

Predictably, all of Piggot’s complaints had vanished into that bureaucratic black hole, and Flechette simply went through power testing again. If not for the fact that any upgrades Colin would want for his own body would require corresponding changes in his Tinkertech — and thus involve the Review Board — he would have been knocking on the biokinetic’s door as soon as he had seen the resolution of Flechette’s situation. But while he had strong suspicions that the special investigation’s reach went a lot further than the Review Board, Colin had not wanted to try his luck yet.

The construct under his microscope was putting a lot of stress on that conviction.

Dragon snapped his attention to the task at hand. “Colin, look — see the microstructures in the ligaments?”

“Yes, what am I… oh. There is no way for that to have evolved naturally.”

“I wouldn’t go quite that far, but I agree. Circe likely invented that herself. Let me run a few simulations here…”

While she worked, Colin searched around the tree-mech to find other interesting creations. He was part of the way through isolating what appeared to be a nerve when Dragon got back to him. “Fascinating. A human ligament with those modifications would account for more than 80% of the increased strength displayed by Flechette, which suggests that Circe is copying designs.”

“Indeed,” he murmured, using an electrical probe to investigate the nerve and marveling at its efficiency.

---
​

The glowing tree-mech was eventually loaded onto a Protectorate transport so that Colin and Dragon could continue to study it under better conditions. Removing the construct also allowed the PRT agents to finish cleaning up the scene — for all that she had made a mess, Circe had caused little actual lasting damage, for which the sheriff was very relieved.

Soon after, Colin found himself cruising back to base and chatting with Dragon about their discoveries.

“Colin, I want to talk about Oeneus for a moment,” Dragon said suddenly. “I was curious about your unofficial visit to her workshop last week, and when I started digging, I found something… unusual.”

“A Tinker made something unusual,” he deadpanned, pulling the motorcycle to a stop in the parking lot of a closed restaurant. “You don’t say.”

Dragon’s huff of amusement brought a smile to his lips. “I became suspicious after you relayed Battery and Dauntless’s experiences with the ‘potions,’ and I started asking around to see if anyone else from Canberra could remember anything else of note.”

That had been an interesting conversation. While Dauntless had been happy to describe his experiences, Battery had become noticeably cagey when asked about drinking the vials that granted some measure of regeneration and healing. Both had described the experience as ‘intuitive,’ giving them a vague sense of how healthy they were and how quickly repairs were proceeding.

“Logical. Understanding how Oeneus’s Tinkertech enhances humans would go a long way towards replicating it ourselves. Do you have any more thoughts on her specialization?”

“I do,” Dragon said slowly. “As it turns out, Narwhal took all three of Oeneus’s ‘potions’ during the fight against the Simurgh, and she described the same sort of ‘intuition’ that Battery and Dauntless reported. However, the boosted reflexes also extended to her shields — she was able to reflexively shield herself against projectiles.”

Colin said nothing as the implications started to churn in his brain.

“Several people reported similar behavior, developing much better reflexes with their power after drinking the potion. This was true across a variety of types of powers, not just those tied to their bodies. Taken together, this sounds like something else entirely,” she continued.

“Power interactions,” Colin breathed. “The most important part about parahuman powers —”

“— is that they are intuitive,” Dragon finished. “Oeneus isn’t a human enhancement Tinker, or a chemical Tinker. I believe that she’s a power Tinker.”

The next piece fell in place for Colin rather quickly. “They’re the Kleos. They never have the same powers twice because Oeneus is constantly testing new ideas.” He replayed his last meeting with the two in his head and made another connection. “The future sight was Oeneus, too, not some new mystery Toybox Tinker.”

Dragon laughed awkwardly. “Yes, they appear to have recreated melange. I suspect one of them is a fan of classic science fiction.”

“We need to speak to Legend about this,” Colin realized. “Because I think we have started to understand why there is a special investigation into those two girls.”

“That seems sensible,” Dragon agreed. “Do you mind taking a diversion back to Lord’s Park? Now that we have a second sample of Circe’s bioluminescence, I would like to reexamine those trees…”

---

Saint could hardly believe what he had discovered.

Following their bombshell discussion, the AI had followed Armsmaster back to the park where the rogue biotinker had transformed several trees, and under more normal circumstances Geoff would have been obsessively checking Dragon’s every claim about the safety of the trees in question. Instead, his mind was awhirl with the possibility that there was another power-granting Trump out there, one whose tech persisted for hours at a time and seemed very general.

With his normal source of powers trapped in the Birdcage, this ‘Oeneus’ could be his ticket to finally unraveling Dragon’s plots and freeing Teacher. Unfortunately, he found it unlikely that either Tinker would be willing to help willingly.

Well, there were plenty of ways around that. He knew that capturing the girls would be a tricky proposition, as Dragon had sold them some of its security hardware and software for their lab. They were actually rather secure for independent Tinkers, something that Geoff had appreciated before but now found frustrating. He had no doubts about his ability to break into the security system, of course, but hiding it from Dragon (and thus Armsmaster) would be tricky.

Then there was the issue of actually capturing the girls. Trumps were often maddening to deal with under favorable circumstances, and now he knew that Oeneus had a whole library of powers that Geoff couldn’t anticipate. Circe was actually worse, for all that her powers were known to Dragon — the ‘healer’ was actually an S-class threat on her own.

Geoff smiled to himself. Taking them both down would be doing the world a favor, assuming he could figure out how.

His best option was probably to call in some favors among the Russians or Gesellschaft. They had power nullifiers and other specialists for exactly this sort of mission, but he would have to be very careful to not tip off those groups by asking for their services. Every team on the planet would want their hands on the two girls, if they knew what they were capable of doing. The PRT was actually helping here, keeping that information under such tight control.

“Hey Mags, Dobrynja!” he called, turning in his command chair. “We’ve got a new —”

However, instead of the other Dragonslayers, Geoff found a woman in a fedora.

He barely had time to register surprise before she shot him in the head.