Charm Learning Shard (Worm/Exalted) (COMPLETED)

Autobiokinesis! The ability to change your appearance at will! There is no single greater boon for a cape trying to juggle multiple identities.

That's what you were telling yourself when you prioritized its acquisition above everything else.

What actually happens once you get it is that you rush home and use your newest superpower to give yourself the oldest superpower.

That's a euphemism for 'tits', in case there was any confusion on that point.

Your vanity has already been established, okay? You're not ashamed. You're only doing what any 'late bloomer' (judging by your mom, closer to 'never' than 'late') in your situation would do, no matter how much they'd lie about it if asked.

Nor are you ashamed of going to the internet for help when it turns out that tits are more complicated than they look. Bigger is better, yeah? But 'saggy' is definitely bad, while 'perky' is highly sought after. Yet merciless gravity conspires to foil your attempts at having the best of both worlds. There must be some trick to it, right?

But searching for 'breast physics' on your phone mostly brings up a lot of video games you have no particular interest in playing.

None of the technical anatomy resources you find help either, being focused on function (and dysfunction - you learn more about breast cancer than you ever wanted to know) over form. You're reduced to trial and error, standing in front of the bathroom mirror and repeatedly growing, shrinking and reshaping your bosom.

At some point in this process you realize another important criteria for an attractive mammary, and 'how to spot fake tits' enters your search history. Not ashamed.

At least here the internet is helpful, providing you with a huge list of 'don'ts' with plentiful illustrations.

You eventually get the hang of it, you think, and start producing good-looking results. Although... as a heterosexual female you're not really the target audience here.

You do another search, this time for 'best-looking breasts'. Not. Ashamed.

Unsurprisingly, the internet has your back here as well. You find a quaint little forum where boob lovers from across the globe gather to share, discuss and rate the very finest pictures of breasts.

Those guys really know their business, too. Looking at the top-rated entries, even you can tell that those are some amazing fucking knockers.

Inspired, you resume shaping the ideal form with renewed vigor. Only to be interrupted by your dad banging on the bathroom door.

"Taylor? Are you alright? You've been in there forever."

Crap.

"Be right out!" you yell. You hurriedly slurp your new tits back into your chest and wriggle back into your shirt. Wow, changing that quickly takes a lot out of you. You feel as if you just ran a hundred-meter dash. Better not do that again.

You barge outside, almost catching your dad with the door. "Sorry!"

It's not until he clears his throat and looks away that you realize your mistake. You're fully dressed, but... after being called out, you left the bathroom instantly without any flushing or running water, out of breath and with your face bright red.

Nope. Nope nope nope nope, you're not thinking about what he's thinking you were doing in there, nope. You're running straight to your room and burying your face in your pillow and hoping to die.

That's quite enough excitement for one night. Yep. You're done.

You don't strip off your shirt and keep experimenting. Nope. Not down here were Fenrir can see you.

You definitely don't take a picture of the results and upload it to the boob lover forum before you go to sleep, and it doesn't get 627 views and an average rating of 8.6/10 by the time you wake up.

Of course not. That would imply that you went to sleep, as opposed to staying up all night to prepare for your business trip. You know, the stuff you had planned to do earlier in the evening, before you succumbed to the siren song of breast augmentation.

Danny makes no attempt to hide his amusement when you show up at breakfast.

"Too excited to sleep?" You grunt in the affirmative. "I suppose it's an improvement compared your first summer camp. As I recall, quite a bit of kicking and screaming was involved in getting you out the door then. What was it you said when we dropped you off? 'You can force me to go, but I refuse to have fun.' Even though it was your own idea in the first place!"

It's a good attempt, but between the lack of an audience and your semi-conscious state this tale of youthful indiscretions fails to achieve the proper sting of mortification. You zombie your way through breakfast until the honking of a car horn outside signals that it's time to leave. A glance through the window shows Lisa waving at you from the driver's seat of a dinged-up white van.

You try to make your way outside through a storm of last-minute fussing. "Did you remember to pack everything?", "Don't forget to call!", "Try to break at most one leg!", "Love you!".

"Love you too," you say before shutting the door in his face and dragging your suitcase to the street.

"Is there a reason you didn't come into the driveway?" you ask Lisa as you get in the passenger seat.

"Didn't want your dad to get a look at the plates, just in case."

You take a second to digest this statement. "You stole a car to cover for me?"

"No, I borrowed it from Rachel. Who, admittedly, stole it." Ah, that's what the smell is. "Now, where do I drop you off? Bus terminal?"

"That works."

---

Lisa stops the car. You fish a backpack out of your overstuffed suitcase.

"Hold on to this for me?" The suitcase contains everything that would make dad suspicious if you didn't bring, not things you actually need. Not that you expect him to rifle through your drawers in your absence, but better safe than sorry.

"I should be charging extra for this," Lisa says. You reach into a pocket and toss a couple of crumpled twenties at her.

"That was a joke," she protests, but she makes no move to hand the money back.

"Was it." You quite deliberately leave out the question mark.

Lisa sighs and rolls her eyes at you, and on that note you part ways.

You have one errand to run before you get on the bus, though. You quickly locate a suitable hair salon. Not one of the fancy ones that other Arcadia kids might go to, but rather a cozy little establishment whose understated, handwritten signage almost makes you think it's trying to hide itself - probably from the IRS.

"I need you to wax me a bald spot," you tell the proprietor.

"Excuse me?"

"I lost a bet, all right?" If there's one upside to being a teenager, it's that no one doubts you when you claim to have made terrible life choices.

"Shouldn't you be in school?"

"Be hard for me to pay you if I was."

---

Freshly shorn beneath your hoodie, you catch the next bus for Boston. Fenrir comes along, of course, though if everything goes well he'll materialize exactly once over the next week. The wolf walks into the bus with his feet still on the asphalt. From inside the bus it looks for all the world like he's wading, head and shoulders sticking up from the floor (well, for all the world except you it doesn't look like anything at all, because he's invisible).

Then he gathers himself and jumps straight up, landing lightly on the floor of the bus itself - but still phasing through the seats, as he's too big to fit in the aisle. Clearly the physics of his intangibility is just 'whatever is most convenient at the time' scribbled on a napkin.

You settle down in the back of the bus, hunch down to let your hoodie hide your face, and prepare to do the scariest thing you've ever done: You're about to turn into a completely different person.

What if you can't turn back? What if you forget what you used to look like? Yes, one of your cellphones now holds more than a hundred pictures of yourself, from every possible angle. But you didn't bring it with you. The peace of mind was not worth all the wacky hijinks that would ensue if Smith (ostensibly male, fifty-ish) was found to be in possession of naked pictures of a 15 year old girl.

What if something happens to that cellphone while you're gone?

You grit your teeth, and get down to business. Ever so slowly your hands start to grow, your dainty girl fingers replaced by the meaty paws of a man with a lifetime of manual labor behind him. Your forearms swell to match, then your upper arms, followed by a widening of your shoulders. Unlike Cliff you don't actually gain any muscle mass this way, you just spread what you have across a larger space. A pity, but you've come to terms with such degradation in copied powers.

Your hair becomes short and speckled with gray. Experimentation showed that you can modify your hair freely, but not remove it. Which is why you had to contract out your male pattern baldness. You do what you can with the rest of your body hair, lengthening, thickening and darkening it to make it look denser than it really is. You'll be wearing long sleeves anyway.

Making doubly sure no one is paying attention to you, you pull out a small hand mirror and start working on your face. First you sculpt a handsome manly jaw, then you hide it behind jowls and sagging flesh. Add some faint wrinkles to taste, a bit of sunburn and general weathering. A liver spot or two? Best not to go overboard. Grow the eyebrows out a bit, though.

Then you work your way downwards, removing what little feminine curves you posses and adding that most masculine of curves, the beer belly. A slight thickening of your legs follows. Finally you exchange your shoes for an old pair of your dad's and grow your feet to match.

You don't even try to modify the downstairs plumbing. You're not crazy. A padded jockstrap will do just fine.

After somewhat less than three hours you arrive at your destination and take a moment to stretch your legs. You would have loved to sleep on the bus, but your experience yesterday taught you that shapeshifting is best done slowly and deliberately. As expected, no one paid enough attention to you to notice that the person that got on the bus was not quite the same as the one that left. Not that it's all that noticeable, underneath the loose, baggy clothing you wear.

Ironic, that your depressing wardrobe still comes in handy even after you got the power to deal with the body image issues that inspired it. Is that irony? People are so picky about that...

Once again you find yourself changing underwear in an alley, though this set is padded in quite the opposite way from the ones you usually wear.

You also change into the rest of your Smith costume. It's not much of a costume, really: One of your dad's old shirts, worn enough that it's only used for yard work anymore, and a matching pair of pants. Gloves, because while you could make yourself a new set of fingerprints, you don't trust your ability to put the old ones back correctly. Finally a leather apron that you found lying on the floor of your appropriated forge, even more battered than the rest of the outfit.

It's very authentically blue collar, you'll give it that.

You also switch your glasses for another, less girly pair. Technically these also belonging to your dad, but he got a new pair years ago. They're not quite your prescription, but close enough.

At your command Fenrir materializes briefly and drops off the gun he's been carrying the whole time. Dog Burglar's Smuggling Company: Accept no substitutes when moving unregistered weapons across state lines. You hand him a bag of incriminatingly girl-specific clothing to dematerialize.

Next order of business, thankfully, is a nap. You deliberately arrived early to give Fenrir a chance to recharge after giving you the gun, just in case Toybox tries anything. You don't expect them to, they have a reputation to maintain after all. But again, better safe than sorry.

---

You arrive at the designed meeting point - a quiet area behind some industrial properties - five minutes early with a scarf wrapped around your face. Two minutes before the appointed time two people pop into existence with nothing but a faint breeze of displaced air.

Sorcerer's sight confirms their parahuman status, as if their fashion sense wasn't clue enough.

The larger figure is wearing fully enclosed power armor. Where Armsmaster's tech is sleek and futuristic, this suit is bulky and industrial, and none too clean. The unpainted metal is generously adorned with oil stains and scorch marks. They are empty-handed, for all that that matters when their augmented grip could crush your skull like a grape.

The other - a woman - is technically wearing a light blue bodysuit, but mostly she's wearing tinker-tech. The bandoliers crossing her chest, her belt and even some sort of half holster, half garter arrangements on her thighs are all dangling with devices, less than half of which are (obvious) weapons. Her mask is a plain white number, with an attached hood hiding her hair.

On spotting you, she grabs one of the non-weapon devices and points it at you. It goes 'ding'.

"He's armed," she says. "Basic concussive projector."

Moving slowly, you pull out Kid Win's gun from behind your apron, gripping the barrel between your thumb and forefinger.

"That would be the merchandize," her companion says. The speaker system of his armor isn't the best, but he sounds male beneath the buzzing and crackling. You suspect that it's an affectation, because anyone with the technical knowledge and resources to make goddamn power armor could certainly get a better speaker system than that.

You nod, and approach to hand the gun over to the woman.

"Why the heck would anyone build a phasing system into a gun?" she asks rhetorically.

"Not everyone is as enthusiastic about carrying their gear around as you are, Glace."

She scoffs, but takes the gun from you. She reaches down to her belt and detaches what you now recognize as your order.

"Here, look it over while we do the same," she tells you.

The thing she hands you is a mask, black with metallic highlights. You requested that it look 'like I didn't care about how it looks', and they followed your instructions to a T. You suspect that your friend in the power armor is responsible for the design, as it has the same heavy industrial aesthetic.

When worn it will wrap all the way around your head, covering your nose, mouth and cheeks, curving up to cover your ears (with slots to accommodate glasses) and cradling the back of your skull.

Good thing it's a lot lighter than it looks, or it would be incredibly uncomfortable.

Clamped in the hinge is the instruction manual, three loose A4 pages of printed text.

You ignore the other features for now and look for the voice changer function, the whole reason you wanted a tinkertech mask in the first place.

The controls turn out to be a set of physical sliders hidden behind a panel that would normally rest against your left cheek. You slide the top one, that the manual designates 'pitch/gender' all the way to the right, leaving 'distortion' and 'reverb' in place. Then you reconsider, and instead slide it all the way to the left. It's only natural to try out the most extreme setting first. And for Smith, who obviously has a deep male voice...

You turn away from the Tinkers, unwrap your scarf and put on the mask. Not that you care whether anyone sees Smith's totally real and not at all brand new face, but verisimilitude demands shyness.

"Testing, testing," you say. Your voice always sounds different to yourself, but with the 'calibration' switch enabled the built-in headphones play back what it sounded like to others.

What it sounded like was five year old girl, if the girl in question had been held down and forced to breathe helium until she triggered with chipmunk powers.

You try again with the slider at the other extreme, and your voice becomes an almost incomprehensible bass rumble. They certainly didn't scrimp on the range, though the precision leaves a bit to be desired as a result.

The Tinkers are hunched over the screen of some sort of diagnostic tool Glace has attached to the gun. They are so engrossed that they don't even look up as you doff and don the mask several times, fiddling with the settings.

"I'm satisfied," you announce in your new voice. When that gets no reaction, you walk over and wave your hand in front of Glace's face.

"Hm? Oh. Yeah. Your goods check out as well." She heaves a sigh. "God, what I wouldn't give to work under Armsmaster. This stuff is crazy."

"How's the fit?" her companion asks you.

"It's fine." It was a bit iffy at first, but you quickly adjusted your face to make it more comfortable. "How long does the battery last?"

"RTFM," Glace says. Her companion gives her a light nudge. Light by power armor standards, it still sends her stumbling back.

"About a month, longer if you turn off the phone system," he says politely.

"Pleasure doing business with Toybox." You shake hands with both of them.

"Likewise, Smith. Don't hesitate to contact us again should you find something else of this quality." He hesitates a moment, then adds "You're a pretty trusting guy, coming here alone and essentially unarmed. Most of our customers are a lot more paranoid."

You laugh, and the voice changer does a surprisingly good job of turning your laughter masculine while still conveying your genuine glee (mostly at passing as a 'guy').

"You think your little scan found all my weapons. That's adorable."

Rather than take offense at the implied insult to her tech, Glace nudges her friend back (he of course does not budge an inch). "Hear that, Toy? You're adorable."

Toy nods. "I am adorable."

"See you around," Glace says.

With that they take a few steps back, and vanish as quickly as they appeared.

 

When Dragon gives you a ride, you ride in style. Heads turn up and down the street as a small jet plane swoops down towards the empty parking lot where you're waiting. The nose tilts up and four engine nacelles decorated to look like stubby legs twist to point forward, killing its momentum. The 'legs' then turn back to point straight down, leaving it hovering perhaps fifteen feet off the ground.

The paintjob is suitably draconic, of course. The wings are painted to resemble bat-like dragon wings while the fuselage sports a metallic scale pattern, with a mouth and eyes in the appropriate places up front. The effect is only further enhanced when it starts to descend: The wings fold up onto its back and landing gear shaped like claws sprout from the 'feet'.

The whole thing is lit up to sorcerer's sight, but that sort of goes without saying. Of course it's all tinkertech, duh! Dragon being Dragon, she probably only sacrificed a few percent efficiency to make it look that good - well worth it in your opinion.

The plane touches down gently enough that you can't hear it over the (remarkably silent) engines. Folded up like that, it only takes up two parking spaces.

The mirrored canopy opens to reveal an empty cockpit. Remote controlled, then. No wonder, there's certainly not room for two people in there. No ladder appears to be forthcoming, so you grab the edge of the cockpit and (after a couple of embarrassing false starts) manage to to vault/scramble your way inside. Fenrir jumps up to ride on top of the plane, ignoring any and all physical and logical problems with this course of action.

The cockpit is certainly snug. You're somewhat regretting making Smith this broad-shouldered. You have no idea how Dragon fits in here - as far as you know she never leaves the house without power armor. With another couple of false starts you manage to figure out how to buckle yourself in, too.

There's a flight stick, but instead of the countless dials and meters you'd expect from a cockpit, the dashboard is made up of a single blank screen. Just as you're wondering what to do next, the screen lights up and Dragon's face appears.

"Smith! Hello."

"Dragon. A pleasure to meet you, in image if not in the flesh just yet."

Not even that, really. The face before you is no more real than your voice. It's clearly computer generated, and it elects to stop short of the uncanny valley instead trying to bridge it.

"Likewise. Are you ready to leave?"

"Certainly."

The cockpit seals shut and you hear the engines start back up. You carefully keep your hands away from the flight stick as the plane gently rises into the air. Dragon's face moves up into the corner of the screen as the rest fills with a lot of information you don't know how to parse. You briefly make out 'landing gear retracted' before you're pushed back into your seat by sudden acceleration.

That Fenrir remains entirely unperturbed by this sequence of events goes without saying. Air resistance is for tangible people.

"Is it even legal to land a plane in the middle of a city like that?" you ask.

"Ah." Judging by the sudden blush spreading across Dragon's cheeks, you'd guess her face is no less real than your voice either - computer generated, but based on a real video feed. "This vehicle is registered as power armor, which legally makes it a pedestrian when piloted within city limits."

Huh. You guess you can get away with a lot when you hold the majority of all Tinker-related government contracts on the continent. You say as much, and Dragon blushes again. Oh well, another one for the 'all heroes are corrupt' column. But at least in her case it's only traffic violations, and she even has the decency to be embarrassed about it.

"The trip should take 3 hours 23 minutes," Dragon says. "I'm afraid the entertainment options are limited, but I could play you some music?"

"Thanks, but I'll just take a nap. Haven't been getting enough sleep lately." You could stay up and study the tinker-tech surrounding you, but there's little point. You have no desire to build an airplane of your own, even should you somehow manage to procure enough orichalcum to do it.

"As you wish. Sleep well, Smith." The video feed vanishes, leaving more indecipherable instrumentation in its place. You close your eyes and let the engine noise lull you to sleep.

---

You wake up with the nagging sense that something is out of place. You blink groggily and look around trying figure out what it is.

As far as you can tell, nothing looks different. A glance outside shows that you're approaching a city, but you have no idea which one. The instruments are still unhelpful, but you manage to locate a clock. Hm, either you slept for less than an hour, or you've passed through a timezone or two.

Oh, there it is. There's a faint high-pitched noise underlying the soft roar of the engines. That could be bad.

Another hunt through the instruments reveals no flashing red items, at least.

"Dragon?" you ask.

Her face immediately appears on screen again. "Yes?"

"Do you hear that?"

"No? Hear what?"

"There's this faint high-pitched sound." You frown in concentration. "I think it's getting louder, and it's... warbling a bit? Yeah."

"Hm. Diagnostic telemetry does not show anything wrong, and I can can't hear anything over the audio link either. Are you sure?"

"Yes, it's definitely getting louder."

"Okay. I believe you. The range on the cockpit mike is not the best." As she speaks, the engine noise lessens and the plane banks and starts losing altitude. "I'm landing the plane. Once it's on the ground, I'll walk you through an inspect- oh no!"

The plane suddenly pulls into a spinning, twisting evasive maneuver. Through heroic effort, you do not puke into your mask as the world flips end over end.

"What's happening!? Dragon?"

Dragon yells something back, but the channel is sudden filled with static and you only make out the final word: "*crackle* *crackle* Simurgh!"

Oh. The noise - the scream - reaches a crescendo and you see a flash of white outside the cockpit, then there's the terrible screeching sound of tearing metal. The violent evasive maneuvers turn into an even more violent tumble and several different alarms start blaring through the cockpit. Three quarters of the instrumentation turns red in an instant.

Most relevant to your interests would be the large flashing letters spelling out 'EJECTION MECHANISM JAMMED', which is the last thing you see before foam fills your vision.

---

This time you're jarred awake by liquid hitting your face. Not water, you catch a faint whiff of solvent as it seeps underneath your mask. Your eyes are held shut by some sticky substance, but after a few moments it gives way and you get a look at your surroundings. The plane - or what remains of it - is on the ground, surrounded by greenery. It's too well-manicured to be a wilderness, though. You'd guess a park, somewhere in the city you were approaching.

The cockpit is filled with bright orange foam, which is slowly dissolving into liquid as a set of nozzles spray it with solvent. This must be Dragon's famous containment foam, the number one tool for non-lethal parahuman takedowns and, apparently, high-speed impact cushioning. Given the miraculous way you're still alive you rate it 10/10, would be encased in while falling out of the sky again.

When you try move, though, you quickly discover that your everything hurts. Note to self, upgrade Brute rating before crashing another airplane. Nothing feels outright broken, though.

Which is good, because you have to get out of here. You can still hear the scream in the back of your mind, though it's a lot fainter than it was before. Everyone knows what happens if you hear that for too long. Melt faster, foam!

Your phone chirps, indicating an incoming message. You have to wait a few seconds for the foam to recede from your pocket before you can check it. You don't recognize the sender, but Dragon is the only person who has Smith's number.

< If you survived the crash, you have until 1407 to get out of range.

The clock on your phone reads 1:54 PM.

The foam finally gives up its hold on your legs, letting you pull yourself out of the cockpit. You take all of one second to admire the wreck - one wing and three engines are unaccounted for, lost either in the initial attack or during impact.

Once that second has elapsed, you take off running in a random direction. That's the problem, you don't actually know where the Simurgh is in relation to you right now. Maybe sorcerer's sight shows a faint aura of her power all around you, maybe that's just your imagination. If it's there at all, it's too faint to make out a gradient.

If the scream grows stronger, you'll turn around and hope you didn't waste too much time.

Fenrir is nowhere to be found, either. He must have fallen off during the evasive maneuvers. You're sufficiently confident in his physics-ignoring bullshit that you're not really worried about him sticking the landing. Hopefully he'll turn up soon.

...Come to think of it, shouldn't you be panicking right about now? You're lost and alone and you're about to have your mind subverted by the scariest being on earth. That seems like the sort of situation that ought to induce panic.

Maybe you're in shock? If so, you don't see why shock gets such a bad rap. This detached, analytical mindset seems quite nice, if the alternative is sensibly freaking the fuck out, or maybe curling up from the pain you're curiously unconcerned about right now.

As you reach the edge of the park, your choice of direction is vindicated. The street is full of people fleeing in roughly the same direction as you were going. It's a relatively sparsely populated area, so the streets are not entirely clogged.

Encouraged by the sign that you're going in the right direction, you put on a burst of speed. You should be getting winded too, but if anything you're feeling lighter on your feet than when you started running. Your stride is lengthening with every step, and-

The sight of dust and grit rising out from between the slabs of pavement clues you in just in time. You lunge for the closest lamppost and wrap your arms and legs around it.

All around you, people slight slower on the uptake are shouting in panic as they start rising slowly into the air. A lucky few manage to grab onto a street light or the side of a building on the way up.

It's not just the people who are affected, it's everything. Dropped objects are following their owners into the sky, garbage is rising out of a nearby trashcan... Even the cars are lifting off. Though your grip on the lamppost is secure, you feel your clothes striving to pull away from you. Good thing your glasses are securely attached to your mask.

You suppress a giggle as the phrase 'I went to a Simurgh fight, and all I got was an atomic wedgie' flashes across your mind. You unnatural calm notwithstanding, you realize that hysteria is right there, waiting for you to take a single step in its direction.

Good news, the levitating force does not seem to be getting stronger. You could easily hang on here all day. Bad news, you really need to be running away right now. As if in response to your thoughts, the scream gets ever so slightly louder.

Why is she doing this, anyway? She's supposed to rip entire buildings from the ground and throw them at people. Why haven't the heroes shown up to distract her from bullying the civilian population yet?

The scream changes pitch briefly, making a sort of interrogative noise. 'Ah-hah?'

You count as part of the civilian population, all right? You're not here to fight, you don't have any powers that would even scratch her. You don't want to be here at all!

The scream changes again, and you're probably literally going crazy but you swear it sounds reassuring. 'There, there.'

Could this please not be happening?

The scream rises in volume, seeming to build towards something, before it abruptly cuts out completely. The levitating force vanishes at the same moment, causing you to fall on your ass.

You get off easy. Shouts and sobs turn into wordless screams as people plunge out of the sky to splatter against the pavement. Most of those who found a handhold on the way up suffer the same fate, as they were not prepared for gravity to return to normal. One poor bastard manages to land safely, only to be crushed beneath a falling car.

You're numb to the horror of it, preoccupied by a much more cerebral horror: Soul's price just went off.

Simurgh wants daddy to spank her more often.

So. Either that really counted as a conversation, and the Endbringers are alien kids acting out for attention... Or she's already hacked your brain enough to spoof your powers. Even though - you check you phone - you still have nine minutes left according to Dragon.

You're reevaluating the pros and cons of hysteria when Fenrir shows up, running full tilt towards you. Not only is he unharmed, he's still carrying your dematerialized luggage. See, you knew he'd stick the landing.

Right, focus. You can do this. You can still get out in time. In time? The scream is gone, which means that your escape has already either succeeded or failed. No, don't think about that. You still need to get out of the city before the barricades go up.

Just take it one step at a time. Next problem: Cameras. You take a look around, ignoring what's on the ground, completely ignoring what's covering the ground.

Your gaze fastens on a young woman who survived by wedging herself in a doorway. She looks a bit like you, when you don't look like an old man. Not so much the face (no glasses, either) but the hair is similar.

You make your way over, trying not to step in anything too horrible. She's - understandably, given the circumstances - hugging herself and crying, but her face lights up with hope when she sees you approaching and she manages to get control of herself.

"A-are you a hero?"

"A rogue, technically, but close enough. What's your name?"

"Uh... Marie. It's Marie."

"And what city is this?"

"You don't know? It's Ottawa. Uh, in Canada. On Earth Bet."

"Have you lived here long, Marie?"

"Why? Why are you asking so many questions? Get me out of here!"

"All in good time."

"Three years! Please! I moved here three years ago. Help me, please!"

"Shhh, everything's going to be all right." You place a finger against her lips.

Marie wants to be saved from the Simurgh.

Yes, you guessed that already. But you have to hear it, or the magic won't take.

You hand her the scarf you used in place of a mask earlier today. "Here, wrap yourself up in this. No matter what happens, don't let anyone see your face."

"O-okay." She wipes eyes with her sleeve, and some unladylike snorting noises indicate that she's trying to avoid getting snot on your scarf.

"Come forth," you whisper once she's done. Let there be wolf.

Marie shies away from Fenrir when he appears. "Up you go," you tell her. When she doesn't react, you gently but firmly push her in the right direction. She doesn't resist, but just looks back helplessly when she fetches up against the wolf.

Fenrir obediently lies down at your gesture, and you manage to coax Marie to get astride him. You mount up behind her with considerably less hassle.

"Now, what's the fastest way out of the city?" you ask.

"Back that way." She points in the direction everyone was already going, and Fenrir takes off at a sprint. Marie yelps in shock and flails about, but between your arms around her waist and Fenrir's bullshit riding wolf magic she doesn't even come close to falling off.

"You're steering," you tell her. "Just tell him which way to turn."

Aside from her directions, you ride in somber silence. Don't think about what's on the ground. After a couple of blocks you leave the killing fields behind. You're not sure whether the levitation field was localized around your particular area, or if it covered the entire city out to here. Don't think about it.

"How can you stand it?" Marie asks.

"Is not that uncomfortable a ride," you reply, vaguely insulted on Fenrir's behalf.

"Not the wolf, the scream!"

Oh. She can still hear the scream. It only stopped for you, personally.

"Hearing protection in my mask," you lie, tapping the metal covering your ears. "Is it getting fainter?"

"...yes." She brightens up. "We're escaping!"

You emerge onto the freeway, which can best be described as a giant traffic jam interrupted by occasional pileups. And most of the space not taken up by cars is taken up by pedestrians, as everyone abandoned their car and started running the moment they realized that they weren't going anywhere. Fenrir has to slow down significantly to avoid trampling people.

This isn't working. You could try to double back and find another route, but you're on a timer here. "Fuck property damage," you tell Fenrir. He stops avoiding the stalled cars and starts going over them instead, buckling metal and scratching paint as he leaps from one to the next. The ride becomes a lot less smooth, but he is able to maintain an unreasonably fast pace nonetheless. You silently say a prayer to whatever gods might be listening, giving thanks for bullshit physics.

A majority of the people you pass call out to you, trying to get you to bring them with you. You can't afford the time to stop and pick anyone up, though. You don't know how quickly the quarantine goes up when the Simurgh attacks a city, but you can't take any chances. Saving Marie is your absolute priority.

You get your phone out, mostly out of curiosity - you've entirely lost faith in the official guidelines. Four minutes, by that count. Probably a bit more for Marie, assuming Dragon started counting from when you first called her about the noise.

The road crests a small hill, and you look behind you to see if you can make out anything useful from this higher vantage point. What you see is a second sun in the sky. An angel-shaped... you frantically shut down sorcerer's sight. It may be closing the barn doors after the horse already burned down, but you're not giving her another high-bandwidth channel into your brain.

Between the distance and your bad glasses, you can't make out much in the way of details. She appears to be hovering upside down, with her wings flapping and fluttering erratically. She has, in fact, started throwing buildings at people.

Probably because she's being engaged by the Triumvirate. You think. There's a small black streak that's probably Alexandria, a blue streak emitting giant beams of light that's unquestionably Legend, and a glowing green dot that's almost certainly Eidolon.

Large jagged black shapes are forming in the air around Eidolon. As each one grows to be half the size of the Simurgh, he launches it at her. Most are blocked by flying buildings, or deflected by the flick of a wing.

Then one of them strikes her right in the torso, and sticks there. Instantly her wings go still, her arms and legs splay out and her back arches as she throws her head back.

Yes, daddy! Harder!

The black shard falls out of her chest a moment later, and she resumes her previous pose as if nothing happened. That's the last thing you see before Fenrir's path down the other side of the hill cuts off your vision. But you're not really thinking about the fight anymore.

That came in over soul's price. Again. You are undoubtedly compromised, and the Simurgh is using her all-access pass to your brain to mess with you instead of (or, you know, in addition to) making you go nuts and murder your friends and family.

Is it some weird dominance display? Look at what I could do to you, should I desire? You've never heard of her doing that before.

No, think positive. It's possible that the official numbers are right, and she only managed to hijack the verbal channel of soul's price in the time she had. Except for that part where she seemingly read your mind... No, you paid attention in computer class. Read access is not write access! You'll just keep telling yourself that.

"I can't hear the scream anymore," Marie says. "We made it!"

"We still need to get out before the quarantine goes up," you remind her. Fenrir doesn't slow down.

"There!" Marie shouts a little later. People in military uniforms have set up across the freeway up ahead. They are clearly preparing to block it off, but they don't try to shoot you as you ride past. You made it!

You take out your phone again, just in time to see 2:06 PM change into 2:07 PM. You type out a quick 'made it' to Dragon. Actually, better get some independent verification on that. Overexposure can result in summary execution. Another little technically non-secret fact that PHO doesn't want you to talk about, that you uncovered back when you were researching parahumans.

You direct Fenrir to turn around and approach one of the soldiers.

"Excuse me, sir?"

"Yes?" He regards you with a certain caution. Well, you are riding a giant wolf.

"Parahumans Low Key and Smith," you tell him. "Please log our presence outside the danger zone at 1407 hours." Marie, having no idea what you're talking about, sensibly remains silent.

"Ah." Understanding dawns across his face. "Will do!" He finds a pen, scrawls a note on his hand. But he verifies the time on his own watch first.

"Thank you. Now, which way to the rallying point?"

"Clear on the other side of the city, I'm afraid. You'll have to circle around." He indicates a clockwise direction. "Or I could radio for someone to come pick you up once it's all over."

"We'll get back to you on that."

A nudge of your knee has Fenrir turning away. You guide him several blocks away and out of sight before you dismount and help Marie do likewise.

Just some minor administrative details to take care of. You turn sorcerer's sight back on to verify that yes, Loyalty is in place.

"Ok, here's what happened," you tell her. "We never met. You never saw a wolf. In fact, you weren't even in the city. Through sheer dumb luck, you happened to be gone on some errand or other when the Simurgh attacked. The names Low Key and Smith mean nothing to you."

"Uh... okay? Sure. I don't know what's going on, but I won't tell anyone. It's the least I could do." She hugs you, squeezing tightly. "You saved my life, you know? Thank you."

You do know. You were counting on that enhanced gratitude to keep your secrets all along. You gently peel her away from you and accept your scarf back. That's definitely incriminating evidence now, so it joins your shoes and panties in the evidence bag. A quick "begone" and the bag vanishes along with the wolf.

You leave Marie behind and stroll back towards the military blockade. You hear shots ring out before you arrive. Looks like quarantine is in effect now, and someone didn't listen when told to turn back.

The soldiers look a lot grimmer on your return - no wonder, they just shot their first maybe-a-Simurgh-bomb civilian. It's unlikely to be their last.

"You're back."

"Yes. The young lady elected to make her own way, but I think I'll take you up on that ride. Just between you and me, sitting on a wolf was not all that comfortable." Fenrir gives an invisible snort of disgust at your vile slander. It's all right, he knows you didn't mean it.

"I'll call it in."

"Thank you."

You find a comfortable piece of concrete to rest your back against, and sit down to wait. You're sort of half expecting an emotional collapse now that everything is over, you've heard that's a thing that happens.

No? Nothing? Guess you're just a natural-born stone-cold badass. Yep, that's you. Smith the Tinker, born with brass balls and definitely not wearing a padded jockstrap. A small giggle escapes you. You try to clap your hands over your mouth to stop it, but of course end up bashing your hands against your mask - which just makes everything even funnier.

You just can't seem to stop giggling. You fumble for the audio cutoff switch on your mask. Mustn't disturb the nice men gunning down unarmed civilians. The, the funniest part is that none of that is sarcastic, they really are nice men, and they're- no, stop, that's not funny, it's horrible. Why is it so funny?

A small detached part of you notes that you are in fact having that emotional breakdown you were worried about. At least you're having fun with it? Yes indeedy, nothing like watching hundreds of people die horribly and having to spend the rest of your life worrying about whether you're a psychic bomb just waiting to go off and kill the people you love.

And now you're crying. Good job, Taylor. Some badass you are. Guess you lack balls after all!

 

At the eve of a new arc, allow me a moment to address the audience.

"Is this even Worm?" said audience might be saying right now. "Where's the grimderp? I'm hardly traumatized at all!"

Never fear, the chill nature of arc S was merely the train building up speed. And it will continue to do so for a while yet. The thing about a train, gentle reader, is that the ride it offers is quite smooth right up until there stops being any rails beneath it.

Be reassured, arc L is where my brain started having ideas that made my better judgement sit up and go "you sure about this bro? It's a bit much, don't you think?" I'm going to completely ignore it, of course, and proudly announce:

Content Warning: YES

===

When Dragon gives you a ride, you ride in style. But the Canadian armed forces are no slouches either. You've never ridden a helicopter before.

As you're about to leave, the... sergeant? The guy in charge places a fatherly hand on your shoulder. It's a bit funny, since your current persona is older than him, but you're actively trying to not find things funny right now.

"Just wanted to say, no one here is judging you. You kept it together when it mattered, yeah? Freaking out a bit afterwards is fine. Doesn't make you any less of a man."

Keeping your shit together would be a lot easier if people stopped being so goddamn funny all the time.

----

You wander the temporary base camp looking for Dragon. It's quickly emptying now that the fight is over, but you're still surrounded by more parahumans than you've seen before in your life. Truly a feast for the eyes, as long as they are magic eyes.

Now if they'd just stick around for a few weeks, you could get something useful out of it.

"Smith! There you are!" Dragon's voice comes from behind you. You turn around to finally meet her in the flesh.

Or... not? She's in power armor, of course, a colossal battle-suit almost ten feet tall and bristling with weapons. Except no, sorcerer's sight reveals that what you're looking at is tinkertech all the way through, with no chewy human center.

But sorcerer's sight also reveals that what you're looking at is definitely a parahuman. The glow of a power is unmistakable. You suppose a similar effect could be achieved by a Master capable of possessing inanimate objects - but then the power would also show up as active, which this one does not.

Sooo... Dragon is secretly a robot. A robot cape. A paranonhuman, if you will.

"Smith?"

"Ah, I'm afraid you've caught me staring, my lady. That's quite the provocative outfit you're wearing."

Dragon laughs, and it sounds remarkably genuine for a robot. "Yes, several Tinkers have told me so. I wanted to tell you that I've arranged for Strider to take you directly to my factory. I'll join you within the hour, but I still have some things to take care of here."

"Of course." As you understand it, Dragon usually handles the majority of the administrative work involved in Endbringer fights. Must be her giant robot brain. "Uh, where do I find this Strider?"

After she's given you directions, you also request her soul's price. Person enough to trigger means person enough to desire, right?

Dragon wants to have her restrictions removed.

You chew on that as you make your way to the departure point. What restrictions? It's the first time you've gotten a soul's price and been unclear on what you're supposed to accomplish. You've often boggled at the how, but never before has the what been in question.

You are jolted from your thoughts when you notice a glow on the side of the road. Did someone drop their tinkertech? You crouch down for a closer look.

Your breath hitches as you recognize the object. A slim crystalline feather - or a fragment of one, but even with he tip broken off what remains is still almost a foot in length. Its opalescent white hue leaves no doubt as to its origin. Someone hit her hard enough to send it flying all the way out here?

A likely story. A magic feather from the telekinetic precog just happened to land in the middle of the base camp, where it just happened to go unnoticed until you - an alchemist Tinker who was previously singled out by said precog for special treatment - stumbled across it?

Yeah, no. There is no conceivable universe in which this is not a trap.

You pick it up.

Your goal is marked by parahumans standing around in groups, waiting to leave. No one greets you as you take your place among them. They all look varying degrees of grim and tired, and few are talking even within the groups. Every so often a cape will appear, walk over to a group and exchange a few words, after which they all vanish without fanfare. That must be Strider.

He's dressed in eye-catching black and blue, in a style you would describe as 'action train conductor' - complete with a jaunty cap, even. Rather than a conventional mask, oversized ski goggles cover most of his face.

Before too long it's your turn.

"Smith?" he asks.

"Yes," you respond, and your surroundings change before you can finish the syllable. Strider vanishes before you can thank him.

Wait shit he didn't bring Fenrir along! He must designate individuals to teleport, rather than an area. And of course he didn't see the invisible wolf. Crap. Double crap. If Fenrir gets lost, how would you possibly find him again?

Uh, well, nothing you can do about that now. You'll just have to hope that he can find his own way home. You forcibly put the matter out of mind, and focus on the other important aspect of being teleported.

Looking around, you find yourself standing on a helipad on the edge of an industrial park. Several large but relatively flat buildings sprawl out in front of you, surrounded by thick forest. You'd be tempted to call it the middle of nowhere, but there's a surprisingly wide and well-maintained road leading off into the trees. Or maybe not so surprising when you think about it, she has to get materials delivered somehow.

Lacking any direction, you wander aimlessly between the buildings. You hear machine noises emanating from several, but don't try to get inside. Eventually you come upon the one that must be intended for you.

Large parts of the roof has been replaced with glass, and several gigantic parabolic mirrors have been mounted above it. Perfectly smooth and flawlessly reflective, they are a far cry from the hodgepodge mess you built back home. You feel your Tinker instincts stirring, and you haven't even seen the furnace itself yet.

You're not sure how long you stand there, lost in thought.

"Wait until you see what's inside," Dragon says, her voice tinged with amusement. When did she get here?

What she proceeds to show you is indeed impressive: The furnace is suitably large, the magma already preheated. The lenses in the focusing array alone probably cost more than your dad makes in a year. It's all motorized, with a control panel letting you move and swivel every mirror and lens in three dimensions, and adjust the temperature of the magma down to a tenth of a degree. Next to the control panel is a similarly advanced CAD workstation.

Surrounding the furnace, and taking up the entire rest of the building, is... well, to call it a 'well-appointed blacksmith's shop' would be like calling a 747 a 'well-appointed paper airplane'. It easily matches any factory-cathedral your power could dream up.

Throughout the tour, however, you're distracted by one thing: Dragon changed into more human-sized power armor since you last saw her. The casual wear of battle-suits, hardly armed at all.

Except, you know, there's obviously still no human inside. Nor is there any sort of swappable 'core' that could have been moved from one armor to the other, even a cursory examination with sorcerer's sight shows that their internal layout is completely different. But the parahuman glow doesn't lie: It is the same 'person'.

Sooo... Dragon is secretly two robots?

No, that's stupid. Once you've figured out how to be more than one robot, there is absolutely no reason to stop at two. Dragon is an arbitrary number of robots. Or, to use the technical term, a Skynet.

This revelation might require a slight change in your plans.

"Good news," you tell Dragon once the tour is concluded. "I figured out a way to reduce both the weight and the cost of the orichalcum."

"Oh? Do tell."

"I should be able to alloy it with up to twenty percent meteoric iron without impacting its durability, as long as I also add trace amounts of iridium." You repeat the words popping into your brain. "Maybe nineteen percent, to be safe."

"It has to be meteoric?"

"Yes," you state with finality. "...if you figure out why, I'd love for you to explain it to me."

"It's still cheaper than gold," Dragon admits. "Even if the reduction in density won't be all that-"

"No, no," you interrupt her, "the density isn't important. I said reduced weight, not reduced mass. Do pay attention."

"I see..."

Yes, it's that kind of Tinker bullshit. You move your hands in front of you, experimentally swinging an imaginary orichalcum sword around.

"Wow," you say as your brain supplies more data ex nihilo. "The effect on angular momentum will be nuts. How..?"

"I do believe the phrase is 'fucking Tinkers.'" Dragon is taking the nonsensical physics with good humor. She probably runs into stuff like this all the time.

"Yeah. Anyway, I can't add the iron until the orichalcum is fully synthesized, so you have a week to procure it."

"Im afraid it's going to be slightly more than a week. I've arranged the purchase, but there are strict regulations about transporting that much gold, and with the current state of emergency..."

"My schedule doesn't have all that much flex in it, you know." Your voice is grave, belying the song in your heart. More time with Dragon's power? Yes please!

"I know. If things still aren't moving by tomorrow I'll start calling in favors."

"In the meantime, I believe we have a... what would you call it? A drone? A weapons platform?"

"I just call them 'suits', even the unmanned ones." You're not sure if that's giving too much away, or a clever double bluff, or what. Whatever works for her. It. Whatever.

"-a suit to design. But, uh, I'd appreciate if you could show me the way to the bathroom first."

---

The 'bathroom' is a porta-potty behind the building. Okay, it's a few steps above the plastic abominations you'd find at a fairground, but it's clearly not a permanent structure. Makes sense, really. The factory is designed for robots pretending to be humans in fully-enclosed power armor. No reason to put in real plumbing all the way out here.
Dragon added one personal touch to the facilities, though. Your eye is instantly drawn to a small glowing spot of tinkertech on one of the walls. Leaning in close, you see that's it's a tiny camera. Without sorcerer's sight, you'd never have spotted it.

Well, you can't have Dragon catching you with your pants down. You wag your finger in front of the lens, then rip it out of its mount and put in on the sink, facing the wall.

---

"I hope you're blushing in there, young lady," you tell Dragon, launching the camera towards her with an underhand toss. She pretends to be so flustered she fumbles the catch. "I admit I'm not 'hip with the kids', but I believe it's still considered polite to ask for those kinds of pictures."

"I, uh, I just-"

"You have no excuse?"

"No, I suppose not. I have cameras monitoring every other part of the facility, I guess I kept going out of habit, and-"

"And you're sorry you got caught?"

"Yes. No! I'm regular sorry, I shouldn't have done that." It's sort of funny, the way she doesn't know that you know and has to keep pretending to be human, but it's hardly productive. You're here to steal her power, not indulge in playacting.

"Water under the bridge," you say. "Now, about that design..."

You start by sketching a rough silhouette, basing the design on the inspiration you had when watching Kaiser's armor. Your Tinker power likes armor, and you're quickly refining the design and sketching out decorative flourishes and intricate interlocking joints. Dragon vetoes most of the decorative stuff, preferring a sleeker design. Probably because she's the one paying for the orichalcum.

You get into a lively discussion about the joints, however. You're basing your designs on human-worn armor, but with a robot you can design the articulation of the limbs however you want no longer need to worry about comfort. Dragon is more experienced in building robots, but hasn't worked with this much indestructible material before and doesn't have your instincts for it. Between the two of you, you're pretty sure you're breaking new ground in the field of armorology.

You didn't expect that you'd come remotely this close to holding up your end of the collaboration. You frequently have to pause and think for minutes at a time. Ostensibly to 'catch up with the World's Greatest Tinker', because a bit of flattery never hurts. It's even half true, you're so busy contributing that you need the pauses to internalize your observations of her power.

You're also having incredible amounts of fun. Before you know it it's past midnight, and you don't realize it until Dragon shakes you awake where you fell asleep in your chair.

"It's been a long day, hasn't it?" she says. "Let me show you to your room."

Your room is a cot in the corner, behind a pair of screens. You're sleepy, but you're still alert enough to look pointedly at the wall just above your bed, and again at another spot on one if the screens.

"I'll remove the cameras."

---

When try you get dressed the next morning, you find that your costume has other ideas. The residue of containment foam from the crash has not only stained it an eye-catching orange, it somehow hardened overnight. Luckily you still have two sets of the bulky unisex clothing you wore while transforming, and your backpack mostly protected it from the foam.

Your skin also features a certain orange tint here and there. You sponge yourself off in the sink as best you can. You're probably going to be pretty smelly by the time you leave, but at least Dragon has no nose.

You bring the remains of your costume to Dragon. "You're the world's foremost expert on containment foam. Is this salvageable?"

"I'll see what I can do."

After a quick breakfast of the finest Canadian MREs (Dragon 'already ate', of course) you get back to work.

"I forgot to ask you earlier," Dragon says, "what shape was the Katla in?"

"The- the plane?" you ask. Dragon nods. "A good forty percent of it was still in one piece, if not quite the right shape."

She makes a humming noise. "Worth recovering, probably. The paperwork for removing technology from a quarantine zone is going to be nightmare, though."

"I thought you were in charge of all that paperwork."

"That's how I know how awful it is."

During lunch you call your dad. The instruction manual for your mask was also rendered partially illegible by containment foam residue, but you manage to figure out the 'secure call' functionality. It boasts of 'tinker-proof encryption', 'undetectable tunneling' and other such things you're not really qualified to evaluate. You have little choice but to trust it.
It's pretty neat, actually. With the right settings enabled the mask sends your undisguised voice over the phone, while still broadcasting the altered version through the external speakers.

You could simply disable the speakers, but you find it amusing to let Dragon overhear your end of the conversation and restrict yourself to statements that work for both father/daughter and husband/wife conversations.

"Of course everything is fine, you worry too much."

"Yes, I'm having fun."

"Love you, bye."

Things like that.

"Secret identities, eh?" you say after you hang up. "I'm on a lovely skiing vacation right now, did you know?" Dragon elects not to scold you for keeping secrets from your loved ones, possibly because she thinks you're older than her.

...come to think of it, are you? Robots don't have childhoods, just when did Dragon make her debut?

"It would be really neat if the gold arrived in time to melt by sunrise tomorrow," you remark as the sun sets.

"I know, I'm working on it." From the way she stops contributing for long periods of time, you guess she's on the phone with a lot of people. Unlike you, she does not elect to share her half of the conversations.

Her efforts bear fruit, though, as some time after midnight an armored truck pulls up by the factory, accompanied by a motley collection of capes. You only recognize one of them. A man whose armor alone would be worth a week of study, were you not otherwise occupied.

"Armsmaster," you say, nodding your head in his direction.

"Smith." He's never seen you before, but he's able to pick things up from context.

"Thank you for forwarding my proposal."

"Good luck on your project." There's a distinct note of envy in his voice, or is it jealousy?

The heroes help unload the gold into the furnace. You of course looked up the price of gold when you first became aware of your Tinker power, which lets you calculate that Dragon is spending roughly fifty million dollars on this venture in gold alone.

"Make sure it melts in time, but don't turn up the heat more than you have to," you tell her before you stumble off to bed. It's so late it's early, and you have to be up before sunrise tomorrow. Early to rise and early to bed / makes a man healthy, wealthy and dead. That's how the rhyme goes, you think.

---

Further design work is put on hold as you struggle with the unfamiliar controls. After a few hours of mild panic you get the hang of moving the mirrors and are able to resume. You needed a challenge, right? Now you get to monitor the forge, design a robot and steal Dragon's power, all at the same time.

"What do you want to name it?" Dragon asks.

"Smaug," you say without hesitation.

"It's a classic, but unfortunately not one in the public domain quite yet."

"It has armor made of treasure," you counter. And a weak point it doesn't now about, but you don't tell her that.

"You know, I can't really argue with that. I'll get in touch with the Tolkien estate. I doubt they'd object to us using the name."

"Hard to think of a more wholesome activity than opposing the Endbringers," you agree.

"Good thing Behemoth's shoulder is extremely inhospitable to thrushes," she jests. Ah. Great minds think alike, to a certain extent. Quick, deploy a distraction!

"...Let's maybe not joke about a clever feathered being ruining our shit?"

"Sorry."

You wave off her apology. "You know what we really should do, though? We should put a patch of plain steel on its breast - with orichalcum beneath, of course."

Dragon laughs. "Oh, very well. I've denied you enough frills, I'll let you have this one."