Ponzi (Worm/Celestial Forge)

Spoiler

Someone in Diamond Hard’s comment section recommended I read Celestial Forge. So, here’s my take on that, but with someone really desperate for money who tries to use the power to get rich quick. Also, the Forge might be modified to be less broken.

What I really needed was money. Lots and lots of money. I actually had a fair amount of money and pretty recently, too, but I’ve taken to gambling, both in the stock market and on horses and haven’t been very lucky recently. I ended up losing my job in marketing as a spillover. Like I said, I could really use some money. Instead what I got was a key. It was a normal looking key, but what was interesting about it was instead of opening the door it was put in, it opened a pocket dimension.

The pocket dimension had two rooms, the first was an empty room with a tree engraved on the ground, the second was a combination wood/metal shop with a basic set of tools and supplies. I tried taking a sheet of steel out of the workshop and it disappeared, but when it did I understood that the supplies can’t be taken from the room, but if they’re used to build something then you can take what you build out and the supplies will be replaced. I realized at that moment that I could use the supplies to build furniture, then sell the furniture and the supplies needed to build more furniture would be instantly replaced.

I wasn’t sure if this was the solution to my money problems that I needed, but it was worth a shot. I used my phone to reserve a spot at the day-after’s flea market for $20 and spent the afternoon pounding out some homemade furniture.

I showed up to the flea market the day afterward in my SUV, with a bookshelf, a coffee table, and four of these bar stools. Turnout at the market was decent, but had a fair amount of window shoppers. I ended up letting the bookshelf and coffee table go for a hundred bucks each, followed by a bar stool for a twenty and the remaining stools as a set for fifty. I actually ended up finishing just before lunch. Two hundred seventy bucks for like nine hours of work really wasn’t enough to pay back all of the money I owed people, but it proved the proof of concept worked. I signed up for the next day’s flea market on my phone while getting lunch at one of the food carts they let into the area. Without my money troubles, this would almost be a relaxing life.

-0-0-0-

Just as I thought, the supplies automatically replenished and I spent the rest of the afternoon building even more furniture to take advantage of the free stuff. It was enough that I needed to make two trips to get them to my stall. When lunch came around, I was $350 richer and a bird house, chair, desk, and table + chair set poorer.

I was munching down off a beef burrito when one of the other vendors came up to me.

“I noticed you selling a bunch of homemade furniture. You have any training in that?” He said.

“Nah, I just got into wood-and-metal shop recently, but I don’t actually need the furniture, so I’ve just been selling it here. You’re the guy that does glass sculptures of animals, right?” I said.

“Yep. I used to work down in the docks, but I had enough savings that I was able to retire when the area went under. The glass sculptures are just a hobby for me, but it’s nice that it makes money instead of costing it. There’s no way you’re able to sell your stuff for more than it costs to make it, though.” He said.

“It’s certainly not winning the lottery, but I am coming out ahead.” I said.

“Really? Maybe you should show me how you work sometime. I’m Gy van Huizen.” He said.

“Steve Fiorelli and if you give me your number then I’ll let you know if I’m available.” I replied. I wasn’t sure what I’d do with a glassmaker’s phone number, but my dad used to say you should always be networking.

-0-0-0-

With the second day of flea marketing done and $620 in my pocket, I decided to ring up my girlfriend and take her out drinking. She worked as an assistant manager at a Ruby Tuesday, but she was open to getting drunk at any time at any place that wasn’t a Ruby Tuesday. If you must know, we got very very drunk and then she spent the night and the following morning at my place.

I ended up skipping the flea market the day after. It probably had something to do with the fact that I was drinking when I would’ve needed to be making furniture and was sleeping when it started, but I had no ragrets.

Having a free day to take stock of my situation actually seemed like the kind of thing I really needed when I thought about it. I had blown up my finances, got fired, discovered a magical key, started a get-rich-quick scheme, and then gone on a bender all without taking a moment to decompress. To take some stock of my situation, I have a two hundred thousand dollar condo with about a hundred fifty thousand dollar mortgage, I have about a quarter million in gambling debt, five grand in various financial institutions, ten grand in credit card debt, and about a thousand in cash.

I might join the Protectorate if they could wipe out my debts, but I’m not interested in any of the work they do. I just want to have a good time and do what I want. The gangs might be more willing to wipe out my debts to shady criminals, but that’s also not work I want to do. As for Furniture-Store-Tycoon, if I made $500 a day and went there every day, that would be a good amount of money, but would get suspicious pretty quickly and probably isn’t enough for my debts. In summary, I am absolutely screwed.

-0-0-0-

Actually, come to think of it, I’m not screwed at all. Sure, I may owe some nice gentlemen a quarter million dollars, but if an independent hero was to break into their office, destroy their books, and tip the Protectorate off to their operation, would they really be able to collect?

That is the story of how I came to be parked outside of the shadiest payday lender in the city, wearing a hoodie, ski mask, and gloves, with my car’s plates in the glove box, four 5-gallon containers of gas in the backseat, a lighter in my pocket, and a brand new prepaid cell phone in my hand.

“Hi. You’ve reached the PRT Emergency Line, how may I help you?” I heard.

“Hi. I’m a new independent hero. I just wanted to let you know that the CashNow on Lord and 12th is actually a front for an illegal gambling operation. I’m gonna deal with it right now.” I said.

“Sir? SIR?” was what she said, but what I heard was “IT’S GO TIME!”

I sped around the parking lot, parked on the curb in front of the CashNow and chucked an open container of gasoline through the front door and followed it in while carrying two more open containers. I heard someone making noise in the backroom where the crime happens, so I threw one of the open containers to the side, flicked on the lighter, and as soon as I saw the back room’s door handle start to twist, threw the third container at it, and followed up immediately with the lit lighter.

I was not expecting the fire to get that big that fast. I was barely one second and one foot in the door and half the cashier’s counter was on fire. The door to the backroom was also on fire, but whoever was back there decided the door was better closed. The fire was spreading a few feet a second, so I decided “mission accomplished” and bailed.

My heart didn’t stop racing until I was a mile away in a Walmart parking lot reinstalling my license plates. I thought I heard a fire truck go by, but that might have just been my imagination. Now with a little luck, my bookies will be in too much trouble from the fire and the PRT poking around to bother me about my debts.

-0-0-0-

I spent the next day working on home-made furniture and drinking the money I would have paid my bookies in the form of margaritas. Not at the same time, well I tried doing both at the same time, but that didn’t work out, so I spent the morning doing furniture, lunch drinking, the early afternoon doing furniture, and then the late afternoon, evening, and night drinking.

It took me three trips to get my furniture to the flea market, which was not fun to do hungover, but I managed. I made about $500 before lunch with a pair of my better furniture sets and took lunch to hunt down that van Huizen guy.

“Hi, Gy. I remember talking to you a few days about the flea market. I was wondering if you knew of anything that might sell well here.” I asked.

“Well, you’d have to buy anything if you wanted to sell it here and there’s not much money to get here. That’s why this place is ⅔ garage sales and ⅓ starving artists. Like if you keep bringing this much furniture for another week or two you’ll flood the market, since there’s only so much demand. I mean, electronics and jewelry are always popular, but that’s cause you have people unloading their old stuff and selling to customers who care more about price than quality.” He said. “I think you might be misunderstanding the kind of place this is.”

“Yeah,” I said, “maybe, I am.”

After that downer, I ended up selling the rest at a fire sale so that I could be done and leave early. I only left with about $600 bucks, but that’s six hundred bucks more than I had yesterday.

-0-0-0-

I checked online and the type of parahuman I wanted to be was officially called a “rogue”, someone who doesn’t do the hero or villain thing and focuses on making money. I realized that if I really wanted to join their ranks, what I really needed was a lawyer. Someone who can tell me how to make money, if not legally, in a way that wasn’t obviously illegal. I ended up finding what seemed like a decent corporate attorney and scheduling a consultation for the next day.

-0-0-0-

I was sitting in a bland conference room when a man in a fancy suit stepped in.

“I’m Michael McFaul. Are you John Doe?” He said.

“I’m not, but I am the man you’re looking for.” I said as I pushed $200 across the table.

“How can I help you today?” He said.

“Suffice it to say that an acquaintance of mine has come into supernatural powers and was looking for legal advice on how to monetize them.” I said.

The meeting was somewhat helpful, they told me about a PRT program that pays rogues a stipend to stay out of trouble and gave me some advice about the needless hoops that capes have to jump through in order to sign contracts and own property. Unfortunately, the advice I really wanted, how to make lots of money with the ability to open pocket dimensions from doors, either didn’t exist or they didn’t know about.

-0-0-0-

I decided against signing up for the PRT stipend. Sure, I could probably do it under a separate identity, so that I could keep the stipend and have a legal way to get money as a cape even if I did get into trouble, but I wouldn’t be able to sign up without giving away at least some hints to my identity and a fair amount of knowledge about my power. Besides they’d almost certainly use it to pressure me into joining the Protectorate and I’d run out of legitimate sounding excuses pretty quickly if they pressed the issue. Not to mention the idea of doing it as a separate identity won’t hold up to scrutiny. Like if they know there’s a guy out there who can open a pocket dimension by putting a key in a lock, then any time someone in Brockton Bay opens a door to a pocket dimension, they will suspect me, even if it isn’t actually me. I’m willing to sell knowledge of my power, but not that cheaply.

-0-0-0-

Afterwards, I was just sitting at home drinking the afternoon away, when I got a phone call.

“Hello?” I asked.

“Is this Mr. Fiorelli?” They asked.

“Who’s asking?” I said.

“Call me Justin. I work with the CashNow company. I just wanted to touch base with you and let you know that we’re sorry for any inconvenience that the fire at our facility may have caused you. We’d like to schedule a meeting with you to check in and make sure that our business relationship can continue smoothly.” He said.

I would have sworn, but at that point I was distracted by suddenly developing the ability to work as if I was literally ten people.

Spoiler: Celestial Forge Bookkeeping

Leftover wc: N/A
Wordcount: 2212
Excess: 212

Workshop (Personal Reality) 100:
Each purchase of this adds to your Personal Reality Workshop needed to perform a specific type of craft, which is to be specified when purchase is made. It comes with a basic set of tools and supplies. Good for fixing or creating all sorts of things, although any complex parts or nonstandard supplies will have to be brought in from outside. Additional purchases can add different types of Workshops to your Personal Reality or expand existing ones.

Access Key (Personal Reality) Free:
This is a special key which lets you access your Personal Reality and its contents.
When inserted into any lock on any door, the door opens to reveal a gateway into your Reality at a predetermined location within it. You are the only person who can take the key from the lock, the gateway remains open as long as the key is in the lock, and if the key is ever lost or stolen you will find it in your pocket a few minutes later. You cannot close the door as long as you are inside the Personal Reality.

Entrance Hall (Personal Reality) Free:
This is the room your Access Key opens a door to. It starts off as a 5-meter cube with blank white walls, floor, and ceiling, as some doors, one leading to the current Host Reality with additional doors leading to other extensions as these get added to your Personal Reality. Feel free to customize this Entrance Hall as you see fit. Additional Halls can, at your discretion, be linked only to certain keys or only to certain extensions. This allows you to have an entry hall just for skiing if you want.

Don't Need A Team (Ace Combat) (100CP)
Fighter planes are pretty complicated machines, and more often than not you need a whole crew to maintain them so that they don’t break down in the middle of a fight and doom the pilot. You know your plane well enough to circumvent this issue. You've got just the right idea on what needs tuning up and what needs fixing, along with having the speed to be able to fix a plane up by yourself without the need for a crew in a fraction of the time. Performance issues are a thing of the past for you.

// Other Ace combat perks

 

“I can meet tomorrow evening? Does that work for you?” I said.

“That works fine. Come to the Ratskeller at 6 PM. We’ll have a reserved seat under your name.” Justin said before hanging up.

Evidently, my first plan to get out of my gambling debts wasn’t a success, but maybe if I played along enough I could figure out how to make my second attempt work. While I was waiting for that, I decided to do another round of the flea market, but this time I decided to use my new power. I got a half-dozen table-sized pieces of wood and just started carving artwork in them. I still wasn’t actually that good at artwork, but this was closer to tracing. I would look up artsy photos on my phone, use a marker thing to doodle them on the wood, carve them like a paint-by-numbers picture for kindergarteners, and finish by framing them in metal. I decided to diversify a bit at the end by creating three much smaller wood engraved art pieces. When I finished sorting the artwork that I would bring, I noticed that the tree on the ground now had two stars lit up on it. It was oddly beautiful and I just knew that I was going to have a good day tomorrow.

Unfortunately, the flea market betrayed me. The masterpieces of art I made were apparently worth less than the discount furniture I had previously sold. I ended up dumping all of my art before noon for $300 and heading out to my lawyer’s office.

I think he understood that a John Doe claiming to operate on behalf of a cape was actually the cape out of costume, but he had the grace not to mention it and I would expect attorney-client privilege to force him to keep it a secret. What I wanted to know is how I could take cash and put it into a bank account without setting off money-laundering alarms. They were happy to take their payment in cash, but being used as an actual bank was of no interest to them. They were happy however to set up a shell company for me and start the process of getting it a bank account that anyone could deposit cash into. That was a step in the right direction, but it would’ve been much more convenient if there was just some Cape Accountant I could call to manage my money for me. I tried asking about such a person and they politely said that they couldn’t refer me to criminals.

Oh well, with the lawyer doing his job I figured I could go to the Ratskeller early. The idea was that if I acted normal, I could relax at the bar and spy on the man I was supposed to meet. This would let me figure out what kind of trap I was about to walk into. So, that’s what I did, I got there around two, hopped up to the counter, and spent two hours pounding down Jagerbombs and cheese fries. Slightly after four, I noticed one guy with a notebook at a corner table. No one else was seated in the corner, but visitors would come by, chat for ten minutes, and then leave. At that point, I switched from Jagerbombs to diet coke because this was clearly something I wanted to be sober for.

He was a buff white guy about my age with blonde hair and at around 5:50, I walked over and sat down next to him. “You’re Justin, I presume?” I asked.

“The name’s actually Victor, but I’m the guy you’re here to meet. I’d offer you a drink, but I can tell you’ve already had plenty.” He said.

“Just dealing with some nerves. I'm good now.” I said. “So, what do I owe ya?”

“Our records indicate you have a debt of $241,600. I’m curious what your current plans are to pay it off.” He said.

“Well,” I said as I took out a hundred bucks and gave it to him, “my plan is to give you the money. I wouldn’t be averse to you forgiving the loan, though.”

“Forgiveness isn’t on the table, but don’t you have a job that pays well enough to handle this?” He asked. I didn’t even get a chance to answer, he must have seen my face and decided to keep talking. “Well, I’m sorry to hear that, but if you’re willing to do some quick work, I can ensure you’re well paid.” He said.

I leaned forward and said, “I’m listening.”

“It would just be some courier work. You’d just be taking a safe out to the middle of nowhere, trading it for another safe, and bringing the second safe back here. It should only be an afternoon’s work, but we’d give you two grand for it.” He said.

There is no way this isn’t criminal, but it did seem like easy money, especially since this is probably more of a job interview than an actual job. It’s another lead to learning how much I need to blow up before my creditors forget I exist and if worst comes to worst, I can just burn my civilian ID and live as a cape full-time, not right now, but soon enough.

“That sounds exactly like the kind of thing I’d be interested in.” I said.

“Great, show up to this address tomorrow at 10 AM and follow their instructions.” He said as he handed me a blank business card with an address written on it. “You’re dismissed.”

-0-0-0-

As I parked on the street outside some abandoned garage, I took a moment to think. I decided a few days ago that I didn’t want to be some gang’s cape enforcer and just a few days later I’m being some gang’s flunky. I didn’t get too long to muse on the irony though before some guy knocked on my trunk, I took the hint and opened it which he used as an opportunity to throw a fricking safe back there. The car had almost stopped bouncing by the time he walked up to the passenger’s seat, got in, and gave me an address to drive to.

My GPS said that we were going on an hours-long drive to a Walmart in upstate New York, but my passenger wasn’t in a talkative mood, so I mostly listened to music. I started with a 90’s rock station and then went through a succession of country rock stations once we left civilization.

The actual destination wasn’t that exciting either. We just parked while my passenger texted a few people, before an old pickup parked next to us. We opened the trunk, they opened the trunk, and our safe was swapped for their safe. Then we started back to Brockton. My passenger and the new safe got out at the garage, but not before my passenger gave me an envelope and a phone number.

“Call this number and ask for Doug if you want to do any more of this kind of work.” He said.

“Is that your name, Doug?” I asked.

He shrugged and said, “It could be.”

This might be a bit of an opportunity. If whatever they’re shipping is really worth handing out envelopes stuffed with two grand, then it’s either cash or drugs. If I decided to actually do the job, then I could use my key dimension to hide it where it can’t be found and pass any mundane search. If I decide the work isn’t for me then I can just steal the safe and use my workshop’s tools to pry it open. Regardless, every place I would go and every phone number I would get would be valuable information. Either criminal contacts willing to pay me money to do their work or yet one more thing I can throw under the bus to save my own skin.

I did some research on that abandoned garage. It was outside of town, so it technically wasn’t within any gang’s territory, but it was closest to the E88’s territory, which is actually a disappointment for me. I don’t really have a problem working for criminals, but the E88 is bad for other reasons and it makes it a lot harder to get away from my bookie if they’re just one tentacle of the city’s largest gang. I thought about calling Doug’s number, but it wouldn’t do to rush into things when I have other options.

I thought about doing another flea market run, but van Huizen was right, there are only so many people interested in cheap homemade furniture, and dumping endless supply on them would exhaust demand. Not to mention, it wouldn’t be very subtle. Fortunately, I could solve both issues by going out of town. The demand there would still be high and I could keep a low profile by simply skipping town before I overstayed my welcome.

I started to actually prepare for the trip and discovered that I could get an Airbnb with a garage in Boston for a hundred bucks a night. That’s not cheap, but if I’m making extra money it would be worth it. Also, Boston is a much nicer town than Brockton.

When I woke up in the morning, I decided to just go for it. It might work out, it might not, but it would be fun to find out, or at least that’s what I told myself as I reserved a room for a week and a half. The drive to Boston was much quicker and much nicer than when I went to New York and it was only a few hours after making the reservation that I was getting the keys to a condo from a nice couple that used it as a second home every so often.

My first day in Boston was full-on tourist mode. I did the Harbor Walk, I did the Skywalk Observatory, I went to Fenway and got a Red Sox shirt with a Patriots jacket, I did Bunker Hill, I did the USS Constitution, and I finished with the Freedom Trail. I had my fill of culture and history for at least a month. With that done, I reserved a stall at the flea market for a week and pounded out four car loads of furniture in an hour.

My days became a loop like that. Each day I would bring four SUV loads of homemade furniture to sell, I wouldn’t get a good price, but since I wasn’t paying for supplies the thousand bucks I would make each day was pure profit, when people asked me where I got the furniture from, I would say that I inherited it all from a relative who was really into arts and crafts. The Boston flea market was much nicer than the Brockton one, I had much more competition, but it worked out since there were more customers and they were less financially desperate than Brocktonites. In the evenings, I would hit the club scene and drink everything Boston had to drink. In the nights and in the early mornings, I would pound out massive amounts of furniture in almost no time.

It was on the second day that I got a phone call from my lawyer. My shell company now had an attached bank account, I could pick up the debit card for it in a week, but they were happy to give me all the account details over the phone which I could use to deposit cash into the account.

At the end of the week, I had about six thousand dollars. I decided to split it in half, half I would either invest or deposit into my shell company’s bank account, the other half I would take with me to a casino to have a celebratory bender.

Like any good bender, it started as soon as I woke up. So, at 10 AM I took a taxi to the Boston Harbor Casino, grabbed a margarita, and sat down with a thousand bucks in chips at a roulette table. I just alternated between the outside bets, taking turns putting $50 on red, or on even, or high, or the opposites. The money didn’t really matter to me, I was just enjoying the adrenaline. That adrenaline and alcohol combo high met a completely new high, which made it even better as I spontaneously learned how to make a variety of weapons ranging from conventional pistols to blocky particle cannons and how to modify weapons, in general, to be better. It would be nice if I had some kind of super gambler power, but casinos throw people out if they think they have that kind of power, so it has its downsides. Although, given that I just developed the power to outfit an army, who’s to say that I won’t someday get good luck?

This new power had thrown me off my game enough that I decided to get dinner. It was a reasonable stopping point anyway since I was about fifteen drinks in and four hundred dollars down. They had this massive screen behind the bar where they were doing some kind of Oscar nominee marathon. I didn’t come here to watch cowboy Matt Damon rescue kidnapped girls, but if it’s on while I enjoy my buzz I don’t mind.

Any thoughts of Matt Damon were driven out of my head when a pretty girl sat down next to me. She looked a lot like my girlfriend, if you changed the hair, perked up the chest, and did her makeup differently, but I enjoyed her company. We got to talking and she was a good listener. I regaled her with stories of my past few weeks stripped of all the references to my powers. I kissed her when I had finished my meal, which she took as a chance to say that she was an employee of the casino and would be willing to take me up to her room for two hundred bucks. There was no way I could’ve said no to that kind of deal and I’m glad I didn’t.

Afterward, my head was clear enough that I thought this “gun tinker” thing deserved to be looked at. I napped off my drunkenness in the car before driving back to the Airbnb and sleeping until noon exactly. I had some coffee and got some Red Bull from a 7-11 on my way out to look at gun shops. It was as my power promised me I knew a way to improve every gun I saw. I still had about two grand I was planning to spend at the casino before my plans changed, so guns were a decent backup plan. I got a pistol, which I wanted to upgrade into a machine pistol and then I spent about fifteen hundred dollars on a rifling machine, a set of tools for cartridge making, and some various other things that my power said it could use for lasers.

When I got them back to my workshop, I took a minute to admire how nicely they fit in with my other equipment. Out of all my tinkering equipment, the gunsmithing tools were the only ones I actually paid for, but they were also the ones that were going to let me make serious money.

Spoiler: Celestial Forge Bookkeeping

Leftover wc: 212
Wordcount: 2559
Excess: 771

-Customized Weapons (XCOM) (100CP)
You know that efficiency is number one, because waste is a thief. You know how to make the best designs better, and will ensure that the equipment in use is ergonomic, streamlined, and efficient.

 

I decided the easiest way to get the contacts I needed to turn this knowledge into gold was to create a throwaway ID and try to do it in the loudest way possible. After I swung by the bank and dropped off the $3,000 in my business account, I quickly picked up a prepaid burner phone and headed off to a Panera bread where I could use their wifi to create a PHO thread.

■​

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■​

♦ Topic: Tinker Pricing
In: Boards ► Places ► America ►Boston
Haadweh (Original Poster) (Unverified Cape)
Posted On Feb 20nd 2011:
So, I've recently come into the ability to make weapons. I was planning on selling them and I was wondering how much I should charge for them?
Essentially, I can make pistols, rifles, sniper rifles, shotguns, light machine guns, rocket launchers, heavy machine guns, and grenades, but each type of weapon can be built as a conventional, laser, or plasma weapon, with some exceptions. Anyone in Boston know where a tinker can buy large quantities of sapphire and sell a few dozen particle cannons?

​

(Showing page 1 of 2)

►Dawgsmiles (Veteran Member)
Replied On Feb 20nd 2011:
I can just tell this debut is gonna be one to remember.
►Chrome
Replied On Feb 20nd 2011:
If you're really gonna ask the internet for prices, why not just set up an auction?
►AverageAlexandros (Cape Husband)
Replied On Feb 20nd 2011:
This is really not a good idea. Selling guns to strangers is so risky when you can just join the Protectorate and get a good paycheck from them.
►Robby
Replied On Feb 20nd 2011:
Accord must love all this chaos.
►Weld (Verified Cape) (Wards Boston)
Replied On Feb 20nd 2011:
The Boston Protectorate would be willing to buy everything you can make. If you stop by, I'd be happy to give you a tour.
►Reave (Verified PRT Agent)
Replied On Feb 20nd 2011:
Yes, I really must insist that you join the Boston Protectorate. New Tinkers are extremely vulnerable to forced recruitment. The Protectorate is both capable of preventing this and capable of mentoring you on how to tinker at the same time.
►Thatdude
Replied On Feb 20nd 2011:
I'll give you $100 for a rocket launcher.
►Procto the Unfortunate Tinker (Not a tinker)
Replied On Feb 20nd 2011:
I would just take the cost it takes you to build something and multiply it by four. That should give you a healthy profit while making plenty of sales.
►Miss Mercury (Protectorate Employee)
Replied On Feb 20nd 2011:
Even if you aren't sold on joining the Protectorate, there's no harm in stopping by for a visit.
​

End of Page. 1

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■​

I decided to bail on Panera at that point. It would give PHO time to generate useful answers and I could use the time to buy some electronics and maybe make a few laser guns. Going electronics shopping as a tinker was actually kinda stressful. I kept looking at all of these consoles and computers that I would love to play with, but at the same time, I’m planning on tearing them apart for parts as soon as I get them somewhere private. It was nerve-wracking and I wish I had enough to both get parts and get sweet video games, but I didn’t. The $1,500 or so was used to buy like five business class computers and then I promptly took them back to the Airbnb and into my workshop.

I quickly pounded out a plasma pistol with a matching belt holster. This could be my personal weapon as a cape and if I’m discreet enough maybe even a concealed weapon for use as a civilian. After that was done, I started stripping the desktops for laser and plasma parts and was doing some initial work on a few bigger weapons, but I was interrupted when I saw my watch and realized that I should probably check on my PHO thread.

■​

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(Showing page 11 of 12)

►Thatdude
Replied On Feb 20nd 2011:
He could've easily been pranking us. It's not like we have any proof and it wouldn't be the first time.
►Procto the Unfortunate Tinker (Not a tinker)
Replied On Feb 20nd 2011:
Thatdude: I'm still thinking real, since that power description is wonky enough to be a real Tinker power. As for him being AFK, it's a point against, but not everyone lives on PHO.
►Nod
Replied On Feb 20nd 2011:
I'm sure we'll know in a week when someone robs a bank using a laser shotgun.
►Haadweh (Original Poster) (Unverified Cape)
Replied On Feb 20nd 2011:
First, all of the haters can check this out. That's one of the plasma pistols I built.
Now for individual responses:
Procto: I was, in fact, busy tinkering.
Weld: I'm willing to sell the Protectorate weapons, but joining them is right out.
Fenwaagh: Just because I'm not interested in joining the Protectorate, doesn't mean I'm interested in joining the Teeth either.
Answer Key: The answer's probably similar to how other tinkers would answer, but I'm gonna keep the details to myself.

People who are serious about buying should DM me a phone number and I'll get back to them tonight.
►Answer Key
Replied On Feb 20nd 2011:
He lives!
►Tumbles
Replied On Feb 20nd 2011:
So, what's the difference between laser and plasma weaponry?
►Weld (Verified Cape) (Wards Boston)
Replied On Feb 20nd 2011:
Tumbles: Lasers are simple beams of photons. Plasma is high-energy gas, usually accelerated out the barrel with magnets.

@Haadweh: I'm really sad to hear that. I'd be willing to come to you if that would make you feel better. We don't have to do anything you don't want to do. Sent you a DM.
►JWilson (Verified PRT Agent)
Replied On Feb 20nd 2011:
I'd have to warn you that selling tinker tech weaponry online is technically illegal and selling it to people you know to be criminals is extremely illegal.
►Haadweh (Original Poster) (Unverified Cape)
Replied On Feb 20nd 2011:
Weld: Thanks.
JWilson: I'm sure you'd have as much luck catching me as you have catching Accord and the Butcher.
►Mac's Dual Rocket Propelled Grenades
Replied On Feb 20nd 2011:
Yeah, JWilson, you guys can't even catch Damsel of Distress. Why would you be able to catch OP?
​

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​

■​

Yeah, I may have kicked off that flame war, but that didn’t mean I wanted to stick around in the trenches. I checked my DMs and found a few phone numbers, one from Weld, two from obvious throwaway accounts, and a fourth from Citrine attached at the end of a long letter where she requested more details on my tech, resource requirements, and asked me to get back to her immediately. Then of course there was a fair amount of spam. I copied the numbers down on my phone before going to lunch on the other side of town. It may have seemed strange to leave an Arby’s parking lot in order to go to an entirely different Arby’s, but I wanted to separate myself from anywhere I had logged in as Haadweh as quickly as possible to avoid being tracked.

After a late lunch, I decided to head out into the woods. It wouldn’t do if my first time using my pistol was when I needed it. Besides, noone actually likes trees, do they? If trees didn’t want to get shot, why didn’t they evolve the ability to run away? It was pretty fun just sitting on a side road off of the highway and blasting holes in trees, but it would’ve been even better with a beer, then I could really pretend to be a redneck. Although, if I was gonna go through all of that trouble, then I would probably want to build a bigger gun. That would really teach those trees what for. Pew pew trees! Oh, wait, the trees are on fire now. Time to run before the fire department starts looking for arsonists.

It was as I was driving away, all nonchalantly, when I got another power. That was much faster than the previous one, but it was balanced out by sucking. Seriously, I have a pocket dimension workshop, the ability to work as if I was an entire team, am a weaponry tinker, and now… I’m good at tailoring? Whatever, they can’t all be awesome.

I made a swing by a library to use its wifi to check the PHO thread and my account’s messages. The thread had degenerated into enough memes and flame wars that I didn’t see the point of responding to anything, but I did take the time to copy down a few more phone numbers from throwaway accounts and one from the Elite.

With that, I was going to head back to the Airbnb and relax for my last day in Boston, but as I looked to the side a man in a black-and-white suit with a black-and-white mask was sitting in the passenger seat. I try to reach for my gun, but his hand grabs my wrist and squeezes it to stop me.

“There’s no need for violence. I’m simply here to deliver a message from Accord.” He said.

“I think grabbing my wrist like that counts as violence.” I said. Black-and-White simply squeezed my wrist harder. “Fine. What’s the message?” I asked.

“He’s willing to provide you a loan of $50,000 along with access to any suppliers you need for tinkering. In exchange, you will leave Boston immediately and never return. You will use that loan to build a diverse range of tinker tech and when you are done and Ambassador will arrive to pick it up. If you complete this work satisfactorily, then Accord will forgive you for both the loan and for your actions in Boston.” He said.

“That actually seems like a good deal to me. I’d be happy to accept it as soon as I get it in writing.” I said. Having a few phone numbers of people who would sell weird technology without asking questions and getting an account set up with the Number Man was definitely worth it. Although, Airbnb would probably be giving me so many fees since I wouldn’t be able to return the couple’s keys.

He pulled out an actual contract from a cardboard tube and handed it to me. After I signed it, he ripped the top half off, left me with a bottom half that was also a signed copy, and disappeared while I was staring at the signed Accord on the bottom. Also, there were a few pages underneath the contract containing instructions on how to access a financial account and a few business cards.

Spoiler: Celestial Forge Bookkeeping

Leftover wc: 771
Wordcount: 1960
Excess: 731

-Talented: Tailoring (Inukami) (100CP)
You are an expert at any non-combat-related skill. Cooking? You can make a five-star meal with low-rate ingredients.

 

Spoiler: Formatting

This copied weird, so the formatting might be messed up.

I had a lot of money, the contact info for a few tinker tech suppliers, and an order to fill, so the path forward was obvious. As soon as I picked my jaw off the floor, I left immediately for Brockton Bay. On my way, I started calling up the suppliers Othello gave me. One of them did raw material, one of them did bulk electronics, and one of them did machine tools and custom mechanical parts. I quickly spent $20,000 on bulk electronics. I had all the metal I needed in my workshop, but they had the parts I needed for my laser and plasma weaponry and did rush orders. I was also worried that if I didn’t spend Accord’s money immediately, he might take it back, even though this was supposed to be a new account for me.

I had a really expensive celebration dinner at an Outback Steakhouse while waiting for Accord’s suppliers to fulfill my order. I brought my girlfriend Courtney along as well, sort of as an apology for the girl in Boston, but I told her that I quit my job in marketing to work as a consultant, went down to Boston to look for clients, and was celebrating my success. She was mostly happy for something to drink to.
It took them a few hours to arrive at the abandoned building I told them to deliver to, but that was still great time. They unloaded the pair of cargo vans they used into the abandoned building without complaint as I stood around in the costume I used when I burned down the CashNow. They were willing to leave me a dolly when I asked, and I gave them a decent tip as they left. Then I simply used one of the doors in the abandoned building to open my pocket dimension and moved the delivery on in. The experience I had earned from carting SUVs worth of furniture really came in handy.

With that, I headed home, grabbed a few beers, and started pumping out guns. I had a fair amount of designs that came with my weaponry tinker abilities even though I could also modify guns, so I decided to just make one of each of the pre-built designs for Accord’s order. I was making quick progress on Accord’s order which probably had something to do with me being able to work as an entire crew at once. I could tell that I would have some electronics left over after I completed Accord’s order, which combined with the $30,000 I had left over, meant I could probably do two additional orders of that size.

I went through all of the numbers I had received from my PHO thread. First was a fake number. Second was the Elite who offered to reimburse me cost plus twenty percent for building anything I wanted for them and then would negotiate follow-on prices. I almost accepted that immediately, but asked for time to think it over before responding. Third was someone named Poison Apple who said Blasto would be willing to trade tinker tech for tinker tech. Fourth was Weld’s answering machine. Finally, fifth was someone called Hemorrhagia who claimed to be from the Teeth, but wasn’t clear about what they wanted to buy or what they wanted to pay.

The Elite and Blasto would probably be my next customers, but I figured I should finish up with my current customer before moving on. I wanted to field-test part of Accord’s order, so that if there were any obvious defects I could correct them before delivery. With that in mind, I went out to buy tailoring supplies, a selection of clothing that might work as part of a cape costume, and a couple GoPros. When I meant field test, what I meant was I was going to shake down Squealer for tinker tech using this order and record how it goes. My tailoring power was ridiculously fast, even without the ability to be an entire crew at once, and I was very quickly dressed up as Snake Eyes, but with guns instead of swords. I was feeling pretty pumped.

There were a few guesses on PHO as to where Squealer’s base was. Unfortunately, some of those guesses were literally entire sections of the city. I tried a smart way to locate her by looking up a map of auto repair shops and comparing it to where people thought Squealer might be. That pointed me towards a mostly abandoned area of the docks that had a car mechanic in the center.

I drove towards the area out-of-costume and parked about a mile away. Afterward, I started walking towards where the facility should be. On my way there, I saw a suspiciously popular abandoned building. It wasn’t the building I was looking for, but it definitely looked like a Merchant facility, so I could either go around it or fight through it. I chose the second.

I ducked into an alleyway and used a door there to access my workshop. I got my costume, a plasma pistol, a heavy laser, and a scatter laser, with a GoPro attached to each of the lasers. Game time! I placed the heavy laser on the ground by the mouth of the alleyway and opened fire.

If you’ve ever seen one of those videos of an Apache firing its gun at night you have a good idea of what it looked like. A stream of light burst from the gun and burned holes through whatever it hit as I swept it back and forth along the building’s facade. I picked the gun up and started to waddle to the merchant hideout. When it looked like they were about to return fire from inside, I swept the windows with fire. About halfway to the building, I dropped the heavy laser and switched to the scatter laser. Some bullet fire started coming out of the windows and impacting the area just behind me. I ran as fast as I could into the building and fired on the first moving thing I saw, which turned out to be a door. Deeper in the building I could see a fire burning, so I just started grabbing phones and wallets and shoveling them into my pockets.

It was pretty obvious at this point that this wasn’t Squealer’s base, but maybe someone here could tell me. The first people I found were corpses, so aside from giving me their wallets and phones, they weren’t very helpful. This smoke that was slowly filling the building probably gave me a time limit. I stepped through the interior door I had shot earlier, hoping to find someone to question, but someone immediately stabbed me in the shin. I would’ve wanted to question that guy, but my first reaction was to shoot him in the face and with my scatter laser that was enough to vaporize his head and the floor beneath him.

I collapsed on the floor afterward. Why did no one ever tell me how much pain hurt? I got myself moving again after a few seconds or maybe a minute. I reached into a coat pocket and pulled out a needle and thread, then I reached down and pulled out the knife. I almost fainted when I saw the blood gush out, but I had enough presence of mind to sew my wound shut. This had ruined my night, so I decided to call it quits.

I limped out the front door and saw a couple guys try to lift my heavy laser. I fired a warning shot and they dropped it to run. I limped over to it and started dragging it. It was a struggle since only my uninjured leg was strong enough to pull, but I was able to get it into the alley and then into my workshop. From there, I changed back into civilian garb and shuffled back to my car. I heard a fire truck drive by, but I didn’t see it, so it was probably a block or two away.

I basically fell asleep as soon as I got home. I did a status check on my gear when I woke up. Unfortunately, the bullets and fall damaged my heavy laser and its GoPro. Neither was worth keeping. The wallets and phones I had taken from the Merchants were mildly useful. I got a hundred or so in cash, four phones which I left in my workshop next to their removed batteries, and a dozen or so credit cards which I might test out when I’m feeling lucky. My leg injury was pretty bad. My stitches held overnight, but I could see some discoloration, which was probably an infection. Assuming my power didn’t spontaneously make me a doctor, my best bet was to trade with Blasto ASAP and see if I can get medicine in the deal.

With that decided, I ordered another twenty grand of electronics to refresh my stockpile and headed to another abandoned building to get to work completing Accord’s order.

With the testing done successfully, I had largely finished Accord’s gun order. I just needed to build a replacement for the damaged heavy laser, which barely took me an hour. Then I put all of Accord’s guns in crates in my waiting room to make transporting them easier. I wrote up a cargo manifest and put it in the same crate as the alloy cannon. Hopefully, he’d appreciate the effort.

The second electronics delivery was just as boring as the first, which was a good thing in my opinion. I spent most of the wait debating with myself whether I should release the GoPro video from the scatter laser. It was pretty awesome, but it was probably criminal and there’s no guarantee people couldn’t use the video to track me.

After I had the electronics delivery sorted out, I called the number that Othello told me to call when I was ready for them to pick up the order. It rang once before someone picked up and a voice said, “We’ll be there at three-thirty.” and then hung up from its end. I checked my watch and it said 1:42 PM, so I set a reminder for 3:15 PM and got to work making a few of the guns that I thought would be most useful. Mostly a variety of plasma guns. When my watch reminded me what time it was, I stopped and moved Accord’s order from the front room of my pocket dimension to the abandoned building I was squatting in. As I was doing so, I got another power. It was a good one. I could now build and repair giant robots called Titans.

Exactly at 3:30, a pair of Mercedes pulled in front of the door followed by an 18-wheeler which parked in the middle of the road with its back door level with my building’s front door. The black-and-white guy Othello walked over to me as the rest of the crew started picking up boxes and lifting them in the truck. I thought it would be sweaty to lift boxes in formal wear, but they didn’t seem to mind.

“I’m happy that you were so ready to receive us. There were people with doubts as to your competency, but this will be a mark against them. Accord will contact you if he has further use for you. Otherwise, remember the terms of the agreement and treat our deal with discretion.” He said, before he disappeared and I noticed that the rest of his team had already left.

With that done, I really wanted to celebrate, but I really needed to get started on my next deal. I kind of needed the Blasto deal to get me back on my feet and I could just imagine me exploiting the cost plus twenty percent deal that the Elite offered to gold plate my house in the process of building a giant robot. Also, Weld might have something interesting.

With my options laid out like that, I went for the medical supplies.

“Hello?” A feminine voice answered.

“Is this Poison Apple? I have a bunch of death rays and I was hoping to sell them for some medical equipment.” I said.

“Yep, I’m Poison Apple. That makes you Haadweh?” She said.

“I haven’t decided on the name yet. Haadweh is just supposed to be a throwaway ID.” I said.

“Well, it’s going to be hard to throw away now that it’s PHO-famous.” She said.

“Ugh. Can you just pass me to Blasto so we can talk business?” I said.

There were some weird staticky sounds from the phone for a minute, before a lethargic man’s voice came on. “Hello?” They said.

“Is this Blasto? I’m the guy that was selling guns on PHO. Apple said that you were interested in trading tinker tech for tinker tech? I’m in the market for medical equipment and was hoping to make a deal this evening.” I said.

“Yeah, I’m Blasto.” He said. “This evening might be tough. I have plenty of medical equipment and I’m always interested in new tinker tech, but I was already settling in for the night with my girlfriend.”

“Are you high? It’s like four o’clock. It’s not even dinnertime.” I said. “I have so many guns here. I’m literally tripping over guns. That’s the real trip, dog.”

“Nah, not tonight. Tomorrow? Yes, tomorrow.” He said.

“Well, I’ll see you tomorrow, then, but don’t freak out if all of the good guns are gone by then!” I said as I hung up.

I immediately moved to redial the Elite. “Hey, this is temporary-codename Haadweh. I called earlier today about selling some guns and you offered to pay cost plus twenty percent? I’d like to hear more about that offer.” I said.

“It’s sort of like our recruitment package for new tinkers who don’t live near an actual Elite cell. We’ll fund your tinkering expenses plus 20% for personal use until you have something to present to us, as long as you give us weekly updates.” The speaker said.

“What makes you think I’m a new tinker? I just finished a $50,000 deal.” I said.

“Congrats on the deal! As for how we knew you were new, you mentioned in the PHO thread that you had recently come into your power.” The speaker said.

“I guess I did say that. I got a few questions: First, what’s your name? Second, are you saying you reimburse expenses as they occur, not at the end? Third, what prevents someone from abusing this and just living off your money forever, without finishing anything?” I said.

“You can call me Switchboard. We reimburse expenses as contractors report them. We check on people who are part of the program, if they’re genuinely struggling to finish projects that’s one thing, but if they’re deceiving us, that’s a problem which we address on a case-by-case basis.” She said.

“What about medical treatment? What if I steal another tinker’s stuff? What about facilities and equipment?” I asked.

“If you get the injury from tinkering or need the treatment to continue tinkering, then medical treatment is reimbursable. We can reimburse expenses incurred stealing from a non-Elite-affiliated Tinker, but we don’t encourage it. We also reimburse facilities and equipment used for tinkering, but we’d need the full documentation before we would reimburse and we would launch an investigation if you tried slipping something by us.” She said.

“This actually sounds like a great deal. A business partner set me up with an account with a guy called the Number Man, but I’m not sure if I can trust them. How do you guys handle payment?” I asked.

“We actually use Number Man for almost everything with our own companies being used for the rest. If you send over your account details, we can verify your account, and then get started.” She said.

And that’s the story of how the Elite agreed to pay me to build a giant robot for them.

Spoiler: Celestial Forge Bookkeeping

Leftover wc: 731
Wordcount: 2681
Excess: 1412

-Titan Engineering (Titanfall) (100CP)
Titans are incredibly complex machines, and due to the disposable nature of their use and production, and not designed for easy repair. You've got the deft touch though, and know exactly where to tweak and shore up the structure to keep it purring like it's fresh out of the drop pod for years.

 

Spoiler: Formatting

This was copied from Google Docs and the formatting had to be manually correcting, so may have mistakes.

Let it never be said that when I decide to make a giant robot that I give it anything less than my full commitment. In my apartment, I spent the rest of the day with a notebook with the word TONE scrawled on the cover in permanent marker, writing down everything I knew about the Titan I was going to build and what I’d need to build it. It was 25 feet tall and it would need a lot of resources. I currently have thirteen grand and the rest will have to come from the Elite, Squealer, and whatever free resources I can get from my workshop. I needed some really high-end batteries, a lot of missiles, a way to get more, a force field generator, some computers, some TVs, really advanced hydraulics, some sensors, some really tough armor cut in very precise panels, all the equipment to assemble and maintain a giant robot, and enough armor-piercing 40 mm bullets to reload an autocannon the size of a car.

When the morning came, my first act was to type up the shopping list for the Titan and send it off to Accord’s suppliers and the Elite to get some price quotes. With that out of the way, I called Blasto up again and we arranged to meet in my abandoned building in the afternoon. Blasto definitely wasn’t happy to hear he would need to drive out to Brockton Bay, but I mollified him by offering an extra pair of rifles.

Blasto’s healing came as him slapping some gunk on my leg and calling it a day. I would have been an unhappy customer if it didn’t work, but it did and he gave me a jug full of it. It cost me most of my pistol stock and a decent chunk of my rifle stock, but nothing I couldn’t replace. Just out of curiosity, I gave him a copy of my Titan shopping list, in case he could sell me any of it. I wasn’t optimistic since he’s a biological tinker and that’s very different from what I was doing. He immediately mentioned his ability to make all of the hydraulic fluid I needed, but I wanted an actual cost estimate, both in money and in weaponry, so he parted ways with a promise to get back to me on that.

I then set out to use the credit cards I stole from the Merchants to buy tinkering supplies. That was a bit of an adventure, trying to keep a low profile while trying to buy a few hundred dollars worth of arts and crafts supplies. I still did well. Out of the ten credit cards I stole, six worked, while two needed PINs, one simply being always rejected, and one going in the trash when the cashier asked me if my name was really “Mohammed Jackson”. This got me just over a thousand dollars in supplies. I sent the receipts off to the Elite for reimbursement to see what would happen.

I currently had about thirteen grand in various cape accounts and I could put about as much on my civilian credit cards, but I knew that I would be lucky for that to be within an order of magnitude of Tone’s final build cost. I had a solution, though. It was essentially a Ponzi-scheme. I would spend say $13,000, get reimbursed $15,600 from the Elite, spend the $15,600, get $18,720 from the Elite, spend the $18,720, get $22,464 from the Elite, and so on and so forth until I finished making the Titan. Now was I expecting everyone to cooperate with that plan? No, but that was another problem I knew how to solve. It was actually somewhat simple, I would get suppliers to submit their invoices to me as soon as possible so that I could hit up the Elite for reimbursement and then I would try to delay payment as long as possible. That way I balance out the people who take forever to give me receipts and demand payment upfront with the people who give me receipts early and let me slow-walk my payment. The “free” money from getting reimbursed for money spent using stolen credit cards would also help if it worked.

I just had two final tests of my power to do before I could really get to work. The first test was to construct a simple frame big enough to wrap around Tone. This wasn’t a test to see if I could build it, it was a test to see if my pocket dimension could accommodate it. I was happy with the outcome. As I built the frame, my workshop expanded to fit it and the interior door of the pocket dimension also stretched to fit the frame. I was probably going to build a second, more stable version of the frame when I actually had a Titan to frame. My second test was mildly risky, but I still needed to do it. I went out in search of a garage door big enough to pass a Titan. I swung past that abandoned garage at which I met those smugglers and noticed that no one was there. I quickly pulled up, confirmed I could open the door to my pocket dimension from a garage door, then I closed the door, and retreated back to Brockton Bay.

The problem with using abandoned buildings to meet people and go in and out of my workshop was that I didn’t control the space when I wasn’t there and had to worry about the legitimate owners, hobos, or law enforcement deciding to mess with me when I was there. I thought this was a problem that I could solve by just getting some industrial space legitimately. I wouldn’t even need to own the property, I just need exclusive use, and I wouldn’t even need that exclusivity for a long time. Within a month, I would most likely have either solved my money problems or gotten killed. I called up my lawyer and asked for him to resend me a bill for all his services, I would send it to the Elite as another test of how they would handle reimbursements. I also asked him to look for industrial spaces for rent, for as cheap as possible. All I needed was privacy and a large garage door, and I think my lawyer got the picture. With that invoice sent I also felt that I would soon see if the Elite were going to screw me over on them. It would really kill my plans to screw them over if they screwed me over at the very beginning.

With that done, I had everyone who could do stuff for me doing stuff for me, and I had healed the injury I received when I was looking for Squealer. Obviously, it was time to look for Squealer some more. I was still thinking that Squealer’s lab was the garage in the middle of Merchant territory. I could’ve confirmed it, but I ran into a Merchant outpost the last time I tried getting to it. I would just need a smarter way to prove it and if so, win the inevitable fight.

My initial idea was kind of dumb, but the knowledge that a shield, a fancy suit, and some diagnostic tools had appeared in the middle of my workshop had distracted me. Right, my initial idea was to just drive by Squealer’s suspected garage as if I was looking for someone to fix my check engine light and bail if it looks dangerous.

It actually wasn’t that informative. I hit a red light a few blocks away from the garage and a drug dealer came up to my car and asked me what I wanted. I told him that I was just trying to get to a garage to get my car looked after. He directed me to one downtown and when I asked about the one nearby he told me that garage shut down after the Boat Graveyard happened. That was a plausible story and it only seemed to be confirmed when I drove past the garage and it looked abandoned, but that was still pretty suspicious.

That night I decided to take a closer look in-person, but not to go in machine gun blazing like last time. Instead, I would go in with a laser sniper rifle that I had modified to fire invisibly and silently. This was a much better idea. I parked six blocks away and grabbed the rifle out of an alleyway door, along with an alloy cannon and a plasma pistol. From my vantage point four blocks away, I could definitely see people moving around the building, which was enough to convince me to move to the roof of a building three blocks away from the garage. It took about an hour and a half to make the move and climb up the fire escape without being seen.

From my new vantage point I could see that not only were there people moving around inside, but there were also vehicles inside. This almost had to be Squealer’s workshop. Now, I just needed to get everyone to leave so I could steal her stuff. This might be a good time to call the PRT and get Armsmaster to put his boot up Squealer’s butt, but my phone was too connected to me. It was originally a burner phone, but I’ve been using it for a lot of cape stuff and I didn’t want the PRT to have the number.

That left my backup plan of sniping guys until they abandoned the facility and I could pick over the remains. This was not a great plan, but given that the Merchants didn’t have any Thinkers or Purity-knockoffs, they shouldn’t be able to find me and if they can’t find me, they can’t fight back. Actually, that might be a way to get out of my gambling debts.

I took a few deep breaths to steady my breathing before I started. The first three targets I shot were all guards who looked isolated and went down with one shot. The fourth target jerked immediately before I pulled the trigger, and I only clipped him. I needed a second shot to put him down. At that point, I could see plenty of activity going on in the garage. Subtlety was a lost cause at this point, so I simply shot a few rounds at anyone moving near the garage who looked like a Merchant. At about the minute mark, they seemed to get the message that it wasn’t safe to be running around outside. I could see what looked like a few people hiding behind cover, but I didn’t want to shoot in case I was imagining things and missed. I could tell that there was motion inside the garage, but I didn’t have a good angle to see what was happening in there.

I was trying to decide if I should move to a better spot, when a fire truck simply drove through the garage door and ripped it off its hinges. Or rather, it wasn’t a fire truck, but it was a combat vehicle based on a fire truck. I tried putting a few shots in the windshield, but the windshield was too strong. Worse, that seemed to give away my position. Not my exact position, but I wasn’t happy to have a half-dozen machine guns fire in my general direction either. I bailed from my sniper perch, dove through the roof access door, and tried hiding halfway down the stairwell. I knew I couldn’t stay here forever, but I wanted to figure out my next move instead of simply going with my first reaction.

The best chance I had of beating that fire truck was to switch my loadout for a heavy plasma and a blaster launcher and hope I could destroy it before it shot back, but if that’s Squealer, then that means that garage is almost certainly full of her tinker tech. I just needed to sneak past her and I could steal it all. There’s probably money and valuables there as well. However, that seemed to operate on a time limit, the longer I took to get to Squealer’s garage and the more time I stayed there, the higher the likelihood of the Protectorate or even Merchant reinforcements stomping on my scene were.
Still, I had to try. I ran down the stairwell until I caught up to some people who were also leaving the building. I trusted them not to run towards the Fire Truck Tank, so I followed them. The fire alarm went off while we were walking down the stairs. The growing crowd led me to what I’m pretty sure was the road opposite the Merchant garage. They seemed to notice me, but the fact that it was 11 PM on a weeknight meant that they weren’t energetic enough to do anything about me.

I ran for the garage, but in an indirect way that should help me loop around the fire truck if it stayed still. It was pretty exhausting. It must have taken at least ten minutes to make the run. On the plus side, the fire truck seems to have left. On the minus side, the Merchants seemed to have cleaned out the garage as well. There was no one in the garage proper, unlike the occasional guard that I sniped that was still bleeding on the roof and ground outside.

It gave off a pretty spooky feel and I was in no mood to dillydally, so I opened my pocket dimension on an office door in the garage and just started shoving random car parts and garage tools into it. I was barely five minutes into it before I started hearing sirens for actual emergency vehicles, which I took as my cue to leave. I just ran out the back and started running. I caught sight of a PRT van turning onto the street I was on, but I just kept running and after a block or two ducked into an alley, opened up my pocket dimension, and switched back into civilian clothes.

At that point, it took me about an hour to walk back to my car and drive home. I was exhausted when I got home and I wasn’t even sure that the outing had been worth it, but that was something I could think about after a good night’s rest.

As I woke up in the morning, I reached out to Weld again. This time he actually answered.

“Hello?” He asked.

“Hi, Weld. This is the guy who was selling guns on PHO. I called myself Haadweh, but I’m thinking of Ponzi as my cape name.” I said.

“Oh, cool. I just wanted to see if you wanted to hang out with the Boston Protectorate. Just get to know them and stuff?” He said.

“Unfortunately, no. Last time I was in Boston, I got myself banned from the place, but you don’t have to worry about me selling guns on PHO. I’m on a contract and I don’t have that kind of free time anymore. Call me if you ever leave Boston and I’ll see if I’m free.” I said and hung up.

I checked my Number Man account, and I saw the reimbursement for my lawyer’s invoice, the supplies I had bought using stolen credit cards, and a 20% bonus. That was nice. This was what I needed to get my plans really moving. I also received the bid from Accord’s suppliers. They were offering to supply a bare third of my technology needs and were offering to do it for a nominal $528,000. They weren’t even offering to sell any of the tinker tech I needed! Blasto’s bid was more reasonable. He was offering organic substitutes of all the chemicals and many of the synthetics I needed and was willing to trade it for weapons. Assuming the substitutions worked, that was a great deal from my perspective and probably from his as well. The Elite bid was the most comprehensive, but also the most chaotic. They sent me brochures from mundane technological and scientific equipment stores with offers to deliver them anonymously. They sent me a few resumes and portfolios from tinkers that were willing to work for “negotiable fees”.

To complete the set, I checked with the lawyer that I had looking for cheap industrial properties. He found garbage, but perhaps the kind of garbage that I was looking for. The best two properties he found was a location in a strip mall just outside of the nice part of Downtown which had a loading dock, utility hookups, a $1,200 a month, but would see reasonable foot traffic and a foreclosed sea food warehouse, which had space and big garages, cost $1,800 a month, but didn’t have any utilities and hadn’t had a safety inspection since 2008. Both of those options seemed good, but I just went with the stripmall since it would probably have less of a problem with gangs and hobos trespassing. It hurt to see the $2,400 bill for first month rent and security deposit, but I did enjoy immediately sending the invoice to the Elite. My lawyer said I could pick up the keys in a day and that he would use the shell company to pay for and hold the lease.

At that moment, I remembered that Othello had literally promised “access to any suppliers you need for tinkering”, so wouldn’t that count suppliers able to sell tinker tech batteries, armor, rockets, and 40mm bullets? I called all of the suppliers back and told them that and they said they’d get back to me.

I also did an inventory of what I had taken from Squealer’s apartment. I got a cordless impact wrench, a car jack, one of those boards for working underneath cars, a couple five gallon tanks containing antifreeze, gasoline, and oil, and a set of welding gear that is slightly more portable than the welding gear I already have. All of that was next to the two things that I got from my power: a well-constructed sword, a suit similar to my cape outfit but in flashy colors, and a tricorder kinda thing with many connectors and scanners, capable of finding faults with simple technology and identifying advanced technology.

It seemed to me that if I wanted to complete my Titan, I would need to keep chasing Squealer. She already abandoned what I thought was her main lair, so I needed to find her new lair and then make sure she can’t escape. I could try to use the same process that led me to that garage to lead me to Squealer again, but I thought there had to be a better way. Maybe I could reach out to Uber and Leet about doing a heist game? Then they could find Squealer for me. If even that didn’t work, I might have to give up on stealing Squealer’s tinker tech and check if Armsmaster’s bike might be an easier target. Perhaps Accord could help me?

I logged on to a McDonald’s Wi-Fi as I walked past and sent Uber and Leet a message from my Haadweh account that I would be willing to participate in one of their shows and would like to discuss the matter in person.

I kept busy while waiting for the Gamer Duo to respond and the most productive way to do that was to take all of the bids for supplies and try to mesh them together. If I used Blasto for everything I could, that would reduce the amount of equipment that I needed to get from other sources. Or, I could suddenly get a new power that easily allows me to create super tech to solve anything that counts as a “household problem”. It also had a secondary ability to let me reach conclusions twice as fast. As if humans needed any help jumping to conclusions! However, this new power is something I should put on the backburner for now until I get done with my accounting. As I was saying, using Blasto as much as possible would mostly take money from Accord’s people, but if I can get batteries from Blasto like he claims and they’re good, that could substitute for some of my most expensive resource requirements.

I went out to get lunch after that as a mini-celebration for last night’s “success” and my new power. It was also an opportunity to get reimbursed by the Elite. I was even happier when I checked my PHO messages and saw a message from Uber and Leet instructing me to come to Fugly Bob’s at 7 PM. That gave me like six hours to check out my new powers.

It was pretty weird. I essentially could do anything as long as it involved fixing a “household problem”. Fortunately, I did have a household problem for it to solve and it was happy to help me modify my router so it used wormholes to connect to the internet through random places in the world to hide my location.

Now, with the ability to use my own internet without giving my home away. I decided to do some more research on Uber and Leet, since I was kind of worried about the meeting being a trap. It seemed completely pointless for them to do such a thing, though. I was a fellow tinker interested in helping with their shows. Why wouldn’t they want that?

At around 6:30 PM, I found myself parked about a block away from Fugly Bob’s. I had another copy of my shopping list, in case they were willing to help, and a map of my guesses on Squealer’s location if they just wanted to do a heist video and call it a day. Around 6:45, I decided that I’d rather risk marching into a discreet meeting wearing my cape outfit than risk wearing my everyday clothes to a meeting with capes. I was able to find the back door of some store to open a discreet portal and change in. Then at 6:58, I marched into the Fugly Bob’s and looked around for anyone that could be Uber and Leet.

Half of the restaurant seemed blase about my presence, while the other half were gawking. Actually, that’s not true. There were two guys in a booth hurriedly whispering to each other. One was a tall man with broad shoulders and a sculpted physique. The other was a scrawny, slouching man. Any doubts I had as to their identities ended when I saw that they had matching Mario and Luigi t-shirts, with the scrawny one as Mario and the buff one as Luigi.

I walked up to them and sat in the booth next to the man I thought was Leet. “You wouldn’t happen to be the two that I’m meeting? Would you?” I said.

The buff one seemed to grow a spine at that point. “Yes, we are. Though we were expecting you to be discreet.” He said.

“There was no way I was meeting other capes for the first time out of costume,” I said, “but if you’d like to take this somewhere comfier, I’d be willing to move. Otherwise, I think I’m going to try the Challenger.”

That was, of course, the part where they betrayed me. Okay, it wasn't literally betraying me, but when an invisible force holds you in your seat and a theme song plays that no one outside your table seems to hear, it definitely feels like a betrayal.

"Welcome! To Uber and Leet's Restaurant Trivia Show! In this corner, we have Haadweh who wants to work with us to create videos. In the other corner, we have Leet, who thinks adding another member is a pointless distraction. To settle this disagreement, let's play a game with your host, Uber!" Uber said in a shouty announcer voice that no one outside of our table seemed to hear.

"I never agreed to this." I said.

"The rules are simple. I will ask you questions and if you have the answer, buzz the table in front of you and shout it out. First to five correct answers wins!" Uber said as the intro theme wound down.

“First question! What is the name of the planet where ‘Gears of War’ takes place??” Uber asked.

“Sera!” Leet said as he slammed his hand on the table.

“Second question and it’s an easy one!” Uber said as he looked at me. “What is the name of Mario’s dinosaur sidekick?”

I slammed my hand on the table and shouted. "It's Yoshi!"

That was the peak of my night. Leet steamrolled the next four questions and I lost 5-1.

I barely listened to a second of Uber's sanctimonious apology before storming out of the restaurant. I wouldn't work with them even if they wanted me to. I went straight home and threw myself into making household gadgets.

Spoiler: Celestial Forge Bookkeeping

Leftover wc: 1412
Wordcount: 4187
Excess: 1599

-Diagnostic Tools | Melee Weapon (Outlaw Star) (100CP)

Diagnostic Tools (50CP)
A small data display with numerous connectors and scanners, capable of letting you know what is wrong with simple technology and what advanced technology that has been programmed into it.

Melee Weapon (50CP)
A well-constructed sword, axe, or blunt weapon. Superior in construction to many ancient weapons of the same type and can act as a minor magical focus if you can use magic.

Fancy Suit (FREE)
A colorful set of clothing, highly individualized and tailored to fit perfectly. The fabric also breathes well, and can be stylized towards the practical or the ostentatious.

-Super Scientific Solution (Tenchi Muyo) (100CP)
This perk grants two features that in-universe depend on your setting, out of universe both work unless you desire otherwise.

Slice of Life: Science solves everything, even the little household problems. You can create supertech improvements to common tools and appliances, up to and including automobiles or similar works of engineering. Create dishwashers that can clean dishes in an instant, self-heating plumbing or forcefield window panes that act as air conditioners.

SpaceOpera: Well-established methodologies and an instinctive grasp of same allow you to draw conclusions or produce results incredibly fast. You halve the time it takes to gather data, compose research on some subject, or devise a test to prove/disprove something handy for when you have to figure out an enemy fortress' one weakness…

 

Spoiler: Formatting

This was copied from Google Docs and the formatting had to be manually corrected, so may have mistakes.

Frankly, I don’t see why I ever thought Uber and Leet would be useful associates. They’re basically grown-up children who spend all of their time playing video games and acting like life’s a game. I could do so much better than them. If my newest power was as strong as it seemed, I could probably build people better than them.

For now, I decided to be a little less ambitious than robotic supermeidos. I started with a landline phone that like my router messed with its connection in order to hide where it was coming from. I followed up with a security monitor that could show me the outside from any viewpoint of my building, could save this 360-degree security footage, and transfer it at will to my normal computer. I followed up with an LED board that would keep track of my accounts and display the state of my finances. Then I was too depressed and confused to continue any longer. Although I was happy to see another $3,000 in reimbursements from the Elite.

I got the keys for the stripmall place from my lawyer and headed on over. It was exactly as described and mostly what I was looking for. It had a somewhat convenient location, that was near to most of the city, yet rundown enough that most people would ignore it, with a loading bay door that should be able to pass a Titan crouching down, and enough room inside to work as a second home.

I tested opening my workshop from the door to the bathroom and when that was a success; I got to work building devices to keep my new store a secret. First, was another monitoring device to record and display what’s going on both inside and outside the building from arbitrary vantage points. Second, was a privacy device which would make people view my store as a normal store which should hopefully be strong enough to cover up any indiscretions from operating a tinker base here. Third, I built another hidden landline phone and hidden router for the store.

I thought about it and it might be useful to dig out a sub-basement for me to actually work in, then I could turn the upstairs into a front company as a disguise. My “super scientific solution” power seemed to consider digging basements to be a stretch, even though it was clearly a “household problem”, so I just built a shovel in my workshop and decided to circle back to the issue later.

I posted a generic help-wanted sign on the front of my “store”. It was mostly a lark, but if people called I could give them job interviews either to work as my minions or to work at the front business I was thinking of setting up. It would also be something to test the landline I built for the store.

I sent an order for ten grand in televisions and high-performance computers off to Accord’s suppliers. I would need these for the Titan, but in the meantime, I could make use of them myself. It was a nice enough feeling to be able to take delivery at an actual address and not an abandoned building, so I ordered pizza for a late lunch.

You know what else helps my mood? Suddenly, developing a Black Thumb by which I mean rather suddenly developing the power to keep vehicles running even in the worst environments and even when that means repairing them while they’re in use. Especially when my power considers Titans to be vehicles.

It ruined my good mood when I saw that Uber and Leet had posted a version of our meeting on their website and sent me a link to get past the paywall. They had even edited it to make themselves look good and me look bad. They were going to regret that someday. In fact, I could probably make them regret this pretty soon. If I stole all of their stuff, then I wouldn’t need to put all this effort into stealing from Squealer. Could I get a subscription to their livestream and then immediately travel to where they are and beat them up? Or maybe do the same thing with a police scanner? Probably not. If Armsmaster hadn’t done that by now, it’s probably because it wouldn’t work. What if I created a letter-delivering carrier pigeon, sent them a letter, and followed the letter to sneak attack them? No, super-scientific-solution says that’s too much of a stretch to be a “household problem”. Maybe I could just reach out to local capes until I find someone willing to gang up on them with me? That’s literally the same strategy I tried with Squealer that resulted in me getting made fun of online by Uber and Leet.

Nevertheless, I reached out to Citrine. Accord has been a massive dick, but he hasn’t actually screwed me over and I still haven’t heard back from his suppliers about Othello’s promised supplies. I sent a PM off to the account that Citrine used to contact me originally. I offered to forgive the mistake that Othello made if they help me capture Squealer of the Merchants and steal all of her technology.
I got a phone call on my store phone while eating pizza. I answered it since it was probably someone interested in a job.

“This is Citrine.” The beautiful voice said.

“Hello, Citrine. Is this about my proposal?” I said.

“Yes. It was a drafting error by Othello that Accord did not authorize. We’re happy to have received your counter-proposal and Accord is willing to subcontract the assistance to a local cape named Coil. Would this be acceptable to you?” Citrine said.

“I’m happy as long as I get Squealer’s technology.” I said.

“Wonderful, I’ll get started on the arrangements. Is this the best number for him to reach you at?” She said.

“No, I’d prefer people to reach me on my cell phone.” I said.

“Thank you. Coil should be with you shortly.” She said.

I took a moment to be amazed at how fast Accord’s people worked, and another moment to be amazed at my good fortune that Othello had made such a mistake. He would’ve been fine if my power had stayed what it was when I made that post, but since then my tinkering needs had grown far beyond Accord’s ability to supply. Perhaps beyond anyone’s ability to supply. Even the Elite, a continent-spanning organization, didn’t have what I needed off the shelf, they had to refer me to tinkers to negotiate for what I needed.

It took about an hour, but I eventually got a phone call from Coil.

“Hello?” I asked.

“This is Coil. I’ve been briefed on the situation, Ponzi, and have a plan to capture Squealer’s tinker tech to present to you.” He said.

“Sure, let me hear it.” I said.

“I’ll text you an address shortly. If you arrive at that location at nine PM with your own equipment and twelve plasma rifles, I’ll send some of my own guys to meet up with you, they know the basics of how your guns work and for the duration of the mission, they will pretend to work for you in order to disguise my own involvement. They will then escort you and your vehicle to a staging area outside of Squealer’s workshop. That will lead to a period of reconnaissance, which I will be happy to share the results of with you. After sufficient reconnaissance has been done, I will give you the go-ahead order. This part of the mission should go well, and afterward, I’m told that you will be able to haul away any technology you desire to take. When you finish that, my men will return the borrowed equipment to you and either stay behind to clean up the scene or provide a distraction for the local heroes. I would also like to talk to you about buying some of your equipment, but that can wait for now.” Coil said.

There was no way that Coil wasn’t a thinker with that speech, but I didn’t see a part that I wanted to pick apart, so I simply said “That works for me.” and hung up.

The rest of my afternoon was actually pretty boring. I made a few plasma rifles, accepted the delivery of TVs and computers that afternoon, left to get dinner, and spent a few hours watching movies, before taking the plates off my SUV, putting the rifles in, and heading out as a cape.

I met up with a dozen mercenaries in a parking garage where I traded them a bunch of guns in exchange for a radio that let me talk to them. From there, we drove to the parking lot of an abandoned factory, which I was told was three blocks south of Squealer’s current lab and current location. And then we waited and waited and waited…

It was basically two hours of waiting while doing nothing, and by doing nothing I mean I wasted time playing games on my phone while the mercenaries told stories about other parking lots they had waited in.

Coil’s voice came on over the radio, “Here’s the plan of attack. Ponzi, get to the roof of the factory next to you. Alpha and Beta teams will then drive towards the building as the beginning of their attack while Ponzi will pick off lookouts using his sniper rifle and Charlie hangs back to protect Ponzi and be a reserve force. When Alpha and Beta are spotted, Ponzi should then shift his sniping to focus on keeping people out of vehicles. Be advised, both Squealer and Skidmark are in the building along with about twenty non-parahuman hostiles. Ponzi, on my mark, GO!”

I jogged to the roof slowly and then quickly as my adrenaline kicked in. It probably took five minutes or so, but I whispered a “Ponzi in position.” over the radio as I started setting my stealthed laser sniper rifle and my heavy plasma up.

An articulate “Alpha and Beta teams, GO!” answered me.

I could see part of Alpha and Beta teams’ approach, but they kept getting behind buildings, so I switched to checking out targets in the warehouse. There were no lone lookouts, but I picked off a few of the less attentive pairs before I switched to looking in the garage itself. There were multiple garage doors and I could see the fire truck in there and a few other vehicles. My mission was to make sure as few of them as possible actually got in vehicles. I noticed movement from the inside, assumed that they spotted Alpha and Beta approach, and started opening fire. One benefit of lasers is that they don’t have recoil, so I could fire as soon as I got a target in the crosshairs. No need to wait for the gun to stop shaking. I also had no reason to worry about running out of ammo. Alpha team drove straight through a garage door, while Beta parked out front.

Alpha unleashed a wave of gunfire from within their vehicle before using it as a shield to cover them getting out. Half of Beta marched in after them and started shooting anyone they could see, while the other stayed outside as lookouts.

The attack was pretty messy, but it was way more successful than it had any right to be. As the adrenaline started to leak out of me, I got a call to rendezvous with Charlie and take a ride to the garage.

The ride was pretty quick, but what was suspicious about it was that I could see all of the mercenaries wearing earpieces and I could hear things on those earpieces that I wasn’t hearing from my radio, which is the exact thing that these guys would want if they were planning to betray me.

These guys were supposed to be pretending to be my guys, so I put that to test as I walked into the garage with Charlie team. “All right. Good work, men. Here’s what I want. I want you to empty the Merchant’s pockets. Take the wallets, cell phones, and other valuables and put them in the bed of that technical. Any of them that’s still alive I want outside so that they can’t see in here. Also, someone get me the car keys. Let’s get to work.”

Fortunately for me, the mercenaries gave a HUA and got to work. There weren’t many injured, and the injured I did see weren’t likely to live long, but Squealer was still fortunate to be among them, Skidmark was unfortunate to not be among them, and I still didn’t want them to see me work.

When the injured were out, I shoved my key into one of the garage doors that didn’t just have an armored car drive through it. I supposedly could customize the entrance hall of my pocket dimension, so I took a moment to think about what I wanted my entrance hall to look like now. I wanted it to be tall enough for large vehicles to fit inside and not scratch the roof, I wanted it to be wide perhaps a 100 feet so, and I wanted it to be deep maybe 200 feet or so. I concentrated on that as I turned the key and opened up my pocket dimension, or rather, my pocket warehouse.

“Alright,” I shouted, “I want you to grab everything valuable in this building and put it in here to the left of the door. Start with tinker tech and things that are easy to move. Do not open any door or touch anything in there unless ordered. I’ll handle the vehicles.”

The mercenaries got to work, with one of them walking up to me to hand over a keychain. “Coil wants you to modify your radio to listen to enemy radio chatter.” He said. For a second, I almost believed these were my guys, but that sentence just destroyed the illusion. I realized that I actually knew how to do that as I started taking vehicles. Aside from the fire truck, there was a pair of technicals, a tow truck, a bulldozer, and a sports car with a jet sticking out the back.

I still think it’s pretty weird how successful the attack was. There were no casualties among the mercenaries, the Merchants were almost totally wiped out, and I got what I wanted. Is this part of Coil’s power? I checked on the power that let me come to conclusions faster and it was pretty confident that this related to how Coil knew things he shouldn’t.

Thinking those kinds of thoughts was a good way to pass the time, when doing something boring. Although, I’m amazed that stealing tinker tech vehicles and modifying a radio with a screwdriver while trying not to run over the guys that are helping me steal and who might betray me at any moment counted as boring now. At least the garage door was big enough that I could stick to the right and people would have enough room to push dollies or carry things to the left.

After finishing the car thefts by dropping off the second technical, I walked out of the pocket dimension. “Okay,” I shouted, “it’s time to clean up. Everyone return your gun to my space. Then, I’ll close it up and we can go.”

These guys sure could hustle when they wanted to, and I had my key back and was piling into the car with Charlie team right on time. My fellow backseat passenger confirmed that I had modified the radio to intercept enemy chatter and we took off. I was kind of expecting us to leave separately and the others would stay behind, but all three cars ended up leaving at the same time. The convoy ended up leaving pretty weirdly. We would be on a road for a block or two before suddenly turning.

“This is Miss Militia on PRT Dispatch. Velocity is on his way to the garage fight. He’ll coordinate with the PRT chase when on scene.” My radio suddenly said and I finally realized that we were driving weird in order to avoid the PRT.

We continued the crazy driving for a few more minutes. Although, it might have changed a bit. I realized that the shoe just dropped when I saw Velocity pull up beside us. We drove straight through a half-dozen red lights and picked up a pair of PRT vehicles before the convoy split in half like I expected at the beginning. I considered myself lucky to be in the half that Velocity didn’t pursue, though we still had a PRT vehicle behind us.

I was expecting losing our tail to be difficult, but after making a few confusing turns, the driver slammed on the brakes and our tail swerved to avoid hitting us and ran into a parked car on the side of the road. With our tails lost, the first thing Charlie team did was to take me back to my car. They didn’t say goodbye or anything. They just came to a stop by my car, unlocked the door to let me out, and drove off once I was out. It was yet another reminder that they were just pretending to be my guys. Regardless, whatever Coil’s deal is doesn’t really matter to me as long as he keeps it to himself. With that in mind, I took my car on a winding path back to that store and fell asleep as soon as I got inside. Even though the floor was some kind of hard tile, the exhaustion from stress and from it being late was simply too much.

I woke up certain of two things. That I immediately needed to make a device to make floors comfy and that I now had a power that let me always be fashionable while letting me ignore my body’s needs as long as I’m focusing.

It took me barely twenty minutes to modify a dimmer switch in the store’s office to toggle the floor. I then immediately toggled it to “mattress”, lied down, and went back to sleep. When I woke up, I toggled the floor back to “tile” and took a minute to just aimlessly browse PHO and relax.

PHO would be a lot more relaxing if it wasn’t talking about me. I skimmed the PRT announcement. A new gang claiming to work for a cape named Ponzi broke into Squealer’s lab outfitted with weapons from Haadweh, 17 dead, including Skidmark, two taken to the hospital, Squealer missing, Velocity was attacked by Grue while trying to apprehend the fleeing suspects.

And of course, the PHO thread had so much speculation even I don’t know what actually happened. Of course, I actually had a way to solve this. My power could casually make my cell phone untraceable, and it only took a decent amount of effort and a small chunk of my morning to make my phone capable of automatically calling anyone. All it needed was a little bit of precognition and then it could try random numbers until you got the person you wanted to call, then retroactively call that number first. This was technically testing it, but I was completely confident that it was going to work.

“Hello, Grue.” I said into the phone. “I have some questions about last night I’d like to ask you.”

Spoiler: Celestial Forge Bookkeeping

Leftover wc: 1599
Wordcount: 3258
Excess: 857

-Black Thumb (Mad Max) (100CP)
You have the skills of an expert mechanic, able to keep vehicles running even in the most inhospitable conditions. Repairing and tuning up engines is your bread and butter, even while they’re still operating. You also have a feel for how to upgrade cars in more esoteric ways; hey, it takes skill to add that many spikes and not hurt the handling!

-My Fashion Sense is Tingling | Iron Bladder (TWEWY) (100CP)

My Fashion Sense is Tingling (50CP)
You have an impeccable sense of fashion-You can make an appealing outfit out of just about anything. In addition, you will always have an innate knowledge of what is fashionable in the area wherever you go, allowing you to remain on top of your game no matter where you are. In fact, you'll usually be a trendsetter.

Iron Bladder (50CP)

If you're really involved in something, you can do it for as long as you please. So long as you focus completely on a single task, whether that be the creation of an object, the defeat of an enemy, or just beating a videogame, you can completely ignore any bodily needs such as sleep, hunger, or pain. You're just ignoring them, though- Which doesn't make them go away. All of your needs will catch up with you when you're done, which can kill you if you're not careful.

 

Spoiler: Formatting

This was copied from Google Docs and the formatting had to be manually corrected, so may have mistakes.

“Who is this?” Grue asked.

“I think you can figure that out on your own.” I said. “I’m just curious why, when I was running from Velocity last night, he ended up being stopped by Grue. Even though I had no prior sign he was going to be helping me that night.”

“I don’t know if you are who I think you are, but it’s not a big secret that I was just doing my job. Please, don’t call this number ever again.” He said before hanging up.

At least he answered the question, I thought, before I saved the number in my contacts as “Angry Grue”.

Next on my list of people to thank is Citrine. “Hello, this is Ponzi. Calling for Citrine.” I said as my phone called her number automatically.

“This is Citrine speaking.” She said.

“I just wanted to thank you and Accord for whatever all the help you gave me in acquiring Squealer’s stash of tinker tech.” I said.

“You’re welcome, but we do have a few requests. First, is that you do not sell or buy tinker tech from Blasto. Second, that you never contact Accord directly.” She said.

“I’ll take that under consideration. Thank you for your time.” I said as I hung up. I could easily live with that second condition, but that first one? That’s a tough one. I guess I’ll have to cross that bridge when I come to it.

I called Switchboard the normal way, “Hey Switch.” I said, “I’m actually making pretty excellent progress on the Titan. It’s going to be beautiful, just you wait.”

“Okay, I believe you. Anything else?” She said.

“Oh, yes. I wanted a quote on a plasma rifle. I have a person interested in buying some and just wanted you to give me a price that sounds fair to you.” I said before reading off a much lengthier description of my plasma rifle’s features and performance.

“Something like that would sell for twenty grand if it’s reliable. If it’s not reliable, it can be about five grand or just unsellable.” She said.

“Thank you. That’s all for now.” I said as I hung up and the realization suddenly struck me that Accord really screwed me over with that first deal.

With that out of the way, I had no more excuses to delay talking to Coil. “Hello, Coil. This is Ponzi.” I said.

“How did you get this number?” He asked.

“Tinker,” I said as if that explained everything, “but that’s also part of what I wanted to talk to you about. I know you were interested in buying those guns from yesterday and, right now, I’m interested in selling.”

“I’ll send you the correct number to reach me after this.” He said. “As for the guns, I’m willing to buy twenty of the plasma rifles and five plasma pistols for one hundred grand.”

“You know. I just talked to someone who said that those rifles should be worth about twenty grand each, but I’ll offer you an exclusive one-time deal. I’ll sell you the twenty plasma rifles and five plasma pistols for three hundred grand.” I said.

“I’m not sure about that.” He said.

“Tell you what, if one of them breaks and it’s not due to user error, I’ll replace it at five grand.” I said, “However, if you don’t accept right this second, I’ll hang up and sell them to the other guy.”

“Okay, fine, I accept.” He said.

I was a bit surprised that trick worked, but I was serious, so I’m happy it did. “If you send me the payment now, I can have the guns ready tomorrow.” I said.

“Sure, sure.” He said, before I went through the tedium of giving him the info necessary to send me money.

“I also want to talk about last night. Specifically, why did Grue attack Velocity, and what happened to Squealer?” I said.

“Grue’s simply part of a local team called the Undersiders that does jobs for money. As for Squealer, I don’t know what problems you two have with each other, but I’d like to see if she can be useful before I turn over to the Protectorate.” He said.

“A pleasure doing business with you.” I said, before hanging up.

While that work was nice, it wasn’t as nice as tinkering, so I created a high-tech alarm. Whenever it detected someone doing something inappropriate either near or around my store, it would contact the perfect people to handle the situation. It also had the option to detonate a bomb equivalent to five hundred pounds of TNT. How does my power define “inappropriate” or “perfect people”? I don’t know, but I’m confident that it will only detonate the bomb if necessary and I’m willing to trust my power on the rest. I also remembered that radio that I modified on Coil’s suggestion to be able to intercept enemy communications. I don’t know how he figured out I could do that, but I’m grateful for the knowledge. I built a second version in the form of an earmuff and added it as a permanent feature of my main costume. I didn’t know how to build actual body armor, but this should at least give me a heads up as to danger.

With that bit of goofing off done, I really needed to do some actual work and what more productive work was there than inventorying what I stole from Squealer? It was, frankly, a lot of junk, but it was tinker tech junk. My fashion power is screaming at me to tear these cars apart and redo them, which I could, but I won’t because my main goal here is to see what resources can be used to build the Titan. I’ve got a crane, which will definitely be useful, the armor from the cars could easily be put on my Titan, the lathe and many of her tools are specialized for large-scale crafting, which I’ll need to do a lot, the chemical lab can be used to make hydraulic and other fluids, Squealer’s alleged batteries can be refined to be actual batteries, and the rest will probably be useful for other things. Another thing I learned from stealing Squealer’s lab is that I can stretch my door and my entry hall pretty ridiculously. Could I steal the Boat Graveyard with a giant door? Maybe I couldn’t, but it’s at least a serious possibility. What is also a serious possibility is that if my math is right, I’ll have enough money once Coil pays me for the rifles to finish getting the parts for the Titan.

I could probably put a lot of effort into the Titan if I wanted to be an overachiever. My new fashion power has a lot of things to say about Titans, and the rest of my tinker powers could use the opportunity to stretch their limbs, so to speak. Frankly, with how quickly I’m making progress on the Titan, I’m worried that I won’t make enough money off the Elite before I turn it over. I don’t want a repeat of that Accord deal, which this is getting uncomfortably close to.

That might be a good reason to try to steal the Boat Graveyard. It would give me a “test” to make sure that the Titan works correctly and it would also benefit me immensely. Both by improving my rep among Brocktonites massively and giving me large amounts of raw materials.

Selling Coil his guns was almost anti-climactic after day-dreaming about stealing the Boat Graveyard. I spent the previous evening making his guns and putting them into crates, then in the morning when I confirmed his payment, I placed the crates out back behind my store’s loading bay and told him he could come pick them up whenever. They disappeared before lunch. My security system confirmed his guys took them, and that was that.

With that, I sent a message to Accord’s guys ordering $271,000 worth of machine parts. I decided against express shipping this time, since I’d still be busy constructing the rest of the Titan when the express shipment arrived. I ended up not ordering anything from Blasto, but that was because Accord’s guys had everything I needed after I got the tinker tech from Squealer.

Also, I was really glad that the power that gives me the ability to work as much as an entire crew doesn’t make me get as tired as if I did that work as one person or need as much food as an entire crew, because programming the Titan’s operating system while welding a chair into the cockpit while filtering hydraulic fluid of contaminants while removing the armor from cars in pieces that fit the Titan while uses the fire truck engine to charge the batteries would be a lot less fun and a lot more torturous if it did.

This was actually feeling a bit anticlimactic. Once I had the resources taken care of, the actual building just became something that took time with no suspense or drama. I tried to add some excitement to my day by going out and trying the Fugly Bob’s Challenger. That actually did add some excitement to my life, but not from me actually succeeding in the Challenger. Rather, the excitement came from me getting a text message from my security system informing me that someone had broken in and installed some listening devices while I was out.

I honestly expected the device I made that makes people perceive my store as a normal store would prevent this kind of thing from happening, but I guess not. I left Fugly Bob’s to go to a random hotel, I literally googled Brockton hotels and used random.org to pick from the list. I grabbed a room, went in, and opened my workshop from the bathroom. I got to work building the ultimate in anti-Thinker stealth technology. It was just like the old version that caused people to see it as a normal store, but this took it a step further. It was a “Private Property: Please Respect Our Privacy” sign that would cause any attempt to spy on the people inside, using technology, tinker tech, or Thinker powers to show a false image reflecting what would happen in a normal version of that building and these false images would also work as carrier waves for the Stranger effect that made people believe it was a normal building. Now, any attempt to get around the Stranger effect would just expose the trespasser to more of it. That was good, very good. The power I got at the same time was also pretty good. It was another tinker power, focused on using these “Cores” to produce energy which can either be used to power things or to enhance the physical properties of structures. The power even came with a free phonograph that would self-repair like my workshop. These “Cores” are actually pretty impressive pieces of work. They’re made from engraved gem spheres and get better as they get larger, the gems get more expensive, and the engraving gets more intricate. The engraving might be some kind of circuitry or it might channel the Mantic Energy, but it’s pretty weird. I can make a low-quality one from a massive block of quartz, but I don’t think I can afford a better one. There’s a Home Depot that sells quartz by the pound, but this seems more like the kind of thing for which I would use Accord’s raw material supplier. I was getting the feeling that I would tear apart my Titan in order to rebuild it into a super-version within days. Well, whatever, I could deal with things as they come.

When I woke up in the hotel the next morning, I sneaked back to my store very quietly and as soon as I walked in the store, I slapped my privacy sign on the back of the front window, so that it could take effect. With that done, I reviewed the security footage, saw where my trespassers had placed their bugs, and deactivated them before using them as raw material. With my “household problem” power, those bugs, and a spare compass that Squealer had lying around, I created a compass that could link to a building and a picture of a trespasser in that building and it would always point to the person until you picked someone new. I targeted the trespasser and then set the compass next to my other security systems since I had other things I needed to be doing. I started making some modifications to my Titan. I had decided to go through with my plan to steal the Boat Graveyard, and there were a few things I needed for that to work.

The first thing I needed was for my Titan to be waterproof. I hadn’t finished it yet, since I was waiting on the parts from Accord that should arrive later today, but I didn’t need those parts for water-proofing, anyway. No, what I needed was to shore up the cockpit’s life support so that it could recycle air indefinitely and to install a Mantic core that would energize the Titan and use that energy for water-proofing purposes. I had gotten those features done and spent the last two hours sitting in my cockpit rebreathing the air over and over again and thinking of more modifications I could do to this Titan, when I got the notification that the delivery was here.

The delivery was impressive. It was four 18-wheelers, and they spread over half of the parking lot. The order manifest took twenty pages, and I went through all of it to make sure they got everything. They even included the cubic meter of clear quartz and rock-carving tools I added to the order that morning. The actual unloading was perhaps a bit cruel. Each of the delivery men would carry their box through the loading bay into my entry hall, look shocked at all of the tinker tech they saw, I would point to a place to set it down, they would do so, leave, and their eyes would glaze over as the normalcy field reasserted itself. It took about four hours to unload it all, which was impressively quick given the size. I ordered pizza for everyone who helped unload at the end as a thank you, and as soon as they finished and left, I vanished back into my lab to start installing the new delivery. That crew power once again let me do things that would have literally been impossible without five guys. I was willing to pull an all-nighter and I had a power that would let me ignore my body’s needs as long as I was focused on a task, but I ended up going to bed at five in the morning with about eighty percent of the work done since I didn’t want to test my power by pushing my body too far.

Now when I woke up at three in the afternoon with twenty percent of the Titan work remaining, I felt like it would be a race against time to get the Titan finished that day. It was a race I was glad to take part in. When I saw my watch display 11:30, I almost gave up in despair, but then I realized that I had the Black Thumb power and could work on vehicles while they’re running. If the feeling of working as an entire crew wasn’t weird enough, it was even weirder when you were piloting a vehicle while nine other yous were trying to get the servos right. It was pretty awesome, though.

Spoiler: Celestial Forge Bookkeeping

Leftover wc: 857
Wordcount: 2624
Excess: 1481

-Build That Wall (Bastion) (100CP)
You know the basics of Caelondian technology. You understand how to harness the semimystical power of Cores and turn it into usable Mantic energy, to power basic machinery, shortrange flying machines, computers, and a variety of other uses. More interestingly, you can use Core power to reinforce existing structures, running a Matic current through it to enhance whatever physical properties it possesses, usually durability, though other uses are possible. This is what allowed structures like the Rippling Wall and the Bastion to survive the Calamity as well as they did. You also gain basic skill for mundane construction.

Phonograph (Bastion) Free:
An old-fashioned hand-cranked phonograph. Very sturdy, gives much higher-quality sound than you’d expect. Has a single record with the full OST for the Bastion game, as well as several additional Caelondian and Ura folk songs.

 

Spoiler: Formatting

See previous note.

Now I mentioned that there were multiple things I would need if I was going to steal the Boat Graveyard. I just finished my Titan, so I can check that off the list.

The second thing I needed was to upgrade the security on my pocket dimension. I didn’t want thinkers or tinker tech looking at my stuff, and I certainly didn’t want anyone trespassing in it. These were once again “household problems”. I created a human-sized version of my Titan to wander around my workshop and harmlessly knock out any trespassers. I created a less subtle version of my “Privacy Please” sign that would simply prevent Thinkers and tinker tech from seeing what was inside my dimension, and with that I felt safe in a way that I don’t think anyone has ever felt safe before.

The third thing I needed is something that can drain all the water from my entry hall. Fortunately, this is something that my “household problems” power solves, especially if I use my other tinker abilities to make its job easier. I can just take Squealer’s fire truck and reverse the fire truck’s hose so that it’s essentially a very bad vacuum, next I can add servos inside the hose so that it can be remotely controlled from the cabin and a force field on the end that can filter out everything except water. With that as a base, I can use my “household problems” power to make it the perfect water-only vacuum. The fire truck’s water storage unit becomes infinitely voluminous due to dimensional shifting, the hose becomes capable of stretching to accommodate any amount of water flowing through it and capable of sucking it very well, and the cabin’s controls get a simple but very effective autopilot that is programmed to suck all of the spilled water in the Workshop into the infinite water tank. This “household problems” power would be so overpowered if it wasn’t so limited.

The fourth thing I needed was a massive door, which I’m hopeful is something I can get from the “household problems” power. I could place it at the bottom of the Boat Graveyard and suck up the boats like the drain in a bathtub. I know I’ve seen these lockable storage cabinet things at Walmart. Is making one of those a “household problem”? Yes. What if I want a button on the front that can resize the cabinet? Still a “household problem”! What if I want it to be able to resize to 200 feet wide? Apparently not. Ok, what if I want it to have a button that lets you resize it with no limit on size? That’s a bit of a stretch, but doable. I thought that it would work better if I started with a mundane lockable storage cabinet instead of using my power to both build and enhance one, so I quickly went out and bought one. With those hoops jumped through, I went ahead and upgraded my storage cabinet so it would fit in my Titan’s hand yet could fit the Boat Graveyard inside it. It had a normal lock that my key fit into and three buttons. One that made it wider and taller, one that made it skinnier and shorter, and one that was a self-destruct in case I had to abandon it in the field. There was no need to make it deeper, and therefore there was no need to make it shallower. I tried to finish it off by making its durability scale with its size so that it wouldn’t break apart under its own weight, but I could tell that it was becoming unstable so I tried to placate it by painting pictures on it. These pictures were of the cabinet serving as a secure door into someone’s home while also containing a separate space that the household could safely store objects of arbitrary size in. Amazingly, this seemed to work and made it easier for the cabinet to hold together.

The fifth thing I needed was an automatic sorting machine. If this giant door plan worked, I would literally be dumping dozens of ships into my base. Not to mention, all the other junk that’s in the bay. I didn’t want that, so I checked if sorting things in your house was a “household problem” and it was! I repeated the same trick as with the fire truck. I did as much work as I could with my Titan and more normal tinker powers to meld the engines from Squealer’s technicals to Accord’s electronics to create a giant force field projector capable of sorting things, then I upgraded it with my super scientific solution tinker ability, so it should automatically sort junk and do it well.

The sun had risen while I was tinkering and I decided to go to sleep since stealing the Boat Graveyard seems like something that I should do while wide awake. I thought of going out to my store and sleeping on the floor after making it as soft as a mattress, but I wanted to stay inside my anti-Thinker dimension as long as possible, so I just made a bed from a few of Squealer’s car chairs and called it a night.

When I woke up, it was with determination. I was getting near the end of my checklist. The last thing I actually needed to do was to make the entry hall huge. I had already expanded it to the size of a warehouse to take in Squealer’s tech. Now it needed to fit an entire fleet. I concentrated as hard as I could and fixed my mind on three dimensions. Three miles wide, three miles deep, and three hundred feet tall. I closed my eyes; I opened them, it was a success.
Now, I was strictly doing things that weren’t needed, but which I wanted. Like creating a separating wall to hide all of my stuff, except for the two devices I built to sort and dry the debris, from the waterfall of ships, fish, and other things that are likely to come in my dimension’s door soon. It was kinda funny. I had a three-mile by three-mile space and then I crammed most of it including a normal-sized door to the workshop in a one hundred by one hundred area a few hundred feet away from the main door which was currently a very normal door, but would soon be a door big enough to pass ships. I also made this giant socket wrench out of precisely cut sheet metal. The idea behind it was that it could hook into my pocket dimension’s key and then my Titan could carry the wrench and use the key that way.

The last thing I did was give my Titan a paint job. My fashion powers had perked up at any chance to use them, but this was the first time I actually did. It wasn’t just any old paint job though, this was an artistic masterpiece. On every surface of my Titan that I could paint, there was paint. Each piece was a painting of Brockton Bay, not the real Brockton though, but the Brockton everyone wishes Brockton was, the Brockton that would be if the world was just and man was kind. Full of happy people, busy skyscrapers, and beautiful outdoors. I had an entire crew devoted to painting, and it was all I could do not to burst into tears when I saw the finished product.

Eventually, the sun went down and my painting wound down. When the paint finished drying, I grabbed the basic equipment I might want for field-tinkering, got in the pilot’s seat, grabbed the supreme lockable storage cabinet, and set my crew of engineers to working on the Titan to optimize it for the mission and repair damage as they’re done.

I also set the mech’s cameras to record everything that happened, because this was about to make history and because a video of this would be the perfect way to get back at Uber and Leet for the restaurant trick. I snuck out of my store’s loading dock with a finesse and stealth that even human athletes would have struggled with, pulled the key out with my giant wrench, and started to run to the docks. I was the size of a tank standing on two legs, yet I ran like greased lightning. A couple people may have seen me, but it didn’t matter. Everyone was going to see me soon enough. It was probably two miles as the crow flies to the docks and I made it in three minutes.

I dove into the water with my storage locker and wrench and, in the moment of truth, I did not drown. Sure, part of my crew had to patch up the Mantic reinforcement and seal a few joints, but nothing major. I swam out to the middle of the Boat Graveyard and picked a suitable spot. It was right by the biggest boat and out to sea from most of the graveyard.

I let myself settle to the ground and put the locker on the ground. I switched my Titan to fine manipulator mode, which my crew had apparently programmed in on the ride over, and put the key inside the locker. I wrenched the locker door open and used two of my Titan’s fingers to hold it up at a ninety-degree angle.

I took this moment to celebrate by creating a BB_Ponzi account on PHO and letting Brockton Bay know that I would be getting rid of the Boat Graveyard, right now. I then switched back to the delicate task of expanding the locker. With two fingers on my right hand holding the locker door open, I used my left hand to pull a 40mm shell from my cannon and using its tip press the button to make the storage cabinet wider and taller. It wasn’t the fastest work, in the first minute it barely doubled in size, but it was getting faster. I started letting the door fall open more as it got bigger, which let me switch to a one-finger grip to hold it up and prevent it from opening all the way. I got another power at that point, which was good since it was another engineering one. My crew got to work incorporating its lessons into our Titan, but otherwise, we continued as we had been.

I shifted my grip again. I was now using one finger to push the enlarge button and support the storage door’s weight. Every so often I would see an unfortunate fish swim by and get sucked into a wormhole the size of a car. I shifted my grip again with one finger pushing the button and my hand holding up the door. An active sonar system announced its existence with a pulse and showed that there was not much happening yet. I made a magnet the size of a human arm that would stick to the storage cabinet and keep the button pressed until it outgrew the magnet. That was nice. It let me move my hand away and switch off fine manipulation mode.

The cabinet was now at least as wide as my Titan. I could sort of see a vortex forming on the surface, but I was fortunate that the locker’s door actually shielded me from the locker’s vortex. My maneuvering thrusters started to work in the water, and I used them to back up and let the locker open all the way.

The cabinet hit the size of a tugboat. There was definitely a vortex, but I wasn’t sure if it was big enough to suck in ships. I thought the magnet that was holding down the button fell off because the cabinet looked like it was staying the same size. I put all of my crew on trying to change our particle wall so that it cut a piece off the big ship and see if that got sucked in.

With the full crew working on it, I quickly had a 200 foot long and 1 foot wide force field thing. I stabbed it into the big ship and carved off a piece to see if it would get sucked into the vortex. The cut-off piece fell and moved towards the cabinet, but it hit the ground and got stuck there. In other bad news, that cut took a noticeable amount of my power. I came out here prepared for ten hours of work, but at the rate I’d actually been going, those ten hours would only last three more.

That clearly wasn’t enough. I jumped to my left and let the vortex curl my path inward so that I landed near the top of the locker, but a reasonable distance away. I kicked the ground with my feet to create anchor points and then I used my extra long force field to press the enlarge button, so that the cabinet got back to growing again. I kept it up that way for a minute before the cabinet hit some kind of rock. I stopped growing the cabinet while I thought about what to do. I could feel the pull on my Titan and a piece from the big ship fell and got sucked into the cabinet by the vortex, but it wasn’t good enough.

Fortunately, my crew had not been idle and my rockets now worked as torpedoes. I fired one at the rock that the cabinet bumped into and the rock exploded. That was enough to clear the path so I could go back to expanding the cabinet. I couldn’t have been at this for very long, but I was getting impatient. I unloaded a full volley of rocket torpedoes at the big ship. It gave very nice booms and a cloud of metallic debris that did what I wanted it to and got sucked into the vortex. With a noisy shudder, the big ship started to break into pieces. This was good to see. As I watched the ship collapse, about half of its pieces went into the vortex and half got stuck on the ground. I thought some of those larger stuck pieces would be useful to tinker with, so I slowly walked back towards them, trying to keep my force field pressing down the button.

I could see the vortex on the surface of the water and it was about the size of a boat, but it still wasn’t pulling any of the wrecks towards it. I decided that I needed to switch up my plan. Instead of creating a giant drain and hoping that sucked ships towards it, I would create a giant drain and then push ships into it.

With that decided, I stopped enlarging the cabinet and jetted over to the remnants of the big ship. Given the years the containers had been underwater, most of them were now full of garbage, but getting them back to my pocket dimension would still be good practice. I grabbed one of the containers and jumped with it towards the vortex; we got pretty good height and I could feel that the container was being sucked in, so I jumped off the container back towards the ship’s remains with a little bit of jetting to make me go faster.

That worked, but it still wasn’t fast enough and it wasn’t like every ship could be broken into container-sized chunks. The next thing I tried was using my force field to pick things up and lift them into the vortex. That worked, but it was a bit slow since the force field would collapse if there was too much resistance. The ability to tinker in the field was really going to show what it could do here, so I started shifting my Mantic Core’s power away from water-proofing to strengthening the batteries and the force field generators. Most of the things that needed to be water-proofed already were, and my crew fixed anything that wasn’t yet waterproof as I switched the power around.

I could’ve done more if I had built a full tinker lab into this Titan, but I hadn’t and was suffering the consequences. Although, that field modification had majorly improved my ability to pitch containers. I found it worked even better if I grabbed the containers and jumped as hard as I could and then used my force field to push them onto their final trajectory. Though it was still taking too long. I decided to leave the big ship behind and try to hurl small ships in one single piece. Fortunately, there was a small ship nearby. It was some fishing boat that tried to get back the big container ship, crashed, and sunk. I got on the opposite side of it from the vortex and tried to extend my force field along the bottom, my crew having just converted the force field entirely to some kind of tactile telekinesis thing. Once I got it a bit off the ground, I started pushing it by hand, and using my jets to brace and assist.

That worked reasonably well, except for the almost ten minutes it took. I really needed to be going faster, so once I had the boat on a path to the cabinet I reached out and pulled out its engine and a fuel tank. It was an old inboard engine, but I knew how to get it running and integrated with my systems.

While I worked on making myself an engine backpack, I started hearing radio transmissions from the PRT. They were asking me to stop what I was doing and threatening to arrest me, but I didn’t really care. They didn’t have any underwater capes and the public would be furious if they punished me for cleaning out the Boat Graveyard. I pretended not to hear them since that was less awkward than responding just to say no.

My diesel engine seemed to work pretty well. I had to modify it a fair amount to get it to run underwater, but that wasn’t so hard since I had a power to keep engines running in hostile conditions. Essentially, what I did was create a second fuel tank for storing compressed air and used that to substitute for the actual air that the engine couldn’t get down here. The engine would then use some of its excess power to create compressed air. I then connected the system into my Titan’s electrical system. This both allowed my Titan to jumpstart the engine and help it get around the paradox of needing compressed air to run the engine that produces compressed air and allowed my backpack engine to supply its excess power to the batteries. I also connected the engine to my movement controls so that it could mesh with the other systems for helping me get around, and I could use it as an underwater jetpack. I finished up all that tinkering by upgrading my sonar and giving it the ability to identify materials. The idea is that this would let me find fuel or batteries underwater, and that would let the upgrade quickly justify its creation.

With that, I could clear out the small boats pretty easily and that’s what I did, but while I was clearing out about a dozen or two tugboats, fishing boats, and tourist craft I was thinking about how to clear out the big ones. Many of them were the size of skyscrapers. Although the container ship was the biggest one and I was able to get rid of it with a volley of rockets, that had left a lot of wreckage behind and I probably didn’t have enough rockets to clear out the rest of the big ships in the same way. Especially if I was unable to make more ammo underwater.

I did think some more about how I could get a tinker workshop underwater when I realized that a decent amount of commercial ships actually had their own machine shops. That thought got a decent amount of my crew to switch to reprogramming my sonar to look for machine shops, which I didn’t really think was a productive use of their time, but which I allowed. I started using my telekinetic force fields to pull beached ships back into the deep, since by that time all of the small, purely underwater ones were in my dimension.

When I went back for the next beached ship, I hopped up onto a nearby boat ramp. There was a decent crowd there, and I gave them a wave. Unfortunately, most of the crowd was PRT agents, but I could see some normal Brocktonites behind the caution tape and gave a second wave just for them. I could tell they were taking plenty of pictures from all the flashing, so any fears I had about this being covered up or someone stealing my credit were easy to dismiss.

The work settled back into a second period of monotony, where for the dozen or so beached ships, I would swim up and use my force field to lift them off the beach. Large ships would then be allowed to sink to the bottom while I would sacrifice small ships to the vortex. As this was going on, I decided to have my crew cover my Titan in fins since the ground had trouble supporting my Titan when it used its full power and swimming everywhere seemed like a good workaround.

After what was probably another hour of work, there were only large ships remaining. These would be the hardest to deal with, but I had an idea. What if I could use my rockets to move them? Not in the way that I had used the rockets to blow up that first one and then moved the pieces, but what if I used the energy of their fuel to overcharge the force fields for a quick lift?

I started prototyping the change by increasing the burn rate of my backpack engine and the power draw of my force field. I was expecting to have at least ten hours of power when I set out for this and was running the diesel to keep to that schedule, but with these changes, I was probably down to two hours before I would simply run out of power. I tested my force field with this new power strategy, and I was just barely able to lift one of the larger boats. I couldn’t move while doing that, but I already had some of my crew switch to fixing that issue.

This seemed like it would work. I could probably do the eighteen or so big ships in two hours. That would mean the only energy I would have to take me home would be what I could collect in that time. That might sound difficult, but should be doable if I’m clever enough.

Having made a decision, my crew created another set of fuel injection ports in my backpack engine and took about half of my rockets apart to make a fuel tank and fill it with fuel. Then I tested it. The engine went full-power almost immediately and stayed that way for the second it took to go through the burst of speed. During that time the power output was almost to overflowing, and the force field needed to take all that it could, just to prevent the batteries from overheating, but during that second, that big ship almost jumped for the vortex.

I started turning the ship towards the vortex and that also helped it move faster. It still took me fifteen minutes to carry it to the vortex, and that was way behind schedule. I was hoping it would get better with practice. The secondary fuel gauge showed that I had burnt a tenth of the repurposed rocket fuel, which was also pretty bad.

At this point, I felt myself about to get a new power and I was hoping it would help me out here, but apparently not. Instead of getting even a crappy power, I got a sense that my power tried to give me something, but it was too much of a stretch. What a ripoff!

That was also the time the earmuff I built to intercept enemy comm chatter decided to make itself useful.

“This is Dragon. Cawthorne is now entering Brockton airspace. Where do you want it?” I heard.

“We’re grouping at the docks where he entered the water to engage the robot when it tries to leave.” Armsmaster said.

“Affirmative.” Dragon said.

The good news was my new interceptor worked. The bad news was Dragon is really strong and my exfiltration just became much, much harder, since I didn’t think my Titan could beat Dragon or evade her.

Aside from Dragon, I was getting nervous about my power supply, especially since I was committed to clearing out all of the Boat Graveyard tonight. Fortunately, I wasn’t trapped in here. I had a phone and could easily reach people on the surface who might be able to help me.

“Switchboard!” I said as she picked up the phone.

“Hello, Ponzi. How’s business?” She said.

“I built the Titan and am currently testing it. Check Brockton Bay Boat Graveyard on PHO and you should see what I’m up to.” I said.

The phone was silent for a few seconds before she responded, “Oh, wow. This looks really cool. Is all of this from the robot?”

“No,” I said, “the vortex is actually from something completely different, but I am using the Titan to push derelict ships towards the vortex to clean up the area.”

“Interesting, do you have anything special to talk about or did you just want to discuss the delivery date for your robot?” She said.

“I’d actually like you to send me a catalog on tinker tech power supplies. That’s a problem I’m having with the Titan and I’d like to see what I could do to fix it. If you also have advice on defeating Dragon, I’d like that as well.” I said. I knew that I couldn’t get anything delivered in time to be useful, but just looking at what other people did to solve my issues would be pretty helpful.

“Moving on up in the world, are we? I’ll get that to you as soon as possible. Ciao!” She said before hanging up.

I decided to move on to Grue, but canceled the call when I saw that it was calling the “Angry Grue” number. I could call Coil and Citrine, but we don’t really have that kind of relationship. As I realized I needed more cape friends, I settled on calling Laserdream. I could probably absorb her lasers for power, if I could get her to cooperate.

“Hello?” She mumbled.

“Hi, Laserdream. I’m working on clearing up the Boat Graveyard and I could use your help. I might be able to use your lasers to power some devices I’m working with.” I said.

“Mmm… Armsmaster?” She said.

“No. I’m Ponzi, the new guy?” I said.

“I wanna go back to bed.” She said before hanging up.

That was a disappointment. I would’ve expected my activities to be an all-hands-on-deck situation, I didn’t expect I’d be waking her up. No matter, I saved her number into my contacts and moved on.

With my Rolodex exhausted, I went back to focusing on my work. Right now, I’ve cleaned out four of the eighteen big ships at a pace that has me running out of power with six ships remaining. I’ve tried or am doing all of the easy ideas to get more power, maybe I just need to reach farther? Fortunately, I had the email from Switchboard with the catalog for Elite power supply tinker tech and a list of news articles describing times that Dragon lost, so I should have plenty of good ideas to steal. I allowed myself to be distracted from the email for a second to check PHO and my Boat Graveyard thread had really blown up. I even got a Verified Cape badge for BB_Ponzi.

Regardless, I needed to focus on either saving energy or getting more of it. The catalog had some good ideas, though. I technically could build a nuclear reactor, but not with the resources I had on hand. A power-saving mode probably wouldn’t help, since while there may be some things running that I wasn’t using, the biggest power-draw was moving ships around and that wasn’t something I could turn off. As for regenerative braking? That was actually a good idea, and I immediately had my crew get to work modifying the fins so instead of wasting energy when they braked, they returned it to the batteries. Oh, a wireless power transmitter would solve this issue completely!

Unfortunately, I didn’t think I had the time to do it at that point. Then I had a wonderful idea. I couldn’t make the Titan use less power, but I could make the work take less power. All I needed to do was reprogram the fire control computer to work on thrown ships, and then I could automatically find the optimal way to move ships to the vortex.

That idea was essentially a miracle. It was pretty epic to just casually toss boats around in such a way that they would get sucked into the vortex and I finished clearing the Boat Graveyard with 20 minutes of runtime remaining. I took a quick breather and then started to lower the power settings so that I would have more time to think a way out of this trap. Dragon probably had half the local Protectorate waiting with her to ambush me as soon as I got out of the water. That’s not a fight I could win, so it’s a fight I need to avoid.

Fortunately, I had an idea. It’s true that I was originally planning to escape back to land in my Titan, but I had a backup plan and her ambush was based on several assumptions which I would do my best to disprove now that I was aware of it. I swam underneath the cabinet door and pressed the self-destruct button, then I started to swim up and slowly closed the cabinet door as I did so. I moved myself to the outside edge, and kept lifting so that the door was almost straight up-and-down. Then I jumped over the door’s edge and gave the door a pull so it would start to fall shut. As soon as the door was falling, I quickly rotated my Titan so that my back was facing to shore and hit the eject button. The design came with the option of having the Titan automatically explode when the pilot ejected, but I didn’t activate it because I was about to send my Titan back to base. As I rocketed away from it, I just took a moment to feel gratitude that my escape pod’s thrust was strong enough to get out of the vortex and keep going.

My escape pod was starting to slow down as I saw my Titan fall into the pocket dimension and the door slam shut. There was an impressive burst of water when that happened, and I could feel the wave all the way here in my escape pod. There was another burst of water when the cabinet’s self-destruct went off incorrectly, but it was small and when I looked back I saw the area had instead dissolved into a cloud of purplish-grey shards. When my escape pod came to a stop on the bay’s surface, I got out and swam back to shore. It was a terrible swim with my pilot suit just barely keeping me from freezing to death and the distance almost completely tiring me out. I probably would have drowned except for the fact that I had a power that let me ignore my bodily needs as long as I was focused on a task. The shortage of light definitely helped me sneak up to the shore undetected, and I almost fainted as soon as I came to a rest. Fortunately, I was simply too sick to fall unconscious. All of my body either went numb or started shivering with my lungs and heart simply screaming in pain. I think I pissed myself as well. I don’t know, I was pretty confused by the experience. After what was probably a few minutes to get my wits together I realized that I came ashore near the Trainyard, north of the Boat Graveyard.

I took a brief stop in an alley to open my pocket dimension, see the rows upon rows of wrecked ships, piles of fish, and the collapsed rag doll of my Titan, and changed into civilian clothes including a triple layer of jackets, before I went out to IHOP for a 5 AM celebratory breakfast. This was a good day.

Spoiler: Celestial Forge Bookkeeping

Leftover wc: 1481
Wordcount: 5506
Excess: 2987

-Engineering Basics (Dead Space) (100CP)
You're a real Mr. Fix-It, y'know? Malfunctioning fuel intake? Easy. Faulty asteroid defense cannon? Turn it off, then on again. Non-responsive communications array? Shuffle the working emitters around a bit so they're symmetrical. Undead monstrosities? Depends on what you mean by, "fix." Does using a rivet gun to blow them apart count? Yes? Then we're good.

-100 CP saved

 

Spoiler: Formatting

This was copied from Google Docs and the formatting had to be manually corrected, so may have mistakes.

Given how epic the night I just had was, I decided to simply veg at IHOP. Not work on any crazy schemes, not design a doomsday device, just sit and veg with a nice meal. IHOP was pretty nice for that kind of thing, anyway. They didn’t serve alcohol, so there was no risk of accidentally starting a bar crawl. I got pancakes with a side of mozzarella sticks and a hot chocolate as a drink. I could have almost drifted off to a food coma, if the internet didn’t tell me those don’t exist. When I finished my meal, I switched to drinking diet coke and asked one of the waiters to put the local news on with subtitles. I wanted to see the reaction to my stunt live.

Sure, I had my PHO thread which had blown up massively while I was working, but there’s something special to seeing an actual person speaking that you just don’t get through the internet. They had some older lady doing the news. She seemed cautiously optimistic about me clearing out the Boat Graveyard. Her guest was some PR officer from the PRT. I could tell that he didn’t like me and he tried to portray himself as being all reasonable, but he was really just trying to ruin the mood of what should be a joyous occasion by only mentioning things that make me look bad like how my debut was supposedly a brutal attack on the Merchants or how we don’t know if there will be any side-effects from the tinker tech used in the Boat Graveyard’s cleanup and that the PRT is trying to recover all the purple-grey metal shards left behind in case they’re dangerous. I made a post on my PHO thread calling him out by name for scare-mongering and being ungrateful and letting the people of the Bay know that I could put the ships back if the PRT really wanted me to.

At that moment, I got a new power. I normally would’ve been happy to suddenly become able to decipher any technology whose controls I can get access to, but I was hoping to have a relaxing morning and this guy ruined it and my power teamed up with him against me. With my mood ruined, I got the check and put a twenty-dollar tip on it, so that the waiter didn't think he was responsible for my bad mood.

After I slept all day, I posted my Titan’s POV video online. It was the most amazing thing I had ever seen, and I had already seen it in person. Just imagine how awesome it’s going to be for normal people watching it. Although, I did edit parts of it, mostly to cut out the beginning and just show me starting from the docks and to leave it ambiguous how I left at the end. It was basically a five-hour-long video of my Titan hauling ships, and it was awesome. Hopefully, the good PR would come in handy soon enough.

After that, I checked up on my Titan. It was in reasonably good shape, although it would need a full cycle of maintenance to deal with jerry-rigged nonsense and the odd wear and tear. It should mostly be doable with supplies I already had. However, I wanted to use this opportunity to get even more stuff paid for by the Elite. So, I called up Accord’s suppliers and spent $350,000 on equipment. The order was about half-and-half machinery and electronics. I was hoping the equipment would enable me to make synthetic gems for Mantic Cores. Regardless, it would be useful for my future projects.

With that done, I called up Switchboard.

“Hi, Ponzi.” She said.

“Hi, Switchboard,” I said. “I think I’m ready to schedule the Titan’s delivery now. I ordered some parts for it and was planning to take some time to repair it, but that stuff is time-consuming, not difficult. I think I can be ready four days from now, if that works for you. I just sent you another invoice for parts, so I’ll need that approved before the handoff.”

“Sure, I’ll let the people in charge know and they’ll get back to you. Is this number okay for them to reach you?” She said.

“Yes. Thank you.” I said, and then I hung up.

With that, I got back into my pocket dimension through my store. I intended to repair my Titan, but when I went to walk to it, I had to walk past an enormous mountain of fish and it smelled terrible. I decided my first order of business was to get the fish to not stink up my base. Fortunately, this was a reasonably easy “household problem”. I just modified the fire truck that was storing ridiculous amounts of water to suck in the fish and then freeze them so they wouldn’t rot, or at least wouldn’t rot anymore. Then I put together a couple of fans in a complex arrangement around some chemical equipment that my household problems power told me would air freshen my pocket dimension. Maybe when I have some free time, I can try to green the Sahara by dumping a mountain of dead fish and water on it.

With that done, I could actually get to work repairing my Titan. I needed to replace the escape pod, a fair amount of rockets, then determine which of my field improvements I should keep and which I should revert, my doing that, and finish by fixing the wear and tear. It was mostly an all-nighter given I had the crew, and I had the parts I needed, either from Accord or from salvaging one of the dozens of ships I had in here. I kept the waterproofing and the changes to the code, but I reverted the force field back to its original particle wall configuration, removed the diesel engine, and removed most of the fins except the ones that were actually useful above water.

After that, I had my crew put together documentation. I knew that the Elite were probably going to have their own tinkers go over this and try to figure out how to use it, but getting some basic documentation would be useful, both as practice and the beginning of the documentation I would need to sell Titans to other customers. I didn’t want to put that much effort into it, but when you have ten people writing, you quickly get a hundred-page book, which I thought was enough.

I spent the next few days mostly taking it easy, but I did some tinkering when I got a good idea. I also gave my bookie’s boss five grand. I’m still thinking of crushing their operations, but that’s not something I can do on a whim right now. I was saddened though when the Simurgh attacked Canberra. I couldn’t have done anything if I went, but I still felt bad about not going.

Canberra was really a turning point for me. I knew that I was a powerful tinker, but that day made me realize that even a powerful tinker was nothing compared to an Endbringer and that if I wanted to amount to anything more than the smartest man on the cinder, I would need to step the hell up in my tinkering and in order to step up my tinkering, I would need lots of money and in order to get lots of money, I would have to look for more customers. That should be doable, given that my current customers were gotten when I was an unknown and me clearing out the Boat Graveyard was national news for a day.

There were three things I needed if I was going to step up like that: security, minions, and production. I’d need security simply because any operation like that would be constantly tested by morons trying to screw it over, I’d need minions because any operation like that simply has too much for one person to do it all, and I’d need production just to fill the orders.

Fortunately, household security is a household problem and I’m good at solving those. I got an answering machine at Walmart, then modified it so that it would say why the caller was calling. That should be an easy way to screen out calls for pranks while letting potential customers reach me easily. It was also a simple thing to then connect it to the untraceable phone that I got for the store. I also replaced the “Privacy Please” sign on the store. The old one had a Stranger effect that would cause people to believe it was a normal store and which worked on Thinkers and through tinker tech. That was too clever by half. The new one simply made the store’s insides invisible to Thinkers and tinker tech, but kept the Stranger effect for mundane observers. Then I figured, if I’m making the store immune to Thinkers, I should make it immune to Blasters and Brutes as well. I mixed up the world’s toughest paint and my crew put up a coat of paint in no time flat. I just had to hope that my attackers wouldn’t bring any paint remover. That would go through the invulnerable paint like a hot knife through butter. Fortunately, the locks that used a force field to reinforce their doors and hold them shut didn’t have such weaknesses.

With that done, I made another thread on PHO:

■​

♦ Topic: Anyone want to buy a Titan?
In: Boards ► Places ► America ► Brockton Bay
BB_Ponzi (Original Poster)
Posted On Feb 26th 2011:
Hello again. I've appreciated all of the feedback and public support I got for using my Titan to remove the Boat Graveyard from our fair city. My only regret is that I didn't do it sooner and better. I hope that the city can use this opportunity to restart industry and return to prosperity.

If you're wondering how to get your own Titan, then you're in luck! Just call 1(603)981-9443! For the record, that number will automatically screen out anyone who isn't serious. If you are serious and I don't answer, then you should hang up and try again later.

Let's talk about Titans, though! They are all bipedal, armored, 25 foot or so tall, piloted robots. Piloting is done with a neural interface to minimize training time. They each have a set of primary weapons and ordnance, plus a defensive ability, tactical ability, and charged ability. These are very flexible and with a bit of warning, I can make them very specialized for your needs. The Titans are powered by rechargeable batteries which should be enough for ten hours of normal usage. They are also boosted by a device called a Mantic Core which infuses the vehicle with mantic energy and can be adjusted at build time to produce a variety of effects, but with a focus on enhancing the Titan's durability. The actual price of a Titan is negotiable, but assume it’s in the millions or tens of millions of dollars. I’m willing to take payment in tinker tech if money is an issue and give discounts if you plan to use them in Endbringer battles. Contact me for further info.

I also have guns for sale. These aren't as exciting but are much more affordable. I can sell laser pistols and rifles for $12,000 each, plasma pistols and rifles for $20,000 each. Shotguns cost twice as much with machine guns and sniper rifles twice as much again. I would prefer to sell guns in bulk, but will not insist on it.

If you want delivery, you can arrange that on your own. Otherwise, pickup is in Brockton Bay. As for maintenance, the guns should last until damaged or the user makes a mistake. A Titan should be checked for wear and tear after each mission.

​

■​

I felt pretty good about security, but I had one last idea before I could move onto minions. I built this digital day planner and mounted it on the wall in the room that I had been using as an office. Then I upgraded it so that it would use precognition to check that it was correct. That way any trouble that happens at my store would show up on the calendar before it happened and I could start working on the problem ahead of time.

Now that the security aspect was handled, what I really needed was minions. Most of the potential minions I knew were either worthless or spoken for, but I had one with some promise.

“Hey, Steve!” She yelled as she picked up the phone.

“Hi, Courtney! I’ve got some important news to share, but first I want you to meet me somewhere.” I said as I texted her the address of my store.

While waiting for my girlfriend to arrive so that I could give her the big reveal, I spent my time manning the phone and seeing what weirdos would prank call a man who builds giant robots. I did however get two somewhat serious customers. One being an unknown tinker who confirmed that I was Ponzi and that I wasn’t interested in selling my guns for less than the listed price before hanging up. The other was someone from the Adepts who saw the description of the Mantic Core in my Titan description and wanted to buy it separately from the Titan and talk about it with me. That was actually a deal I was interested in, so I quoted them $50,000 for a decent orb and $100,000 an hour to consult and left them to discuss it and call me back. When that was done I checked my precog day planner and saw that I would be having dinner with Courtney, so I went out and got dinner supplies.

That was when my power decided to be weird and give me a laboratory that looked like a Gothic Cathedral. Although, this was actually pretty good. It was focused on reverse-engineering and if I combined that with my own ability to understand technology by messing with the controls, that would give me a decent ability to reverse engineer technology. I decided to test it by taking the machine that I built to automatically sort the Boat Graveyard and shove it into one of the testing bays. I realized that this lab would need to be as big as it was, if it wanted to reverse engineer anything the size of a vehicle or larger. Though the skull decor was really unnecessary, I did enjoy the way that they started chanting and screens started showing sensor readouts once they started examining the sorting machine. I would have loved to stick around for the rest of the afternoon, but my day planner said I would be eating with my girlfriend soon and I didn’t want to see what happened if I tried to prove it wrong.

Courtney arrived when the day planner said she would. I greeted her as a civilian and gestured her to a simple meal of salad and sandwiches with a side of beer. I would’ve gone fancier, but the store didn’t have many appliances yet.

After dinner, the mood turned serious.

Courtney asked me, “So, when did you get an office in a strip mall?”

“A few weeks after I got superpowers,” I replied.

“Really?” She replied, mildly stunned. “What kind of powers?”

“Let me show you,” I said as I got up and opened the door to my pocket dimension through one of the interior doors.

“I take it you didn’t quit your job to become a marketing consultant?” She asked.

“No, but I’m making even more money as a rogue tinker. That’s actually why I called you. I wanted to offer you a job as my minion. I need someone to man my customer service line and let me know what people try to contact me about when I’m busy with other things.” I said.

“If you offer me six figures, I can start today.” She said.

“Sure, must suck at TGIF. I take it?” I said.

“It’s Ruby Tuesday and it’s just boring. At least this way I get to do cape gossip professionally and I get to sleep with my boss on the clock!” She said.

I took the time to explain to her how to actually do the job and she seemed to get it reasonably quickly. I then moved on to my next potential minion, while watching her in case she screwed up. I tried calling Grue again and was happy not to get the Angry Grue number. A young man picked up the phone and said, “Hello?”

“Can I speak to Grue, please? It’s about a job.” I said.

There were some muffled sounds before Grue answered, “Yes? Who is this?”

“I’m Ponzi. I wanted to talk to you about work. Specifically, an opportunity for future work.” I said.

“Okay. Are there going to be giant robots involved?” He asked.

“They’re called Titans. I may be selling some, though. In which case, I was wondering if you wanted to be a bodyguard during such transactions.” I said.

“I’ll do it for twenty grand a pop.” He said, perhaps a bit sarcastically. I accepted the deal, and we spent some time discussing what I expected the job to be like. I put the phone number in my contacts list as Happy Grue. I knew I was overpaying him, but if I regretted hiring him then I could switch to someone else and if I really regretted hiring him, I could make him really regret working for me.

Perhaps I could wow an independent hero with money or steal someone from the E88? They were one of the serious people who called me. They were thinking about getting a Titan, but were content for now to just order a few dozen guns. I thought about leaking the news to Coil and starting an arms race, but that was unnecessary. If the E88 ever used the guns, I’d expect Coil to find out soon enough. I must have made a few hundred grand in profit on that sale. As for delivery, they paid half in advance, I left a shipping container of guns at a hidden spot in the city, told them where to pick it up, and they paid the remaining half. Neither I nor my girlfriend actually likes the Empire, but that was enough money to pay her salary for the year, to restock my supplies, and make a down payment on my next project.

Thinking of my next project reminded me of when the Elite gave me a stack of tinker resumes as I was looking to buy parts for my Titan. I remembered this one guy who made transportation infrastructure, Mantic Cores are definitely the kind of thing that could help him boost the durability of his projects. On a more selfish note, they also have this guy who makes chambers that enhance people. I don’t have much to help him except for the neural interfaces from my Titans, but if he’s not interested in that, I could always trade him some guns. I sent off a quick message to both explaining my interest in trading tinker tech and moved on to check on the Laboratorium.

The Laboratorium had partial results from the sorting machine. It cleared up a couple points of force field physics that I was confused about and some parts that I needed to rely on my Tinker power to understand. As for understanding that “household problem” tinker power? It still needed some more time and preferably more samples to figure out what’s up with that, but it did give me a few tantalizing hints as to how the computer worked. It was better than the computers I could already make, but it needed better resources unless my power was giving them to me. With that, I authorized the Laboratorium to do destructive testing and decided to retreat while the cheering skulls tore that car to pieces.

My next phone call was a bit of a surprise. I expected it to be the Adepts getting back to me about the Mantic Core, but it was actually Coil complaining that I gave Grue a job.

“So, what you’re saying is that the Undersiders, including Grue, work for you, but I can’t tell them that and you don’t want me giving them as a group or as individuals jobs?” I asked.

“Yes, that is the case.” He said.

“Okay, if you let me take Grue out for the job I hired him for and keep being a good customer then I won’t hire him or the Undersiders without your permission.” I said.

“That’s acceptable.” He said.

Fortunately, we solved it like adults.

As a result, when the Elite called me to arrange the delivery, I was starting to get antsy and was ready for some excitement in my life. I also had about eighty percent of my next Titan done. I was calling it Scorch, and I was unsure whether to keep it for personal use or sell it. I guess I was waiting to hear the price.

The Elite wanted to do the handoff later that day at some farm, and I was fine with that. I checked and so was Grue. We got there early in my plateless SUV. I used a barn door to grab my Titan and sat in it while waiting for them to show up as Grue waited in the SUV.

A convoy of luxury vehicles pulled up. Once they came to a stop, a female passenger dressed in an olivine dress with a gem-encrusted mask got out of the front sedan, walked to the limo in the middle, and helped an old man dressed in a tuxedo covered in Tron lines with a matching mask limp out. It was clear to me that this limping was a trick to get us to underestimate him, and I resolved not to fall for it.

I called Grue and ordered him to get out and hand his cellphone to the Elite.

“I’m Ponzi and you would be the Elite, I presume?” I said to them.

“That’s correct.” The old man said. “I am Uppercrust and this fine lady is Parvenu. Although, I was expecting us to meet in person.”

“Apologies. I wanted to ensure that this was not a trap before revealing myself.” I said as my Titan stepped forward and kneeled down in front of him.

“Does this work for you?” I said through for my speakers.

“If you insist. I am interested in that robot and look forward to taking it home with me, but there are a few other things I need to mention. First, The Elite are going to send a team to Brockton Bay to set up a new cell.” Uppercrust said. “We want you to be their local point of contact and will compensate you for your services. They will reach out to you to arrange that. If you want to join the Elite, we and they will be glad to have you.”

“Thank you. I look forward to meeting with them. As for membership, I’ll need to see the full costs and benefits, but I am considering it. Maybe we can talk about it some other time.” I said.

Uppercrust reached it in his coat and pulled out a pair of business cards. “You can contact either me or my secretary, Parvenu, at your convenience.” He said. “There’s one more matter I need to discuss with you, but it’s a bit private.”

Grue took his business cards while I leaned in as if inviting him to whisper into my ear. “Yes?” I said.

He stepped forward and then looked up at me. “We know you were over-charging us with the reimbursements. Normally, we kill people who do that kind of thing to us, but we’ve decided to forgive you this one time, because even with the extra payments, we were still getting a good deal. You will not enjoy attempting it a second time. Understand?” He said.

“Yes, sir.” I said.

“Then all is forgiven!” He said as he returned to his starting spot.

At that point, I stepped out of the front of the mech and gave him a handshake. “Thank you.” I said.

The meeting wrapped up pretty quickly since all that was left was to hand over the documentation and try to give a five-minute lesson on the controls. Grue and I left for Brockton once the Elite were satisfied. We never saw how they left, but at one point I looked back and they were gone with the Titan. Although, I may have been distracted by a new power. It was partly a generalist tinker one, but it had a decent amount of robotics and computer hacking skills. It also came with a secondary ability to play a theme song when I’m being awesome. I can definitely use the robotics knowledge to give Scorch an upgrade when I get home and if I have some extra time I might teach it to play my theme song.

Grue had me drop him off in the middle of the docks. I heard a rumor that in the wake of Skidmark’s death and Squealer’s disappearance, the Undersiders, which Grue was a part of, had claimed a few blocks of the docks as their territory. I didn’t see the point in claiming such worthless territory, but Grue confirmed it when I asked him, so I gave Grue a discounted quote on plasma guns and my phone number, along with the money I owed him for being my bodyguard on this job.

ARC END

Spoiler: Celestial Forge Bookkeeping

Leftover wc: 2987
Wordcount: 4318
Excess: 1305

-What's This Do? (Titanfall) (200CP)
The technology used in the frontier can be so complex and advanced it takes years for even the most brilliant minds to understand. Really now? That's good, you needed something to do after lunch today. Now, even if you're in a dropship in the middle of a firefight, you can decipher the inner workings of technology so long as you have the controls to scre- I mean analyze.
-Laboratorium (Light of Terra) (100CP)

Ancient cogitators, arrays of auspex systems, and volume upon volume of documentation supply an Adept with the tools and information necessary to capably analyze a recovered technological artifact.

-Engineering (Teen Titans) (100CP)

You're a master mechanic and an expert at building robots and other technological devices. You also have a fair bit of knowledge about hacking into computers.
Theme Song (Teen Titans) (Free)
You get a personal soundtrack that will play whenever you enter combat or do anything worthy of music.
Official Celestial Forge Document docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1ZSh8kfVxsuSpZyclWWVjJ-m5Jv7JBTo3H7KMVpz9wQM/htmlview#

 

Spoiler: Formatting

This was copied from Google Docs and the formatting had to be manually corrected, so may have mistakes.

It wasn’t often that the Elite’s regional bosses all got together on a conference call, but when they did, they were glad to use Toybox’s hacker-proof telecommunications gear. One of those videoconferences was just reaching the end as Gabriella Vargas, in her guise as Entourage, was wrapping up her speech asking people to support her plans to found an Elite Cell in Brockton Bay.

“In conclusion, with your support and my leadership, I believe we can make the Elite the dominant force in Brockton Bay within two months and create a base capable of supporting regional efforts within a month.” Entourage said.

“I’ve looked into Brockton Bay.” Bastard Son said. “It’s a shithole. It’s so bad that the Teeth left and have no intention of going back. Why should we chase after something that not even they want? Sure, you can mention the recent clearing of the Boat Graveyard, but there are dozens of run-down industrial cities we could invest in. Why this one? Maybe you can mention that new tinker, but he’s still only one tinker. He’s not Scion. Nah. This is all just some plot by Uppercrust to get his hands on Panacea, as yet another scheme to fix his health. The last one failed, and I expect this one to fail as well. Everything else is just fast-talk and I’m wondering why the rest of us should put our efforts into something that only one of us is going to benefit from.”

“We have already decided to start a cell in Brockton Bay. It’s time for you to quit bitching and focus on moving forward.” The Gentleman said.

“The Gentleman is right, but I would like to take a moment to address Bastard Son’s concerns.” Uppercrust said. “Panacea is grossly underutilizing her talents. She has the power to cure anything that isn’t brain-related, yet she uses it to cure scraped knees and bloody noses for free. With our guidance, she could make millions selling her services for market price. Panacea alone could pay for this operation, even if we were not also doing it as part of our plan to expand to the East coast. Though I think you underestimate the tinker, Ponzi, as well. It’s true that from a power perspective his robot and his guns aren’t the greatest, although that undersea portal might actually have been impressive depending on how it worked. However, from examining the robot I can tell that his work is more reliable than the average tinker’s. What’s more, our thinkers estimate that he has had his powers for at most a month. Surely, with just a month of work, he is someone just discovering his potential and while his character may leave much to be desired, if we strike while the iron is hot, we can mold him into something amazing.”

“Fine,” Bastard Son said, “but I’ll want something for this.”

“I expected that.” Uppercrust said.

“While I’m not enthused about the prospect of recruiting a man named Ponzi who acts like his namesake, what I’m most worried about is your plan for dealing with New Wave.” Agnes Court said. “It seems like you have this initial plan and if that fails, you just give up? I’d like some more detail.”

“It’s not giving up. New Wave has a really low activity level and my thoughts are that if we cannot bring them in-house, then it would be easiest to poach their most active members and let the remaining group go dormant. At that point, further attempts to absorb them would be counterproductive.” Entourage said. “Circling back to Ponzi for a second, I should mention that if the low estimates of his time as a cape are correct, that would imply an impressive speed of construction for his tinker tech, which combined with his ongoing work as a rogue only makes him more suited for membership. As for his name, it wouldn’t be the first time for him if he switched. The Boat Graveyard incident should either give him the resources he needs to be productive or something he can trade with the rest of the Elite’s tinkers for what he needs.”

“Do you think you can stop him from posting your secrets online?” Bastard Son said. “He has a frightening lack of discretion about even his own tech, but fine. Let’s move on. What’s the next topic?”

“The next topic is putting together a team to set up in Anchorage,” Agnes Court said, “and I have just the team in mind.”

 

Spoiler: Formatting

This was copied from Google Docs and the formatting had to be manually corrected, so may have mistakes.

Spoiler: Theme Song

www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpaapLI0ozY

♬ Gettin’ rich wicked fast / Livin’ like aristocrats ♬

Suddenly gaining a theme song was an interesting experience. It was also pretty interesting to feel my power try and fail to reach for another power while I just sat back and listened to it. I was optimistic that my next power would be extra amazing to compensate since that was what happened the previous time and the greatness of the song helped to drown any pessimism I might have been feeling, so it was already coming in handy. The idea of the song automatically playing when I did something exceptional had some downsides, but I could manage them.

What I was less confident about managing was the Elite. Just a quick Google search let me know that they were now the second largest cape group in North America, so I probably couldn’t stop them if they really wanted to move into Brockton Bay. Of course, there was a question of whether I actually wanted to stop them. Uppercrust seemed nice, and he was one of the big names in their New York cell. If he wanted me to be local support for the Brockton Bay cell and they could pay, that might be something I want to help.

Regardless, I needed more info. I could get some with my new hacking powers, but I had a better idea. I knew of a team that had plenty of experience living in the same city as the Elite, were within driving distance, and wanted to hang out with me. With that decided, I called up Epoch, who the Internet said was the leader of the Adepts.

“Hello?” A voice answered.

“Hi. This is Ponzi. I was calling for Epoch of the Adepts.” I said.

“Oh, hi. Is this about the Mantic Core that Warder wanted to buy?” He asked.

“Yes. I’m willing to give you a Mantic Core and try to explain how to use it. What I want is room and board for the trip and for you to tell me everything you know about the Elite and your experiences living in the same city as them. I also have another proposal for you, but it’s something we should discuss in person.” I said.

“The deal’s acceptable, but no promises on your mystery request.” He said.

I was pretty happy to race out to New York City. I took a small number of tools with me in my SUV so that I could upgrade it on the drive over. It was pretty fun. When other cars were nearby, I would do my best to fit in except for driving a little fast, but when I was alone a squad of invisible ghost mechanics would come out and start taking it apart while I drove as best as I could. My GPS wanted me to take the beltway around Boston, but I remembered my deal with Accord and plotted a course twenty minutes out of my way so that he couldn’t argue that I entered Boston.

It was intense. For the first leg of the journey, my crewmembers were going over each piece of the car, tuning it up, and shaving off the excess weight, but I had learned a fair amount from Squealer’s vehicles, so once I was cruising along a straightaway on the highway we disengaged the engine from the driveshaft and cut it in half. My crew patched up, supercharged, and reattached one half of the engine to the driveshaft while they pulled the other half out of a hole carved in the hood and brought it into the vehicle so that we could keep working on it. My crew combined the half of the engine brought inside the car with the parts that were removed as excess weight to create an iron-air fuel cell and installed it as a second engine in the trunk.

It was a beauty to hear my dual supercharged engines roar, but I was sad because I didn’t actually need a truck capable of going 300 miles per hour. I dealt with my sadness by making upgrades I would actually use. I upgraded my car’s navigation so that it could detect cars and red-light cameras. This was almost immediately useful since it let me blow through red lights, safe in the knowledge that I wouldn’t get ticketed or T-boned. With that done, my crew followed up with a few more utility upgrades, including a button to hide and reveal the license plates and an upgrade to the dashboard computer that let it detect radar guns, listening devices, and trackers spying on the vehicle.

The trip should have taken four and a half hours, but I got there in three and a half. I parked underneath the Four Seasons Manhattan and picked up a package from the concierge using a code phrase the Adepts gave me. The package contained my room keys and instructions on how to get to the meeting tomorrow. Just as a precaution, I programmed my phone to check for listening devices, and when my room came up clean thought about what I wanted to do with my free time.

I essentially had the rest of the day to experience New York City. Despite the temptation, I resisted the idea of going to sleep or being a tourist. I knew of one more group that was likely to know more about the Elite than me and already had a plan to get the info from them. The PRT, unlike many cape groups, actually had public email addresses for many of their employees, which my hacking power recognized as the easiest way to get into their systems.

The first phase of my PRT hack was to just spam the New York PRT with phishing emails. That wasn’t as simple as just emailing a list of addresses since I had to build a backend server to host a website, make it look like Microsoft’s Directory Services login page, and give it a payload to try to trick people into downloading. With all of that dedicated software, I figured that if I really want this to work, I should build some dedicated hardware for it.

My custom hardware wasn’t actually that fancy. It was essentially four desktop towers networked together into a single mainframe with a 52-inch TV as a monitor. The monitor was displaying a dozen terminals, each of which was controlled by a single half-keyboard. This way my entire crew should be able to work together if the hacking needs it. I was grateful for the store of the electronics that I kept in my pocket dimension, if necessary I could dig some more into it for upgrades, but this setup should be enough to run all of my command programs and its solid-state drives should have enough space for the data that I would be exfiltrating. I gave it a quick test by reprogramming the smart card in my room key to open any door in the hotel. That was actually something that mundane technology could do well enough, but getting a green light from a janitor’s closet down the hall was enough to confirm that my hack tools were basically functioning.

I used my hacking and household problems tinker powers to upgrade the Wi-Fi cards in my hacking machine. It should be able to connect discreetly to nearby Wi-Fi hotspots or even cell towers in a way that obfuscates my location while still getting good throughput. I try to lean on my hacking ability as much as possible because I understand that better and therefore trust it more than the household problems one. I finish up my building spree by taking one of those Do Not Disturb signs and enhancing it with my household problems power so that only I can open the door and that the area within my hotel room is invisible to thinkers and tinker tech. Let’s just hope that that’s overkill, but I expect it won’t be.

With that done, my hacking should be able to proceed fine on its own since right now it’s just waiting for people to click the wrong link and not realize they are on a fake website until it's too late. So, I checked on the rest of my projects in my pocket dimension.

The Laboratorium had finally finished dismantling the sorting machine for clues. The results were impressive. I had almost a full schematic of it. It even filled in parts of the design that I usually just let my power take care of. Granted, it seemed to request materials that I didn’t know how to get and the parts the household power worked on seemed to be garbled messes in the output, but that was a massive step up from just winging it and would likely improve with time.

Having seen the significant results I got from the sorting machine, I fed it a Mantic Core. I had a couple extra ones lying around. One was for the Adepts and the rest were for Titans, but having one for the Adepts, one for the Laboratorium, and the rest minus one for Titans should work just as well.

The situation wasn’t as simple as just pushing the cart with the Mantic Stone into the Lab, though. When I did that, the alarms went off, and the skulls freaked out. I had to wave off one skull from trying to flamethrower the stone, but once I did, the Lab seemed to settle into a wary but non-violent mood. It took a bit, but I could let the skulls know that I wanted them to study the Stone. They immediately encased it in a bunch of 3-inch thick metal plates, welded them together, and then stuck a bunch of stickers that I assumed to be warning stickers on them, before they brought the encased Stone into one of the reverse engineering bays. It totally gave the lab a dreary and tense mood, though, so I left the skulls to their work and decided to come back later.

I checked in with Courtney. Apparently, the E88 liked the guns and wanted to talk about buying a Titan. I told her to give them the basic info on it and I would get back to them personally after my trip. The CUI also called about buying guns and a Titan. I told her to get their gun order, have them pay half as a down payment, and I would make it available for pickup in three days where we could also talk about selling a Titan. I also sent her some brief specifications on Scorch and told her to let them know that it would be available immediately if they didn’t want to customize their purchase. She also told me that those Elite tinkers I offered to trade with were interested. I just told her to negotiate for as many samples of new tech as possible while trying not to trade anything expensive. I also suggested she reach out to Uppercrust and see what he would trade for a Mantic Core. They should mesh well with the giant force field systems he made. With that, I felt I had done enough oversight to keep my business running until I could handle it personally when I returned from New York.

With those deals in the pipeline, I realized I would probably sell the Titan I was in the middle of building and which I had taken to calling Scorch soon. I had formed no attachments to it, but the realization gave me some motivation to put a few solid hours of tinkering into it. I even put a set of basic tinker tools into it, to make sure that the purchaser doesn’t run into the problem I did of not having the tools to do maintenance on the vehicle.

That was also when my power gave me my newest ability. It was a good one, a great one, even. It made me significantly more likely to succeed when I was doing something new and made it so that even when I failed I likely would have something useful. This seemed like a dangerous power for me to use, but if I could contain the risk, then this would represent a massive step up in capabilities. If I needed my power to fail to get me something yesterday, so it could get me this today, then I was happy with that trade-off.

With that good news processed, I returned to working on Scorch. I discarded the idea of giving it the ability to intercept enemy communications immediately, since I had no guarantee that I wouldn’t be that enemy one day, but I felt free to use all the knowledge of robotics I got recently, since that knowledge was superior to the knowledge I originally designed the Titan with and I figured the customer would appreciate the extra effort. I even gave its chest plate a paint job based on that weird glowing tree that is engraved on my pocket dimension’s floor. It’s been slowly picking up lights, but is still mostly unlit branches. With a reasonable amount of work done for the day, I called it a night.

The alarm I had set to remind me of the Adept meeting woke me up from a nightmare about Leviathan flattening half of Brockton Bay. The meeting was in some branch townhouse. Not a building they would hesitate to sacrifice, but nice enough to be comfortable. I arrived in full costume with a holstered plasma pistol and a rifle on my back. I had the SUV in plateless mode and the Mantic Core on a wheeled cart in the trunk. I got it out and wheeled it to the front door, where a pigeon landed on it as I knocked on the door.

Someone in a flowing robe that covered everything including their face and gender immediately opened the door. I noticed they had a four sewed on as a shoulder patch. They quickly pulled in the Mantic Core and didn’t object when I followed it into the building. The first thing I noticed about the front room was how many pigeons were there. Seriously, it was at least a dozen and maybe even two.

The second thing I noticed was the two wizards walking up to me from around the corner.

“Everything look good, Warder?” The one with a three sewed into his outfit said.

“Oh, yeah. It’s cool.” The woman examining the Mantic Core said.

“That’s good.” The man with a one in his outfit said. “I’m Epoch, leader of the New York Adepts. This is Felix Swoop, and that’s Warder. I’ll let Warder judge if you’ve held up your end of the deal, but I’m ready to hold up my end if so.”

Warder explained that she was a tinker specializing in security systems, so it made sense that she would be interested in Mantic Stones. I did my best not to give any hints to my specialty and just seem interested in everything while saying very little except for explaining how to use the Mantic Stone. The actual explanation for Cores is reasonably simple even if the details of their physical basis elude me. It’s possible to extract “Mantic energy” from solid crystals of certain quality and size constraints. The user can then control this energy by runes engraved into the Core.

Warder tried installing it into their safehouse herself, but I had to step in and correct her constantly. I didn’t want to give her too much help, because I was constantly asking her about her specialty and wanted to keep doing that. She definitely took a while, but eventually got it installed in the safehouse mostly by herself.

With that, Epoch decided it was time to tell me about the Elite.

“Essentially, the Elite try to be a gang of rogues with emphasis on gang. They’re rogues, but they don’t take kindly to rogues who don’t join them.” Epoch said as he handed over a binder. “This binder has a bunch of member profiles and incident reports about them, but it’s not a pretty picture. I wouldn’t join them if I were you. You don’t have to join the Adepts, but they would definitely be better than the Elite.”

It would’ve been foolish of me to expect to meet a group of capes and not get a recruitment pitch. The Adepts did not disappoint, but at least Epoch had the courtesy to wait until after we had concluded most of our business.

“Alright, let me hear your pitch.” I said.

“The Adepts are like a study group.” Epoch said. “We aren’t interested in holding territory or getting into big fights. We’re just interested in practicing our powers. We mostly work with our proprietary techniques called embellishments, which we supplement with more general creativity training. Aside from that, the Adepts have a fair amount of resources which we can make available to members depending on what tier they are in.”

That honestly sounded too laid back for me, but I decided to feign polite interest, at least until he heard my proposal. “What are these tiers you mentioned?” I asked.

“It’s common knowledge about us. We have fifteen members in five tiers. One in tier one, two in tier two, three in tier three, and so on.” Epoch said. “Members can challenge each other in duels and bet on the winner. To go up in the tiers you challenge someone in the tier above yours. They bet their membership in that tier versus whatever you bet and if you win, then you swap places with the member you challenged. If you lose, then you just give up what you bet and wait a bit before challenging them in that way again. Joining works on the same principle, you find a fifth-tier and pony up something against their membership. Even if you aren’t interested in joining, we would like to at least have friendly relations with you.”

“The Adepts definitely seem like a wonderful group, but I’m doing pretty well on my own. If I decide to join a group, I’ll definitely give you guys due consideration, but right now, I have a proposal I want to hear your thoughts on.” I said.

“What is it?” He said.

“Basically, I was going to use my skill as a hacker to get some data from the local PRT. I looked up your power and realized it would be a big help to get messages from the near future, so if you’re willing to help me that way, then I’m willing to give you everything I find on the Adepts.” I said.

“I’ll accept.” He said. “On one condition, you don’t keep a copy of the Adepts data that you give us.”

We quickly regrouped back in my hotel room for the second phase of the hacking. It was awkward having to take a few dozen of Felix’s birds, but being a cape was quickly inuring me to low-level weirdness. I only really needed Epoch, but asking him not to bring a bodyguard probably wouldn’t have gone over well.

I must have sent a hundred phishing emails, but only three of them actually gave me their login info and only one of the three downloaded my virus. That one represented my beachhead into the PRT’s systems with the other two as disguises I could wear within the system.

I wasn’t content with that, so while I was doing the actual hacking, I had my crew constantly pumping out hack tools, except for one of them that dedicated itself to making tools to make hack tools faster. My crew, unfortunately, could not deploy their tools due to the arbitrary limitations of the ability that made them, but that had a simple workaround. They would just package their tools in ready-to-deploy form and I would routinely run a make command in my terminal to deploy and run them. I also had a stack of Post-it notes. Epoch would use his fast-forward power on it every so often, so it effectively gave me a way to get messages from my future self.

I used my remote access to that one guy’s computer to create a base to deploy attack tools onto their network. I downloaded his email credentials and address book to my computer, so that I could keep working even if someone shut down his computer. I left him with a parting gift, though. Whenever he tried to send an image to someone over Skype or email, some of my code would embed it with a link that downloaded a virus. That was more of a distraction though, since I just got a Post-It note from the future mentioning that a tool I was making to find security vulnerabilities would have discovered an IT guy who uses his username as his password.

That was actually a pretty massive victory since I could ssh onto his computer and sudo su to his admin account. With that, I added my program that added my virus to images to the PRT New York email server itself and followed that up by ordering the email server to “back up” all the emails to my computer and disabled the firewall settings that are supposed to prevent that. I had all the data on the Adepts going to a single hard drive since I expected to just hand it to the Adepts and wish them luck reading through it.

That was technically “Mission Accomplished”, but not really. I wouldn’t know if I was successful until I read through the data at the end, the PRT could discover my intrusion at any time, they could shut down my infected computers at any time, and they probably had more secure and valuable databases that I didn’t yet have access to.

I took this break as an opportunity to set up a suite of data-sniffing and intrusion-detection-detection programs on their email server. The data-sniffing tools should start going through the emails on the server and looking for info on databases and servers to probe and ideally collate any login info for.

I focused on collecting data on tinkers and tinker tech. Not only because I might be able to steal their work, but because most non-tinkers have their power fully known the second time they go out in public. I was downloading from the email server as fast as I could, but it was a quick command to get it to prioritize emails about tinkers and tinker tech.

I was switching between a half-dozen email chains from the PRT analysts here before I got a Post-It note from the future with the timestamp and subject header of an email. It contained instructions to log on to a tinker tech database called SMAUG using a test user with a default password. I was hyped and immediately set my analysis suite to do some light probing.

That light probing apparently got me a Post-It note warning me of a special system that the tinker tech database had to detect anomalous usage. I wouldn’t give up that easily and simply spent a few minutes creating tools to analyze and defeat it. My tools quickly came up with a solution, which led me to get a Post-It note saying how that solution would fail and another Post-It note saying what the correct solution is.

I was immensely grateful for Epoch’s help. He just gave me the keys to what is essentially a tinker tech treasure trove. Sure, having the tech in hand would be even better, but this was literally a database of peer-reviewed designs with test and research notes attached. I started copying it to a fleet of backup servers I was squatting in and from there to my actual computer.

With all of the effort it was taking to manage those hard drives, I noticed that the one hard drive I was filling with Adepts info wasn’t getting anything more from the email server. I looked into that and confirmed that it was because the email server had run out of emails and documents relating to the Adepts.

Maybe the Adepts were on to something with the wizard tools because I just developed the ability to operate a wide variety of freaky angel technology. Granted, the ability technically worked on any technology no matter how alien or new, but the angel tech really grabbed my attention.

I carefully ejected the Adepts’ hard drive and handed it to Epoch. “That contains literally every email the New York PRT wrote about you guys. You might need to do some work to sort through it, but that’s not something you need me to do.” I said.

“Does this mean we’re leaving now?” Felix Swoop asked.

“I’d prefer if you stayed.” I said before Epoch could answer. “I won’t hold it against you if you leave because you’ve already helped me a lot, but it would help with my personal projects if you stayed until the end.”

“Sure, we’ll stay for now, but we’ll leave before it gets too late.” Epoch said to my delight.

I actually took a break from hacking at that point. I already had SMAUG and the NY PRT email server downloading, so there wasn’t that much I wanted to risk exposure to get access to. Instead, what I wanted to do is burrow my code into the NY PRT’s systems and fortify it against removal. There were three parts to the burrowing: spreading my code, hijacking their security, and refining my code. Spreading my code was basically the same as I had already been doing, finding computers in the building that I hadn’t infected yet and fixing that problem. It synergized well with hijacking their security since by spreading code I could gain access to systems that controlled security systems and I could use security systems to spread worms, such as by using the Intranet app manager to prompt everyone to update their timesheet app with a version that I had infected and using my control of the firewall to spoof its attempts to check the security key against the developer’s servers. Refining the code was also pretty simple. I had my crew look at the code I had rushed out and deployed as soon as we compiled it, tore it apart, and built versions that didn’t suck. My power to understand technology by using it had learned a lot from all of this hacking, and I let it go to town to streamline and bug-proof the code. I probably went too far in improving the code when I explicitly shifted to making it more beautiful. I tried applying my fashion power to my code-writing, and it, unfortunately, didn’t work, but my hacking tinkering ability could handle code beautification on its own.

There were some air-gapped systems that I couldn’t simply bulldoze my way into. I wrote up a few quick programs that would try to get into them through USB sticks plugged into my infected systems, but my intrusions had been sufficiently aggressive that I didn’t expect to have the time to wait for the virus to make a round trip over the air-gaps.

Satisfied with my infiltration of the New York PRT, I decided to use it as a base to hack the Brockton Bay, Philadelphia, and DC PRTs since those were probably the three likeliest departments for me to run into. With my control over the New York PRT’s email server, this actually wasn’t that hard. The fundamental challenge of getting a virus into a system is either finding a security vulnerability or convincing a user to accept it. The second option becomes a lot easier when you can simply attach viruses to legitimate content by, say, using the email server to attach worms to any email sent out from the New York PRT to any of the targeted PRT offices.

I took it easy with my infiltration of those other offices. I wasn’t looking for any info in particular to steal, just interested in spreading my access around, which was going pretty well since people were much more likely to download viruses and enter their login information on a website hosted and sent to them by the New York PRT than random phishing websites. By sheer coincidence, that was when everything started to go wrong.

It started with a Post-It Note saying that Armsmaster found out about the hacking, which was pretty bad. If there was a way to hide it from him, I’m sure my future self would have said how to do that instead. I checked my data feeds for info on what Armsmaster is doing, and it seemed Armsmaster’s personal intrusion-detection systems had outsmarted my intrusion-detection-detection systems.

Well, it was inevitable this would happen, but I can delay him a bit by sending an email from Director Piggot’s account to the PRT Director mailing list, the Protectorate Tinker mailing list, and the Brockton Bay Senior Employee mailing list stating that an unknown cape had mastered Armsmaster and anyone who sees him should escort him to M/S screening. I finished the delaying action by locking all of Piggot’s accounts so she can’t countermand the order, uploading a patch to my intrusion-detection-detection suite that should handle this kind of tinker-customized intrusion-detection software, and setting the New York email server to vanish any emails mentioning the virus silently.

At that point, my computer started playing some music. It seemed a lot like my theme song, but was much more sedate and lacked vocals. I hadn’t experimented with my theme song power because of a lack of time, but it looked like I’d be doing a natural experiment soon enough.

“What’s with the music?” Epoch asked. I jumped a bit since I had gotten so far into the zone that I almost forgot he was there.

“It’s just a song I like.” I said since any honest answer I could give would sound really weird.

“Hmm, okay. We’ll probably be heading out now since I’ve already given you about an extra hour of my time.” He said. “It was nice working with you. You should feel free to call us at any time.”

I wanted him to stay, but I really couldn’t think of anything that would convince him, and I quickly lost the opportunity as he shut the door behind himself. Fortunately, I decided to see this as an opportunity. Without Epoch’s safety net, I would need to tune up my code to be robust enough not to need a safety net, and I got to work knowing that PRT cybersecurity would eventually mobilize against me. Of course, improving the code wasn’t the only thing I could do to make my network more robust, and I started doing some broad scans for vulnerable computers outside of the PRT that I could use as traps, relays, redundancies, and honeypots. Fortunately, with my abilities “vulnerable computers” not only counted those computers still running old programs with out-of-date security patches. It also counted many up-to-date computers with security holes that were unknown until I discovered them that afternoon.

Still, I could only delay the spread of the knowledge for so long. I was fortunate that many of the people trying to determine if there was a hack were either running on unhacked computers or on computers that were hacked enough to pretend to be unhacked, but some Tinker in the Philadelphia Protectorate found out I set that up which really started alarm bells ringing. Even with everyone exposed to the suggestion that the people who believe in the hack were really Master victims, they were still slowly coming to the belief that it was real.

Some would have looked at the situation and seen a stalemate, but I was confident that I was still making progress. I had two major reasons for this confidence. The first was that every second they took to get their house in order is another second for me to steal data. The second was that many of those discussing countermeasures were developing them on hacked computers, which were reporting their activities to me so that I could develop my own countermeasures in real-time. Even the ones on unhacked computers still had a tendency to email them to coworkers with hacked systems. The ones on hacked computers also had to deal with their computers subtly and not-so-subtly trying to sabotage their work.

♬ This is America bitch / And I’m a capitalist ♬

My theme song going loud made me a bit confused and alarmed. I was even more alarmed when my hacks simply started failing. The battle had clearly shifted and not in my favor. I was pretty confused about what was happening for a minute until Dragon sent out an email to pretty much everyone in the PRT letting them know the hack was real, that the New York branch was the most affected with other branches affected at a lesser degree, that everyone should immediately change their email settings to forbid pictures even from trusted sources, that no one should visit the sites that are part of the New York PRT Intranet, and that anyone who had updated the timesheet app that day should immediately uninstall it.

Even if that was the only thing that Dragon did, it would still be pretty devastating. I knew I couldn’t beat her as a tinker, so I needed to move this contest to a different domain. I was extremely grateful to have Innovator, which was one of my newest powers. None of my current abilities seemed likely to beat Dragon or even force a draw, but having good luck with trying new things might be the trump card I need to pull through this.

I started my defense by ordering a few throwaway servers to publish the data I had stolen. Whether sending it as emails to reporters, posting it on forums, or uploading it to shareable servers, I didn’t particularly care. These systems would basically work as decoy flares by attracting attention and forcing Dragon to stop them while being completely expendable from my point-of-view. In a worst-case scenario where I lose my actual computer, I should be able to recover the data from the public domain.

I didn’t have any creative ideas yet, but I did have the really stupid idea of sending Dragon such beautiful artwork that she refuses to hurt the person who made it and leaves me alone. It’s actually a pretty terrible idea, but it was reasonably quick to order a few hacked computers to create CGI dragons and use one of my hacked PRT Officer email accounts to send them to Dragon as urgent messages. I didn’t bother waiting for a response before I tried to come up with better ideas.

My next idea was much better. I scrounged up the account credentials for the NY PRT Director and prepared a press release. The press release essentially stated that an unknown Master was spreading rumors that someone had hacked the NY PRT and the Master was trying to trick heroes, including Dragon, into attacking the NY PRT to “remove the hacking”. It ended up getting flagged by a mod on PHO as soon as I posted it, but other websites were more credulous or just more willing to run an interesting story. With that done, I emailed Dragon and no one else, ordering her and her computer security programs to back off and threatening to use the full resources of the PRT to punish her if she doesn’t comply.

I could tell how Dragon felt about the email even if she didn’t reply because within a minute I got an alert saying that someone had disconnected the New York PRT from the internet. I made a quick workaround of creating a virtual connection using the combined mobile data capabilities of my hacked phones there and then bridging that through the building’s Wi-Fi, but that still knocks out an order of magnitude or two of bandwidth.

I realized that the only way to get the PRT building back online was to do it through the ISP and immediately launched an attack on the local Verizon data center, but I realized the attack would not succeed when Dragon pounced on it as soon as it started.

I thought about using my newest power, called Hands of Icarus, in the defense. Maybe I could steal some of Dragon’s code in the fight? It turned out not to be that simple. I knew the basics of how to work her programs, but they all wanted to be given giant crypto tokens to do anything interesting. I could still read the help menu and get some small insights into Dragon’s work that way, but that was closer to putting a thumb on the scale as opposed to the breakthrough I needed.

It still wasn’t enough to turn the tides of battle, but the data from the Verizon fight actually gave me very useful information. I could tell from “Dragon’s” reaction times that she was either using an AI to assist her or she had some kind of brain-computer interface that she was using for this. Even her tools were upstaging me! I could build an AI, but I could only base it on human emulation so it wouldn’t be native to cyberspace without further development. I could also do a brain-computer interface, but that would be more for prosthetic arms than cyberwar.

However, if Dragon really was using AI to assist her, then perhaps I could seize control of Dragon’s AI? Some kind of Terminator-style reprogramming might work, but they are clearly better hackers than me, so it might be better to try convincing them that I’m actually Dragon.

I had my programs switch from leaving behind CGI Dragons to leaving behind messages for Dragon’s AIs telling a story about how Dragon was being mastered into attacking me and that I needed her AIs to help me so that I could protect Dragon.

Of course, I would not put all of my eggs in one basket, so I tried doing to her what she had done to me. I had a program write up a list of places where Dragon was likely to be based and started sending off viruses to infect the local ISPs and give the suspect locations 24-hour internet shutdowns.

I didn’t get clear feedback from either of those two moves before Dragon went in for the kill. I had given many of my hacking tools a special code that when received and verified through my public key would cause my viruses to clean up after themselves before deleting themselves. Dragon had apparently discovered it and activated it. I sent a signal to countermand that order, but I couldn’t type fast enough to prevent a lot of damage from being done.

That was pretty clearly game over, and at that point I was focusing all of my work on extracting the final bits of data from SMAUG and the NY PRT email servers before returning to Brockton Bay. Or at least that’s what I would have focused on if my costume’s headphones didn’t intercept some PRT chatter.

“WEDGDG is pretty clear. We are to investigate the Four Seasons Manhattan. That’s the most likely place for us to find leads. Dragon agrees as well.” Some gruff-sounding trooper said.

“Roger.” chorused what sounded like a full platoon.

Yeah, I was not interested in sitting in my room and waiting for the PRT to barge in and arrest me. I decided it was time to cash in my chips. I placed a call to the front desk of the hotel using a PRT Skype account and a speech synthesizer.

“Hello.” My robotic voice said.

“Four Seasons Manhattan. How may I help you?” The concierge said in a cheerful voice.

“The PRT might come to speak to you soon.” The voice continued. “I would like to state that I have done nothing in this hotel to harm its guests or management, so I would appreciate it as a courtesy if you would delay them and be as unhelpful as possible.”

“Is this going to be a big thing? I’ll have you know we are committed to the safety of our guests and won't do anything to endanger them.” A person that I’m guessing is a woman said.

“No, if I have my way, I will handle this completely discreetly. Noone will be disturbed if I have my way. Tell you what, if you help me on this, I’ll give you a few thousand when it’s over. I’ll know if you do your part of the deal or not. Thanks in advance, but goodbye.” The phone said to finish.

If I was hoping that my power would conveniently give me a power to bail me out of this pickle, that hope would have died when I got the sense that my power tried to get me a power I already had. Fortunately, I didn’t need any new powers to retreat to safety. I started cleaning up my room. My computer and cape outfit went back in my pocket dimension before I pulled the key out and closed the portal. I casually left my room, snuck up a flight of stairs, knocked on a few doors until I found a room that seemed unoccupied, used my hacked room key to open it, and then stepped in and immediately attached my Privacy Please sign to the door. The sign evidently wasn’t enough to stop me from being found out, but that seemed like an issue that I could fix with an upgrade, not an inherent flaw. I rapidly did that using a few knives and pens from the room to carve a simple circuit board to readjust the power from an anti-Thinker blank spot to a very subtle Stranger field that caused people to look elsewhere. Getting my butt kicked by Dragon had exhausted me, so I just plopped down on the bed and went to sleep.

Spoiler: Celestial Forge Bookkeeping

Leftover wc: 2056
Wordcount: 7014
Excess: 1070

Saved 100 CP

-Innovator (Final Fantasy XIV) (200CP)
You'll never make a name for yourself if you can't innovate -and sometimes, innovation requires you to take risks and make mistakes, even ones which might be catastrophic. It takes effort to gain experience, and it takes courage to put in effort -but you've also got a bit of beginner's luck whenever you try to produce something new. You're far more likely to succeed -and consequently far less likely to fail if you go in completely blind, but more importantly than that, you're not likely to come up with a completely useless product in the end.

-Hands of Icarus (Heaven's Lost Property) (100CP)
You understand how to use the advanced technology of Synapse. While you're not sure of the 'how' or 'why' the device operates, you can operate any Synapse-made machinery with ease. Past this jump, you know how to use (though not how to make) any basic technological devices (point-and-click devices, guns, switches, etc.) you would otherwise require training or re-education for, no matter how alien or new it is to you.

Saved 100 CP

 

Okay! The archive is up to date now! Feel free to discuss, the next chapter will be posted at 10 AM Eastern, regardless of whether SB is up yet or not.

The rest of the arc will be posted one chapter a day at 10 AM ET until completion.

Edit: The archive is up to date now! Forgot that chapter 11 was already posted.

 

Spoiler: Formatting

This was copied from Google Docs and the formatting had to be manually corrected, so may have mistakes.

I woke up and was still in the hotel room. That’s good, I was almost afraid the PRT would kidnap me in my sleep. Really, the only way I would be safe from sudden PRT arrest was to leave town and get back to my base in Brockton. I used my phone to check out the hotel’s website, and it wasn’t as bad as I feared. Sure, the PRT had a bunch of guys camping in the hotel’s lobby, but it didn’t seem like they knew who or where I was, so no one should stop me from just getting in my SUV and driving away.

I thought about leaving the woman at the concierge last night a few grand on my way out, but I didn’t actually know if she helped me and that wouldn’t be the most subtle way to repay a tip. I decided I would look up her info at home and mail her something if she was helpful.

Fortunately, it apparently was as easy to escape New York as it was to just take an elevator to the garage and drive out while pretending to be normal. I didn’t want to spend four hours driving my way back home, so I had the crew install an autopilot into the car and programmed it to head back to my store.

I had one of my crew keep busy fixing mistakes in the autopilot, while the rest of them work on my phone, rewriting hacking tools from yesterday with the lessons learned and making the phone itself more usable.

As for the real me? I spent most of the ride back reading on my phone to check how the news was covering my hacking fight with Dragon. It was apparently a real embarrassment for the NY Protectorate that none of their tinkers caught the hack, but that’s not really their fault since none of them are really cybersecurity guys. Plus, I had some unfair advantages of my own. The PRT is being really vague about what happened in the hack aside from statements from the Chief Director and Dragon denying the rumors of Mastering that I spread. It’s a bit of an online sensation, but the buzz was dying down given that no one who knows is sharing more info than they must and the parts that I leaked were all really technical. The PRT didn’t even mention any info that was stolen, even though I know I got about eighty percent of their email server and forty percent of the tech database.

When I saw Brockton on the horizon, I called Courtney and invited her to do some celebration drinks at my store and stopped at a liquor store to get the supplies. She met me at the door and we were doing drinking games within minutes. She ended up asking me what we were celebrating when I was on my third shot and I didn’t have a suitable answer. I wanted to say it was a celebration of me getting back from New York, but millions of tourists visit New York and leave with no difficulty, so that would sound weird as a thing to celebrate. I ended up going with picking up some data on tinker tech, but Courtney didn’t really get what was so cool about that and it would’ve ruined my buzz to take the time to explain it to her. So, I put a stop to her questions by showing her the toggle to make the floor feel like a mattress and gave her an intimate demonstration of it in action.

After that fun romp, I felt that we both had work to get to and went to my lab. I gave my computer a once over for tracking devices and found one before I plugged it in. Apparently, Dragon compromised some of my viruses and had them embedding hyperlinks in their status reports, and Dragon was using those hyperlinks to geolocate me. That neatly solved the mystery of how they tracked me to my building, but also meant that I really need to step up my cybersecurity game. After I found the bug on my computer, I immediately followed up by checking my phone for viruses. I was happy not to find any, so that I could get back to actual work.

I spent the rest of the morning reading through the PRT’s emails about the Elite and letting my buzz fade. They weren’t angels, but they definitely weren’t as bad as the Adepts tried to make them seem. The Brockton Bay rig even has a force field made by their guy Uppercrust! Would the PRT buy tech from the Slaughterhouse or even the Empire 88? In fact, I was actually feeling better about working with the Elite after my trip.

The info from the Adepts was a bunch of dossiers on Elite capes mixed with a bunch of incident reports. The PRT probably had their own dossiers, but the Adepts’ version didn’t need me to sort through thousands of emails. It was helpful to know that Uppercrust’s secretary, Parvenu, had combat-focused telekinesis that also worked as a decent Thinker power. The PHO wiki wasn’t clear on the details or that she was a Thinker, so this was new info. As for the incident reports, they were much less informed and much more reliant on rumors than the PRT versions, so that part actually made me regret the deal a bit even though it was probably necessary to get Epoch to help with the hacking that night.

The emails from the PRT were useful, but they weren’t as good a prize as that tinker tech database I got access to. I put together a program to download and re-database the parts that I publicly released, but that was at most half a percent extra. The tech in the database wasn’t the only valuable thing about it, even though I could probably trade designs from this database for plenty of actual tinker tech. No, the database implementation was itself pretty valuable. I had mostly just been improvising my designs as I built, but working with actual blueprints and having a platform to make notes about them would definitely be good for my work. I might have to send Dragon or whoever made this a thank you note.

I got a new power at that point. It was interesting. It let me be immune to the weather as long as I dressed fashionably, let me fix and be comfortable in ill-fitting clothes with minimal work, and as long as I was wearing a single piece of armor it would be as if I was wearing an outfit that was a full suit of it. This was more useful for keeping me safe in civilian life, but it would definitely change some things when I next redesigned my costume.

When I finished with my idle thinking, I decided it would be best to complete a bunch of the deals that were on the backburner while I was in New York. The place to start with that was to sell a giant robot to the Empire.

“Max Anders speaking.” Kaiser said as he picked up the phone.

“This is Ponzi.” I said. “I’m calling for Kaiser to complete his order.”

“Oh, well, I know enough to do that on his behalf.” He said.

“I’d prefer to do this with Kaiser, but if you’re sure, I can work with you.” I said, deciding to be courteous and let such a transparent deception pass unchallenged.

“Right. We’ve read through the basic info from your secretary, but we’re not picky about the details, so we were hoping to get the discounts for Endbringer participation and taking the one you already have.” He said. “Your work with the Boat Graveyard really impressed us.”

“Thank you.” I said. “I was really proud of that myself. Essentially, Scorch is one of my durable models and specializes in using incendiaries for combat. I’d be willing to let it go for twelve million.”

“Doesn’t that seem a bit much to you for being subject to two discounts?” Max said.

“I was thinking of charging twenty mil for full price, so it feels like I’m giving you a forty percent discount and you’re asking for more.” I said. “Tell you what. I’ll guarantee you free maintenance for any damage it suffers in Endbringer fights and a flat one hundred grand plus parts fee for other maintenance that doesn’t total it.”

“Okay, I’ll talk it over with the Empire, but it seems doable.” He said before hanging up.

As soon as Kaiser hung up, I ran to my lab to put the finishing touches on Scorch. It wouldn’t do to have a customer ready to receive a product before I’m finished building it. I couldn’t do all the fancy features that have been in my head since the Uppercrust meeting, but I did put in a few quality improvements. My next Titan would probably be at most half from the original design, with the rest coming from higher-level technology.

Kaiser called back as Kaiser a few hours after my call with Kaiser-as-Anders.

“Hello?” I answered.

“This is Kaiser speaking. I heard about the deal you negotiated with my friend and want to go through with it,” he said, “on one condition.”

“What is it?” I replied.

“We need proof that it’s worth that much money. So, I propose a deal, we’ll find a discreet spot, you take the Titan to meet us there, and if you can beat Fenja in a fight, we’ll go through with it.” He said.

“Sounds fair,” I said, “but after I beat Fenja, I’m going to charge you for the maintenance costs.”

“Sure, why not? I’ll call you when I’ve made the arrangements. Does 7 PM tonight work for you?” He said.

“Assuming it’s not too far from Brockton.” I said.

“It’s not. Goodbye for now.” He said as he hung up.

I was reasonably confident that my robot would beat Fenja, so I hurried to finish Scorch so that I could work on the things that I was less confident about. Namely making sure the Empire can’t suddenly betray me. I tested my new fashion power by wearing a small plate of synthetic ruby attached to a bracelet and trying to stab myself. The knife completely failed to penetrate my skin, even though I wasn’t wearing anything over it. That seemed like a success to me and a reminder to myself that ruby earned its nine on the Mohs Hardness Scale the hard way. I decided to wear that bracelet forever until I could build a replacement. It wouldn’t be that hard since it looked really nice.

Now, with that done, I should get some bodyguards. Their actual combat abilities aren’t the chief thing I want them for, I just need some muscle to discourage people from messing with me. I could’ve called Grue again, but I don’t have a reason to break my deal with Coil. Fortunately, there was a local team of mercenaries who might be up for full-time positions.

“Yes?” A muffled voice answered.

“I’m Ponzi and I was calling for Faultline to offer her a job.” I said.

“What kind of work?” They said.

“Mostly bodyguarding with a side of light henching.” I said.

“We’re out of town at the moment, but we’ll let you know when we’ve returned to Brockton.” They said.

“Hmm… what if I wanted a public statement that you would avenge me if I someone killed or kidnapped me? That’s not something you need to be in Brockton for?” I asked.

“People rarely do those kinds of announcements publicly. They’re usually done much more subtly than that, but we can do it. What’s your offer?” They said.

“I have a fair amount of money, but I think my skills as a tinker would be more valuable to you. I am responsible for both the recent NY PRT hack and the removal of Brockton’s Boat Graveyard.” I said.

“Tell me more about the NY PRT hack.” They said.

“Oh, I broke into NY PRT’s systems to steal their emails and tinker tech data.” I said. “I got a fair amount, but overreached and Dragon crushed me personally.”

“If you give us everything they have on case 53s and Faultline’s Crew. We’ll give you kidnapping insurance and start spreading the word about it.” They said.

“Sold.” I said, which led to the conversation wrapping up reasonably quickly. They told me how to send them the emails, the person on the phone confirmed they were actually Faultline herself, they promised a good faith rescue attempt if someone kidnapped me, I gave Courtney their phone number, and they promised to let the usual suspects around Brockton know that I was a client.

Spending so much time reminded me of that concierge from New York. I had planned on looking up her info when I got back and mailing her a reward, so I decided to get that errand out of the way. I tried calling her to talk and figure out what kind of reward she wanted, but my phone couldn’t reach her because I didn’t know enough about her to identify her. I sent a note to Courtney to look into it when I had some free time.

With that done, I noticed that I missed a text from Kaiser. He had sent me a text with the details on where to meet. It was a farmhouse an hour out of the city, but instead of crops they just had mud and grass. I trusted Kaiser to find a discreet place, but I still needed to find a place to pull out my Titan. Fortunately, there were some photos of it on the property tax assessor’s website which showed it as having a huge garage door. The kind an actual farm would use to store tractors, but which this place probably just had to look cool.

I returned the phone call I got from the CUI a few days ago. They had already told Courtney they wanted to buy a few hundred guns, but were happy to talk to me about buying a Titan. They wanted their Titan to be a long-range Blaster and they insisted I do everything, including the guns, in CUI colors as well. I started doodling some designs for the Ion titan and gave a description of what I was thinking to them. They wanted to inspect it before purchasing, so I told them I would start working on it once they sent the payment for the guns and whoever they sent to pick up the guns in a few days could either buy Ion as-is for twenty million or pay to have it customized. They were fine with it, and I ended the call amicably.

I also got a text from Courtney. Apparently, Accord wanted details on my Titans, but didn’t actually want to buy one. Whatever that was about, I didn’t feel like dealing with it immediately. So, I ended up leaving for the Empire meetup a bit early.

I pulled up to the site in the backseat of my SUV. I was hoping my SUV’s autopilot and tinted windows would make people think that I had a chauffeur. I saw a few sports cars around, but not the Empire capes, so I had my car pull up to the garage door, so that I could get my Titan.

I quickly took my Titan out and had it use Fine Manipulator mode to close the door behind it. I was a bit shocked to see Kaiser, Victor, and the Twins waiting in the driveway when I turned around, but I used my Titan’s body to hide my flinching.

“You’re ready for the fight, yes?” I said as I pointed at the sword twin, who I was ninety percent sure was Fenja.

“Yes. Ready to pick on someone your own size?” She said, as she started to walk out to the field, growing taller with each step.

“That depends. Will you complain when I full nelson you into the ground?” I said as I followed her. The walk was probably a hundred feet, but with our large strides, neither of us took much time to do it.
She was taller than me, but only by a few feet.

“Please. Do you even lift?” She said with a snort.

“I should let you know that I’ll be billing for Kaiser for repairs on this after I beat you. If your next twenty paychecks get docked, at least you’ll know that you brought it on yourself.” I said.

“If you’re so confident in yourself, maybe we should make a side bet?” She said.

“Sure, if you win, I’ll make you a light saber,” I said, “but if I win, I want this place.”

“That’s not something I can bet,” she said, “but I can offer you a date with a supermodel.”

“Like an actual supermodel? Or are you speaking metaphorically?” I asked.

She pushed her boobs forward with her shoulders and said. “What do you think?”

“I think I’ll take that bet. A light saber versus a date with Fenja. Does fighting to surrender work for you?” I said as I turned on the option to record all the Titan’s sense data.

“Sure.” She said before running right at me.

I jumped to the side and threw a firewall in front of her. It was a pitiful thing, and she just jumped right over it. That wasn’t a good start to the match for me, and I immediately had my crew start modifying the Firewall to be something that doesn’t suck.

I saw her about to jump at me again, so I switched to my grenade launcher and tried jumping to the side. She noticed that and a millisecond before she took off, she turned and came straight for me.

I pulled the trigger on my thermite launcher immediately since she didn’t give me time to aim. A grenade the size of a normal person’s head hit her on the stomach and without waiting to see the effects reached out a hand and deployed my thermal shield. It was a much more impressive wall of fire about the size of one of us. Fenja landed right in front of it and paused without trying to attack me through it.

I took advantage of that pause to run for some distance and to reload my thermite launcher. It was a single-shot breechloader, which was pretty annoying, and another thing to fix after the Firewall. I raised my gun to shoot her in the face and she threw her shield at me just as I pulled the trigger.

I tried backhanding her shield away from me. It technically worked, but my arm didn’t come away unscathed. I noticed her wiping a dollop of molten liquid off her cheek. I could sort of see a first-degree burn form, so at least I knew her brute power wasn’t too strong.

With a bit of breathing room, I thought back to the last fight I had, which by my reckoning was the hacker fight with Dragon. I think the key reason I lost that fight was in speed. Dragon or maybe her AIs directly connected themselves to the internet and could use that to run circles around me before I could even respond. If I wanted to have any chance in the inevitable rematch, I needed to get a good neural interface for my computer. Fortunately, I had a working one in my Titan, a power to understand technology by using it, and was currently using it.

The actual description of the neural links was pretty simple. They mainly worked with microwaves to scan from and transmit to the brain. They worked better if the pilot had nanomachines to communicate with the machine, but could work without them at reduced performance. Giving everyone who wanted to use one of these Titans a suite of nanomachines would be a lot of effort and I was happy to not have to deal with that. Still, as I piloted the Scorch, I could figure out a few tricks of how the neural link worked and by combining that with the tinker knowledge that let me build them without understanding could give me a general sense of how to build a version that wasn’t attached to a Titan. It would probably need a few rounds of fine-tuning, but hard work only occasionally killed people. I zoned out a bit from the enlightenment, which wasn’t a good idea.

I zoned even farther out when I got a new power. It was in two parts with one part being a weapon modification tinker and the second part being a Thinker/Master ability to get people to phrase things as sexual innuendos. The weapon mod power synergized well with my crew and the tinker powers I already had. The phrasing power actually seemed like a fun power to experiment with right now.

Of course, Fenja putting her sword to my neck made me snap back to reality. She was in some kind of fencing stance and it probably would have been polite for me to surrender, but politeness goes out the window when twelve million dollars are on the line.

“Care to surrender?” She asked. “Or would you rather I stab you in the face?”

My left hand whipped up and slapped her sword with a firewall. She got a good slash in on my collarbone before I jumped away. But that’s not as vital on a Titan as it is on a human. The changes that my crew had made to the firewall were definitely improvements given that I could see the red handprint out her sword, but they still weren’t fully effective given the sword still seemed intact.

“I actually like your sword. It must be good if it can handle that.” I said.

“Thanks, it’s even better than Kaiser’s.” She said.

With that the duel was quickly back on, I did my best to run away from her while shooting her in the face with thermite grenades and she did her best to run after me and stab me with a sword. Being shot in the face didn’t put her down immediately, but she still tried to block and dodge my shots, and the ones that hit left her looking like she had an outbreak of red hives.

“I’m sorry I keep hitting you in the face. It’s just the most vulnerable part of the body.” I said.

“It’s not the first time I’ve had to clean a guy’s stuff off my face.” She said.

She was definitely winning at the beginning, but my crew’s ability to do mid-fight repairs meant I was grinding her down. I was keeping track of the repairs as well, so that I could see about billing Kaiser for them later. When it became clear that I was winning, I dragged it out so that my power to learn things by using them had more time to work on my neural interface, and I had more time to use my flirting power on her.

“I’m going to shove my sword down your throat.” Fenja growled as I dodged and shot her again.

“Your sword, huh? I didn’t know you had one of those.” I said.

Eventually, I decided to finish it. Fenja was tiring, and I wanted this fight to end impressively, not by me simply wearing her down until she can’t fight anymore.

“With all this innuendo, it seems like you’re the one who really wants the date.” I said.

“Don’t flatter yourself. I just want your light saber.” She said.

I took that as my sign to run up to her. She tried blocking with her shield, but I jumped on in and then back to get it out of position. I used my opportunity to pull up my thermite launcher and fire a grenade point-blank into her unguarded face. I’m pretty sure I hit her eye, but she immediately covered her face with her shield so I couldn’t tell.

“I’d be willing to accept a surrender, if you offer one.” I said.

“Tch, you may get me on my knees, but I’ll never kneel.” She said. “I almost made you swallow my sword, and you didn’t surrender. Why should I give in when I can go another round?”

“Fair enough.” I said, regretting what I was about to do to her pretty face.

I armed my Flame Core and just ran at her. She got in a ready stance for her shield and sword and waited. When I got close, I juked to the left and then jumped for her face, while she stabbed at me. Her sword went through my Titan’s hip while my hands wrapped around her face and fired the Flame Core.

We crashed to the ground with me on top of her, and she screamed. “Do you surrender, now?” I yelled. She kept screaming, and I rolled off of her when I felt her shrink. I took a minute to check over my systems while I waited for the screams to stop. Fenja had done a lot of damage to the connection between my hip and right leg, it might even snap off if I tried to stand on it. That was the priority for my crew’s repairs, with the minor slashes and the backlash incendiary damage being lesser priorities.

When I was confident that my right leg wouldn’t fall off, I hauled myself up to a stand that didn’t put any weight on it. I noticed the other Empire capes running towards me at the beginning, with a giant Menja easily outpacing Victor and Kaiser. Menja shoved her spear in my face as I got up and I tried to placate her by putting my hands up. She glared at me for a second, before she shrunk down to get on her sister’s level. Kaiser and Victor finally caught up to her as she tried cradling her sister.

“I’m sorry about Fenja, but she refused to surrender.” I said. “Though, I do count this as my victory and an honest one.”

Victor and Menja picked Fenja up and started carrying her back to the farmhouse, which left me alone with Kaiser. He stared at me for about a minute and whatever thoughts he had he kept to himself.

“I’ll contact you tomorrow morning to arrange final delivery and payment.” He said, breaking the silence. “As for now, I hope you can see yourself out. I have a team matter to attend to.”

I had a recording of the fight that I was planning to give him as a gift, but I decided that would ruin the mood, so I said okay, returned my Titan through the garage, and took a ride to Brockton in the back of my SUV. The recording might be useful for sales, if I could trust my customers to be discreet. Alternatively, I could sell it to Kaiser later for something.

I threw myself into my tinkering when I got back to the store. I had a power to ignore my body’s needs as long as I worked and I’d never even used it to make all-nighters easier. That stopped immediately. Whenever I’m tinkering, I’ll have it active. That will make me work at peak efficiency, and then I’ll be able to go to sleep easily at the end. It’s win-win. Easier sleep and more productive work. What’s not to love?

I had a prototype neural interface within an hour of returning to base. Once I got that to a stage where it would need testing to be developed further I took a break to go to the Skull Lab to see what they had found out about the Mantic Core. The Skulls were actually reasonably helpful. They studied the engravings on the Core enough to realize that they were effectively a programming language and gave me the specifications. I swapped the Mantic Core out for some of that goop I got from Blasto. Unless I wanted to disrespect Accord by buying more from Blasto, I needed my own way to heal. Trying to replicate Blasto’s goop was one option. The other option I was working on was trading with the Elite’s tinkers. I wasn’t that optimistic about the goop, though. The lab did excellent work, but the goop looked like it was going bad and that’s probably too much for the lab to fix. I had to cancel out of a fair amount of warnings about aliens when I put it in, but that was actually an opportunity for me. It let me use my power to understand technology on what I just realized was the most advanced technology I had access to. It would be slow-going, but I was getting ideas for sensors and robotics that I’d be hard-pressed to get elsewhere. I decided at the end to allow destructive testing of the goop since I expected it to go bad before I actually used it.

With the goop being analyzed, I settled in for an all-nighter. I had to repair Scorch so that I could sell it to the Empire and I needed an army’s worth of guns to trade to the CUI and those Elite tinkers. Fortunately, a couple big paydays seemed right around the corner.

Spoiler: Celestial Forge Bookkeeping

Leftover wc: 1070
Wordcount: 4905
Excess: 1975

-Fashion Non-victim (The World Ends With You) (200CP)
For you, there is no such thing as suffering for the sake of fashion. As long as you wear fashionable clothing, you will always be perfectly comfortable no matter the weather. You can make ill-fitting clothing look good on you with a couple subtle pins in the right places, and it'll always be comfortable no matter how big or small it is. Even in the thick of battle, you will be no worse off for your lack of armor- So long as you wear a single piece of armor, like a shoulderpad or gauntlet, your clothes will protect you as if they were a suit of armor made of the same material.

-Weapon Modifications (Archer) 100CP:
You design and modify weapons with flair, creativity, and skill.

- Phrasing (Archer) Free:
You gain the ability to easily bait people into making sexual innuendos.

 

Spoiler: Formatting

This was copied from Google Docs and the formatting had to be manually corrected, so may have mistakes.

Spoiler: Author's Note

Here is the actual new chapter!

I was done with Scorch’s repairs, done with the CUI’s gun order, and halfway done with the orders of my fellow tinkers when I idly noted that I just got another power. I was hoping for something medical, but nope! It was a power to save resources by not wasting or losing any, as if I didn’t have a fleet of ships to recycle.

My sulking was interrupted by a call from Kaiser. Or rather, I was expecting Kaiser, but the woman on the call introduced herself as Menja.

“Hi, Menja!” I said. “What’s up?”

“I think the first order of business is for you to search your brain for healing tech.” Menja said. “It was very rude for you to injure Fenja like that, and it would be nice if you cleaned up after yourself.”

“I have some goop I got from Blasto’s, but I’m pretty sure it’s expired.” I said. “I’ll wrack my brain though and let you know if I have any healing skills of my own. I have the Titan ready and the invoice for the repairs. Let me know when you’ll pay me and I’ll let you know when I can deliver.”

“We’ll pay you within an hour of the invoice. As for delivery, two PM at the warehouse on 12th street behind the Walmart. Cricket will meet you there, but be discreet. You can use the same power you used to summon it at the ranch to summon it there, right?” She said.

“Yes, that all works for me.” I said.

“There’s one more thing I want to talk to you about.” She said, before falling silent.

“Yes?” I asked.

“Fenja said you had a private bet on the outcome of the fight?” She said.

“Uh,” I said, “oh, you mean the date with a supermodel thing? Yeah, I remember that. Tell Fenja that she doesn’t need to do it until she feels ready. I won’t drag her out of the hospital just for this.”

“It’s pretty dumb and I wouldn’t be doing this if we weren’t twins and you hadn’t injured her, but she wanted me to go on the date in her place.”

“Seems unfair to her,” I said, “but if you insist.”

“I do insist. Be at Die Bonner Kantine at 7 PM sharp tonight. There will be a reservation for two for a Heith Anders. I expect you to pay and to dress appropriately.” She said.

Menja was a total bitch about it, but I got all I needed for the Empire’s order and a date with an attractive woman which sounds fun even if she’s just doing it as a favor. With that, I got back to work. My current project was a bit of a distraction, but I still expected it to be useful. I had used my hacking abilities to upgrade the internet modem to analyze everything passing through it, filter out hostile information, and intercept attempts to leak information from within. With the mundane versions of the upgrades done, I then upgraded them with my household problems power. It was much stronger than any other tinker power I had, but it was also the weirdest, so I preferred the parts I could understand do as much work as they could.

As I finished up the upgrades, I noticed that Courtney was standing beside me with the phone. I had a brief moment of tiredness when I switched tasks, but I sounded pretty chipper when I answered the phone.

“Hello?” I said.

“Hi. I’m Entourage. I’m in charge of the Elite’s Brockton Bay Cell.” A woman’s voice said.

“I hope I didn’t keep you waiting too long.” I said. “I assume we have a lot to talk about?”

“I’d like to schedule a meeting with you later this afternoon. I’m pretty flexible.” She said.

“I have commitments at 2 PM and 7 PM, so 4 PM should work.” I said.

“Great. Four also works for me. Just go to Hogarth and Hughes’ law firm and say that you have a meeting with Entourage then. Now, I’d suggest you turn on the local news. I think you’ll see something interesting.” She said before hanging up.

I returned the phone to Courtney and remembered the message that Accord sent. I gave Courtney my reply. Essentially, I can’t give him specifications on my Titans because I am constantly working on improving them and any specification would quickly become out of date. I was still willing to sell him one, though.

With that errand dealt with, I looked for whatever announcement was about to happen. I might even take some notes on it. I saw the cameras focused on a big stage decorated with “Estrella Corporation Presents…” in big cheerful letters that felt out of place in Brockton Bay. There were a couple people on the stage. The one at the podium seemed like a scruffy dockworker. He was giving a generic speech about hard work and opportunity, but he wrapped it up within a few minutes and waved for this young Hispanic-looking businesswoman to step forward.

“It’s my pleasure to introduce Dr. Gabriella Vargas, CEO of Estrella Corporation.” He said before letting her have the podium.

“Thank you, Alex. Like he said, my name is Gabriella Vargas. I know what hard work is like since I built this company myself. I know that the people of Brockton Bay are eager for an opportunity to work hard and make a living, which is why my company has decided to invest here. We intend to revitalize the docks by building a set of shipping facilities, three factories, and an office building for our regional work. Our starting wage is eleven dollars an hour with full insurance, but that can go up a lot higher for those with skills or something extra to bring to the team.”

“We will finance our own corporate hero team. Both to make sure that our businesses can work in peace and to do our part to help Brockton Bay recover.” She said as she waved her hand and three people walked on stage. The first was a towering and ripped man wearing a blue bodysuit. The second was even bigger than the first, but that’s understandable since most of his body appeared to be rugged steam-powered power armor. The third was a woman dressed much fancier than the others, almost like an upmarket Faultline. “I would like to announce the formation of the Brockton Stars with its inaugural members of Teamster, Estibador, and Squad!”

“I don’t expect to do everything on my own however, which is why I will also donate five million to the New Wave Foundation and why Estrella Corporation will work with the Brockton Bay Community College System to create a workforce training program fit for the needs of Brocktonites.”

Gabriella left the stage and abandoned the Brockton Stars, apparently led by Squad, to answer questions without her. What was Entourage doing when she recommended I watch this? Was this some kind of test or did she just want me to watch? She could have easily been on that stage, either as Vargas or as Squad, but if she’s a Changer, she could have been any of them. I should at least assume that the Elite is behind this somehow, since people don’t just create corporate hero teams on whims.

It got difficult to stay awake. When I used Iron Bladder, I was wide awake, but it would deactivate temporarily when I switched between tasks or when I stopped doing the task, I activated it for the press conference. This was a good example. Since the press conference was mostly over, my tiredness was coming to haunt me. I drooped my head, but caught myself before anything more happened. I had Courtney get me a few packs of Red Bull so that I could drink one each transition to make it easier.

I fired up my hacking computer and researched Uber and Leet. Mostly to reactivate Iron Bladder, but once I started I realized that I had the power to get revenge against them pretty reasonably, and now I had an actual reason to do it. I no longer had Blasto’s goop to treat my injuries and my power just showed it wouldn’t give me medical tech just because I needed it. Robbing them of tinker tech and reverse engineering whatever they use for healing seems like my most realistic option at this point. I used my phone to dial their numbers and then hung up immediately to get their phone numbers. I then verified online that those numbers were mobile numbers and sent the two of them text messages spoofed to be from the other person. The text messages were the only hard part. Not the text, where I just said “Hey, check this out.” and called it a day, but the attached images which I designed to install a worm which I could then use to install a second worm with better features. I got both of their phones infected within a half-hour of sending those messages, which was good. Assuming that Leet wouldn't detect and remove them, that just left me to wait and analyze the data they collected.

Of course, I wasn’t just going to sit and wait. I had a lot of work to do while my computer was tracking down the duo and the first work I had to do was drop off the Empire’s Titan. For all the money changing hands, the actual delivery was no more complex than delivering a washing machine. I just showed up, met Cricket, and then pulled the newly refurbished Scorch out of a garage and set it down in the warehouse.

I spent the time until the meeting with Entourage, defeating the Fugly Bob’s challenger. Granted, it only looked like I did it as a civilian, but it was still useful to know that being overfed is a bodily need that my Iron Bladder power could let me ignore. Who could complain about free food?

I then went to my meeting with Entourage. Her law firm was really professional. They had no qualms about escorting a cape walk-in to a conference room. A conference room containing a single person… Gabriella Vargas.

“I assume you’re Entourage, then. That would explain why you called and said I should watch your press conference.” I said.

“That wasn’t the only reason I called, but that was part of it. I do most of my work as a businesswoman, but I go by Entourage when necessary.” She said.

“So, I know a fair amount about the Elite, but Uppercrust said you would pay me to be your guide to Brockton Bay. Let’s get right to business then, what help do you need and what are you offering.” I said.

“I don’t actually need a guide to the city,” she replied, “but I will offer you membership in the Brockton Bay Elite Cell. It comes with a seven-figure salary and a lab underneath one of the factories we’re working on refurbishing. You will also find that Elite tinkers are more receptive to working with you, and our mercenaries are more charitable on pricing. Your work on the Boat Graveyard was impressive and I wouldn’t be here without it, but ultimately I can succeed without you.”

“But can you succeed with me against you?” I said.

“If necessary, yes, but I’d rather not. Joining the Elite wouldn’t be very onerous if you’re worried about that. We would expect you to help the Elite out, but that’s more of a you-scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours situation.”

“You should know that I’m a very ambitious tinker.” I said. “The last guy who sold me tinker supplies couldn’t handle the needs of a Titan. What happens if I join and your lab isn’t good enough for my next project?”

“At a certain point, the resources you need simply won’t exist and you’ll have to make them yourself, but before that we can be very generous.” She said. “You’ll also need to do a mission for me to become an actual member of the Elite, so I’ll have people pulling together your lab when you’re doing that.”

“If you need me to do a task, I’d be happy to beat up Uber and Leet for you.” I said.

“Something like that would work, but I’m still waiting to hear from them about certain business.” She said.

“I’ll probably want to think about it for a bit, so they’ll probably get back to you before I’ve decided about joining.” I said.

“Don’t take too long.” Entourage said. “If you ghost me, I’ll suspect that you’ve become my enemy, and I’d rather not hurt our relationship based on a misunderstanding.”

She looked wistfully off to the side before sighing. “I do have one last incentive I can offer you. You must have heard the urban legend of people being able to buy powers.” She said.

“You can’t be serious.” I said.

“I am. It wouldn’t work for you since you already have a power, but your girlfriend who you have playing receptionist? It’s just a vial that you drink and poof powers. I would sponsor her if that was necessary for your membership.” She said.

My head almost spun right off my head. It seemed insane, but I wouldn’t expect someone like this to make the offer unless she knew it to be true. I was almost certain that Courtney would want one of them. If she was averse to capery, she had plenty of opportunity to break up with me. Plus, a Courtney with superpowers could be genuinely useful in a way that she isn’t now as a receptionist.

“If I take the offer, I’ll want that and I won’t be happy if it’s a lie. I’d also like my salary bumped up to the eight-figure range, I swear I’m worth it.” I said.

That was essentially the end of the meeting. She didn’t want to share any of her secrets until she knew I would join and I wouldn’t commit to joining until I had some time to think about it.

I took my time between the end of that meeting and my date with Menja to scour the Internet for any lead on these power-sellers. I didn’t find any proof, but I found enough consistent rumors to suspect that was because they were intentionally hiding their existence.

I got to Bonner Kantine around 6:55 since that was the latest I could arrive and still be confident I wouldn’t be late. I was wearing my job interview suit. It wasn’t the best, but it fit the dress code. I still felt underdressed since this place seemed to have spared no expense in its construction. It was a two-story building with a space cutout so that people could see the other story from the one they were at.
The first story had a bar, and a crowded dining room, while the second story was a more spread-out layout. They did all of it in leather, brass, and hardwood to let people know that this was expensive yet tasteful.

I let them know that I had a 7 PM reservation with a Heith Anders and they escorted me to a private room in the back. I got to feel a bit snobby being escorted past dozens of fancy rich people, who weren’t fancy or rich enough to have a private room.

I was there first and had some time to check out the menu. This place wasn’t just named German, it had an all-German menu. It was a bit of a shock that they didn’t even have hamburgers on the menu. It was much less shocking when I felt my power once again try to get me a power I already had. Maybe for certain things it would actually be beneficial to get it twice, but I can see why that has resulted in a dud every time it happened to me.

It was twenty past the hour when Menja showed up. She was beautiful, and I could believe that Fenja wasn’t joking when she said she’d get me a date with a supermodel. Her breasts were even perkier and larger than I would have imagined after seeing her in costume, and they were shown off by a v-neck cocktail dress that also hid and revealed her legs with each tantalizing step. She also had on a gold and diamond chain necklace and enough skillfully applied makeup that I couldn’t decide what to stare at by the time she sat down.

She had a cruel smirk on her face, as if she knew that I was staring and enjoyed denying me anything more. I planned to get my revenge by pushing my phrasing power to the max. The server knocked on our private door and I put my plots on hold until after we ordered.

“I could order for you, if you want.” She said to me. I subtly nodded my head as the server came in.

“I will order for both of us.” Menja said. “We will have an appetizer of Marinierter Hering, then a Haussalat, with a main course of Schweinshaxe, followed by Gebackener Camembert, and finished with Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte.”

“As for wines,” Menja continued, “we will have a Weingut Keller Meisterwerk Riesling Trocken with the main course, a Markus Habeck Grande Cuvée Nouvelle Vague Trockenbeerenauslese with dessert and the chef’s recommendation for the other courses.”

I was a bit stunned to hear Menja order a five-course meal, but this place seemed fancy enough to be the type. I pushed through the stunned feeling I had to strike up a conversation.

“Is Heith Anders really your name?” I asked.

“No, but making the reservation under Ponzi wouldn’t have worked well.” She said.

“Is it your sister’s name?” I asked.

“I’d prefer you stop asking about the name. Speaking of my sister, though, her face should heal within the week.” She said. “Although, it must have embarrassed you as a tinker that we needed Othala to clean up a mess you couldn’t fix yourself.”

“I’m happy that Fenja’s prognosis is so good.” I said. “I’ve been looking into medical technology and I think I will have a solution within a week, if my current studies pan out.”

“Oh? Why are you only now getting into medical technology? I’ve seen the trouble you get into routinely. Why haven’t you already built something if you can?” She said.

“Medicine didn’t come naturally to me when I was starting out like my guns and Titans, but it’s still something I can do with enough elbow grease. I was using Blasto for my medical needs until recently, so I didn’t see the need to do it myself.” I said before I remembered I had the power to be lucky when trying new things. “Actually, I just realized that I could probably succeed if I tried to treat Fenja’s burn wounds, and if I failed, I’d at least leave her in a better state than I found her.”

“So, if I were to rip your balls off and shove them down your throat right now, you could fix that?” She said.

I gave her a smile full of fangs. “I think you’ll find that’s a lot harder than it sounds, but if you want to play with my balls, I’d be happy to accommodate you.” I said.

“Please, you would jizz yourself before I even touched your balls.” She said.

“I’d be fine with that if you helped me clean it up, but circling back to the medicine, I do think I’d have an excellent shot at fixing your sister if I treated her.” I said.

“Have you treated anyone with burn conditions before? I will not let my sister become a guinea pig. If you can prove it works, that would be another thing.” She said.

I dodged the question by moving on to current events. Current events which by sheer coincidence involved me.

“What do you think about the Boat Graveyard being cleared out?” I asked.

“I’m sure it will be lovely for the city, but it will take a lot of work to make use of the opportunities it gives us.” She said. “If I didn’t know better, I would’ve assumed that who did it was a great hero.”

“I think Estrella Corporation’s willing to put in the effort to revitalize the city, but yes the person who cleared out the Boat Graveyard was definitely great.” I said.

“I want to get my hands on that Vargas girl and let her know what I really think about her.” She said.

“I could give her your phone number if you want. She might be interested in getting her hands on you just as much as the other way around.” I said.

She sighed as she realized that what she said was so easy to wilfully misinterpret. “Still, I don’t like the idea of some ‘chica’ stomping in and reaping all the rewards when something good happens to Brockton Bay.” She said.

“Speaking of something good, what about the Merchants disappearing?” I said.

“That hasn’t been the unalloyed good I expected it to be. The Undersiders took over a lot of that area and are just as annoying if better-mannered than the Merchants were.” She said.

“Do you think the PRT will ever catch the guys who killed Skidmark?” I said.

She wrapped her feet around one of my shins under the table and said, “I’ve already caught him and he isn’t much of a catch.”

I laughed at that before doing my part to continue the conversation. We took minor breaks when each course arrived with its accompanying wine, but it was an enjoyable conversation. Assuming you could look past Menja being a Nazi. The meal took hours and was enjoyable, especially how I kept going out of my way to make Menja flustered. She wouldn’t share much about herself, but I liked her small talk.

What I did not like was receiving the bill. It came to almost twelve grand! The meals themselves were understandable, with each of us putting down about five hundred dollars worth of food, but the wine was truly insane. Both of the bottles that Menja ordered were worth thousands of dollars each, and the glasses we got with the other courses were much more reasonable, but still expensive.

“I think I see why you went through with this date.” I said.

She didn’t answer me, but her face was all the answer I needed. I decided to mess with her plan, then.

“I’d be willing to go on another date with you if you want.” I said to her surprise. “I’d even be willing to take Fenja on a date if she feels she missed out. You were actually pretty fun, even though you didn’t want to be. I know your boss may have just paid me millions of dollars, but this was when I actually felt like a rich person.”

Menja didn’t answer me, but that time it seemed it was because she didn’t know what to say. I placed down one of the leftover credit cards from the Merchants, walked out of the private room as if going to the bathroom, and then ran to my car once I got out the front door. She shouldn’t have tried that trick on someone with my skills at dine-and-dash.

I actually could have paid using the card linked to my Number Man account, but I’d rather turn Menja’s trick around on her. My other option would’ve been to plead poverty and try to get Menja to pay, but she likely had a trap waiting if I did that and I did not have time to be washing twelve grand worth of dishes.

Spoiler: Celestial Forge Bookkeeping

Leftover wc: 1975
Wordcount: 3967
Excess: 1942

-Rationing (Mad Max) (100CP)
When you don’t have much, it’s important to be careful with what you’ve got. You’re very good at saving supplies, ensuring that anything you find of use stays found and that it doesn’t get wasted by accident. You’ll get every last drop of fuel from a can, and never drop some plastic tubing just because you can’t think of a use at the moment.

Saved 100 CP

 

Spoiler: Formatting

This was copied from Google Docs and the formatting had to be manually corrected, so may have mistakes.

I rushed home after the date with Menja and resolved to spend the full night working on the Ion Titan for the CUI. I wanted to get as much work done as possible before my Iron Bladder reached its limits and I had to sleep. Fortunately, It was then that I got a second power to reverse-engineer things. This one worked by touch. Besides having a truly wonderful tinker ability, it also came with singing talent, pilot training, and a fighter jet that could shapeshift into a giant mech. It would be nice to sing along with my theme song, and although the pilot training was redundant with abilities I already had, the variable fighter wasn’t.

The CUI’s order called for a long-range blaster and the Ion as originally designed does a reasonable job of being blasty, with a rifle, a shoulder-mounted laser, and an oversized laser core. As for range, these weapons work well outside of ranges typical of normal para-human combat and being lasers the pilot doesn’t have to worry about wind and gravity causing them to miss. If they wanted theater or strategic levels of range, that’s really something we’d need to talk about. If they worried about people getting too close, it had a device to lay explosive mines.

With the input of my other tinker abilities, I planned to reinforce the armor with force fields to make it stronger than any mundane material could hope to be and I planned to add a concussive blast to the lasers that would round out its ability to do damage. I made full use of SMAUG as well. I had already deviated significantly from the original design for the Titan with those planned upgrades, so it wasn’t an enormous leap to see what other people could do to make it better. It was also pretty interesting to see Dragon’s notes on those shards that were left behind when my cabinet’s self-destruct failed. They apparently make dimensional effects easier. Checking SMAUG every so often to see if someone had a better idea than me was just pushing me even further away from the original design, but it had the side effect of helping me realize that I was much above the average tinker in skills. I even took out my VF-4 Lightning III Variable Fighter and started piloting it. This let me use my reverse-engineering skills on its mech form while using its mech form to build the Ion. I could already tell that the Ion would be obsolete as soon as I built it, but I mostly prevented myself from taking it completely apart and rebuilding it, since I realized that would waste too much time. On the plus side, using a giant robot to build a giant robot actually saved me a lot of time tinkering, since it could work with big pieces easily and my crew could do any small work. Given how I kept getting stronger, I’d likely be the strongest tinker after the Simurgh within months. That was a good feeling.

Of course, the new parts’ need for more advanced materials and manufacturing processes partially balanced out their increased capabilities. It wasn’t difficult to have some of my crew build new foundries and lathes, but for more advanced materials, I would have to take some more time to refine my current stockpile, unless I had a clever solution.

It turns out I had a clever solution. I saw some of Armsmaster’s work in SMAUG and that reminded me that he was local and liked to ride around town on his souped-up tinker bike. If I stole his bike, I could break it down for parts and maybe pick up a few tricks along the way. I could probably get Armsmaster to walk into a trap just by baiting it with my variable fighter but I decided to go with the simpler path of waiting for him to go on patrol and then ambushing him. I took a bit of a break to hack into all the easy-to-hack security cameras near the Protectorate and PRT buildings. Even only going after the easy ones, there were still a lot of them.

That prompted me to upgrade my hacking computer with a few more processors. If you want to get actual value out of a fleet of hacked security cameras, then you either need someone watching the feeds constantly or to have a smart enough computer to watch for you. I took the second option. On the plus side, it could do more than merely recognize Armsmaster leaving.

I spent the rest of the night working on Ion for the CUI, but I took a brief break to upgrade my variable fighter. I had been trying to create a neural link so that I could hack computers faster. I had a good idea of the principles from reverse-engineering the one that my Titans use, but the best way to prove I could build a more general one was to build one. What better chance to build one than replacing my variable fighter’s clunky controls with smooth thought-power is there? None, obviously. I also had a power to make aircraft store excessive amounts of missiles, which I thought of using with the fighter, but I decided against it since I didn’t have any extra missiles. My neural link actually came along pretty quickly, though it was a bit finicky at first, I could work on improving it while getting back to work on the Titan. I settled into a pretty relaxed tinkering pace, at least until Courtney interrupted my work by running in and waving a phone around. I got out of my mech to see what’s up.

“Hello?” I said as Courtney handed me the phone.

“This is Five.” A generic voice said in monotone English. “I understand that the armaments should be available for pickup tomorrow and the vehicle should be available for inspection. When and where can I schedule this?”

“Nine AM works for me.” I said as I gave them directions to the place where I gave the Elite their Titan as well along with directions on how to complete my payment. They quickly hung up with a final “That’s acceptable”.

I took a break from CUI work. At least, until their final payment went through. The real work I needed to be doing, but which I was distracting myself from, was to decide on joining the Elite and what to do about the vial. I could see myself getting the vial and then immediately feeding it to the Laboratorium, but it would be good if Courtney drank it and it worked as advertised.

There was really only one option. I sent a text to Vargas saying that I wanted to join, wanted a vial for my girlfriend, and awaited the go-ahead order to capture the gamer duo. While waiting for a response, I figured I should take the time to work on my side-quests.

One of those side-quests I never finished was to track down those two guys who installed listening devices in my store that one time. I literally built a compass to track them down and still hadn’t gotten around to it. Well, that ends now.

It was barely five minutes before I was in my car with the compass, trying not to screw up my driving completely while guessing which way would get me to where the compass is pointing.

The compass eventually led me to the beach. I didn’t bring my swimsuit, so I almost called off the search when I got to the water and the compass said they were still ahead of me, but I decided I wouldn't let mere water stop me. I stripped down to my pants and jumped in the water to keep searching. Fortunately, fashion non-victim let me be comfy swimming in just my pants since that was apparently fashionable. The compass led me to an underwater barrel large enough to fit a human or two, and that was enough for me to conclude the search.

I let my SUV drive on the way back and used the travel time to read about the Slaughterhouse Nine and think about what I could do in a fight against them. They were back down to eight after the Protectorate killed Chuckles. I could easily kill Jack Slash, Mannequin, Shatterbird, Hatchet Face, and Burnscar, but Bonesaw, Siberian, and Crawler would be tricky. I might actually benefit from a fight if I can get my hands on Mannequin or Bonesaw’s technology. The bounties wouldn’t hurt either.

My SUV had barely turned its engine off before I came back out with Courtney. I wanted to ask her what kind of power she would want if she could pick one and brunch would be a wonderful opportunity as well as just being fun.

It was a nice brunch. We took the time to pound back mimosas and make a small drinking game where you would have to take a sip every time the other person talked. She seemed to enjoy my phrasing power, and I would’ve suggested having a good time together in the bathroom if that wouldn’t distract from enjoying the meal. I remembered about five mimosas in that I needed to ask her what kind of power she would want. She had a lot of ideas. Female Legend was one of them. Some kind of brute aura that also made people attracted to her was a second. Third was some kind of shape-shifting power that would turn her into what other people find attractive.

She probably would’ve kept giving me ideas until I told her to stop, but I got a notification that Armsmaster had left on patrol around noon. I left Courtney a hundred bucks and a kiss so that she could finish her meal while I went to work. I drove towards the docks and quickly pulled the Variable Fighter out of an abandoned warehouse’s garage door. I took off by pulling the fighter out onto the road, getting out to close my pocket dimension door, before transforming the fighter into its hybrid mech-plane GERWALK form and taking off in an angled, short, almost vertical way, before turning back into a plane when I was airborne.

While I was hunting Armsmaster, I expected him to start hunting me as soon as he heard the news. There was no way that a tinker could hear about a low-flying aircraft without wanting to check it out and that’s when the tinker’s job doesn’t include checking out weird events.

It was about ten minutes of random wandering before I saw Armsmaster below me on his bike. Just as planned, I thought. I swooped around, transformed into GERWALK mode, and landed in front of him. My theme song burst out of my mech and I let it because it was awesome. He got off his bike in order to come talk to me or something and I stepped over him, grabbed his bike and took off. He shot me with some kind of tracking device as I grabbed his bike, but the crew neutralized it. I didn’t remove it since I thought I might like to examine it.

I actually was on the clock, then, so I returned as quickly as I could to where I took off from, put Armsmaster’s bike and the Variable Fighter back in my pocket dimension, closed it up, and tried to drive as nonchalantly as possible back to brunch. My girlfriend wasn’t there when I got back, so I drove back to the store where she was.

I gave her a kiss before heading back to my workshop. The time constraints that worried me and made me want to stay awake as long as possible had evaporated with my recent breakthroughs, so I decided to finish a few things before going to bed.

The first obviously was to examine Armsmaster’s bike. This had a few reasons. The most important was to deactivate anything that he might use to track it down. There were a few things like that and then a few more things that simply sent signals which Armsmaster could track as a side-effect. With those deactivated and the bike powered down. I had one last thing to do. I used my household power to make a bed out of some of my workshop’s wood and some leftover car seat fabric. It would give a perfect rest to anyone who slept there. I set an alarm to wake me up in 3 hours as a test.

I woke up from my alarm in the middle of the afternoon, refreshed in a way that someone who only slept for three hours after staying awake for two days had no right to be. It was actually a very productive nap, since the CUI had paid me for their guns and Entourage had sent me her approval to wreck Uber and Leet along with a guess as to where they were headquartered. I also got a new power. This power consisted of low-level telekinesis and two pieces of gear. The first piece of gear was some micromanipulator gloves. I put them on as soon as possible and vowed to make them part of my everyday costume. The second piece of gear was a vending machine, but that seemed pretty useless.

I checked my own cyberwar programs and the place the Elite suspected was also the place where my programs said they both spent most of their time. Convenient. That would be my first stop for the beat down, but I decided to delay it until after the meeting with the CUI. Getting prepared for that was actually pretty quick. It barely took me three hours to finish up their Titan, which gave me an evening to spend in bed with Courtney and a night to spend relaxing on my own.

Spoiler: Celestial Forge Bookkeeping

Leftover wc: 1942
Wordcount: 2315
Excess: 257

-Fingers of Silver (Macross) (200CP)
While other kids were building tinker-toy creations, you were fiddling with your dad's car and doing a better job than him. By purchasing this, meddling with machines and OverTechnology is as easy as breathing for you. By getting your hands on something, you can easily figure out how it works and how to copy its inner workings, provided that it wasn't just bullshit magic. The more advanced something is, the harder it may be... but with time and effort, you just might succeed.

Serene Sinatra (Macross) Free:
You're no slouch in the singing department, that's for sure. You may not be popular idol material, but no one's going to complain if you decide to sing along to a song or randomly bust out a tune with a voice like this. Who knows, maybe you could practice and get a little better?

Basic Training (Macross) Free:
Piloting a Variable Fighter can be pretty complex. There's all kinds of modes and maneuvers to worry about... with this, you won't have to worry so much. You'll know which button does what, and you won't end up turning into a mech when you need a jet. ...but I reserve the right to laugh if you mess up, anyway.

Space Suit (Macross) Free:
A futuristic, spandex space suit that will let you survive for 20 minutes in deep space. It's really more in case your vehicle gets stranded, but otherwise it's pretty darn cool looking.

Basic Variable Fighter (Macross) Free:
Your good ol' Fisher Price Veritechs! They may be the beginning, but they're classics and were the groundwork for future generations. Editions like the VF-1A Valkyrie (or its other variants), the YF-4, VF-2SS or the VF-4 Lightning III are made available for your stay here. It can transform in the atmosphere and operate in space, but it cannot reach escape velocity on its own. Comes with basic armaments and like all Variable Fighters can transform into a Jet, a Mech, or a 'middle' form called Guardian Mode.

-Micromanipulators | vending machine (Raildex Science) (100CP)

Micromanipulators (50CP)
These delicate gloves were meant for scientific purposes. They're reinforced with small motors and electrically contracting artificial muscles to allow you to perform delicate work on the scale of a micron. While they're definitely more suited to scientific experiments, they can be put to use in any situation that requires steady hands like aiming a rifle, conducting brain surgery, cooking, defusing a bomb, or even bypassing some redirection and shielding abilities.

Vending Machine (50CP)
Randomly flavored during dispensing vending machine that no matter where it is placed produces a profit. Eats high dollar bills sometimes and always dispenses at least one beverage when shaken roughly. It's a little old with loose springs but won’t need repairs and is always stocked, Just watch out for the random barbecue and strawberry mixes.

Random Esper Ability (Free) Telekinesis (Lift Light Objects):
This form of telekinesis allows you to create a field of force that affects an object you wish to manipulate. Control decreases the closer you get to your weight limit and maximum range. Through that, you might be able to fly, fire telekinetic bullets, maintain telekinetic shielding, accelerate objects to insane speeds, or simply tear people apart. The amount of “hands” you can maintain at once and amount of weight moved increases per level. Range maxes out at 100M. Has a lot of potential for mayhem and huge versatility, especially with creative use.