10

Chapter 10

Saturday 2nd January 2011, Evening.

I look down at a flickering neon light, deep in a run down area of downtown on the border of the downtown area, a few blocks off Lord street not actually far from the old halfway house I stayed in what feels like a lifetime ago. At the apex of one of the few hilly areas of the city.

The Palanquin. A redbrick rectangular building, looks like it was possibly an ex bowling alley or Arcade or the like.

The music is thudding, rapid, thrumming bass audible even from here, and a lengthy queue winds down the street.

This isn't actually what I expected at all.

I knew that the Palanquin was a nightclub, but my only experience with nightclubs was the ex-industrial monoliths of Manchester.

I supposed I didn't expect it to be this packed.

It's an open secret that Faultline's crew bases here. No-one ever attacks this place, the unwritten rules cover the Palanquin as well as anywhere else. Much like Somer's Rock.

Of course, this only lasts as long as Faultline takes no action within the city proper. There's a reason they don't take jobs in Brockton Bay.

I land at the rear and knock on a rear door as instructed. A few minutes pass before a narrow window in the door slides open.

I am met with a set of solid blue eyes with a rectangular pupil.

Newter.

"Yo Archon. On time I see."

I nod.

I hear the sliding of multiple bolts as the door swings open.

"She's waiting upstairs. Let's go."

He leads the way, not seemingly interested in small talk.

"EFA, keep constant scans of the area, if anyone so much as sneezes in my direction let me know please."

"On it boss."

The interior is interesting, all metal floor and wood panelling. Cheap and easy to throw this up when needed I guess.

Newter leads me to a thick metal door and swings it open for me. The interior is tastefully decorated for a night club. Deep mahogany panelling and a wooden floor. A table is set in the middle, a large black circular monstrosity surrounded with metal chairs.

I wonder if they play poker here.

"Boss no observation tech is detected, this room is currently private and unrecorded."

"Thanks, EFA, please let me know if that changes."

Sat at the table can only be Faultline herself, and Gregor the snail.

Newter takes a seat on a metal stool to Faultline's right.

Faultline's demeanour is entirely no nonsense. A heavily reinforced welding mask and intricate riot armour combined with tabard and cape. It works well on her.

No sign of Labyrinth, Spitfire or Shamrock but timeline wise she would only recently have recruited spitfire, Elle isn't exactly fit for a meeting, and Shamrock hasn't joined up yet I think,

She immediately takes control of the meeting.

"Archon, you wanted to meet with us?"

"Yes, I need information, I believe you were wanting to speak to me too?"

She nods.

"I'll get straight to the point. You are known as a notable healer, and information on you suggests significant natural skill in medicine additional to your tinker speciality. One of my ongoing tasks is to look into curing or otherwise helping Case 53s with their mutations." She gestures to Gregor, and then to Newter.

"I want to know how much it would cost for you to assess Gregor and Newter, and potentially help mitigate their conditions."

Being honest with myself, I'd do this for free. It's one of my overarching missions here too. However, I need information.

"Ok, let's discuss my requests first and then I will scan Newter and Gregor and we can arrive at a mutual exchange that works for both of us."

She nods in agreement.

"Ok firstly I'm after information. I know you don't typically act in the bay but you are known as the best information broker in the state from what I gather. I need to know A. what the hell set Lung off before my fight with him at the docks, and B. any info on independents or teams acting in the area who could have broken Lung and Oni Lee out without a trace."

We sit in silence for a few seconds as she digests.

"Anyway, while you decide what that info is worth to you, Newter please bring your stool over and I'll do a preliminary scan."

He drags his stool over to me and sit's facing me on it. I bring up my omni tool and engage the deep scanners.

"EFA I should be able to pick up most medically relevant issues but if you can monitor the non-medical scans for interesting info it will be helpful."

The scans are fascinating. The genetic engineer in me is awed by the fact this man is alive and walking.

His DNA is less of a helix, and more of a pretzel. A half-eaten pretzel at that.

"Hmm. Interesting. Very interesting. Have you engaged any other healers to look at you?"

Faultline nods. "We had little luck with New Wave and we don't want to push with Panacea but Lamb of God down at Haven and Mirtigan in Ohio both looked and couldn't do anything or even recognise anything was wrong."

"Well, that's because as far as their DNA knows nothing is wrong. Something has twisted the DNA at the very base level. It's "technically" fixable. But I don't know if their power will reinitialise the changes and I wont be able to really check until I can build some better scanning equipment. Panacea could likely make some fixes but it would take her a long, long time to unravel this."

I look over at Gregor.

"Gregor, would you like to trade in for Newter?"

He moves to the chair next to me as Newter moves back to sit next to Faultline.

I quickly run deep scans on Gregor and much the same as Newter, his DNA is utterly twisted. Hit by inspiration I turn to him.

"May I have permission to put my bare hand on your shoulder? I couldn't do this with Newter for obvious reasons but the healing element of my non-tinker power has more esoteric scanning abilities."

He quickly agrees and I put my palm on his shoulder.

I initialise Aura reading and regret it quickly. His Aura is twisted. Im obviously not skilled enough to unravel even a basic aura but I thought this would be worth the insight and development.

I was wrong, there are distortions in his Aura that are making me extremely queasy. I remove my hand and scan his brain.

"EFA, are you picking up special distortions? Check around his Corona Pollentia."

"There's a slight gravitational shearing and extremely light output of energy."

"Gregor can you actively channel your power in some way please?"

He obliges and starts ejecting foam from his hands.

"THERE, did you catch that boss? There was a severe special distortion on his Gemma as he activated and deactivated his power."

"Let's check the usual spots, see if any of his original stem cells remain."

I'm almost ready to give up hope, but at the last minute I hit the jackpot.

"EFA, his teeth! They still have his original stem cells in them look, these are proper helixes! Dental pulp stem cells haven't been changed."

"I wonder if it's because they were already fully formed and set before he was transformed. The bone marrow ones are certainly changed, an oversight from the shard maybe?"

"I don't know yet, but there's opportunity here."

"Gregor I'm going to attempt to force a localised change in your DNA, I wont be able to propagate this without some serious lab work, but I can make changes to the tip of a finger as proof of concept."

Now he looks partly excited, and given that Gregor is supposed to be rather stoic this speaks highly of his feelings on the matter.

I activate my Halo without the wings and engage my nanobiotics in his finger, I direct them to take a single strand of DNA from the stem cells I found and then to attempt to overwrite the cellular DNA in his fingertip. It's mind numbingly slow, but slowly a single centimeter circle of skin at the tip of his finger starts to change from white, to pink.

"Right, this will not last without me making wholesale changes to your bone marrow and other stem cell caches, that all have to be made at once. I don't remotely have the equipment built and ready for that so it could be months before I could test this. In the meantime, use your power regularly from that finger, I want to know if power use overwrites the changes or if they change naturally as your skin sheds. Keep careful and close regular observations of the area and note any changes."

I turn to Faultline.

"Keep obs up on his finger. I might have a line to if not cure then at least mitigate some of the mutations. Whether that will be a temporary or permanent solution remains to be seen but there's potential here with the info I've found."

She goes to speak but I talk over her and continue.

"However we need to get down to brass tacks. I'm willing to help do this but the tech I'll need to develop and the tool's I'll need to use go way way beyond the bounds of any financial agreement I believe you could make. Even if I did it at cost."

She nods. "What would this be worth to you?"

"Get me the info I need or give it to me if you already have it. Do a few jobs for me. Non villainous jobs. And for the love of god keep this completely between us until I am sure I can make the changes needed. I do not need every case 53 in the greater Americas coming to Brockton Bay. Not to mention that an improvement of this level would be too much for the Nine to ignore. I won't take cash for this, I'm interested in working out a cure myself. But by the same token I also won't do it for free. The quickest way to devalue yourself is to remove the value of what you do."

She nods approvingly.

"I understand that concept, trust me." She holds out her hand to shake. I take it and shake it back.

I quickly write out a contract in triplicate (Thank you ridiculous writing calligraphy power) and hand it to her to review. She reads it over and hands it to Gregor for a second reading. They are happy with the terms I've laid out and we each sign the three copies.

"Ok so we are in agreement. I agree to develop the technology and tools to make an attempt at genetic recalibration by January 2012 on Newter and Gregor. You agree to perform some jobs for me in the same time period, no more than 10 under the condition that they are non villainous and not death wishes. And the two jobs already given regarding information gathering do not count towards this limit."

She nods in agreement and we each take a copy.

"Ok, information, what do you have."

"Lung first, he attacked the Docks because his stashes were hit deep in his territory. We are talking, next door to his residence deep. Places where you don't even breathe in the wrong direction for fear it may sound like an insult. Evidence led or was planted to lead out to the Docks. Not sure which, could be either."

I sigh.

"Any idea on the culprit?"

"Would need to be someone either immensely strong, or a teleporter or other type of mover because the goods were gone in minutes, if not seconds. He lost in excess of ten million in drugs and weapons and cash."

Wow okay, so he was legitimately pissed off for good reason then.

"What about the breakout?"

"I don't have any decent lead on that, Oni Lee has been seen since, near the old market up in the northern docks, but Lung has disappeared entirely. There's no parahuman that isn't Strider that I know of that could move two people out of two Protectorate cells without passing through the building. And he would be seen doing it. From what my contacts said camera wise, the cells were fully covered on camera. No static or buzzing, they was there one minute and gone the next. At almost the same time."

I'm wracking my brain for parahumans capable of this in canon. Strider? Eidolon and Glaistig go without saying. Circus possibly? Coil for sure. Contessa?

In fact, any of cauldron could do this with Doormaker, but what would they get out of it…

There's just too many potential options at the minute, I don't have enough info.

Until Lung shows his face again I'm not likely going to make much progress with this investigation so I need to keep my eyes and ears open.

"Ok, thanks for the Info Faultline, if you could keep investigating this for me I'd appreciate it. I don't like the criminals I catch being broken out."

She nods in agreement.

"We wont work in Brockton as you know, but we will keep our ears open."

We say our goodbyes and I make my way outside. I'm reviewing the medical scans on my omni tool as I leave.

"EFA, these scans don't make any sense. I don't know what the hell the shard is doing and I cant make head nor tail of it. This isn't even DNA as we know it, the genes are still there, there's still adenine, thymine, guanine and cytosine, but the helixes are completely out of whack. The chromosome counts are the only thing that are correct. It's like a kid knocked over and broke a statue then tried to rebuild it out of lego."

"According to your memories aren't these shards effectively "dead" unless they get connected to a different network? Aren't the powers themselves just smashed together by Cauldron in hope that they will work?"

"Yes but even though the shards are as dumb as a chocolate fireguard, why would a protocol that makes changes like this even exist? There's no atypical Scion shards from what I know so why would Eden's shards have a mutagenic effect? Even if you mixed and matched powers, the default would surely be 'Stay what you are now'?"

"It's likely that the Shards simply don't know what a human is supposed to be? Maybe they're trying to copy function over form and just make it work with whatever powers have been smashed together?"

"I need to scan more Case 53s, I'm missing something here, I can feel it at the tip of my brain. Theres something in the Mercy memories and the Magos:Genetic Engineer memory package that is telling me that something obvious is completely passing me by."

As I take to the skies from behind the Palanquin, the forge hits me.

100CP gained, 200cp are available.

Crafting Magitech… Success!

The Mystic and the Machine – Marvel Cosmic – 200CP

0CP remain.

Well then, this is a useful little perk. I already had potential Magitech production from Doll Maker of Bucharesti with enough research, but this perk directly gives me a speciality in making Magitech, and Techno magic too. It gives me the ability to seamlessly combine any magic, science and technology I know together. The perk specialises in creating new Magitech and allows me to with enough R&D make technological versions of any magic I know, and magical versions of any tech I can build. Theoretically I could now make a real magic healing staff, I could make magical wings. And the reverse, I could make portal or teleportation technology with a lot of research.

The best thing about this perk in the here and now, is that I now have multiple ways of interfacing with the Draenei tech with regular power systems. One of my biggest issues, solved. Energy shields, here I come! I can also look into some of the deeper Draenei tech that would previously require magic sources I did not have access to. Either via powering them mundanely, or alternatively by creating a magic generator. The potential here is breath-taking.

Trajectory throws me a warning as I dodge a pigeon. Ok Thomas. Theorise about your new perks while you aren't mid-flight.

Flying at night is quite relaxing in Brockton, the city skyline dotted with lights and there's a strange peach that comes with soaring over it all. The ability to fly is definitely my favourite thing I've built up to now.

I decide to spend a little time patrolling while I think about the Faultline situation, checking various hotspots and scanning police and PRT radio broadcasts.

I intervene in a few unpowered situations backing up BBPD, they're appreciative of the assists and a few chats with them tell me that there's been skirmishes between unpowered gang members all across town the past few nights.

An hour later, and I've stopped my third mugging of the night. The docks are a hive of minor crimes at this time.

Waiting for the BBPD to show up and process the criminals uses up the lions share of my patrol time compared to actually catching criminals, but as an independent I cant guarantee arrests if i don't follow the procedures. One of those procedures is a proper handover to the legitimate authorities.

It's boring, and strangely banal for a man flying around the city stopping crimes in an angel winged powered suit.

At my fourth stop of the night however, life conspires to reduce my boredom.

 A call picked up on the police band. It's just a standard stop, a bunch of skinheads spraying homophobic and racist graffiti on the edge of downtown and harassing passers-by. I'm planning on giving them a warning, and then watching to see if I can catch them in the act.

However as soon as they see me one of them pulls out his phone and screams "NOW!"

My life turns into a white flare, trajectory, and my scanners blare a warning from above!

Something immensely powerful smashes into my back from above and I plummet towards the ground.

"Boss, your left wing is completely destroyed, you need to teleport to the ground before your velocity increases too much. Use the right wing to slow yourself!"

I feel completely out of it, I'm pretty sure I have a concussion but the nanobiotics are doing their job. I use my right wing to slow myself and then teleport myself to the street.

Trajectory sends me another warning and I throw back my arm with my energy shield in time to deflect a large metal spear from turning me into an Archon kebab.

I turn towards the source and my blood runs cold.

Kaiser, Krieg and Crusader are stood in the street. Purity is floating above them.

Fuck I thought she left the empire. Was that what smashed into my wing? One of her blasts?

My wings are fucked. Left is almost entirely destroyed away and the projectors are cracked. Right is fine but I cant fly on one wing, only float.

Luckily the Halo didn't take a hit. The armour on my back is scanning as cracked too.

I should have gone home to implement my damn new perk. I came out on patrol weak to energy blasts with one of the most powerful blasters in the world in the same city.

I pull out my staff as Kaiser starts to monologue.

"Well then, if it isn't the race traitor. Not looking quite so imperious without your precious wings."

"Still got more than enough to deal with you and the rest of the Hitler youth."

"Oh, I'm sure you believe you do 'Archon'. However, I don't believe you are up to much without your precious wings. Why after all would a teleporter need build such ostentatious wings, unless he had some sort of restriction on his teleportation."

Well, I'm pretty much fucked from the start here aren't I? My magic pool is much bigger than it was, but combat against a flying blaster, a kinetic redirector, a ferrokinetic and a minion master with flying, wall ignoring minions is not in my favour even with teleportation and enchanting.

I'm going to need to play this carefully. Luckily Kaiser seems to enjoy the sound of his own voice.

"How utterly predictable you turned out to be. Send a few of my men to spray some graffiti and you come running like the good little boy scout you are. Unfortunately for you, you opposed us and betrayed your kin and therefore you need to be taught an object lesson."

 I fold away my right wing. I can teleport if I need to go high and it's just getting in my way. I eject the left wing and use the omni tool to break it down into resource storage. It's going to need to be rebuilt anyway and at least this way I can save the rare resources.

"Kaiser do you honestly think I'm going to let you just attack me?"

"No Archon, I expect you to put up some token resistance, but you will fall eventually. You barely dealt with Hookwolf and Cricket, and this time I've carefully deployed my forces against you. All outgoing calls and internet are blocked for a few blocks thanks to a lovely device from my friend in Europe, so there's no backup for you. And this time you can't cowardly take us by surprise."

"EFA what's the status on communications?"

"Not good boss, the protocols in the Omni can punch through this if there's an active device in range but there are no active devices anywhere close to in range from what I can detect. We never needed a more powerful transmitter."

Crusader laughs. High pitched and cruel, not at all what I expected.

To her credit, Purity doesn't exactly look enthusiastic to be here.

"So, what did he pay you to get you to sucker punch me Purity? From all signs you had left his pitiful, impotent, wannabe Reich to become an independent?"

She looks away as Kaiser chuckles.

"Everyone has pressure points Archon." He says smugly.

Crusader summons his famous ghosts and Purity starts to glow as Krieg and Kaiser start walking towards me.

I'm going to need to retreat. However, there's no easy and obvious route. My teleportation is line of sight and I can teleport about the distance of street width safely. I cannot rapid teleport too much, the cost increases exponentially if I do it too rapidly.

This is really going to stretch my abilities.

Purity is charging a blast and Krieg is running at me. As Purity releases her blast I teleport to a nearby roof edge just before it hits me. Hanging from the edge I quickly pull myself on to the roof. Another blast flies out and I barely parry it with my shield. Krieg runs at the wall and then continues running up it. What the fuck even were this guys powers? I can barely remember. I see Kaiser start to extrude spears from the ground and Crusaders ghosts are slowly approaching me.

I look to teleport to another roof, if I can get far enough away then only Purity can reasonably follow me.

As I go to teleport however Kaiser shouts over to me.

"5 members of the lesser races die if you retreat here Archon and I start turning the houses nearby into blenders."

He holds up his phone and plays a recording. I can hear sobbing and a language I don't recognise coming from his phone.

"Just so you can hear those you will abandon to death should you attempt to teleport away 'Archon' You hero types are always so easy to manipulate. Now, face us on your feet like a man."

Well, that settles it then. No escape possible. 4v1 against possibly my four worst possible opponents from the Empire.

"Don't worry Archon, when I hand your unconscious body over to the Protectorate in exchange for Othala and Cricket after liberating your technology I'm sure they'll find a way to regrow your arms and legs eventually."

"Damn you really do love the sound of your own voice don't you."

I pull out my energy pistol and pepper shots at Purity as I teleport to another rooftop overwatching the area. Purity fires another blast at me which swallows my energy shots entirely as im forced to emergency teleport again.

Down below in the street, Crusader has his ghosts in a widespread pattern, some of them guarding Kaiser and the rest covering obvious hiding points. I get the feeling he's more of a thinker support in this fight, as he seems to be able to perceive through his projections somehow.

We'll if the first rule of fighting is take out the healer, the second is take out the summoner.

Time to show them something they won't have known about already.

I teleport down to a nearby alley and call up all three of my shadow clones. They don't have my outer armour but they DO have the inner suit, effects of my implants and my sword and bow. They can't use the pistol as it's too complicated to copy with the technique at this level of usage, but the sword and bow count as simple weapons. I summon them with the mental order to stay hidden until I give them the signal then I quickly teleport back up onto another roof. Purity continues to rain low powered blasts at me whenever I'm on a roof, she doesn't seem to be going all out as the buildings aren't being turned to rubble, it seems her job is to harass me and prevent me turtling up. The ones I don't dodge are deflected with my shield easily enough..

"I'm getting bored of this now Archon, if you aren't going to fight me then I'm going to leave and the consequences of that you won't much like."

Ok then you Nazi fuck, I'll give you what you want.

I teleport to the ground and use the feedback from trajectory to continue dodging and peppering Purity with shots to keep her moving.

I charge at Krieg, I know I can't take him in melee, but I don't intend to. I want him to think I want to.

As I enter the edges of Krieg's kinetic field I teleport behind him and summon my baton, I can't wrap him with it and I need to touch him to shock him. I quickly extend it over his head and he smirks at the 'miss'.

Until I use the matter manipulator to elevate him into it. Loopholes bitch.

I quickly dodge around the twitching Krieg as Purity tries to blast me again, as I move I discharge another three baton charges into him while he is twitching. His power is still up and I cant retract the baton from him, so I elect to leave it, not like he can do anything with it anyway. I leave the power button depressed so it will keep shocking him until the internal battery is fried.

I move to teleport away but I feel an almighty pain in my right shoulder.

One of Crusaders ghosts has put a spear through my shoulder completely bypassing my armour. How the fuck did it sneak up on me?

"Boss they don't appear on any form of scan unless they are actively bypassing terrain, you need to stay mobile."

I teleport away from the ghost as my shoulder regenerates, I continue to pepper Purity intermittently. Dodging is really taking its toll on me as I fail to follow trajectory's instructions properly and a spear from Kaiser glances off my chest plate.

What is the long game here? Why are they so adamant to keep me in combat…

Wait.

If these four are here and they knew they could keep me in one place, why wouldn't the rest be here?

Damnit Cricket and Othala are in Boston it's not like they're keeping me distracted so they can release them. What's the play here?

Another blast from Purity deflected and I'm dodging like a maniac.

Right, I'm so done with this.

"NOW! TAKE DOWN CRUSADER!"

Crusader looks around in alarm as Purity stops firing and looks over at him in a panic.

My three clones have charged Crusader who has been covered by Purity and Kaiser until I directed the fight to a different area. I've caught him flat footed and while two of the clones are dispelled by Purity and Kaiser, the third managed to get in and put his blade through Crusaders knee.

That's two dealt with. With the distraction working I charge Kaiser intent on putting him down. I go for a slash and expect him to dodge.

What I don't expect him to do is put his hand on my chest plate.

And for my right lung to suddenly be full of metal.

He punches me straight in the stomach plate and another metal extrusion pierces my abdomen as he steps away from me imperiously.

"What a disappointment. I've changed my mind on letting you live. Purity, get ready to hide the evidence."

Purity charges up a huge blast and is looking right at me.

Is this where my story ends?

Kaiser is picking up Crusader and they both make their way over to Krieg. Krieg is out for the count and Crusaders going to have trouble healing that leg.

My consciousness is moving in and out now, my armour is shattered and I am critically injured. The metal still inside the wounds is preventing regeneration.

"You gave it a good try race traitor, but there's a reason I deploy myself against people who rely on armour. Even Armsmaster doesn't try to deploy against me without good reason."

He turns to his people, as unpowered E88 goons enter the area.

"So ends the 'great' Archon. Ended at the hands of the pure and the just. Tonight, a protector of the mongrel menace is put to my sword. Tomorrow, we eject the impure from the foul false dragons lands without interference."

He turns to Purity.

"Give him the funeral he deserves please dear."

"Boss, overlaying trajectory, when I give the signal, shoot your pistol at this trajectory and then teleport to the rooftops."

"I don't think I can, I can barely even see straight."

"Teleport or die boss, I don't give a fuck if you are too cowardly to live, I don't want to be dragged down with you because you were too scared to try."

A green set of boxes is overlaying my black and faded vision. I grasp my pistol in my hand and gather my strength.

The silhouette of Purity takes aim at me.

"NOW."

With the last of my strength, I fire my pistol at the box and teleport for the roof. I see Purity's head snap back as the entire world explodes in a blue-green supernova.

I pass out.

I wake up in an alleyway, it's the dead of night, no sign of people about.

My nanobiotics are the only thing keeping me alive currently, one lung and one real kidney left. Thank all the gods that I installed the third kidney. I engage my armours quick release and scream in pain as three giant spikes of metal are extracted from my torso alongside the armour release.

I drop to my knees and consciously direct the nanobiotics to regenerate me. I also grab a stimpak and some medi-gel and use both simultaneously. I also grab a healing wrap and some water. The portal is likely the most useful perk I have at the minute.

Half an hour later, I'm still minus 2 organs. And likely minus 1 life out of however many spares I have. However, I am alive. The Nanobiotics are working on my lung, but it isn't looking good. The kidney is a total loss. Nanobiotics can regenerate almost anything, but two complicated organs in a non-medical environment. It will take days to weeks with this level of damage.

I head to a nearby door intent on heading back to my workshop to start a proper healing process.

The keyhole doesn't turn for my key.

I feel goosebumps up my back.

Where is my workshop?

I look at the key, it looks…Dull. I try scanning it with the omni-tool and find something interesting.

There seems to be an internal power buffer, and it's completely empty though slowly refilling at a slow trickle.

Damn did I use up all the power in my key somehow?

"Uh boss. We have a bit of a situation."

"What's up EFA, my keys dead and we cant get back to the workshop though luckily the portal is working. What now, is Jack Slash on his way to give us an offer we can't refuse?"

"Possibly a bit worse than that boss."

"What could possibly be worse than that?"

"Well, for one, I'm connected into the internet via the most ancient 2G protocol I've ever seen. And unless we are both subject to a mutual delusion or you drunk something so strong it made both of us drunk, It's currently the year 2000."

"EFA, are you telling me that when I teleported away from Kaiser, I fucking time travelled?"

"No boss. Because from what I can see on various search engines and through crawling the web. There's no such thing as parahumans."

"EFA are you hitting the e-glue?"

"Boss. Im not joking. We are currently in Los Angeles. There's no parahumans anywhere in the world. Brockton Bay doesn't even exist. And the only sign whatsoever of anything paranormal or weird going on is some monster incident in New York at Christmas in 97. Some monsters that look like a Nilbog Christmas party tried to take over the city or something, there's a lot of paranoia and conflicting information around it so it's hard to get any real info, but it's legitimately the only thing that could be said to be remotely "parahuman" here.

Fuck. This is an elder blood misfire.

I knew I shouldn't have tried to use it. Worse still I cant use my key as it seems that travelling between dimensions causes it to be completely drained and have to recharge.

Damn I'm going to need to lay low and get some idea of where the hell I am. And do some research myself.

"What's the date EFA?"

"August 28th, 2000"

"Ok thanks, Keep investigating and let me know if you find anything of note. It's 2000, net security is basically non-existent compared to our time and a lot of security protocols aren't in place, hack us up a bank account and some cash please. Take it from the mafia or something."

"On it boss."

The forge pings me twice as I head out into LA to look for a hotel in downtown.

200CP gained, 200cp are available.

Failed!

200CP remain.

No new perk, well at least I still have access to the forge.

"Boss, I've hacked you a reservation at an upscale hotel in downtown. You were right, there's no security here worth speaking of. Compared to the tinker derived stuff at home and the constant shadow of dragon I'm basically like the god of the internet here."

"Thanks, EFA."

I quickly use the Omni Tool to deconstruct my armour and attachments that are too big to send back through the portal. I'm going to need to run a full rebuild on the armour anyway. I shrink the halo and mount it flush to my back and then put a change of clothes on over the top after cleaning my blood off myself. I drop my weapons back into the forge and make my way downtown looking only slightly out of place.

My chest and abdomen are still burning, I need to run a full status check on my implants and cybernetics when I get to the hotel.

After a short walk I stumble into my hotel and get taken to my room by a porter. I tell him to charge a tip to the room as I don't have cash on me currently and he nods appreciatively.

I collapse on the bed and disappear into the land of dreams.

Notes:

Perks gained this chapter.

31.009 - The Mystic and the Machine - 200 - Marvel Cosmic - Crafting Magitech

The argument between mystics and technology is a faulty one. There is no need to choose one as they enhance and complement one another. Like a certain Mad Titan you have unlocked mastery of combining these two pathways to power. You can always find ways to combine any mystical knowledge you have with any scientific or technical knowledge. This differs from Fine line in that it is all about creating magitech. It also allows you to make a technological version of any magic you know, or a magical version of any technology you can build. All power sources between the two become cross compatible as well. Only fools choose one when they can have both.

No PRCP Gained nor rolled.

IMPORTANT AUTHORS NOTE

So, now we enter or first Jaunt.

Jaunts are a function of misfires from the elder blood. It's Archon visiting different worlds and IP's for a quick drop in. It's possible that he can return to the same IP again in another Jaunt but very rarely at the same time.

A few important rules on Jaunts.

1. No cp is gained, nor perks rolled while the Jaunt is in progress. Instead a flat bonus of CP is gained at the end of the jaunt based on Word count, deducted if any companions are gained from the Jaunt. Jaunts will be an important way of Archon gaining new members of his team. Archon can also gain gear, knowledge and very rarely powers from the Jaunts too.

2. No PRCP is gained or rolled in the pre chapter nor during the chapters of the Jaunt. Archons connection to the personal reality is broken while the Jaunt is in session. The only thing Archon can do is use the personal portal as a pseudo inventory system.

3. No time passes in the primary reality while in a Jaunt. When Archon returns, its mere minutes after he left.

4. No Interludes or Intermissions while a Jaunt is in progress.

As a side note, i know people get worried when a lot of companions are gained in fics like this as it tends to bog down the fic. Don't worry about that in this fic. Imagine companions in this fic like companions in Suikoden games. You hire 107 of them in those games and yet only ever see 6 of them at a time. Companions in this fic are more narrative drivers and options for combat companions to keep things fresh. I aim to have a varied cast of them mostly because my biggest writing exercise in writing this fic is learning how to do characterisation. So a big cast helps me a lot with that.

If you have an IP you would like to be included in a jaunt and a possible companion/companions then drop it in a comment with a reason why. Nosetting or potential companion too powerful! Don't think im going hiring Uchiha Madara to come be my bodyguard. Think interesting characters more than powerful ones because any powerful character will be bought in at points in their career where they arent powerful.

Also 100 points to whoever guesses the current Jaunt IP first.