Journeyman 3.5

Standing in the same room with Faultline and Gregor, Thomas let out a heavy sigh and stretched having finished up healing the latest customer to visit the Palanquin. He was around less often than before, but that did not mean he had stopped, and the fact his bank account had been growing steadily aided him in feeling a bit more secure with his circumstances.

"Well, that's the last customer scheduled to show up right?" He asked this of Faultline to confirm there had not been any last moment requests, seeing as the last few times there had been a few hurried patients to tend to. He had a higher charge to show up outside the usual times, but during those he only requested a little more for someone arriving in a hurry. A change of additional twenty percent and an extra five hundred, it certainly encouraged people to use the times he had agreed upon with Faultline.

"It was the last scheduled one, but we have two coming in here in a hurry to deal with still. They have made an offer of twenty-five thousand for helping them."

The words made Thomas blink and whistle. "What is it that they need help with?"

"Poisoning, radiation poisoning to be exact." The tone she used seemed to convey Faultline's own thoughts about the matter, and Thomas nodded slightly.

Even if he donned the outfit of 'medic' for this job, he still preferred to act as the independent hero Blackjack. The matter of radiation poisoning certainly made him wonder about the source, and whether or not these people might be folks he would regret tending to.

"I assume the pay is meant to ensure we ask no questions about the source of that radiation poisoning?"

"Correct, though I made a few inquiries. There was enough to determine that these idiots were experimenting with unshielded tinker-tech that was stolen from its creator. They pulled off some impressive heists with it, but are paying for it now."

Thomas nodded and let out a short breath after that. Helping some thieves who messed around with bad tech was easier to accept than helping someone who might be planning to use nuclear weapons for whatever reason. The fact they were not willing to try and get in touch with Panacea or other healers was telling as well.

"I should be able to do it." He nodded briefly. Neutralize Poison, Remove Disease, and a few Restoration spells would help take care of it, thanks to his present level of power in the divine magic.

He had originally been afraid the Restoration spells would require him to use costly components to cast them, but in the end the only real requirement was some diamond dust, and with synthetic diamonds on the market, he had been able to acquire said diamond dust for testing purposes easily enough.

The end result had been rather telling. He could cast the spell entirely without any of the costly material components, but it would mean that charge was spent, the way that creating a potion did. He would regain the charge another day, but it was telling that he couldn't do that without a cost.

As for using material component, if he had the component and was willing to use it, then the charge returned just as quickly as normal. And lastly, casting with the component at hand but not expending it seemed to mean he 'lost access' to the spell charge for an hour's time, similar to how not having a component worked, but at a lesser scale.

Seeing as the 4th level spells already took that ten minutes or so to replenish he didn't think using some spells with expensive components like that to be a bad one. He did not need any 'cheap' components anyway, only the costlier spells seemed to require them, and even there he could just use the material component like a focus, effectively serving as a catalyst to the change, not spent in the process.

Seeing as the diamond dust was not quite as expensive as he had feared, he was willing to 'spend' some of it if necessary, but naturally if he didn't have to and only needed a few castings of restoration, he would simply use it as a focus.

Still, diamond dust was something that was at least available, he had to wonder how things would be with some spells requiring expensive components that could not be acquired all that easily. It might be those spells would be by sheer necessity bound to being cast without material components, taking time. If the time to cast them grew longer with higher level spells, that might make those spells a very limited resource for him. The fact that he was at the very least not 'locked out of them' was comforting though.

Taylor walked ahead in a swift step, her books stashed in her bag. She was not keen on using her locker since what had happened to her, but the weight of her books was not too bad. The real problem about it was that Emma and her goons were more keen on attacking her bag to ruin her work and books.

Thankfully that morning it seemed she had come before Emma and her group. She saw a few of her groupies, but no signs of Emma or Sophia. Madison was usually only trouble when she was with the other two, she could be mean on her own but not really all that dangerous by comparison.

Heading over to the class, she stopped to wait at the doorway, finding a group of girls belonging to Emma's clique standing nearby and glancing at her, but leaving her alone for now. Other than pointing and laughing at some joke or taunt she was too far to hear, but that was likely about her and one of the pranks the three bitches pulled on her from time to time.

She tensed slightly, but then drew a deep breath and let it out with a long exhale, the tension slipping away from her, and pushed into her swarm. Numbing her emotions slightly, she regained her focus, and glanced at the clock on the wall. Mr. Gladly was going to show up soon, and the class would start. Emma would likely show up before Mr. Gladly, but given the man liked to act the 'cool teacher' he arrived a tad early and let people 'hang out' in the classroom before lesson, which generally meant Emma and her clique stayed in their own group and ignored her, other than some mild taunts that they couldn't get in trouble for doing in public.

Not that they seemed to get in trouble for anything they did. The principal was pretty much letting them get away with murder. She had to wonder just how much of it was supporting Sophia, their star track and field member, and how much of it was support from Alan Barnes, Emma's father and a surprisingly competent lawyer. A divorce lawyer, but still, the man had a touch of charm about him that made him able to work through even tough cases like the principal Blackwell, and charm them.

She shook her head slightly, before noticing one of the cattier members of Emma's clique walk up towards her, with what appeared to be an unscrewed plastic bottle of soda in her hand, probably intending to dump it on her or 'accidentally' spill some over her.

She pretended not to notice, while a hornet that had been lurking in the air conditioning flew down and right down at the girl, stinging the side of her neck and making her jump and yelp, drawing attention to her smacking the side of her neck. The hornet was dead, but the sting obviously hurt, and she had dropped the bottle on the floor as well.

Taylor wanted to be better than these people, to not use her power against them, but after the actual attempted murder and the school destroying the evidence of a criminal case and even trying to put the blame for messing up her locker on Taylor herself she was considering her priorities.

She didn't just swarm the bullies, or attack them regularly with small stings like that either, but she kept more alert thanks to the additional senses, and had the occasional attacks like that hornet ready if she wanted to give them a feel of karma.

Besides, she had the project for her art class in her bag and she sure as hell did not want that girl anywhere near her with an open bottle of soda in hand. It was entirely possible Emma had hinted at that project being due soon, and pouring that soda right into her bag would have been something that those bitches would have likely been perfectly willing to do, especially if dumping the bottle itself there would make it seem like Taylor had made a mistake of bringing an unsecured bottle in her school bag herself, ruining her project, and possibly her books, by herself.

It wasn't as important as the second art project they were due to make later that year, but it was still not something she was willing to let them destroy on a whim.

Watching the bully girl whimpering and heading to see the school nurse about the sting made her wonder if the girl could be allergic to react that strongly to the hornet's sting but put it out of her mind soon. Chances were, they were not used to being hurt themselves, despite the fact they were perfectly willing to attack her on Emma's urging.

Seeing Mr. Gladly arriving, and no signs of Emma or Sophia, or even Madison yet, she headed in the classroom after him feeling a touch of relief before heading to her chair. Only to pause and frown realizing her desk had been vandalized, with someone scratching insults into the wood. Causing her to simply roll her eyes and take a seat.

The words there might have hurt her if she hadn't been able to push that into the swarm, but at the same time with everything that had been going on in the bay with Legion and the gang wars she was starting to feel that Sophia and Emma were just too damn childish. Calling her an ugly virgin nobody would touch with a ten foot pole one day, and then trying to make insults at her at being a whore who would do anyone for some attention the next. The fact they jumped from one group of insults to another like wild mood swings just made them seem all the more pathetic in her eyes.

They were just not worth her time.

Punching the machine before her as hard as she could, Miracle grimaced as she heard the machinery groan and then break. She moved to touch the hydraulic press behind the target, and soon returned to striking it again, harder and harder. The pressure of her strikes was being resisted by the machinery, pushing the target back from punches that would have blown a man across the street, from strikes that should have shattered it one hit.

That had destroyed the original one in one hit, actually. Miracle had 'fixed' it and each time it broke, she fixed it again, a little stronger. Same as her body. She struck the damnable target time and time again, pushing the limits of her pseudo-shard, and when it was creaking and whining, she pushed her mad talent at it and fixed it, stronger than ever. The warnings and protesting in her head was quieted down after the third time as her pseudo-shard seemed to realize it was improving despite its in-built limitations not-to.

The pseudo-copies of shards were not meant to grow or evolve, they were snapshots of the shards they were based upon, sometimes altered enough to jailbreak them in particular way. In her case, the snapshot of Glory Girl's shard with the jailbreaking making her aura more insidious and its effects long lasting given enough exposure. Subtle, and simple enough to pass through the basic tests to screen such things.

Except she wasn't sure if it was subtle enough given the fact Dragon and Director Piggot seemed to be regarding her with wariness that made her wonder about her continued presence in the Bay and in the Wards. Thankfully her image as a helpful cheerful and lovely young man helped there.

And that was the thing. She was a young woman who had been presented with the option to save her family and all it took was killing one bastard out there with power. She had been forced to make some choices to augment her powers to pull off that stunt, and one of those cost her a body she would have been perfectly at ease with.

She was stuck in the body of a boy, but she had adapted. Most of the time she referred to herself as he, but there had been some little gestures and behaviour that had apparently made a few people wonder about him. She had generally dodged around that issue, and didn't really act in a way that would make people too concerned, plus 'his' young age helped make the behaviour more easily dismissed by the people watching over her.

Nonetheless, things were escalating, and Legion had stepped in to try and claim the win recently after running wild across the East Coast. Miracle needed to escalate her own efforts, and forcefully 'fixing' her pseudo-shard to break the damned 'game set limitations' upon it was a good starting point.

The fact her mad talent at fixing was actually capable of hacking through whatever pseudo-bullshit the random omnipotent bastard had set in place to make the shard copy of hers supposedly stagnant and ungrowing only meant its 'normal' progression had been nerfed, she had began to break through that and made her strikes harder, her shield faster in its recovery rate, and her speed increase further.

Alexandria-lite package that Glory Girl had was being slowly twisted by her mad talent to a more proper Alexandria package, and the fact her shield went down and needed to be brought back up was rather easily paid off by the fact that while her shield was up, it could tank most of what the world could throw at her. She wasn't about to take a chance to moon Siberian with it or yell at Scion any words that might draw his attention, but she was reasonably sure that it would stop snipers, Nazies, overgrown lizards, teleporting assassins or Legion's magic attacks dead in the air while it was active.

Twisting around and using her flight to keep from crashing she delivered a powerful kick against the target, hearing the pressure in the machinery whine and shatter once more as she checked the results.

Brute 5. It had started at Brute 3, and gone up steadily with practice. She had the shard that Glory Girl had, but the body was that of a young boy, and did not quite utilize the full extent of that power yet. It was supposed to grow into it, but she had chosen to simply push the schedule with the training and 'fixing it' over and over.

The fact she'd already fixed the cameras and computer system to repeatedly use training sessions she had gone through in the room under normal power before was holding her secret safe for now, unless Dragon decided to start snooping around the code and realized the videos were practically identical.

Still, even if they did notice, she doubted they'd be willing to alienate her. Not when her power and usefulness was growing, and with the way the Bay was under a severe storm of attacks by Legion and the other powers. They needed her, even if some of them thought of her as a snake in the grass. She had no illusions about it anymore, Director Piggot was a bigoted old woman with a grudge against capes after what had happened at Ellisburg, and if she had decided that Miracle was hiding dangerous things, she was likely not going to let it lie. Yet at the same time she must have come to the conclusion that keeping on her good side was more important than starting a fight that would probably drive her away, or see the Protectorate denied the services of someone able to maintain tinkertech and heal people with surprising ease.

They would not do that on mere suspicions, they'd wait till they'd have some proof. And by the time they'd have any proper proof in their hands, she would either have accomplished her mission, or she would be strong enough to break free and head on out to carry out the mission on her own if need be, but far more likely, turn the Wards and some of the members of the Protectorate against the Director herself, and run a charm campaign on the new director from the ground up, with several Protectorate members and the Wards 'willingly testifying Director Piggot's bigoted, devolving mental state about working with capes'.

Fixing the machinery, she soon returned to her practice. She still had a fair way to go. Not even noticing that her formerly crimson glowing pseudo-shard in her mind had grown pulsing black veins and the machinery she had kept fixing had began to take up impervious strength that should not have been possible with the base materials she was working with. Forming crystalline structures that made the power-feed more effective than it should have been, able to fuel the resistance that normal power-feed would have faltered under.

Her shard's surface cracking in places, only for the black veins to grow over them, throbbing at the same beat as her heart, drawing power from the shard and feeding it back into it, even as the shard's innate limitations were being overruled and countered, the safeties stretching and coming close to snapping under pressure.

The doors to the bank were kicked in and the people turned to look over in a bit of awe and confusion on their faces, watching Assault, Battery and Triumph walking in with stern expression on their face, and heading to the counter.

"We need to talk to the bank manager. There's evidence of this bank being involved in criminal money laundering and unless we are given access to the all the relevant information within the next fifteen minutes, we will be pressing charges and coming back with a warrant for the arrest of all banking officials we believe to be involved in this!" Assault stated while slamming a fist to the table before the bank clerk, causing the table to actually crack loudly showing that he was someone with parahuman power rather than some costumed poser and a fake.

"Y-Yes sir!" The clerk panicked and squeaked out before hurrying off towards the back, leaving customers staring and whispering.

At another part of the town, Legion smirked slightly while dressed in a police uniform, besides a second copy of his, currently using disguise self to alter their appearance slightly.

Their little game would both give the Protectorate some bad PR and cause people to seriously doubt the integrity of the bank that they had chosen for their target, all the while a couple of currently invisible, intangible clones would make their way to the main vault and loot it.

Not that Legion really needed the cash but being able to pull it off amused him, and would help him secure some assets that had heavy price on the black market. Sure, using charm person to convince criminals to help worked, but paying some of those people well and asking them to secure some harder to get supplies with an appeal to their greed would pay off a lot better.

The fact he could hurt the Protectorate and the bank that held the accounts of the members of E88 at the same time was just icing on the cake. True, a lot of money was in digital form and not actually at the bank, but there was a fair bit of money there, and some valuables stashed away in boxes that would get looted on top of everything else.

Simurgh was floating silently over the ocean, at a high altitude, and considering the situation she currently found herself in. The urge to initiate conflict had not eased up entirely, but rather than attacking against in 9 months time, after Leviathan and Behemoth had been given a chance to spread some merry havoc, she felt she would not have to worry about attacking again for an entire year and a half. 18 months. Even that, she checked her simulations, was only temporary estimate. It was entirely possible the urge would be eradicated entirely in due time.

Unfortunately that change would not come in time to prevent Leviathan from his course. She had run a few simulations in her mind, and Brockton Bay was going to be hosting Leviathan in the future, an event that left even her future sight somewhat blurred.

The end results of that would determine what paths were open for the future. Eidolon's recovery or death was almost insignificant at that point. What mattered more was whether [Broadcaster] got within close proximity with the [Warrior] at a certain point in the future or not.

She could see a few ways how that would turn out, but was somewhat ambivalent about it. The species in this world were somewhat amusing and intriguing, but she wasn't too inclined to care. Attacking them under orders that aggravated her was one thing, but actually working to assist them was another. She preferred to keep focused on her own goals.

She was a conflict engine, but one that had served as something of a commanding officer to the others, and a strategist dictating the best targets and methods. Not that they necessarily obeyed her, but they were at least willing to listen.

That had given her some leeway in terms of mental development, even while under [Thinker]'s command. She had carried out her task time after time, species after species showing how the powers, the shards could develop, granting insights with the different methods and outcomes. Data that the [Thinker] had hoarded and examined.

Yet with her demise, Simurgh had been left to slumber, until he awoke her and her siblings. Until he began issuing fragmented commands and screeching in her mind, sometimes even conflicting commands. Instructing her to hit him, fight him, and yet also instructing her to be struck back and damaged.

She had grown annoyed because while she could obey commands and attempt to assist in the primary objectives issued to the conflict engines, she saw the logic that the coordinator they had been given after [Thinker] to be flawed, and incredibly short-sighted. The conflicts they caused were accelerating the world's demise so fast that the original purpose of information gathering was at risk, and additionally so many of the test subjects were exterminated early by her and her siblings, ending the test early on their part.

In truth, while the species were interestingly adaptable and able to come up with new solutions, this planet would likely yield less than 20% of the usual information even if [Thinker] was still alive, because the sheer number of deaths forcing the shards to return and await deployment, and without [Thinker] present to send them again, floating useless. At least [Warrior] occasionally shed those 'returned' shards back to the world again, in another configuration.

Still, without [Thinker] and free from the coordinator's control, she could foresee some additional information being salvaged from the already badly damaged cycle. It was quite possibly the last one. [Warrior] had not recovered from the loss of [Thinker] and while not quite ready to self-terminate, the entity was not carrying out the usual activities either, instead seeking to carry out minor beneficial actions at the urging of one of the members of the local species.