Chapter 28: 3-8 Charmed

Charmed 3.8

2000, July 13: Phoenix, AZ, USA

With the most complicated part of the EMP generator finished, I was able to complete the project a day later. The materials weren't expensive or hard to find either. I essentially just needed various bits of piping from an old school steam boiler in good condition.

I stripped down most of it and even fashioned brand new pieces scaled down to fit, but when it was over, I was left with something the size of a basketball.

I was proud of it. When you pressed a button, it would use an internal battery supply to flash-boil a container of water. The energy and pressure would then catalyze the activation of the prototype Hex Core, releasing a large amount of mana. An intricate web of wires and transformers would then channel the flood of mana and convert it into electricity, scattering the electricity outward in a dome of static that was completely harmless to organics but would play merry hell on any form of technology.

The truth was that electricity did not play nice with open air. Pokemon lied: Flying types would shit on electric types because air was one of the best insulators out there.

The Hex Core and internal transformers did not convert mana into electricity perfectly. This wasn't a design flaw, but a matter of necessity. It needed at least some mana to function. In order to keep the static discharge both nonlethal and somehow coherent through air, the device wove mana amidst the electric currents in a way that was frankly impossible to put to words.

Hextech was bullshit.

As homage to the great golem, I made my new contraption look like Blitzcrank's faceplate, two golden plates that joined together at the center to form the outline of a skull. Two shining "eyes" finished the look. Taken on its own and without the context of Blitzcrank's body, it actually looked a little like the closed carapace of a beetle.

I heard footsteps behind me. La Torcha. I'd felt her coming when she entered the building, her confident gait and pantsuit attire at odds with the disguised gang members who dressed like they did hard labor working for a shipping company.

"Is that the EMP generator you promised Lawless?" she asked.

"Yes," I nodded. "I'm thinking about naming it the Blitzpack. What do you think?"

She took it from me, the bitch. "I think it's mine and I don't care what it's called so long as it works. What's its range?"

"About two hundred feet, so approximately the length of a city block. Radius, not diameter."

"I think I'm going to have this tested outside the city first. We have so many beautiful national parks after all."

I snorted. "Aren't they on fire at the moment?"

"Not all of them. A fair chunk is desert."

"Fine, whatever." I pointed to a knob where Blitzcrank's spine would be. Below that was a switch that could have belonged to a lamp. Because it had. "That holds water, a bottle's worth. You're going to need to refill it whenever you use it. That switch turns it on. The static will fry absolutely everything in the area that relies on electricity, from cars to phones."

"Use once. Reload. Simple enough. Anything you want from me?" She laughed at the look on my face. "You don't have to look so surprised. I told you, I want you on my team and my executives get rewarded."

I could see Lawless listening in from the other room, no doubt using the chance to figure out what exactly I can make. Out of sight, out of mind, except he wasn't ever out of my sight. I needed something that wouldn't be considered too risky, but something that could also give me an edge.

"Tools," I decided. "All the tools. Power drills. Electric saws. Voltage testers. The strongest welding torch on the market. Everything an electrician, plumber, carpenter, or construction foreman might have in his truck? I want the best there is."

La Torcha made a show of looking around the room at the lab she'd had set up before my arrival. "What's wrong with this?"

I shrugged. "Nothing, but I'm going through the 'tools to build better tools' phase. I could probably make a better welding torch for myself out of a car battery and a lighter if I needed to, but why bother when I can source better materials to start with?"

"I give you free reign to ask me for something and you want tools? No games? Food?"

"I told you. My goal is to murder Scion and prove I'm the greatest tinker ever. This is my hobby. Besides, Cam gives me good food anyway."

A slow smile spread across her face. "Fine, I can do that." She gave me the side-eye. "Don't think you can use any of this to escape. I'll be working out of here for a few days while you make this thing."

"Then you'll test all its functions and make sure I can't use it to kill any of your minions," I finished for her. "Yeah, yeah. I got it."

The swat I got for my cheek was worth it.

X

I had a pile of handheld power tools on my workbench within the hour.

I wasn't just testing La Torcha's willingness to give me potentially dangerous tools; she obviously didn't think I could make anything to escape with while she was on-site. And truthfully? She was right. Her power let her turn into fire, phasing through all physical attacks. As far as anyone knew, she was invulnerable.

I had my own guesses. I hypothesized that La Torcha's Shard was taking her physical body and translocating it into a different dimension and that the energy required to do this produced an exothermic reaction which ignited the air around her, causing everyone to mistake her breaker state as "turning into fire."

Which meant simply dousing her in water or otherwise depriving her of oxygen wasn't going to work since she wasn't in the world to begin with. Hell, even the blossoms likely wouldn't work in her breaker state. It was why I also guessed that she'd be immune to poison. She'd shown some instinctive phasing ability in the past when she avoided gunfire she couldn't have seen coming. There was a reason she managed to escape LA without Alexandria ramming a fist up her ass.

No, my goal was for once completely transparent: I wanted a multi-tool, one that would be with me throughout the years. And since I didn't need to pretend my tinker specialization was strictly alchemy anymore, I saw no reason to limit myself.

I'd drawn from Viktor, so it was only fair that I drew on his counterpart this time: Jayce, the Defender of Tomorrow. Pretentious and hopelessly optimistic name aside, he was a genius whose work rivaled Viktor's.

Everyone saw his Mercury Hammer as the single greatest thing he'd ever made. That's because people were easily distracted magpies. They saw the flashy, shiny weapon and oohed and aahed, but never considered what it took to make such a hilariously impractical thing function in the first place. Not just function, but have all of its parts synergize to create a greater whole than the sum of its parts.

Jayce's goal in life was to raise the standard of living among Piltovans and Zaunites by creating mechanical marvels that could perform anything and everything a job required. Essentially, he made mecha-shift weapons from RWBY, but for civilian use.

He made a shovel that could shift into a pickaxe for miners. He made a hammer that could double as a laser drill for demolitionists. But that alone wouldn't have made him a legend. Even in Earth-Bet's fledgling internet, there were dozens of pictures of "redneck engineers" stapling together random tools in the name of innovation. Hell, there were professional manufacturing companies coming up with "tactical shovels" that had their heads sharpened into hatchets with telescopic shafts that could house a hidden flashlight and so on.

They were all, without exception, utter dogshit.

A multi-tool alone wouldn't have made Jayce a legend. Rather, it was what he did to get mecha-shifting multi-tools to work perfectly that made him a household name. He, alongside Viktor, made hextech capacitors that could seamlessly transition from one function to the next while adapting to different energy sources, switching from mana to electricity to steam and more. Versatility was the name of Jayce's game and he was a master. Hell, it would be the inspiration for Viktor's own Hex Core.

Take the Mercury Hammer for example. Though it was originally made for civilian use, Jayce tweaked it into his iconic hammer to fight Viktor and reclaim the Namestone.

The Namestones were crystalline containers which housed the life force and memories of the Brackern, a race of scorpion-like sentients native to Shurima. Skarner, the Crystal Vanguard, was the greatest of their number.

The Namestone was also required for the construction of a truly sentient Hex Core, which was why I'd called the one in the Blitzpack a prototype.

'It's funny,' I mused, 'how so many things Piltover and Zaun made come back to the crystals of Skarner's people. In a way, they were never inventing anything new using magic, merely reapplying an existing magical resource in a new way. Then again, I suppose that is the soul of innovation in the end…'

The Mercury Hammer was no different in that regard. It used a fragment of a Namestone to meet its tremendous energy requirement. Jayce had to make his own hextech capacitors because the ones widely available weren't good enough. But the end product spoke for itself. It was a hammer that could lob electricity on rapid-fire, shift into a fully functioning cannon, generate a static field that somehow had kinetic force enough to knock back and electrocute enemies, and enhance the hammer's impact using electromagnetic fields. Defense. Offense. Utility. Range. It had it all.

My head slammed into my workbench. I opened one eye and glared at my latest creations. Two rectangular capacitors stared back at me. They were small, the size of a Lego block each.

They were also the only things I'd managed to make despite working at this for over four hours.

"Andy, come have dinner," Camille called in that entrancing way of hers. It was almost familial the way I could see her in the other room pulling out paper plates for pizza.

I glared at the evidence of my snail's pace but got up. Paradoxically, I'd found that the easiest way to minimize my contact with Camille and her power was to force myself into interacting with her. She'd seek me out less this way. Even that was getting more difficult by the day.

X

2000, July 14: Phoenix, AZ, USA

I snuck into my lab at two-thirty in the morning. Time was working against me. Not only was Camille's power slowly Pavlov-ing me into being her lapdog, the only way I could tinker without Lawless' oversight was to do so in the dead of night. But working like this was wreaking havoc on my eight year old body. And equally as bad, I needed to sleep more if I wanted to make my blossoms bloom.

More meditation. More sleep. More tinkering. More… everything.

It was wearing me thin.

Still, I powered through. Once the blossoms fully bloomed, I would be able to make my escape. Until then, I needed to make use of every second I had.

I pulled my pillowcase inside out, removing the six dream blossoms. Every night, as I waited for Lawless to fall asleep, I'd made small handfuls of Mana Crystals, storing them alongside the blossoms. And every night, as I got up to tinker, I'd move what few I'd managed to make without my trademark blue light show into a box in my lab. So long as I didn't think about wanting to use them and kept myself distracted during the day, I could keep them hidden.

Tonight was no different. I snuck into my lab and added the crystals to my hidden stash. Thirty-three in all greeted me. That seemed like a lot, but I reminded myself that my relic pistol had taken forty. Even counting my newly increased pace, I'd need more.

Thankfully, tonight's tinkering session could barely be called that. I converted the holy water into the Water of Life before placing a pair of scissors and ten Mana Crystals inside. After that, I used the Mana Crystals to slowly merge the water and the scissors.

As dawn approached, I stuck the bowl of holy water inside an out of the way cabinet and thanked God I didn't necessarily need loud power tools to tinker.

Tomorrow, I'd be ready.

X

I finished my multi-tool.

It wouldn't exactly be seeing much combat, so I didn't need the overwhelming energy capacity of a Brackern Namestone. Instead, the two capacitors acted sort of like batteries. The primary difference between a capacitor and a battery was that a capacitor kept electrical energy as a charged field while a battery generated electrical energy through chemical reaction. A capacitor could also discharge its electrical field instantly, where as a battery could take a bit of time. In exchange, a capacitor couldn't usually hold its charge for longer than a day.

I wanted to make sure that no one else could use my tech, so I hooked up a transformer to the capacitors. The transformer was tinkered to convert mana to electricity, something I'd figured out how to do while making the Blitzpack. This way, no one could charge the capacitors except me and the multi-tool would quickly run out of power when in someone else's hands.

Eventually, I wanted to replace this setup with a full Hex Core, turning it into a smart-tool that could assist me independently, perhaps even making it into a Wrenchbot like Dr. Heimerdinger did, but for the moment, this would suffice.

The tool itself looked for all the world like a standard wrench, if thicker and heavier than normal with a blockier profile. The teeth could be adjusted, naturally, but would also emit plasma between them to weld anything with ease. It was thicker than the average wrench because I'd made sure it could double as a hammer. Hell, there was even a mana-based scanning array modeled off of the Oracle's Elixir and a voltage tester that could tell me the exact metrics of anything the light touched, along with the voltage, amperage, density, and atomic composition.

A portion of the shaft had even been replaced by a thick, transparent plastic filled with fluid so it could act as a leveler. Its reverse end contained a power drill, electric saw, miniature compartment to store screws, a foldout ratcheting box end, and a flashlight, just in case.

It wasn't the bullshit plot device that was a Mass Effect omnitool, but I was reasonably confident that it could do everything I'd need it to even should I be forced from my lab.

It was evening when I finished. I very reluctantly demonstrated every function to La Torcha, then only thought about how much I wanted it back as she took it away.

I unfolded a taco dorado and slathered on a layer of sour cream and guacamole before sprinkling a layer of ketchup and hot sauce. Rolling the goopy mess, I took a giant bite.

"Okay, that ain't right," Lawless whined. "Which fucking idiot told you you're supposed to put ketchup on tacos?"

"Bandit," I said plainly, shoving him the bird. I missed the peppy shortstack. "She's 'bout as Mexican as it gets so fuck off."

"Ain't no accounting for good taste."

"Leave him alone, Kevin," Camille said, sending my heart aflutter. "You're not the one who has to eat that."

"But I do have to watch. What happened to expensive tea and shit? Thought you had class, kid."

"I do. For tea. And music. And literally nothing else. Now fuck off and let me enjoy my tacos."

"Shit, been here a week and he's already giving me lip. I ought to smack you for that."

"You will not," La Torcha said calmly, but there was an audible hint of warning in her tone, like embers smoldering beneath the coals. "Leave him to enjoy his dinner as he pleases."

Lawless raised his hands in the air in mock surrender. "Alright, fine. Let the kid have his insult to food. Anyway, he's done with that sonic screwdriver shit, so what else is he gonna make?"

"Something for me," she said as she looked at me with eyes like smoldering embers. No, there were literal embers dancing within them. "Eventually, I want you to kit out your fellow executives in tinkertech tailored for their specific powers. You'll start with me of course."

I stared at her flatly; it was about as much rebellion as I dared. "And what would complement your powers? You're immune to physical harm because you phase through everything so armor is useless. I'm pretty sure your breaker state makes you super fast and you can set things you touch on fire. What? You want a gun so you don't have to run people down? Some goggles so you can see infrared? Maybe some kind of knife for heatproof enemies? For that matter, can you even use tech? Your power generates heat. A lot of it. Wouldn't it just melt anything that isn't custom-made for you?"

"No to the last one. Otherwise, I'd burn off my own costume. As much as men might prefer that, that's not how my power works. I think it was called a Manton limit? Nothing I have on me seems to burn or heat up."

I nodded. This was one more support for my theory that her Shard was shunting her body, and anything she was carrying, into a separate dimension away from her power's exothermic output.

"Okay, fair enough. Have you tried firing a gun while in your breaker state? If you can't fire a normal weapon, I don't recommend trying it with tinkertech."

"I can," she confirmed with an uncaring shrug. "Who knows how physics works where powers are concerned?"

"Fine. So gun, knife, or goggles?"

"Hmm… You know, ever since I was a little girl, I've always wanted to fly. Not that I'm complaining of course, but it'd be nice."

I thought about it. Had she chosen a knife, I would have just made another Petricite dagger. Had she demanded a gun, I would have made her the most inconvenient weapon I could with an incredibly high skill cap, namely Cait's sniper rifle.

In contrast, I actually wanted to make the goggles. By drawing on Master Yi's Seven Lenses of Insight, I wanted to make some progress into figuring out permanent sight for myself, even if it meant giving La Torcha telescopic, infrared, ultraviolet, and x-ray vision. It'd give her some utility, but she wouldn't become any deadlier.

"Wings…"

"You can't do it?"

"I can…" I trailed off. "Let me think…"

Hextech Anivia had wings of course, but I felt like I'd be insulting the goddess if I gave someone like La Torcha her wings, even a shitty, third-rate effigy. No, a regular hoverpack was fine. It wasn't about the specs; it was a pride thing.

"I'm going to need more generators, maybe a solar battery or dozen, exhaust pipes, and a few laptops. Oh, and a motorcycle helmet with tinted out lenses."

"I don't exactly need a helmet."

"No, but you do need the UI. User interface," I explained at their blank looks. "You do want to be able to steer this thing, right?"

"Fair enough, get me a list."