21 Closing Moves

I looked across the newly arrived figures. Leet's stupid fighting game message still burned in the sky while he and Uber posed like jackasses. Behind them were their motley assortment of henchmen clustered around Bakuda, the last serious resistance that had been left in this hell pit.

The two villains were preening, presumably for cameras I still hadn't tracked down. Either they deployed more when they arrived or Leet built his surveillance equipment to withstand disaster areas. Either way I was definitely taking that tech when this was over.

Behind the posing assholes their henchmen were grimly getting to work. Unlike the pair they did not seem happy to be here. Scut work for the city's least successful villains wasn't exactly the most envied position in Brockton Bay. It was probably limited to people who couldn't stand the major gangs and couldn't qualify for Coil's tactical squads. Actually, they mostly looked like out of work longshoremen. I'm sure middle age blue collar workers were absolutely thrilled about having to put on a stupid costume and get teleported to a warzone on the whim of a pair of twenty-something gamers.

In any other circumstances I might have felt sorry for them. Now I was just done.

Despite their harrowed expressions they were still significantly more professional than the conscripts or even most of the career ABB members. They were scrambling around Bakuda with pieces of equipment and weapons, generally doing a good job of working around their ridiculous outfits.

I glanced at the Undersiders. Aside from the new arrivals we were the least injured people in the facility. The after effects of my slash had subjected everyone present to a massive range of cuts, scrapes, and bruises. Bakuda was trying to play up a second wind, but looked barely able to stay on her feet. One of her gas mask lenses was badly cracked and the costume and body armor she showed up with was in tatters. On top of all of that were the burns from my opening attack.

And she was still randomly twitching. Whatever Regent was trying he hadn't relented in the face of facility wide disaster. I pushed my thoughts and irritations on that aside and focused on what I could actually accomplish.

A quick look exchanged with Taylor's team confirmed that they shared my opinion. No more of this. No more dancing around, no humoring the villains, no mind games, and no showboating. This ended now.

Uber took a wide stance and hefted a rifle with an accordion like section on its barrel. The big cape glanced at Leet, then smirked at us. "It's time to kick ass and chew bubble gum…and I'm all outta..."

His movie trailer voice was cut off as the mass effect round collided with his face. The impact caused a glowing barrier of light to flare into visibility around Uber's body. The man was rocked back slightly, but the shot did no actual damage.

The rest of the Undersiders, Taylor in particular, gaped at my reaction but no one said anything. Whatever conflicts of faith they might have had over taking lethal actions were well behind us now.

"Excuse me," Uber had the gall to look annoyed at being shot in the head. "Can you..."

"No."

I fired three more rounds in quick succession, each aimed straight at his face. What looked like one barrier was actually a complicated interlacing of several types of force fields. They unfortunately had the sense to come into this expecting a serious fight, which was a step above their previous behavior.

The combination of the field effects negated the damage but the additional force from my pistol's shockwave runes was enough to drive him back, causing him to drop to one knee. From what I could tell it looked like at least six different barrier types. Some kind of charged particle barrier, a type plasma sheeting, some kind of kinetic redirection, and a few other brightly colored effects I couldn't identify yet.

"Do you mind? We're trying to..." Leet flinched as a round bounced off a near invisible sphere around him that rippled like water. So far I was the only one to take action. Their henchmen were busy working on something around Bakuda, who was listening intently to her headset. They flinched at the sound of each shot, but didn't spare more than a glance before hurrying with their tasks. The rest of the forces were either incapable or unwilling to intervene, generally pulling as far back from our two groups as possible.

We were facing off across a field of rubble. No cover or terrain features to take into account. Given how heavy Uber and Leet's load out seemed to be that was probably more of a detriment to us than to them. I tried to get a look at what they had brought for Bakuda. The grenade launcher she'd picked up was actually smaller and simpler than her previous one. It didn't have the oversized drum magazine of her old model and looked a lot less advanced. Probably a prototype.

So rather than a resurgence with upgraded gear they had most likely rushed in with whatever she still had in her workshop. Somewhat of a relief, but Bakuda wasn't ever going to be considered harmless. The fact that she was apparently being coordinated by a mystery thinker certainly didn't help matters.

"Khepri!" I called to Taylor as I drew a set of components from my belt. "Time to end this."

She nodded as the thrown formula shaped itself into a wasp's nest. Just before it exploded I heard Uber swear loudly as he brought up his rifle. A barrage of crackling blue spheres launched from the weapon and tore into the cloud of insects. Barely a handful managed to escape the blasts, but those were enough to wheel through the crowd and start picking off targets.

Bakuda dropped the grenade launcher just before it would have been pierced by one of the insects. The creature's momentum carried it into the armored pauldron of the orc-dressed henchman next to her. He screamed and clutched his bloody shoulder as Bakuda dropped to scramble for the weapon. The more heavily armed henchmen had their tinker tech or conventional weapons splintered in their hands while Uber's force field unfortunately managed to protect his rifle.

He lifted the weapon again and I took a position in front of the Undersiders. Tattletale stepped forward but kept me between her and Uber. "We don't have the firepower or durability to deal with that. Can you handle Uber and Leet?"

I glared at the two idiots and scowled. When I first fought them it had been hard to get past their reputation as harmless internet clowns, gimmick villains more concerned with spectacle than profit or doing harm. It made it hard to treat them like a serious threat, even with my new military experience screaming at me. Maybe if I'd had that experience for more than six hours it wouldn't have been a problem, but I hadn't trusted the instincts like I should have.

I wasn't going to make the same mistake twice. "Deal with Bakuda. I've got this."

I triggered another fabrication of drones and ordered Fleet into the air. The drones spread out and soared towards the enemy formation. Uber began to pick them off with his plasma rifle, but they served to draw fire from the Undersiders as they circled around and disappeared under Grue's darkness.

I moved forward and pulled out the reagents for a Speed formula. Uber's eyes widened as I mixed them and he immediately shifted to hose me down with plasma orbs. With my level of thermal and kinetic reinforcement I was able to weather the storm, but the mixture of wax and water was vaporized before it could react.

Uber looked a little unnerved at the lack of damage, but still forced a smirk onto his face. "Should have speced for casting speed."

I furrowed my brow and launched an Overload from my omni-tool. I guess it was too much to hope that I'd be able to keep pulling off that kind of alchemy with impunity. I just didn't expect to be picked out for it so soon. Then again, I hadn't exactly been subtle with it so far, and the glowing mixtures and combination time created a very tempting target.

The blast of electricity from my omni-tool washed over Uber and caused the closer of the henchmen to flinch away and fall back. This kind of effect was specifically designed to bring down shields. While it didn't do a perfect job of that here, Uber's layers of protective fields were looking a lot less vibrant and the ones that held on were flickering. Oh, and the sound of a watch alarm caused him to tear a smoking device off his belt and toss it to the side.

Leet had managed to deploy some kind of red tool box into a short turret that began spitting bullets in my direction. They were barely a distraction, but probably not for long. He was hitting the thing with a wrench that somehow caused the machine to swell slightly with each blow.

As Uber was bringing his plasma rifle back on target I keyed up an Incinerate command from my omni-tool. A portion of omni-gel was energized and projected from the device towards the flickering defenses of the cape. I fully embraced the effects of my workaholic and sent a blast three times the size with twenty five times the volume rocketing towards him.

The blast of plasma utterly baked the area around his position. Uber was lost in the fireball while the henchmen at the periphery found the distance they pulled back to avoid my Overload shot wasn't quite enough to completely save them from the Incinerate. More than a few minions were sent diving for cover or trying to roll out the flames that had quickly spread over their costumes.

I wasn't nearly as concerned about those injuries as I would have been at the start of the night.

I missed a connection to the knowledge constellation as the speed and intensity of the bullets ricocheting off me increased dramatically. The turret had expanded to produce a pair of rotary barrels that spun at an incredible rate of fire. Leet kept hammering on the thing and I saw what looked like a rocket launcher begin to unfold.

Yeah, that wasn't happening. Without Uber to bake my efforts into vapor with his plasma rifle I was able to combine a formula consisting of a piece of limestone and a chunk of wax. Leet flinched as the glowing mix was thrown down, then craned his neck to follow it as it shot into the sky.

I caught the expression of panic as the massive stone fist dropped out of the night, crushing the turret completely and popping Leet's shield like a soap bubble. He crab walked back from the wreckage while also trying to work one of the gadgets on his wrist.

I raised my pistol for a shot on his prone form, but before I could get the round off there was a glowing flash and something cut across my back. It hit hard enough to sting badly, even through my reinforcement. I spun around to find Uber standing in scorched and melted armor. His shields were flickering in and out of visibility and I could see badly burned flesh under the equipment. In his right hand he held the glowing shape of a weapon even I could recognize.

"Uber and Leet finishing the fight." His voice had lost its grandiose tone and had an unpleasantly wet texture to it. "There are those that said this day would never come. What are they to say now?" He flourished the Spartan sword and took a fighting stance.

I shot him in the face again.

There was little damage, but the impact wasn't negated to the extent it had previously been. The combined kinetic energy and shockwave did send the cape back a few steps, which was partially what I was hoping for. Even if I hadn't basically fried my omni-blade with that previous attack I didn't want to get into anything approaching a sword fight with Uber. The wind runes might have been enough to level the field, but it was idiotic to meet a physically superior skill-thinker in a battle of skill.

Instead I used the brief moment it bought me to swing my pistol back toward Leet. The tinker had been messing with a glowing disk that had been attached to the back of his costume. Whatever he did caused thin glowing lines to spread across his body. The rest of his form faded to monochrome just before I took the shot.

The round tore through the tinker's head, but instead of a shower of gore it shattered into tiny cubic pieces that flew apart, then pulled back together. Despite the look of agony on his face Leet screamed in triumph.

"Yes!" He scrambled to his feet while laughing as I had to give ground under Uber's renewed assault. "She was right! Oh my God she was right. I could barely get this working the first time, and now..."

I managed to drive back the larger cape with a trio of shots, then spun and dropped an Incinerate directly on Leet. His scream as the plasma engulfed him was chilling, but as I watched cubic pieces of his body that blast had blown off floated back into place. Uber moved to his side as the fire faded and stared me down.

"Digitization." Leet had a mad gleam in his eye as he taunted me. "Existence as matter and data at the same time. Can't damage information, just derez it, and that's an easy backup."

Next to him Uber spit out some bloody phlegm and smirked at me. The cape looked like he'd be lucky to survive the night in intensive care, but was still moving with as much energy as when he was fresh to the fight. "Health bar." His voice was disturbing to listen to. "The only hit point that matters is the last one. Been more than two years since we used this tech."

I clenched my jaw. That would have been about when Aegis joined the Wards. I didn't know if there was actually a connection or if I was just connecting the grim form before me to the Ward's condition during the bank fight. That said, if Leet had based whatever tech Uber was using on Aegis I didn't enjoy the idea of having to fight it. It would be a frustrating and messy affair

Plus, if Leet's defense worked anything like he bragged then that would be an absolute nightmare to counter.

Would it be hypocritical to say that I hated fighting tinkers?

"Did you..." I put a round straight through the disk Leet was holding to his chest, cutting him off. Once again the wound and damage took the form of shattered cubic pixels that quickly reformed, but the effect was still clearly unpleasant.

Uber charged, causing me to painfully deflect the glowing sword with my forearm. There was more to the effect than just plasma, but my reinforcement was blocking the bulk of it. I doubt anyone else on this battlefield would have been able to survive a single hit. Even the brief contact left glowing streaks on my jacket like metal fresh from a foundry.

Two more shots drove the big cape back slightly and caused one of his remaining fields to flicker out. He pulled out a cylindrical object and took a flying dive towards his teammate before driving it into the ground. A sphere of hexagons sprang up around them that reflected my following shots.

Inside the bubble Leet began his taunts anew. "Didn't you find it strange how things just weren't going your way tonight? Big tough new tinker rides in with his super weapons, his best technology, and an agent of the Tripredacus Council," He said that last part with particular contempt. "but just can't seem to land a win. It's almost as if someone was working against you, rigging the game from the start."

Uber started adjusting what I assumed were his shield emitters. There was the sound of a capacitor charging and one of his failed barriers flickered back into existence around him. I cursed internally and drew the components for another Energize formula.

"Your new thinker?" This seemed like elementary mind games, but that would be out of character for these two. Actually, this night had pretty much thrown out every assumption about their character, so who could say what they were capable of.

A quick glance showed the rest of the fight wasn't going particularly well. There were enough rockets among the Henchmen that Fleet hadn't been able to manage an attack run. Meanwhile I watched Bakuda as she seemed focused on the voice in her ear. She launched a grenade blindly, only for Angelica to burst from a cloud of darkness almost on top of it. The monster dog skidded to a stop before dashing back into cover and just out of range of the blast.

I mixed the reagents for Energize and let the glowing mass flow into my pistol. Then I shifted my attention as my omni-tool chirped a notification.

"You have no idea what she's capable of." Uber looked up from a device on his belt to smirk at me, but his bravado faltered slightly as I fabricated five new drones from my recharged capacitor and sent them towards the shield. Still, he continued taunting in his wet, hollow voice. "The whole city's marching to her tune, they just don't know it yet."

I really hoped that was standard thinker bravado, the kind of blanket claims of control you get from inexperienced capes. There was no denying that this mess had been masterfully coordinated, at least outside Bakuda's slip ups, and even then there was the potential for the thinker to have a hand in things. Spoofing Tattletale was also concerning, but I still didn't have a good idea of how strong the girl's power actually was.

But doubting if every move you made was part of a thinker's plan could be as destructive as any manipulations you could be under. In the middle of a fight acting without a perfect plan is better than inaction. Gotta keep the momentum

"Yeah, right." I charged an Overload burst from my omni-tool as my drones circled the translucent sphere. I needed to put these two down fast and start backing up the Undersiders. "Just another thinker with delusions of completely controlling society from the shadows."

"You don't know." Leet finished checking the disk and switched it with the katana on his back. "You don't know anything. She does." He started laughing even as the electricity of my drone attacks danced over the shield. "I thought I was done, hopeless, but she knew how it works. How everything works!" His expression combined with the electric lightning really played up the mad scientist clichés.

My Overload and charged shot tore through the weakened shield with enough force to tear a fresh set of voxels from Leet's body, but the spindly tinker just tightened his grip on the katana and charged straight for me, screaming all the time. Two of my drones were shredded by mad swings and I directed the rest after Uber, who was quickly falling back to the henchmen.

"Tech trees have branches! Dead ends are opening up! It's changing, everything's changing and we're going to ride the front of this wave." He sort of leaped into the air, but it was jerky and awkward. It was clear he was being carried up by the sword and dragged along as it shot down for a brutal strike. Despite its relative gracelessness the action was blindingly quick and I barely had time to get out of the way as the blade struck the earth.

I had decent faith in my durability when facing conventional threats, but not against unknown tinker tech. I didn't know what that glowing sword was and I certainly didn't want to find out from firsthand experience. He pulled the blade up into a spin that I backed away from while letting the pistol gather energy. As he was dragged by the sword into another attack my energized shot caught him dead center, tearing a hole through his torso that dropped him to his knees. The damn sword stayed up and flailing in an attack formation, dragging it's wielder behind it even as he was reconstituted.

At that moment my motoroid dove out of the path of a fired rocket and, with the worst luck possible, directly onto one of Bakuda's lobbed grenades. That said, I was beginning to doubt how much of a role luck played in the actions of anyone connected to this new thinker. The grenade went up in a bloom of heat I could feel from halfway across the courtyard. It scrapped the entire left side and sent the motoroid spiraling out of the sky into the ground.

There went my air superiority. And given its performance in that role there's clearly a good reason for not generally equipping aircraft with melee weapons.

The impact must have damaged the magitek core because it was accompanied by a sudden flash of thaumic discharge. Incredibly every other cape in the area flinched and focused on the sparking wreckage in a motion so synchronized it was almost eerie.

Whatever they were focused on, it didn't matter to me. I drew a bead and put an energized shot directly into the glowing sword, wrenching it from Leet's grip and knocking the tinker down. With whatever entranced him broken he scrambled for another piece of gear, but repeated shots kept him from accomplishing anything. Even if they couldn't damage his bullshit defense, he had half the mass of Uber and lacked the big cape's exotic shielding. I drove round after round into the tinker. Hand, chest, chest, head, chest

I moved forward to close the distance and he pathetically scrambled, the pixel like damage repairing itself. Behind him Uber was working to reinforce Bakuda against the Undersiders. I hadn't been hearing the constant barrage of explosions that characterized her earlier fights. Apparently this thinker was interested in conserving ammo and taking shots effectively rather than throwing out everything they could in a display as much about showing off the bombs as taking out the target.

It meant the battle was being conducted a lot more effectively. The Undersiders weren't helped by the fact that they were at eighty percent strength with a third of their usual mobility options. Brian and Rachel were riding on Angelica while Tattletale and Taylor took advantage of the clouds of darkness. They were still badly out gunned and probably only saved by the fact that the henchmen hadn't joined in the fight.

"She was right." Leet spat. "It worked perfectly."

I moved to close the rest of the distance and flipped the tinker into a hold with my knee on his back. "And exactly what about this has worked?" A point blank shot into the disc accomplished nothing, merely spreading more reforming voxels and earning another muffled cry from Leet. In the distance a bomb went off that made my teeth itch and sent a few henchmen who were too close to the blast into epileptic fits. I pushed past the sensation and increased the pressure on Leet's back.

I could hear him laugh through the rubble his face was driven into. "She said you'd be mad enough to stay focused on us."

I froze. I didn't even need to ask what else I would have been focusing on. The henchmen had been working on something and thanks to Uber and Leet's sense of showmanship it was announced to the entire facility with an electronic voice. I had actually played the game it was referencing.

"Chronosphere ready."

They weren't reinforcements. They were a rescue attempt.

I put one last shot through Leet's head before jumping to my feet. The center of the courtyard had a baby version of the teleporter super weapon that I remembered from that game. It had split open and was spinning up and sparking. The only reason that it hadn't activated yet was Bakuda had decided to delay the plan. Though for the worst possible reason.

Past the henchmen recovering from tangential exposure to the seizure bomb was the real target, who appeared to have taken a direct hit. Bakuda loomed over Taylor's twitching form with the bowie knife drawn. The bomb tinker looked over at me and with a flourish brought the monomolecular weapon down towards the girl who carried the fate of the world in her hands.

Then her arm froze mid swing. Then flailed in the wrong direction. A chirp from Survey drew my attention to my display. A feed from a remaining drone showed a boy in a charred and tattered outfit approaching the courtyard. Regent was finally back. I was split between gratitude for saving Taylor's life and rage for allowing the situation to get this bad.

Bakuda made another attempt at a swing, but it just flailed her arm open. Uber called something from next to the chronosphere, but she tensed and made one last attempt.

The knife flew away.

With the tinker's hand still attached to it.

Bakuda stared at the bloody stump, then staggered back as the wind blade spun down, saving her head from being cleaved in half still catching a shallow cut that split her mask. The spider webs manipulating the knife were turning into bloody lines as it looped around for another pass, this time literally cutting her legs out from under her.

Uber rushed towards the crippled tinker and hauled her back from the flying knife. Bakuda was screaming a garbled mess of electronic profanity as she groped for something with her left hand. She then demonstrated why I hadn't defaulted to amputation the moment I learned about the control system.

With a single pull of some kind of release more than a dozen blinking grenades spilled out across the ground. Uber took one look at them, then hauled up the bleeding cape and made a mad sprint for the chronosphere. That left Taylor surrounded by Bakuda's last resort bombs while still convulsing helplessly on the ground.

I desperately fished out the only formula that had a hope of letting her survive that mess. There was a single effect that provided a stronger defense than the invulnerability of my Barrier formula. I combined two pieces of wax with a quartz crystal and sent the formula flying towards the girl. Simultaneously there was a brilliant flash from the direction of the henchmen and an electric voice called out.

"Warning, chronosphere activated!"

I watched a flickering distortion expand from the device to encompass the crowd of capes and henchmen. Everything it touched faded and vanished from the facility. The flashing of red lights on Bakuda's grenades accelerated as the last of the reinforcements disappeared and my alchemy crossed the final distance to Taylor's prone form. The Stop formula reached her just before the explosions started.

The blasts were so rapid and clustered that it was hard to pick out the individual detonations and effects. There was a plume of brownish red fog that was dispersed by a column of fire that shot a good forty feet into the air. Electricity tore into the sky, but spread like a growing tree instead of a normal discharge. The bolts shot up, froze in place, then sprouted new tendrils of lightning that repeated the process. On the surface deep gouges were being cut through the ground like a twenty foot area was being cleaved randomly by a giant invisible axe. A radius of rubble transformed into glass before being liquidated by the heat of the column of flame. I felt what seemed like a repeat of the splash of that seizure bomb, only turned all the way up to eleven.

The cacophony only lasted a few seconds, but the intensity made it feel like hours. Finally the effects of the detonations started to vanish. The column of fire pulled itself into the air and dispersed. The lightning tree stopped growing new branches and faded out of existence. The tearing of the ground ceased and the smoke cleared. All that was left was Taylor's frozen form above a pool of molten glass.

I had to get to her before that formula wore off.

Wading through that pool of red hot molten silica was a unique experience and one I wouldn't recommend, even for a person with ridiculous thermal resistance. Taylor was suspended maybe a foot over a crater filled with a shallow pool of liquid glass. Trudging through it, well it wasn't like water. Imagine someone filled a kiddy pool with cold molasses that hardened slightly every time you pulled your foot up.

I knew there were only seconds left before the Stop formula ran its course. Fortunately I was able to reach Taylor before that point. She was horizontal over the pool, still contorted mid seizure. The frozen wind blade hung in the air next to her, bloody spider-webs trailing from it like a macabre puppet show.

I had no idea how she maintained any control over it during her seizure. It looked like she was lashing out instinctively, but I got the impression that controlling the blade took serious focus and coordination. Still, I had bigger concerns right now than the details of her power.

I kneeled down in the glass to catch her before the effect ended, then moved as quickly as I could to lift her away from the heat of the molten material. Despite my best efforts of fighting against the hardening material a few locks of hair brushed the pool and burned away. I rushed her to the edge of the rapidly solidifying pool, a task easier said than done with her in the midst of an epileptic fit, and began channeling my nanites. The knife whipped behind us as we moved like a kite.

As soon as she was clear of the pool I caught the still flailing wind knife by the blade, brushed off the bloody spider webs, and sheathed it. I needed to focus entirely on the nanites.

Her brain was a mess. That bomb, whatever it was, didn't trigger a seizure, it induced a full, permanent case of epilepsy. There was all kinds of interesting damage my nanites were trying to sort out, a situation not made easier by her stupidly active corona pollentia.

Hers was lodged into her frontal lobe, typical for masters, and was lit up like a Christmas tree. Okay, she was having a seizure so her whole brain was lit up, but the corona pollentia was running so hot I was afraid it would explode. There was a gradual calming effect as the rest of the damage was repaired, but the corona pollentia was like a separate creature, and one my nanites couldn't perfectly interface with. Whatever Bakuda had done I could only hope it would be able sort itself out on its own.

I looked up from my healing to find the rest of the Undersiders clustered around me, though still giving me a healthy amount of space. That is, barring Regent, who was still hanging back for obvious reasons. With the immediate crisis dealt with I suddenly had the chance to fully appreciate the magnitude of the fuckup that had just been perpetuated.

Fuck. God fucking damn it. It was even worse than before. Bakuda had dropped the knife that I could have used to track her. I had a sense of the blade on the other side of the crater, probably blown free before the more destructive effects set in. The sheath was just gone, likely dropped and incinerated. Damn it, if we left when I suggested I would at least know where their base of operations was. Maybe launched an attack when I was better prepared.

Survey drew my attention to the sky above the courtyard. In the aftermath of the teleportation and bomb blasts a single piece of technology was standing out like a sore thumb. A damaged camera drone of Leet's design floated unsteadily above the rubble. From my readings it looked like it had started going through some kind of emergency shutdown and wipe as soon as it was detected. The signal cut off before anything could be determined about its source, but I fried its systems before it could completely self-destruct. That was something, I guess.

Oh, there's a nice distraction from my failure. A Celestial Forge connection and my second mote from the Magic constellation. Don't know why it's called Maliwan Intern of all things, but it gave me incredible mastery of elemental weapons, both in terms of power and control. That would have been very useful if it arrived anytime earlier in this fight.

Oh, it even gave me the skills to create technological versions of some of the elemental effects I'd been making with my runes. That was interesting, and fairly useful. Also the elemental mastery portion covered all weapons, including my omni-tool. Once again, would have been useful at any earlier point, but that could be said about pretty much all of my powers.

Grue cleared his throat, which brought my attention back to the Undersiders. "Uh, about how this went down..." he petered off, seemingly at a loss for how to proceed. He glared over at Regent, then looked across the devastation of the battle's aftermath, then just seemed to give up. Frankly I was right there with him. With the immediate threat gone and a moment of peace the reality of the situation was sinking in. I couldn't find an element of this operation that hadn't needed a drastic amount of improvement. This was a damn disaster.

I looked at the vacant ground that was the former location of Leet's chronosphere. Simple silica based glass that had started to cool enough to become brittle crumbled from my arms and legs as I drew up Survey's scans of the event, but I didn't have enough information to discern the effect that was used, let alone determine the target location. I looked from Taylor's resting form to Tattletale. She seemed to pick up my meaning.

"I have no idea where they went." That admission seemed to hurt her, but I still resented my last hope of turning this around being squashed. "I have some guesses on Uber and Leet, but the new thinker's throwing everything off. The ABB, well there are some front businesses I know about, but they won't be using them to regroup from something like this." She swallowed and looked down at Taylor. "Is she alright? I can't see anything wrong, but..."

"Corona pollentia's overworked." I clarified. I took a deep breath and pushed my frustration at the botched mission aside. "It's causing some kind of strain. I've fixed everything else, but I think she needs rest."

I looked past Tattletale to where people were beginning to emerge from the broken cover of the storage facility. A few more shards of brittle glass fell from me as I quickly checked my omni-tool. The conscripts were still alive. Well, the ones that had survived Bakuda's unfriendly fire and summary executions were alive. At least Bakuda hadn't yet bled out. She did have Uber with her, so that was perfect medical technique on demand. She was also apparently impaired enough that she hadn't just detonated them out of spite.

There would be time for self-recrimination later. At this moment I had a chance to make a difference.

I stood up to the tinkling sound of the remaining glass shards snapping and falling free and pushed past Tattletale. The looks of fear on the faces of the conscripts that greeted my action were more than a little disheartening, but all together understandable. I took a breath and called out across the rubble.

"Bakuda is gone." The words echoed out to a mix of emotions on the faces of the forced recruits. "She fled and was badly injured. For the moment she can't detonate any of your bombs." There was a stirring at those words. "I don't know if her wounds will be fatal, but right now you have a chance. Your best chance to be free of this. Stand down and I might be able to get those bombs out of your heads."

I was met with looks of absolute shock, and not just from the conscripts. Brian moved towards Tattletale and the two had a muttered conversation with a concerned tone. Rachel looked stoic, but was running a hand across Angelica's armored flank in a way that was probably giving more comfort to her than the monster dog. The conscripts were gaping at each other, seemingly at a loss. Probably waiting for someone to step forward and give them direction. Across the courtyard Alec just shrugged at the announcement.

Then the shot rang out.

The caliber of the weapon wasn't even enough to make me flinch as it bounced off my cowl. I turned slowly to see a tall man in ABB colors holding a glock. He was sporting the bruises and cuts of the rest of the conscripts, but the smattering of burns identified him as one of Bakuda's right hand men, last seen in person when I had set him on fire.

The gun was held in a shaking grip and he had a look of pure rage plastered across his face. "Fuck you!" Honestly, I was kind of stunned. I understood his anger, but what did he think he could accomplish here? What kind of Dutch courage was holding this guy together? "You think you've won? You think this will stop us? We're the ABB. We're going to own this city. Everyone here knows it. They're ABB now and you're nothing."

More of the conscripts were moving forward at the man's words. This was really not the type of direction I was hoping for them to receive. I saw weapons being gripped and an older man in a scorched and tattered set of janitor's coveralls walked up to stand by the ABB lieutenant. The gang member smiled at him and turned back to me.

"See? These people are with us forever!"

Then the man in coveralls raised a small pistol and shot the lieutenant in the head.

The entire facility went silent as the gang member crumpled like a sack of potatoes. The man in the coveralls put the safety on his weapon, put it away, and pointed a finger at me.

"You start with the children."

Well, I wasn't going to argue with that. From the looks of things that was the push the conscripts needed to start organizing themselves. It also imposed enough order to prevent some kind of mad rush at my promise.

I missed a connection to the Alchemy constellation as I considered the new situation. Maintaining order would be a problem. I didn't know if Bakuda was going to hit a mass detonator as a departing 'fuck you' as soon as she was capable of the action, but I wouldn't put it past her. We had to assume we were working on limited time here. The conscripts knew it and would no doubt start fighting over position once surgery started.

Right, surgery. I was reasonably certain I could handle this. When it came to disarming the bombs I was probably the best person for that task on the planet. Between my omni-tool and diagnostic tools I could pick apart functions of the devices like no one else. My Deranged Alchemist power meant I at least knew my way around a scalpel, even if those talents weren't exactly up for brain surgery.

I could manage the disarming and removal, but I couldn't keep order at the same time. My motoroid could have helped with that, but it was scrapped. As I glanced at the crash site there was another burst of thaumic sparks. Every one of the Undersiders flinched in response and turned towards the wreckage. Even Taylor made a jerky motion before settling back to unconsciousness.

That was a bit concerning and I should definitely investigate it once I didn't have a queue of bomb surgeries to manage.

Turning back to the group I saw that Regent had wandered over and was holding a safe distance while acting as nonchalant as possible. Quite the accomplishment considering Bitch was staring daggers, Angelica was growling, and Grue looked like he wanted to deck the boy. Tattletale seemed conflicted on how to act, and for my own part I would have been happy to join them.

As much as I wanted to lay into Alec for ruining the plan and letting Bakuda get away I didn't feel like that would accomplish much. Especially not when I was working under an unknown time limit. Alec also didn't seem like the type of person who would respond to being chewed out, so other than letting me vent my frustration what was I going to accomplish? I wasn't even on his team. It would just be a waste of time that I couldn't spare.

I grit my teeth and stepped towards Grue. "I'm going to need you to put this on hold until we deal with the current mess."

I could see the tension dancing through his form as he processed my words. "What, are you okay with what he did? With how this went down?" His voice was a low whisper made extra unsettling by the reverb from his darkness.

"Fuck no." I whispered back. "This is a disaster. But the only way we can keep it from being a complete disaster is to deal with the conscripts." I turned to Tattletale. "Tell me, Bakuda wakes up and decides to hit the detonator for everyone here. What happens then?"

The girl pulled her gaze from Regent and processed things. "The PRT will report them as civilians killed in a clash between the ABB and the Undersiders." She looked at me. "And Apeiron, I suppose. Threat assessment and response measures will be stepped up. Worst case scenario if someone in the governor's office doesn't like us we could end up lumped in with whatever kill order gets issued to Bakuda."

Brian rocked at the news. "But, that... We didn't have anything to do with that. We couldn't have stopped it."

"We could have left." I interjected. "If we bailed when I suggested these people wouldn't be under a ticking clock right now."

"Are you saying this is our fault?" Rachel practically growled at me. Next to her Angelic literally growled at me.

"We chose to get involved and stay involved. You rush into a hostage situation and you need to take responsibility for the effects of your actions. Congratulations, you're on the other side of the bank job, only you don't have a PR machine to smooth things over."

Brian lowered his head. "If Regent hadn't..."

"Everyone fucked up tonight. We can figure out the serving size later." Grue hadn't exactly been focusing on obstruction of Bakuda's firing lines. His clouds of darkness had been placed for maximum showmanship. Bitch had been more focused on inflicting pain than any clear objective. I'd already covered the magnitude of Tattletale's fuckup, and if Taylor had held back I might have been able to disrupt the escape instead of covering her. And all that was only scratching the surface of my own errors and missed opportunities. "Can you keep your shit together long enough for us to pull some damage control?"

He tensed and looked around. "The Protectorate..."

"Not coming." Tattletale clarified. "Whatever's happening in the city has them stressed to the breaking point. This is bad and we're only at the edge of it."

"We could still be looking at a PRT squad, or just the cops."

"If they show up they can take over. It won't be our responsibility anymore." I checked my fabrication capacitor and sent five new drones into the air. A wave of tension spread through the conscripts, but died down as the orbs rose away from them into the night. "That will give us advanced warning of anyone inbound and give us eyes on the area."

Brian glanced to Tattletale, who nodded, then to Regent, who gave him a shrug. I felt an urge to deck the smaller cape, but bit down on it. I couldn't afford this kind of conflict now.

"Look, you know the bill that's headed for you after tonight?" Brian actually flinched at that. "Well, let's call this a down payment. I need help with this, so I'm hiring the Undersiders. Time and a half on what you would normally get for a job like this, but we need to start now."

The reminder of his financial obligations seemed to punch through his resistance. I had a rough guess of what their take was from the average job, but also a rough idea of how much they owed me for tonight. I could almost see the numbers being crunched inside his head, mostly presented as a cloud of dread that suffused his body. The chance to chip away at a piece of that looming debt was enough to bring Brian around.

He took a breath. "Okay, as a job." He looked over the conscripts, specifically at the younger members who were being shuffled forward. "Can you really do that? Get the bombs out of their heads?"

I nodded. "I should be able to handle anything she set up. The surgery shouldn't be a problem. As for the triggers..." I made a flippant gesture. Other than her deadman's signal I hadn't been overly impressed. I knew I was leagues better at mechanics and electronics than Bakuda could ever dream of being. She might be able to create impressive and exotic explosives but she was clearly working with support systems to facilitate her work, not as her driving focus. Limits of being a chaos tinker.

"Tattletale can probably help you with that."

The thinker nodded. "My power can help spot things, types of bombs, medical issues. I can assist." She didn't look thrilled about it, but pushed through.

Grue was settling back into the leadership role he was so comfortable with. "Me, Bitch, and... Regent." He tensed, then continued. "Can manage the crowd and keep watch." He looked down at Taylor. "Is she going to be alright?"

I took a breath. I was in new territory on this one, but was hopeful of the result. "I've fixed as much as I can. I think she just needs rest."

"Hey," I turned to Tattletale. "That thing you used? It was a time stop effect? Like Clockblocker?"

I nodded. "Basically. More limited and doesn't last as long, and has a kind of pseudo Manton Effect, but the results are similar."

She looked like she really wanted to ask follow up questions, but just exchanged a worried look with Grue and gave a slight nod.

"Excellent." Everyone turned to Regent. Most of them were glaring. "Let's get this party started."

"Fuck you."

Alec turned towards Bitch and made a mock gesture of offence. "You heard him, gotta save the innocents."

"What the hell were you trying out there?" Brian practically barked, and I got the sense it was only my presence that was saving Alec from a thrashing.

Regent shrugged again, but it was a lot less irreverent. "It just seemed like the thing to do." His voice was distant and hollow and for a second I could see the empty eyes that greeted me when I walked into that smoke choked locker. Then the façade of irreverence was back.

Fuck, Alec was not alright. None of these people were, but he was apparently better at hiding it than the rest of them.

"Did you even manage anything?" Tattletale's voice was both frustrated and for some reason hopeful.

"If I had another five minutes, maybe less." He shrugged, though with a bit more emotion than last time. "Haven't gotten lost in it like that for a long time."

"Since when does that happen?" Grue asked.

"It doesn't." Tattletale interjected. "It shouldn't anymore." She was actually looking fairly concerned. "But five minutes. That means one more appearance by Bakuda..."

"If she even gives us that chance."

I didn't like being left out of the loop. By the looks of things Rachel was also in the dark and enjoyed the state to roughly the same degree as I did. We shared a sympathetic glance at what we had to deal with.

"I probably would have stuck with it if something hadn't distracted me." He looked towards my crashed motoroid, which elicited a series of reluctant nods from the rest of the Undersiders. At that moment the wreck emitted another shower of thaumic sparks causing the entire group and Taylor to flinch.

"So tell me, is that thing powered by Hell, or what?"

I considered Regent's question. The magitek apparatus was stable enough, but it was drawing from an embedded call bead and the core had clearly taken some damage. The bead was unaligned, but it did connect to the shared space of the passengers. I wouldn't really classify that as any mythological realm, but it was seriously alien and passengers did keep data from the capes they were connected to. Even without an inside look you could see that in Butcher and the Fairy Queen. I guess if you stretched the definition...

"Fuck."

Grue's exclamation brought me out of my musings. "What?"

"Ok, 'is your motorcycle powered by Hell?' is not the kind of question that should take any level of contemplation to answer."

I turned towards Regent. "Well, it's not exactly Hell."

The entire group just gaped at me in response. "Well, there's a new item for the list of 'scariest things your tinker can say'."

I wasn't thrilled about their reaction to my magitek drive, but it at least seemed to get their minds off internal group conflict for a moment. "Look, I'll deal with the bike. Can you start sorting things out over here?"

"Yeah, sure. You do that." There were more than a few unsteady glances towards the wreckage as I went. I left Grue to manage things and finally had a chance to check on the status of my downed Motoroid.

It was bad, but not a total write off. Okay, it might have been without my Mechanic power that specifically let me rebuild from devastating crashes. On a more important note the magitek core was still intact. The call bead wasn't in good shape. Even if I got this fixed I'd barely have enough power to get home in motorcycle mode. No more flying tonight.

A lot of the support systems were damaged or just gone. That thermal blast had been no joke. Bakuda was probably shocked there was anything left to crash afterwards, but the hyper alloy had held out pretty well. Fleet wasn't processing anymore, but the memory drive was intact so none of the night's development had been lost. I powered down the core, put the systems in safety mode, and generally stabilized the situation to the best of my ability.

The Celestial Forge made a connection to a small mote in the Toolkits constellation. This was another workshop, but there was a particular element to it. Like how there's been a connection between the Master Builder and Science! powers there was a connection between this workshop and Grease Monkey, the first serious technical power I had.

This workshop was designed to allow me to build or repair absolutely anything that was possible under Grease Monkey, which was basically all the cyberpunk technology you could ever want. My skills had improved and expanded tremendously since then, but it was still miles better than everything I owned, with the possible exception of my nanofabricator. This would make new projects so much easier in the future.

It also included a studio apartment. Somewhat rundown, but given what I was used to probably a major step up. It also meant I would be able to clear out all my crap from the entryway.

I put that out of my mind and hurried back. That man in coveralls had organized a rough line of the youngest members of the conscripts waiting for my first attempt at surgery. Grue was working with the crowd to keep a semblance of order, helped largely by the presence of Rachel on Angelica's back. Regent had recruited some of the more mobile conscripts to start collecting equipment from around the facility. Though he didn't seem to have any enthusiasm for it he was able to pick out various lost or trapped members of the ABB forces, possibly through whatever senses his power granted him.

Tattletale had set up a rough attempt at a field hospital. The bedding seemed to be salvaged or donated coats, but she had lighting and some other odd pieces of equipment on hand. Taylor was laid out on another improvised cot nearby. As I approached she dismissed other Undersiders away and moved to meet me.

"You've never done this before? Surgery?"

There wasn't much point lying to her. "No, but I can handle it. I know I can, and we don't have much choice."

She glanced across the crowd of children and nodded grimly. They were only three or four years younger than her, but that didn't really matter in this situation. She shook her head and pressed on. "Look, I... I don't know what your power is doing, but I can tell it's seriously affecting you. How you acted tonight..." She paused before continuing. "Are you going to be okay?"

I let out a breath. "With this, or in general?" She gave me a flat look. "I'm managing. I have a system. It's not something we need to get into now." Hurray for the regulating power of quarters and pickle jars.

The thinker swallowed, but relented and led me to the improvised surgery bed. "They're ordered by age. I'll help as much as I can. The bombs aren't really inside their heads, Bakuda wasn't sawing through skulls with that number of surgeries. Top of the neck, just underneath the skull. Almost no variation in placement."

"Amateurish. And a hack job. Look at that scarring." The middle school girl on the surgical bed tensed at the words and I stopped talking. Instead I pulled up my omni-tool interface.

"Can that handle surgery?" Tattletale's eyes were glowing again.

"No. Well, not the way it's set up now. I need some tools for this."

This was it. I could finally get started on the surgeries. I'd been half terrified everyone's head was going to explode while I got everything set up and talked people around. Now I just needed to get my damn equipment ready.

She watched as I entered the fabrication program. My work on a new item was glacial when compared to modification or repairs of existing equipment. It's why I wasn't just churning out gear for the Undersiders in the middle of the fight. The omni-tool was pretty much freshly issued with limited features activated. If I had been able to spend a day experimenting with it this night would have gone very differently.

I pushed those thoughts away for now. There would be plenty of time to ponder all my mistakes later. Right now I needed surgical and mechanical tools.

While I wasn't at the point of designing new equipment mid combat, the hybridization with my micromanipulator greatly increased the speed and detail of entering parameters. Survey was also more developed now and was able to help with the process.

I had to work around the non-optional nature of my Workaholic power, but that just meant scaling down everything. The size boost also meant I could fabricate surgical trays, basins, and other items that should have been beyond the limits of my omni-tool.

Tattletale, and in fact everyone present, watched wide eyes as the improvised medical station was filled in with professional grade and beautifully made equipment. It was an impressive display, but I wasn't done.

There was no question that Bakuda had booby trapped these bombs against removal. I could probably work around that, but there was no reason to make things harder for myself than they needed to be. I picked up a custom designed scalpel and an engraving tool.

I had never dealt with water runes before. Most of their applications were fairly mundane. Fluid strikes, flexible weapons, or blasts of water following your attacks. It would be significantly less impressive than the other elements. That is, if not for the fact that the human body was mostly water. So if you wanted to deal bleeding or festering injuries then water runes were the way to go.

My runecraft has snuck up in power when I wasn't looking, feeding off every design and crafting power to incrementally increase its potency. It was an advantage I'd overlooked, but with my new mastery of elemental weapons it wasn't one I could practically ignore any more.

I was making a blood scalpel. On its own this weapon would have been able to turn a tiny nick in the skin into an arterial spray. Despite its tiny size the scalpel was perfectly attuned to this function, an effect even further amplified by my customizations. When I drew the engraving tool across the scalpel I was able to etch detailed water sigils as easily as signing my name. The item actually glowed red in my hand when the final mark was added to the tip of the blade.

My diagnostic tools and scanner had been able to locate the device in the girl's neck. She tensed as she lay face down, ready for the incision. Then the incision came and she gave no response.

High level elemental control of a masterwork blood weapon meant I could make the body essentially ignore the wound. There wasn't even a drop spilled as I made the first cut and it went completely unnoticed by the patient.

Guided by the readings from my scanner I carefully entered the incision with my mechanical tools. This the girl did feel, but Tattletale sat down next to her and worked to keep her calm. I was half blindly disarming a tinker tech bomb embedded next to the brain of a middle schooler. It should have been insanely stressful, but I was drawing upon more technical knowledge than any person in history. It turned what would have been a harrowing guessing game into a set of rote tasks.

Block transmitter. Bypass detection trigger. Disable primary fuse assembly. Halt countdown of secondary assemble. Divert power to short out biometric detection systems. Extract device.

With a clink a small metal object the size of a walnut dropped into the surgical tray. I placed a gloved hand on the girl's back and activated my nanites. Blue lines spread across the girl, perfectly sealing the incision without Bakuda's sloppy scarring and patching up every scrape, bruise, and minor injury of the night.

The girl was crying and clinging to Tattletale as the thinker helped her to her feet. A woman rushed in from the now dead silent crowd and enveloped the girl in a massive hug while speaking to her in what sounded like Korean.

It was a touching moment, but one that could easily spark trouble. Murmurs were spreading through the crowd and I was seeing motion from further back. If they started rushing me for bomb extraction this whole thing would fall apart.

Luckily a combination of the naturally intimidating nature of Brian and Rachel combined with some very angry words from the man in coveralls seemed to impose a sense of order. I shared a glance with Tattletale and she nodded before bringing forward the next middle school aged ABB conscript.

It was a unique surgical setup. I was doing my best to convey a sense of professionalism, but my training was from the days when pharmaceutical commercials were telling people to ask their doctor 'Is snake oil right for you?'. It was light on medical sanitation and bedside manner. My nanites meant infections were a complete non-concern, but no one liked being operated on with bloody tools.

This led to me making a dramatic show of sterilizing everything with jets of plasma between patients. Maliwan Intern gave me precise control of my omni-tool's thermal output and the display seemed to reassure the patients.

People were also picking up on the fact that everyone leaving the 'surgical center' was completely devoid of so much as a skinned knee no matter the state they had been in to start. That led to a heated discussion over triage. There were some serious injuries to manage, including some who were not safe to move. I deferred the decision to Brian so I could maintain my surgical pace without distractions. I hadn't encountered anything I couldn't manage between Tattletale's powers and my own sensors, but every one of the bombs had a different configuration of triggers and components to contend with.

Fucking chaos tinkers.

After the last of the middle schoolers had their bombs extracted I left to deal with the more serious injuries. It was a harrowing tour of the consequences of collateral damage and demonstrated just how much my overly flashy strikes had contributed to the injured. If I had come in with more of a plan, better equipment, or...

No, not the time for that. I pushed on my tour of the too injured to be moved, which happened to be conducted from the back of Angelica. If you want to make a striking appearance you can't do much better than a rhino dog the size of a bull moose. Rachel was 'driving' and may have slightly contributed to the level of intimidation. Her mood wasn't being helped by fact that Regent had coordinated the search for the injured.

"You shouldn't have to do this."

They were the first words she spoke to me since we began our tour. I had just climbed back onto Angelica with less grace than I would have preferred after dealing with a pair of partially buried businessmen who wouldn't have been able to keep their legs without the help of nanotech healing.

I looked at the back of her head as we rode to the next location Regent had flagged. "We've covered this. The PRT will nail us for any civilian casualties. They'll be looking for any excuse to increase the heat." I looked across the facility where the recently healed were making their way back to the main crowd.

"It's not our fault. We should just go, let them deal with it." There was an exhausted and hollow edge to her voice. I had the sense that feel good charity work was an unfamiliar experience for her if the beneficiaries weren't four legged and fluffy.

"Look, what's happening tonight? It's bad." I pulled up my omni-tool again. Cell towers were still up, independent power systems were mandated for communication networks in the age of Endbringers. There wasn't a lot of information on what was happening in Brockton with several states being dark, but what I'd gleaned was general chaos, violence, borderline riots, and actions from every criminal gang. "We pull this off then even if we let Bakuda get away…" I saw Rachel's back tense at that. Frankly I was right there with her, and at least she didn't end up being fooled by Uber and Leet at the last minute. "then we'll probably come through looking better than anyone else in the east coast."

Rachel let out a huff. I guess public perception wasn't high on her priorities.

"Also, the bombs I'm pulling are the best chance we have of tracking her down and countering her technology." I looked over the destruction. "I'm not letting this happen again."

Rachel may have nodded or may have just dropped her head. Either way we finished the tour in silence.

On the way back the Celestial Forge made another connection to a workshop addition from the Toolkits constellation, and this one was complicated. It gave another room of living space and some more workshop area. Said workshop was a medical center specialized in cyborg disassembly and repair. It had a huge amount of supporting equipment, medications, spare parts, and even a 3D fabricator. Unfortunately it gave no additional medical knowledge or experience and I couldn't exactly open my workshop in the middle of a ruined storage facility.

The addition also came with weapons, an heirloom blade that had been maintained for generations, and a God damn rocket hammer. The latter would be completely useless and probably a liability, but this addition to my workshop came with additional knowledge. I suddenly had solid theoretical and practical experience in a school of martial arts.

What school was it? Weaponized Tai Chi. That flowy stuff that old people do in parks on Sunday mornings? I know how to use that to fight. Specifically I knew how to use it to fight cyborgs, which basically amounted to hit fast and get the hell out. The style did serve quite well when it came to directing a rocket spike at the end of a stick, so the new weapon wasn't a total waste.

Putting aside the martial arts, the pure insanity of how I got these powers was a little frustrating. I spent a huge amount of time dancing around a cramped workshop, only to get a barrage of additions in a single day. I had gone from barely having spillover space to being able to access an entire multi-room apartment next to my heavily expanded workshop. There really was no reason to how these played out.

As we approached the medical area I spotted Tattletale rushing out to meet us. I slid off the back of Angelica with a lot more grace than when I left, the benefits of my new Tai Chi expertise. That earned me a concerned look from the thinker. Rachel just glanced between us before huffing and directing the giant dog back to her patrol route.

"We've got a problem."

Of all the problems I'd considered this wasn't high on the list of possibilities. Taylor was still in a fitful state of unconsciousness, but apparently her power was going strong. A swarm of bugs had been drawn from every direction and was massing around her. More were coming every second, and given that this was at least supposed to be a medical area no one was looking comfortable with the situation.

"She's been calling them in her sleep. I haven't been able to wake her up, and if this keeps up we're not going to be able to manage the crowd, much less surgery."

She was right. I could spot people clearly near the breaking point, particular near the back of the crowd. They were flinching in response to every brush with a moth or fly as a constant low density stream flowed towards Taylor.

"If we can't wake her up we'll have to move her somewhere safe, and safe is not an easy thing to come by at the moment."

I nodded. "Right. Let me deal with the bugs, then I'll see if there's anything I can do."

"How are..." Brian fell silent as I drew a formula from my pouches.

Most alchemy is pretty limited when it comes to splitting it over multiple targets. They all have to be in my field of view, there's a hard cap of three targets, and the power gets severely gutted. One formula is different. I combined three drams of water with a mushroom and activated my Corrosion formula.

This formula is pathetically weak compared to the rest of my alchemy, only slowly breaking down the target over a period of time. Two things keep it from being useless. For one, the damage is fundamentally impossible to resist. It might be a pittance of injuries, but it would punch through Endbringer tier durability like nothing. The other advantage was the unlimited number of targets.

This formula was effectively 'fuck everyone I don't like'. It didn't matter that there were thousands of insects in the area, every one of them got hit equally. While the damage would be petty on larger targets against small creatures it was a near instant death sentence. Within seconds the buzzing of insects was gone and only dust remained.

I got the sense Grue was gaping at me again, but decided to ignore him and check on Taylor. I reached out and extended my nanites. I did not like digging into someone's brain, but with Panacea's limitations I was probably the only person who could manage something like this.

Taylor's corona pollentia was still highly active, but not like it had been before. There was some disruption in the neural tissue around it that had built up since the last time I healed her. I trusted my nanites to manage that while trying not to mess anything up. Within a few seconds she was starting to stir. I pulled back and turned to Tattletale.

"I think she'll be alright. Can you take it from here?" The thinker nodded slowly and moved forward with Brian to help the groggy girl up.

I saw Regent approaching me. I bit down on my irritation and turned to face him. "Hey, Chen says they're ready to start again when you are."

"Chen?" Alec gestured to the man in scorched coveralls who had put down Bakuda's lieutenant. He was coordinating a group of similar looking blue collar workers to try to keep some order to the queue. It looked like we were moving on to the older teenagers, which made up a significant portion of the conscripts, but there were some conflicts over that.

Strangely, they seemed to be coming mostly from the new arrivals who I had healed on my tour with Rachel. It was like there was a different character to them than the rest of the group, and more than just being pulled back from a near fatal injury would explain. It was a kind of determined, high energy agitation. And I had seen it before. I had seen it tonight.

"Fuck."

The assembled Undersiders turned to me. "What?" Brian asked while still helping Taylor sit up.

"It's all my fault." I mean, I knew there was blame to go around, but I didn't think this much of it would fall to me.

"I'm sorry?" He tried again.

"This whole mess. Bakuda getting away. It's on me."

There were some confused looks until Regent broke the silence.

"Hey, if he wants to take responsibility..."

"Shut. Up." Grue cut him off and turned to me. "What are you talking about?"

"It was my healing." There were some near panicked expressions forming and I quickly clarified. "It worked too well."

"Sorry, what?" Even Tattletale was looking confused. I shook my head and continued.

"That healing? It fixes everything. Everything down to a cellular level." Tattletale's eyebrows rose, but she let me continue. "Not just damage. Exhaustion, nutrition, even regular wear. It can take someone worn to the brink and bring them back to full strength."

"Okay, but I'm not seeking how that's bad." Grue glanced between his teammates. The penny seemed to drop for Tattletale.

"It doesn't deal with mental or hormonal effects, does it?" I shook my head. Brian looked to her for clarification. "If you're swimming in adrenaline, cortisol, stress based chemicals they're designed to keep you going through pain and damage. You restore everything to a hundred percent while keeping that mix in your system, it'd be a hell of a trip. Fuck, we didn't even notice."

Neither had I. I'd only messed with nanite healing on this scale once before, and that ended with me almost killing myself with life fibers. This was 3 am thinking brought forward by six hours thanks to overclocking your body. God damn, no wonder they hadn't wanted to retreat.

So, how much of this was my own mistakes, how much was impaired judgment, and how much was manipulation from that new thinker? This whole line of questioning was something we didn't have time for.

"What, like meth or something?" Brian was looking seriously agitated.

"No, it's not like meth." Regent was looking contemplative and his tone had the unfortunate suggestion he was speaking from experience. "Less pronounced. It's like a natural high mixed on top of stress. Probably why we didn't notice."

"Did you know this could happen?"

I turned to Tattletale. "I only went through something like this once before. I decided to try an experiment afterwards." Brian's head snapped up. "It didn't go well."

"Anything we should be worried about? I mean, long term."

Both Tattletale and I shook our heads. I let her answer. "It's more of an unfamiliar sensation than a drug. Still can affect judgment, but frankly the same could be said for any medical treatment."

Brian took a moment to process things, but seemed to accept the assessment. He looked at me. "You wanted us out of here. Did you know?"

I shook my head. "Not precisely. It was more of an instinct."

Brian nodded then turned back to the group. "Tattletale, is Khepri doing alright?" She was going to answer, but apparently Taylor was cognizant enough to make a vaguely affirmative gesture with one hand. "Great, then..."

"Right." She sighed. "Back to surgery."

I put the mental effects of my healing out of my mind and fell back into a routine of countering Bakuda's sadistic project. Every bomb had its own little quirks that meant I had to stay precisely focused. It was a frustrating mix of busy work and puzzle solving. Every time I thought I'd seen every possible combination of countermeasures, contingency triggers, and detections systems some new insanity would present itself.

It was nothing beyond my abilities, but the process remained just challenging enough to be frustrating without being engaging. Imagine having to solve an endless series of placemat mazes if one mistake would result in someone dying. Nothing you couldn't handle, but after the twentieth one it loses any appeal and just becomes a trial.

The only upside to the endeavor, aside from all the lives I was saving which was a good and noble thing and service to the community, etcetera, etcetera, was the variety of bombs I was amassing. I had hoped to thoroughly loot the facility after we captured Bakuda. Things hadn't worked out that way, and my own actions had led to the destruction of most of what I could have salvaged. I was down to a couple of pieces of discarded Leet tech, whatever bombs hadn't been triggered when they were buried in rubble, and the growing pile of cranial mines.

Given the variety on display that was still enough to not count the night as a total loss. There was a titanic assortment of technology on display. Some of the bombs were enhanced conventional explosives, or high tech versions of exotic ordinance like chemical, biological, or thermal weapons. However, a significant portion of them were based on more exotic properties, and they were all mine.

It was odd seeing a device that could alter the fundamental fabric with a triggering mechanism that could have been assembled from the remains of a toaster oven, but that was what you got with chaos tinkers. The conflicting technologies didn't matter to me, only the exotic effects. I actually let out a cheer when I finally found a miniaturized time stop bomb in the neck of an accountant. He took it as enthusiasm for his sake, and I wasn't about to correct that impression.

When I took a break to deal with the pile of bombs I felt the Celestial Forge make another connection, this time to the Quality Constellation. The power was called Tailor Made and it was an aesthetic power nearly as significant as Beauty in the Arts. Yes, it improved my skills as a designer to make beautiful objects, but its unique effect was far more significant. It completely removed the time and effort involved in design work or aesthetic construction. I could make the most detailed, engraved, immaculately carved object with the same time and effort it would take to churn out a standardized model.

Effectively everything I made was now being treated as if I had taken all the time in the world in its design and adornment. Given the upper level of what my design work was capable of it produces some absolutely incredible work.

Case in point, the cases in this point. Okay, bad pun but the cases I decided to churn out with my omni-tool to hold the small pile of bombs manifested like the pinnacle of a luggage maker's life work. I had to ignore the openmouthed expressions as I packed away the bombs and got back to surgery.

So it was, after dozens of surgeries, I found myself working on the very last conscript. It had been a hell of an experience. The number of near complete families that had been dragged into this mess was shocking. I could see groups taking comfort from each other, silently waiting for the last members of their family to make it through the queue. That was heartening, but didn't make up for the groups that were clearly missing someone.

Once the immediate lethal threat had been removed the emotional weight of the situation had started hitting people. The impact of the losses of the night was apparent, and the devastated environment didn't make it easy to find remains, if Bakuda's bombs had even left anything to find. There was a sense of a lack of purpose. That was probably not helped by the exhaustion of the hellish evening.

Once I realized the effect it was having I started being more careful in directing my healing. It meant people were wearily pulling themselves off the surgery bed, but at least I wasn't releasing chemically unbalanced individuals into a high stress environment. It didn't help that everyone was stranded at the edge of the city with no transportation, food, or water, and by all reports a state of chaos between them and any help.

At least they were free from Bakuda, and once I finished the last surgery we would be as well. It was more awkward than all the previous ones, mostly because of the significance. Because of course Chen had decided to wait until everyone else had gone before taking his turn.

I dropped the final bomb into the case and sealed the wound with nanites. Tattletale helped the man up from the improvised surgical bed. "Thank you Chen, that's everything." He had already clarified that it was not 'Mr. Chen' or any variation there of.

The man looked at Tattletale and nodded. I felt I should add something. "Thank you for your help. I don't know if I could have managed this otherwise."

The older man stood up and rubbed the back of his neck, feeling the place where the bomb had been removed. "You did a good thing here tonight. I just helped it happen." He positioned himself so that Tattletale was completely out of his field of view when he spoke. She didn't seem to enjoy the implication.

I looked over the clustered groups of former conscripts and steeled myself before asking. "So, do you have a family?"

He nodded. "My wife and daughter."

I did not see anyone standing around who could have matched that description. I was dreading this question. "Where are they?"

He smiled. "With her sister in Vermont. Sent as soon as this mess started."

I nodded. "Smart."

"Risky." Tattletale interjected. "Bakuda was making people bring in new targets. How'd you avoid the conscription quota?"

Chen smirked at her. "I didn't leave the C.U.I. to hand my family to another crazy dictator. I told them I couldn't find them, they told me to look harder. Happened over and over. No one really cares about a janitor." There was a knowing look to his smile.

The man gave me a nod, then just left to talk to some of the former conscripts he'd been working with earlier. I could see cell phones in their hands, so presumable something was being arranged to get these people out of here. It was probably better for them to handle it than for me to meddle any longer.

Tattletale let out a breath and slumped. Meanwhile I started recycling surgical tools into omni-gel. She looked like she wanted to say something, but just didn't have the energy. Though I swear she bit her lip when I recycled the blood scalpel.

I looked over at the rest of the Undersiders. Their dynamic wasn't what I would call healthy, but it was at least functional. "Are you going to be alright?"

"What, as a team?" I nodded. She just sighed. "Tonight wasn't exactly our shining moment. I'm not sure how this is going to play out." She shook her head. "We owe you for this, but I may need some time to figure out the full accounting."

"I'm not going to come around to break your knees, but we'll have to settle up at some point." She gave me a shallow nod.

The rest of the group approached with Brian supporting Taylor. Rachel was walking next to Angelica whose armor was beginning to droop and sag.

"Hey." Taylor mumbled, then squinted her eyes.

"We done here?" Rachel's voice was still harsh, but not as hollow as earlier.

I nodded at her. "That's the last of them. Well, conscripts. Don't know what happened to the regular members."

"Scattered as soon as neck tattoo got himself shot." Tattletale indicated to the grim site of that act that no one had taken the time to deal with. "They're long gone now."

"Oh, hey, got presents for everyone." Regent dug into a salvaged backpack and produced the knives that had been taken from the Undersiders. Well, the remains of the knife in Rachel's case.

The big girl looked at the scorched hilt and stub of a blade. "Two days, right?"

I nodded to her. "Should get the sheath back to." Rachel seemed content with that but I saw Tattletale's eyebrow twitch.

Brian grudgingly took his knife from Regent and checked it before placing it on his belt. I was still more than a little frustrated with the part he played in things falling apart, but everyone had clearly been dealing with a lot more than they let on.

That 'everyone' included me, if I was going to be honest with myself.

"Santa didn't forget you! Presents for that pie run."

"Apeiron."

He ignored my correction and produced a bent katana and scorched shield generator. Uber and Leet's discarded equipment. Two pieces of the tinker tech that had nearly stalemated me.

I'm not saying I forgave him, but the gesture helped.

"We've had it for tonight." Brian looked over the crowd, still giving us a significant clearance. He sighed. "I hate to leave this hanging, but can we handle the follow up later?"

"No problem." We really should have called it hours ago, but that wasn't possible at the time.

"Do you want to head out with us? I don't think the city is its safest."

I shook my head. "No, I've got to fix my bike, then I'm heading out."

The group looked over at the wreckage. Even Taylor seemed skeptical of the statement.

"Well, as long as you believe in yourself." Alec ignored the dirty looks he was getting from the rest of the group.

"It'll be fine."

"Seriously?"

I turned to Brian. "Sure. Five minutes work, tops."

It actually took me three and a half. The motor wasn't the beast of unlimited energy I'd rode out here with, but it would get me home. Tattletale had her mouth open and the rest of the Undersiders looked about equally shocked.

"Never should have doubted him." Alec laughed. "Should have taken book on that stunt. I could have cleaned up."

I was beginning to realize how much of that attitude was just an act. It wasn't a comforting idea.

"Uh, are all tinkers like that?" Taylor asked through shut eyes. Apparently trying to follow the work had made her dizzy.

Grue shifted his support of her. "I don't know. I've never..."

"No they are not." One of Tattletale's eyebrows was twitching. She took a breath. "Look, we'll reconnect in the morning. I don't think anyone can deal with this right now."

"Agreed." I started the bike and keyed up Fleet's control. "I'm going to need everything you have on the ABB, down to the last detail. This can't go on."

"You'll have it."

"We did good here tonight." The statement from Taylor was a half question, but she was looking over the now freed crowd.

"We did... something." That got a nod from the group. It was better than nothing. With a cloud of darkness from Grue we went our separate ways, leaving this chaos behind us.

Jumpchain abilities this chapter:

Maliwan Intern (Borderlands) 200:

At some point, you got lucky and figured out how Elemental Weapons really work. You know how to use them to best effect, allowing you to set enemies on fire regularly, melt people with acid bullets, and have ALL kinds of shocking adventures with electrical ammo. If you have any technical training, you can even jury-rig ways to apply elemental effects to other weapons, as well.

Workshop (Bubblegum Crisis) 100:

You need tools? You have ALL the tools. Using this, you can effectively build and/or repair any damn thing in BGC, though constructing orbital shuttles might take a while. Nevermind getting ahold of the plans.

Apartment (Bubblegum Crisis) Free:

A run down, single-room apartment. Nothing special, but hey, it keeps the rain off. Don't worry too much about the rent.

Civilian Equipment Package (GUNNM/Battle Angel Alita) 100:

Cramped room in the Scrapyard, basic household belongings, clothing, one Heirloom Weapon for free. If you are employed, attached is enough space to setup a workshop, clinic, studio or whatnot.

Heirloom Weapon (GUNNM/Battle Angel Alita) Free with Civilian Equipment Package:

Everyone in the Scrapyard carries something. Yours is a lot better than most, something that an actual professional might carry. Firearms are illegal on penalty of death - but outside the Scrapyard anything goes. As an heirloom, it has seen hundreds of years of loving use and its craftsmanship compares very well to modern technology. To the right person, it could be worth a lot.

Cyber-doctor Equipment Package (GUNNM/Battle Angel Alita) 200:

As Medic, plus powered tools for cyborg disassembly and repair. Bulky diagnostic computer, ten kilograms of miscellaneous spare parts, very rare compact 3D fabricator capable of milling custom components and printing or repairing circuitry. Free Rocket Hammer.

Medic Equipment Package (GUNNM/Battle Angel Alita) Free with Cyber-doctor Equipment Package:

One clean blood-and-dirt-repellent jumpsuit, facemask, kit equivalent to a modern first responder's kit. Assorted drugs and painkillers, and a few roughly bound texts on mutant and human care.

Rocket Hammer (GUNNM/Battle Angel Alita) Free with Cyber-doctor Equipment Package:

A two-handed warhammer with chisel-shaped head mounting a rocket booster that activated by a switch on the shaft. It can be disassembled and comes with a rolling case and replacement parts. A rare weapon in the Scrapyard, while very difficult to control it performs superbly against heavy cyborg armour and is fully legal despite the firearms ban.

Single Style - T'ai Chi Chuan (GUNNM/Battle Angel Alita) Free:

Solid theoretical and practical experience of a single form of personal combat. In the wasteland, what martial arts survive are pragmatic descendants of old world teachings. In the Scrapyard however, there are genuine schools of combat, though they are often overlooked – most human styles are ineffective against the crudest cyborg brawler, and the emphasis is to strike fast and run away faster.

T'ai Chi Chuan –This art is rarely taken seriously, owing to its firm rooting in qigong breathing techniques and ideas about chi, internal balance and fluid control of defence and counterattacks that have little appeal to cyborg fighters. However many elements of it have influenced the most advanced cyborg combat styles, and the therapeutic version is popular enough with the elderly that the original forms survive.

Tailor Made (Career Model) 100:

You are a brilliant designer, and can ensure objects you create are always looking fantastic, aesthetically pleasing and the like. Making something look good no longer takes any time or effort you can focus entirely on function, and whatever you make will look outstanding.