Chapter 17: 13 Exposure

As I rode back towards my apartment I started tallying the work I'd need to do. I probably had a few days before anything serious happened with Bakuda unless she decided to jump the gun on Lung's transfer. I tightened my grip on the handle bar as I thought about how much I was banking on that assumed schedule. Putting those thought aside I focused on the pile of new technologies I needed to start experimenting with.

First priority needed to be nanites. My healing abilities were phenomenal, but there was so much more I could do with them if I could manage proper programming. Even without that I could still control them directly, though that would be ponderous and I'd need to monitor them through every task. To accomplish any of that a nanite containment unit needed to be my immediate priority. Once I had that I could start syphoning nanites from my body and amassing enough to actually complete one of my projects.

Not gray goo. Safer projects. Well, safer by nanite standards which was still pretty dangerous. This was really the ultimate dual use technology. I was going to have a hard time explaining how I developed nanite healing without going through all the intervening steps that would allow aggressive mutations or complete biological destruction.

There was a lot I could do with properly programed nanites, but my priority should probably be those life fibers. I might even be able to manage to make some progress on the problem of how to use them with my current nanite resources. Given how strong, how incredibly, overwhelmingly strong Master Builder and Nanite Removal and Control were I could only imagine what the ultimate potential of the life fibers was. I just needed to be able to safely experiment.

I also needed to check on my fleet program's development. I had a full day of driving and navigation to call upon. That might not be that much experience, but it was a big step up from the previous simulations that had been running. Also, I needed to upgrade the bike's hardware and software. After what I had learned from Master Builder the custom control system I'd developed suddenly seemed horribly outdated. I wouldn't be able to build top end processors without cybertonium, but with even basic nanite assembly I'd be able to yield massive improvements.

Right, cybertonium. I also needed to get to work on my alchemy. That meant setting up a ritual space, still not too comfortable with that concept, for transmutations and find a safe location for potion brewing. Damn did I need a proper base that wasn't just crowded around my workshop. Unfortunately I also needed the trifecta of security, anonymity and ease of access. At the moment I wasn't even at the point of picking two of the three. I'd be lucky to get one.

Case in point, we were nearing my apartment and I had to find another alley to store my bike. That was going to be trouble before too long. I couldn't rely on the apathy of my neighbors forever. Eventually someone was going to take an interest in where the overbuilt superbike was being stored each night. Additionally, while I had enough financial resources to resolve some of these issues, everything I would need to purchase would be a large enough commitment to attract serious attention. My bike was pretty much the limit of what I could get away with. Moving to a bigger or more accessible place would cause all kinds of problems of a tax and money laundering variety.

The Celestial Forge missed a connection to the Magic constellation as I was pulling into the alley. I ignored it and found a decent door to access my workshop. The fleet program had advanced enough that once I got it through the door it was able to navigate the rest of the way to the workshop. That was a very good sign for both pathfinding and AI development.

I said a temporary goodbye to Garment and re-sealed the workshop. In the later part of the day with shadows stretching out I was suddenly feeling a little uncomfortable in the clothes she had provided. This was not a well to do area and I had no idea what this outfit would have cost if it hadn't been manifested by a spirit of fashion. The fact that the colthes fit in at the boardwalk was probably not a good sign. I was confident I'd be able to handle anything this area could throw at me, but it was certain to attract more attention than I would want to deal with. Of course I'm confident that if I told Garment I couldn't wear clothes like this in this neighborhood she'd immediately start digging through rental listings for better parts of the city. I could probably at least find something less flashy than the white bomber collared motorcycle jacket I was currently wearing.

Thankfully I made it back home without more than a second look from my neighbors. When I opened my workshop Garment had changed back to her red evening dress with gloves in opera mode. She immediately headed to the laptop and opened up Youtube. My attempts to check on her were dismissed with a polite wave as she caught up on new posts from her subscribed channels.

I made my way through the unusually empty entryway of my workshop. I'd need to move the rest of my furniture back at some point. At least Garment had left the mattress, even if it was propped up against the wall. It hadn't been not fun the first time I had to move that thing in here from my apartment. I could handle interior decorating later, I had a nanite containment unit to build.

Actually, that joke about interior decorating reminded me of something. My Decadence power wasn't all about aesthetics. It could do interior decorating to an almost inhuman level, but could also optimally attune a space for any purpose. My workshop was still largely in the arrangement it had arrived in with the odd stapled on space for the pieces of equipment I'd gotten from the Undersiders. I'd been meaning to rearrange things since I started work on those knives, and that was before I was supernaturally skilled at efficiently utilizing space.

Probably what had been holding me back from rearranging the place was the size of the things I'd have to move in order to manage that task. The workshop came with its share of heavy machinery, not particularly advanced, but still serious industrial milling machines. I would need a forklift to shift them. Or a magically driven suit of power armor.

I could probably count this as additional testing. It was certainly needed. The Fleet A.I. was still massively unsteady when directing bipedal movement. Considering it was eight feet tall and close to five hundred pounds 'unsteady' was not an adjective you wanted to be dealing with. I had to take things ponderously slow and carefully shift the equipment in short bursts. It was like doing one of those sliding block puzzles, only more frustrating and without the picture at the end. The one definite benefit was the steady progress the Fleet A.I. was demonstrating. As the work progressed I could see the small corrections it was able to make in motion and placement. It was a long way from being independently combat ready, but I could probably trust it to walk across a room without tripping over anything.

When I finished I decided I needed to reevaluate my statement about not getting a picture at the end. The workshop looked amazing. It had that kind of sleek elegance that comes with efficiency, but also somehow ended up with both pleasing site lines and easy access paths. I don't think I had any of that tinker obsession going on, so the relief I was feeling was probably connected to how much easier my work would be from now on.

I heard a clapping from the door and turned to see Garment standing there with approving gestures. Actually, with the combination of my other abilities the workshop was now much cleaner and had a slight elegance to it. Still, I wasn't sure what had pried Garment from her videos.

I shortly found out as she pointed at an icon on the page of one of the Youtube channels she had been watching.

"Twitter?"

She gestured enthusiastically.

"Garment, Twitter is different from Youtube comments. Are you sure you want to do this?"

She switched to the next tab, a twitter account for a fashion journalist. I couldn't make any sense of it, but Garment seemed excited. At that point I noticed the rest of the open tabs. She must have had seventeen different twitter threads loaded.

This could go very wrong. On the other hand if she kept to her brief comments and didn't give any personal information the worst she was likely to endure was some nasty comments and a series of blockings.

"Alright, I'll get you set up, but be careful." She gave me a series of affirmative gestures as I started setting up the information for her account. It was easy enough to link to her Youtube and keep the information consistent. She also directed me to another open tab for her profile picture, some classic Hollywood actress. After a bit of her framing things with her hands I figured out she wanted it cropped down to the gloves.

Well, at least that was consistent.

As soon as things were set up she practically tore the computer from me as she immediately began typing out a response to a tweet on celebrity spring fashions.

Typing slowly, while continuing to search for each letter in turn. Even when she needed to type the same letter twice she would hit the key, then hunt through the entire keyboard looking for the key she just pressed. I was beginning to suspect there was something going on here that a typing course wouldn't be able to address.

Still, she seemed to be enjoying herself, so I left her to the commentary and headed back to the workshop. Nanite containment vessels are not that easy to build. I had to cannibalize the magnetic suspension rigs I had used to make the monomolecular blades in order to assemble a proper restraint field. I also couldn't get anywhere close to the vacuum conditions I'd need for optimal transfer, meaning every loading period would be extended from seconds to minutes. Finally the volume I'd be able to manage with my resources was severely limited. At best it might contain enough to program a group of nanites for a very specific application.

All those were problems I could address later. Just getting any active nanites out of my body would be a victory considering what I could do with them. Yes there were incredible things I could accomplish if I could program them for autonomous function, but even the direct piloting from my latest power would be incredibly useful.

When I was finished the results sat on a table in the center of my workshop. It was roughly the size of a bar fridge and composed of large plates of reinforced metal spaced with supports and power cabling for the internal magnets. The input port was a pair of handles that looped out of the front, hollow pipes with the closest thing to a vacuum I'd been able to rig. In theory I could activate my nanites and have as many as possible drawn through the conduits to the comparative small containment chamber in the center of the apparatus.

It was time to give this a try.

The nanites in my body were essentially dead weight. The ability to direct them to heal was completely independent of their programing or lack thereof. Because of that I couldn't direct them to anything else, so my only option was to flood my body with the largest activation I could manage and hope the containment unit could syphon them into the chamber.

I focused and blue circuit like lines began to spread across my entire body. They formed on clothing as easily as the surface of my skin, but my awareness showed them going much deeper than that. People have no idea just how small a nanite is. They hear the word nanobot and assume it's something along the size of a germ. Maybe a bit smaller, but somewhere in that area. There's a good reason for that, people just aren't designed to think on the atomic scale.

Each of my nanites was a roughly twenty nanometer diameter sphere of crystal surrounding a computational core running entirely on quantum effects. There were a few nano structures extending from the sphere, but they were unbelievably delicate. As in you could count how many atoms thick they were on one hand. These nanites were able to rewrite DNA on an atom by atom basis. That requires a level of fine manipulation most people can't even picture. Without my power I'm not even sure devices like these would be physically possible.

The activated nanites were much more responsive to magnetic fields than dormant ones were. The miniscule machines flooded through my body making tiny and incidental repairs to cells, breaking down pathogens, and processing toxins. The glowing bands near my hands bent slightly towards the handles of the containment unit as nanites were pulled through the vacuum tubes and into the central chamber. It was an odd sensation and not an entirely pleasant one.

I maintained a white knuckled grip on the conduits until the flow dropped off, the concentration of nanites falling below the threshold the system could affect. I took a moment to compose myself before reviewing the data. It looked like I had managed to transfer a little under three percent of my nanites. I could feel them being replaced by my power, but that would take the better part of an hour. At this rate of transfer and ignoring any refinements I was able to make to the system it would take roughly a hundred and fifty transfers to get a cohesive colony that I could start programing.

So roughly a week, and that was assuming I kept up the transfer schedule. It wasn't that bad. As I built up a higher concentration of nanites I would be able to start directing them through independent control. It would be a bit tedious, but there were all kinds of applications for that kind of work, especially with the rest of my crafting abilities.

I took a breath while I considered what to try for next. Alchemy, life fibers, computer upgrades, weaponry. It was too much to handle all at once. What would I normally be doing right now?

I'd be going to the gym. That wasn't a terrible idea. With everything Tattletale had told me I had some stress begging to be burned off. I'd skipped two days between my crafting blitz and the aftermath of the bank battle. That was something I'd absolutely promised myself I wouldn't do. I had options for physical enhancement now, but one of them was a week of nanite transfers away and the other was based on some questionable alien symbiosis. Neither of them would help me develop combat skills.

I needed some time to work out the details of my next project and let my nanites replenish. A quick workout would be a good way to handle with that.

It took me some time to find my workout clothes. It seemed Garment had rebuilt them along with the rest of my wardrobe. They weren't as intricate as some of the other things she'd made, but they had an air of dedicated exercise clothing rather than the old shorts and t-shirt I usually went with. The Celestial Forge missed a connection to the Time constellation as I was getting ready to leave, with Garment continuing her slow typing and barely bothering to wave goodbye as I made my way out the door.

I had missed two full days of workouts. It wasn't that bad all things considered. I'd been following online workout advice and allocating one rest day per week, so my missed time could be counted towards that. With the prospect of physical enhancements on the table I might be able to skip my conditioning work and focus on entirely technique. My God, I might actually be able to avoid my early morning runs. That life fibers project suddenly received a significant jump in priority. Of course I had no idea how I was going to hide super strength from people at the gym. I might end up having to cut ties with the place entirely.

The thought affected me more than I anticipated. In the time since my trigger this gym had quickly transitioned from being a discount fitness option to something of a refuge. It was actually nice to have a chance to blow off steam and clear my head at the end of the day. It was just social enough to be a comfortable point of contact while having enough of a directed purpose that it never got uncomfortably personal. Frankly I wished I'd found this place two years ago, but I know I wouldn't have been able to motivate myself to train like I had after my trigger.

That was a concern for later. I had over a week, probably closer to two, until I had a complete set of nanites ready. It was tempting to direct them for physical enhancement, but there was also all kinds of potential applications in construction, manufacturing, diagnostics, or enhancement of my other projects. There was enough draw on this resource to cover what I'd be able to generate for months, even if I was able to increase the efficiency of my storage and extraction system.

Instead I dove into my workout, focusing on footwork and combinations. I rhythmically struck the heavy bag as I considered what my next step should be. After the second offload I should have enough nanites to manage some micro-assembly. With the rest of my knowledge base I would be able to directly manufacture computer components. Not the best components I knew how to make, but the best I could do without a superconducting material with resonance patterns that extended beyond the material universe. With those complete I could improve my computing resources, accelerate the development of my A.I., and maybe even advance my interfaces for better direct control. It was a project that would start yielding results instantly and have serious advantages to getting deployed immediately. Thanks to the conservation from my Rationing power I would even have enough materials to work with so I wouldn't need to resort to alchemical transmutation.

My thoughts of computer architecture were interrupted by the sudden arrival of Aisha Laborn. I had the remote hope that she'd given up this nonsense after the last time, but apparently I wasn't in the clear yet. She had taken nearly fifteen minutes after my arrival to show up and I still had no idea who her informant was. I made eye contact with Doug who shrugged slightly. It seemed he was at least assuming I had no bad intentions, but was going to keep an eye on things just the same.

That was probably for the best because right from the start I could tell something was wrong. First off her outfit was completely different. It was still vaguely the same style, but she had switched the loud neon colors for a spectrum of grays. She had fewer pieces of jewelry with all the bracelets and lose pieces absent and even her piercings were more sensible. It almost looked like she was actually here to work out.

This could not be good.

Her behavior only compounded my concerns. Unlike last time she wasn't prancing in front of me trying to get my attention. There were no over the top pseudo-stretches or showy work outs designed to provoke a reaction. Most of the time I couldn't even see her, but she could see me. She carefully cycled through workouts and watched me like a hawk. It was so out of character for what I had learned to expect that it was actually a good deal more unnerving than if she had jumped straight into her teasing. I wondered if that was her plan, but Aisha didn't seem like the type of person to play mind games with that many layers to them.

The rest of the gym had picked up that something was wrong. The members who knew what to expect from Aisha were reacting to her drastically altered behavior and the newer members were reacting to the reactions of everyone else. It said something that Aisha had managed to pretty much shut down the entire place just by acting slightly less eccentric. Doug was actually looking seriously concerned and I'm guessing he was weighing the pros and cons of calling her father. I'm not sure how Mr. Laborn would react to a receiving call along the lines of 'Something is very wrong. Your daughter is behaving herself.'.

I tried my best to ignore her and focus on my projects. I still had to work out the alchemical transmutations I'd need for rarer elements in addition to the formation of cybertonium. I had a loose idea of how to form that super metal, but it would take something like sixty eight steps of incredibly precise transmutations. If I wanted any to work with in less than a month I would need to refine the process significantly. Unfortunately I wouldn't be managing any of that here.

There's a very disturbing element to the feeling that you're being watched. It involves this building sense of dread, subtle changes in the behavior of people around you, and a gradually ramping up of stress. It's one of those base instinctual things that was probably designed to allow our species to avoid being eaten by saber toothed tigers. The fact that it also triggers under the observation of a moderately difficult thirteen year old girl is either a bug in the survival programing or evidence of more foresight from natural selection than I ever gave it credit for.

The second half of my workout was thoroughly unproductive, not even helpful as a means of stress relief. Eventually I made a tactical withdrawal and ducked into the locker room when there was no chance of being intercepted. I stood under a borderline scalding shower and tried to figure out what the hell was going on here. Either Aisha had upped her game significantly or there was something new and concerning in play. I had no clue what it could be, and from the looks of things I doubted the rest of the gym had any idea either.

I stretched my shower as long as I reasonably could before I bit the bullet a, got changed, and packed up my things. I slipped out of the locker room ready to make a break for the exit in the event of an ambush. Instead I found the gym had returned to a semblance of its normal activity and Aisha was nowhere to be found.

"She just left." Came a rough voice. "You doing alright?"

I turned to see Doug in all his gruff glory leaning against the wall. The students he had been working with were packing up their things with the usual half-shell shocked expression Doug's training seemed to inspire.

"Uh, yeah." I took a breath. "Do you have any idea what that was about?"

The big man shrugged. "Best guess, she's playing with us. Girl's been in and out of this place since she moved back in with Laborn. She knows he has the regulars looking out for her so she tries something to throw us off every now and then. This is a bit more subtle than her usual plays."

I nodded. I hoped that was the case, but it seemed like there was something else going on. The idea that someone as seemingly random as Aisha would show up, treat me like a research specimen for half an hour, and then vanish didn't sit right, but I didn't have a clue what she was up to.

"Missed you the last couple of days. Some of the guys thought she managed to run you off."

I forced a laugh. "No, started a new job." He quirked an eyebrow. "It was a bit of a last minute thing, but the pay was good so I had to take it. Decent money but terrible hours."

Doug nodded slowly. "People need to take what they can get in this city. You're a smart kid. Make sure you look after yourself out there."

It took me a second to figure out his meaning, but by that point he was half way across the gym. I wished I could dissuade him of that notion, but I actually had been working for a gang, one in service to some kind of parahuman crime lord. Trying to downplay that wouldn't do either of us any favors.

I really hoped I hadn't just tanked my reputation at this gym, but then again probably a third of the older members had what looked like prison tattoos. The implication that I was doing some kind of illicit work on the side would probably just make me fit in better. How Mr. Laborn would react I had no idea, but he seemed like the kind of man who could tolerate a lot as long as you held up your obligations.

The city was entering twilight when I made my way outside. The streetlights were on, but it was at that weird point where they weren't any brighter than the dimming ambient light and basically did nothing to improve visibility. That was probably why I didn't get any sense of the person sneaking up on me as I left the shadow of the gym.

"Hello Jozef." The name was as over-pronounced as the last time I'd heard it. I spun to see Aisha leaning against the mouth of an alley, a slight grin on her face as her eyes shone in the half-light of the early evening. She was wearing her workout outfit with a light jacket and one of those overly small backpacks on her shoulder.

"Oh, Aisha. Hi." It was unnerving. She had dropped all the teasing mannerisms and jovial attitude. It was like dealing with a completely different person.

She shifted slightly to block the path I was taking back to my apartment and looked me up and down. It occurred to me that her waiting in this location meant she knew the route I would take on my way home.

"Heard you missed training the last couple of days." There was a knowing gleam in her eyes.

"Yeah, something came up."

"First time since you started, right?" She looked at me dead on. "Heard you signed up one day and started training like mad. Like you were working towards something. What was the deal? Something happen that got you all fired up?"

God damn, I thought this girl could be unnerving when she was just being inappropriate. Somehow when she went serious it was a whole other level of unsettling.

"I just decided to give it a try." Damn it, I was bad at this. Yeah, I had been desperately training to try to get ready for cape life. Why was she picking at this? What the hell was she working towards?

She glanced off to the side and quirked her lips in a faint grin. "Lot of stuff happened while you missed your training. You hear about that thing at the bank downtown?"

I kept my face neutral, but I could feel blood draining from it. "Wards fought some villains, ended up losing, right?"

She nodded. "Wards fought the Undersiders. They showed up with a new cape and a bunch of weapons and shit. Went through the baby Protectorate like they were made of paper. They're calling it the worst loss in the history of the team." For some reason she seemed almost proud of that statement.

The Magitech constellation approached in the Celestial Forge and my power just failed to connect to it. I cursed internally, I really needed a better grasp of the powers from that constellation.

"Hey, what was that?"

I shifted my attention back to the girl in front of me. "What? What was what?"

"That thing you just did. It's happened every time we talked."

She picked up on that? How observant was this girl? "I don't know what you're talking about."

She gave me a flat look. "Uh-huh. What's that thing they say? Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence, all that shit. So what, is it part of your power?"

I swear I felt my heart stop. "What do you mean?" I was doing my best to play dumb but felt like I was doing a shit job of it.

"Your face looks good."

The non sequitur threw me for a loop. "Uh, thanks?"

"Really good." She moved in closer and my discomfort started to override my fear of being exposed as a cape. I wondered, if I just ran for it would that do anything to throw her off? Probably not, but it was looking like a better and better idea.

"I, uh."

She smirked. "Bruises like those should have stuck around for a couple of weeks. You were fine the next day." She glared as if daring me to challenge her knowledge of facial contusions. "Also, you took that beating really well. Better than you should have."

I desperately tried to come up with some explanation while also dealing with the implication of exactly why Aisha would have such a thorough understanding of those kinds of injuries. What the hell was I supposed to say? I heal fast? It wasn't as bad as you thought? I had been sparring with Vince. By every metric my face should have been hamburger by the end of the night. I was probably only saved from worse speculation by the fact that everyone minded their own business at this gym. Everyone but the unusually observant daughter of the chief coach who was apparently badly underestimated by everyone who dealt with her.

She looked at my poorly concealed distress and smiled. "Your acne scars are gone."

A hand flew up to my cheek before I could think to stop myself. I didn't have the worst case of acne scarring, but there were some flare ups when I was a teenager that I didn't manage as well as I could have. My fingers ran across smooth unblemished skin.

Light Alchemy did not deal with scarring, but medical nanites did. Boy did they ever. With the scale at which they worked breaking down and rebuilding collagen was trivial. My nanite healing is fairly precise and directed so it's not like this is a default effect, but if you happen to be ramping up every nanite in your system in the hopes of being able to syphon off a decent amount the effects can get away from you. At this point I doubted there was a shred of my body that hadn't seen some medical attention. The clearing up of years old pockmarks was probably the least of its effects.

Aisha's expression had turned smug. She was clearly confident in this, and that was largely helped by the terrible job I was doing at covering things up. The part of this I didn't get was why? Why was she confronting me? She wasn't going to the Protectorate, or the gangs, or the press, though most of them wouldn't touch a story about a cape's identity. She was confronting me alone in a rapidly darkening street with nothing but implications about my durability and potential involvement in a federal crime.

"If I was a cape..." She grinned at that. "It probably wouldn't be a good idea for you to confront me."

"Right, because you're SO dangerous."

"Capes are dangerous. This city, the things that are out there, you have to be careful. If you tried this on the wrong person who knows what could end up happening."

She gave me a critical look. "Are you telling me you're dangerous?"

"If I was a cape I could be." It was a paper thin denial of my status as a parahuman, but she didn't even focus on that part.

"I've been coming to this place for two years. That 'look out for Aisha' thing you've been doing? You're not close to the first. My Dad's recruited dozens of guys to his little protection detail, and plenty of them were scum. Some of them, they just wanted an excuse to hurt people while feeling good about themselves. Some of them wanted to get on my Dad's good side. Some of them just like the idea of having someone under their control. I've seen dangerous."

Her stance was completely unthreatened and she gave me a look that made me feel uncomfortable. I'm not sure why, but for some reason her not considering me a threat felt vaguely insulting. I mean, I fought Oni Lee. I could hurt people. Her just making a blanket implication that I wouldn't somehow felt intrusive. It was also a bit harrowing to think about the kinds of experiences that would build up confidence in that kind of ability to judge character.

I was at the point where a denial would do me no good, but at least I wasn't going to admit to anything. Nothing was going to be accomplished here, and she didn't seem to be pressing for any kind of extortion. "Look Aisha, you should get home. I doubt your father or brother would want you messing with capes."

The look she gave me was complicated. "You never met my brother?"

"No, he's never been here while I've been at the gym." I hadn't heard anything bad, but I wasn't really here to gossip and hadn't been a member for that long.

Aisha's grin widened until it looked like it might split her face in half. "Right." For some reason she seemed to be holding back a fit of giggles. "Well, I better get back to my brother. See you around Jozef."

She sauntered off leaving me standing there hoping this wouldn't come back to bite me in the ass. Of all the people who could have figured out my secret identity... well okay, there were a lot of possibilities worse than Aisha, but at least with them I would know what to expect. I had no clue what that girl's next move was going to be. She didn't seem keen on exposing me, and didn't have anything but incidental information. Enough to indicate I was a cape but nothing that would tie me definitively to what I'd done so far.

My passenger still liked her. In fact, he wasn't really worried about this whole situation. Whatever she was likely to do, running to the Protectorate was probably not on the table. Also, I think I could safely eliminate the chance of her selling me out to the Empire. She also seemed way too comfortable with the idea of dealing with a cape. I knew she had a hard life, but how far into the parahuman side of things did that go?

I could find out. I had more technical knowledge than anyone in the city, probably even beating out Armsmaster at this point. Once I finished my computer upgrades I could tear through the joke of digital security that was human telecom networks and find any information I wanted.

Ok, that was another case of me thinking of conventional technology as 'human' and not including myself. I really needed to keep an eye on that. The knowledge from Master Builder wasn't at risk of flooring me anymore, but there was no denying that is was from a decidedly mechanical perspective. Working with the technology of that power made it easy to fall into that mindset. I needed a way to remind myself. Maybe get a pickle jar and start putting quarters in it whenever I slipped up? I could call it the mental dysphoria jar.

Setting aside the obvious power related alterations to my mind, I needed to become more active in tracking what was going on in this city. I might be bribing analysis from Tattletale with criminally cheap medical care but that was too unreliable to be my sole source. If I had a better monitoring system I could probably have headed off some of the chaos in the city's hero community, or at least been prepared for it. They might have tinker level security on cape related systems, but there's no practical way to protect the entire internet, especially if I can get a serious computational set up.

For that I need to build a neural interface. I've had the theory for the technology since my Grease Monkey power, but now I actually have the capacity for it. Getting that rolled out would actually let me take advantage of the kind of hardware I can build, plus be a huge improvement for my A.I. development. I just need to make a series of sensors and transmitters delicate enough to target and read individual neurons along with an advance enough computer system to be able to map, process, and transmit data in a meaningful form.

Wow, a few days ago that would have been borderline impossible. Now it's just a matter of doing the drudge work.

When I got back to my apartment Garment was still slowly typing responses into twitter. I half wondered if she was still working on the same tweet, but a glance confirmed she seemed to have adopted the policy of single word replies she'd been using for Youtube comments. It might seem a bit odd, but this was twitter. I'm pretty sure someone runs a joke account from the perspective of Armsmaster's halberd. A glove account making single word statements to fashion tweets is basically par for the course.

I got a half-hearted wave as Garment continued slowly typing a reply to some account with a medusa head inside a circle for their profile picture. I left her to it and opened up my workshop.

The first thing I did was check on the nanite confinement. There was no degradation in the field strength and the nanites had maintained their integrity. It looked like this would actually work! I was a matter of days away from every nanite application I could ever want. I just had to keep maintaining the transfers.

On that note I prepped the chamber for extraction, grabbed the input port and activated my now restored nanites. I should have seen that detail with scarring coming, but it wasn't like they could cause any more changes. This was just going to be a regular medical overhaul every time I attempted transfer. The 'damage' had been done and at this point it was at most a preventative measure against pathogens.

Once again my skin lit up with glowing blue circuitry with the lines on my hand bending towards the containment vessel. I stood there, counting down the time as the process would ran its course. After a few minutes the transfer petered out and I checked the progress. Once again it was successful and now I had a high enough concentration in the chamber to actually attempt some nanoassembly.

This was going to be delicate work. For one thing I hadn't experimented with direct nanite control before. I had a solid understanding of the capabilities of the nanites, but there were so unfathomably many of them that wrapping my mind around the idea was a challenge. I basically had to avoid thinking about fine mechanics and only focus on objectives. Additionally I had to modify the containment chamber to give it access to raw materials. This had the risk of causing a containment failure and dispersal of nanites, but I was confident in my ability to make it work. It just meant I had another construction project before I could actually start the nanoassembly.

I elected to work directly in the containment vessel rather than try to manage a nanite transfer system. I was basically jury rigging most of this with the help of my Master Builder power and there was a lot of places things could go wrong. The easiest option turned out to be a pseudo airlock that I could attach to the vessel and use as an entry point for raw materials. Fortunately at an elemental level computer parts weren't that difficult to source. The doping agents were more of a challenge than the silicon, but easy enough to acquire in the miniscule quantities I'd need.

It took some creativity and another couple of high powered magnets to manage everything, but eventually I managed to fully load my raw materials into the containment chamber. With some apprehension I laid my hand on the side of the vessel and concentrated. Glowing blue lines spread from my hand across the casing of the chamber. I could feel the multitudes of nanites floating inside the containment chamber. I could extend my will to them and direct their actions. I could feel them strip the materials down to their base elements. I could feel the assembly process begin, layer by layer of silicon wafers manifested at the atomic level. I could feel the exhilaration of controlling the world on a scale that to most people is just an abstract theoretical landscape. And I could feel the Celestial Forge move again because it had absolutely no sense of propriety.

I scrambled to stabilize my crafting as all the reach I had built was used to connect to a larger mote from the Size constellation, one the same strength as Master Builder or Nanite Removal and Control. It was called Hybridization Theory and the power let me literally combine two machines into one. I could basically mash a pair of disparate devices into a single functional mechanism with twice the power they had individually. It was mind boggling what this was capable of.

There were limits. Hybridizing something that I had already hybridized would get complicated to the point of probably not being worth it. Merging two items with independent A.I.s would just be asking for conflicts. If I tried to work on items of significantly different scales there could be issues with power distribution that would require extra work to resolve. Beyond that this was flawless. It was the perfect combination of the features of any two machines I could want without impacting size, weight, power use, or any aspect of their individual utility. I could combine a tank with a fighter jet and not lose any functionality or advantage of either form.

This one power had effectively doubled the utility of everything I could make. Hell, if I just hybridized an item with a copy of itself I could instead just double the power of everything I made. I didn't even need a separate machine, I could build the hybridization in from the start. It would even be less resource intensive than constructing both items independently.

I looked down at my current work, the largely awkward set up from my attempts to merge a nanite containment and fabrication chamber. This power naturally lent itself to combining vehicles, weapons, and other large scale machinery, but it was just as effective at small scale applications. Applications like allowing a containment chamber to function as a manufacturing facility without compromising the integrity or function of either device.

I focused on finishing the processor I had been working on. Knowing the equipment I could now be using made the previously wondrous process tedious. Yes, I was doing near atomic scale construction of what was a true tinker level microchip, but I could now see every extra step that would be eliminated when I was able to overhaul the containment unit. The inconvenient placement of resources, the poorly positioned assembly space, even the tedious manner I had to use to extract my finished product from the chamber.

I looked down at the square inch of plastic coated silicon wafers. It was a good processor, but it was mind boggling how much design and careful assembly had gone into such a tiny object. Despite my best efforts I hadn't been able to get the transistors smaller than three nanometers. With my current supplies there were some limits I couldn't break. Maybe I should move on to optical processors? They were a big step up from what I was working with, but a lot more difficult to integrate into conventional electronics.

Also my design powers had run a bit rampant when I was finishing the casing. Most microchips made due with a plain plastic casing and printed label. They typically didn't have quite so much engraving in their design and I'm fairly certain the use of illuminated script for processor labels was against some standard industry practice.

I set the chip aside and got to work on my first hybridization project. It was strange watching this work with my level of technical knowledge. This appeared to be mechanically sound, but actually it was entirely facilitated by my power. Effectively it didn't matter how different or contradictory the devices were, I would still be able to perfectly integrate them. That's why stacking hybridizations wasn't possible. In order for that to work I'd need to reverse engineer the first hybridization and somehow get it to function without my power facilitating things. It was possible but would get more difficult the further apart the machines were in function and principles. I could probably merge two guns, look at the result, and build something that would function without my power holding it together. That example of a combined tank and jet would be significantly more difficult. Also, the more I nested the hybridizations the more complicated figuring out the necessary engineering would be.

None of that was an issue for this project. In short order I had a successfully combined nanoforge and containment vessel. This was something I could probably have managed with some design work and careful assembly, but with my new power I could basically mash it together and call it a day. I could easily feed in raw materials for assembly and extract finished products without any of that nonsense with attached vacuum canisters. Right now the only limiting factor was nanite concentration and my ability to direct them.

The new apparatus neatly fit in with the other equipment of my workshop. Once again I was thankful that this place seemed happy to cover the power requirements of anything that counted as crafting equipment. Without that the electricity draw of the magnetic suspension field would have been crippling. It was easily the most advanced fabrication device I had access to, even if the build volume was barely a hundred cubic centimeters. I was limited to very small objects, but considering that I essentially had to direct nanites on an atomic scale I'm not sure I could handle anything bigger. Not until I managed to devise some kind of automated construction programing.

My nanites had nearly recovered from the previous transfer and loading a third allocation would make construction substantially easier. Eventually the limiting factor would shift from availability of nanites to my ability to direct them, but that was a ways off and there were some potential methods to address it. I would just have to maintain transfers as my nanites restored themselves, which could get tedious, but the results were well worth it.

A nudge from my passenger made me realize I had forgotten to eat dinner. Weirdly I wasn't that hungry. Was that the nanite activations? I knew they cheated on conservation of mass and could work directly on chemical compounds. In theory they could restore a person's blood sugar, available nutrients, and energy reserves. I hadn't been thinking about it, but I hadn't really been thinking about anything but activating as many nanites as possible. I had gotten kind of complacent thanks to my understanding of the principles at work rather than the practicalities.

On reflection I wasn't feeling that burn in my muscles that I'd grown used to after a hard workout. I really needed to use my Laboratorium to start picking through exactly what this healing was doing to my body. Instant recovery was great, but there was a chance it would be effectively erasing the benefits of my workouts. It was too late for that now, but the next time I did a post workout healing blitz I needed to make sure I was under the best scanners I had.

Still, food was important. Even if my nanites were helping I didn't want to rely on them until I knew exactly what was happening and any limitations or side effects they might cause. I slipped out of my workshop past Garment who half waved at me while continuing to type. I moved into my kitchenette and checked what I had available in terms of provisions. There was a stark divide between my earlier supplies of cheap high protein foods, beans, lentils, canned tuna, and plain yogurt, all blankly labeled generic brands in bulk portions, next to the set of brand name and flavorful foods I had splurged on after my first payment for criminal services.

A better person than me would probably feel some guilt or conflict over this. But that theoretical better person probably hadn't been eating discount health food that tasted of wet cardboard for the better part of two weeks. I dove into the good food and felt no remorse.

Also, master level alchemy knowledge partially transfers to cooking skills. At this point I probably could have managed something decently appetizing even with my earlier ingredients, but with my ill-gotten quality food the result was positively succulent.

As I plated the results of my cooking spree I turned to find Garment waiting with her laptop held in front of her. I glanced at the screen and winced.

"I don't think that's a good idea."

She excitedly tapped the open page, then gestured at me.

"Look, that's a whole different beast from Twitter, much less Youtube. I know you're excited, but maybe give yourself a bit more time to get used to things online before you try it."

Her body language looked devastated and she made a forlorn motion towards the screen.

"Look, how did you even find that?"

She navigated to another tab. Okay, cape fashion Twitter accounts. That made sense. And wow, Garment had retweets? Who was retweeting single word commentary on fashion topics? Apparently cape fashion twitter accounts, obviously. Still, it seemed a bit odd even for social media.

Actually, checking her activity for the night she seemed to be handling herself fairly well. Considering how caustic these communities could get I was kind of impressed. I looked at the other tab and Garment's expectant motions.

"Alright..." She looked positively electrified. "But you have to be careful. I mean you need to review full terms of service, community guidelines, don't get into arguments. All that. And everything from before still applies, but even more so. No personal information or revealing details that could lead back to you."

All through my lecture Garment was making excited gestures of affirmation. I sighed and started filling in the sign up form. I confirmed her email and updated her account with the picture from her Twitter profile. Just to be sure I brought up all the site rules and guidelines and went through them with her. Finally, it was all set and I was certain I had done everything I could to prevent this from ending in disaster. I loaded the up main page for her new account.

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I handed over the Laptop and hoped for the best. Garment was practically skipping on her way back and settled in with a level of focus I hadn't seen from her outside of clothing design and assembly. She was still typing with the speed of a glacier. It was kind of odd seeing such excited body language contrasting with the slow methodical searching for letters on the keyboard.

My cooking proved appealing enough for me to finish despite a lack of appetite. Afterwards I cleaned my dishes and made my way back to my workshop. The first thing I did was complete my fourth nanite transfer. Once this computer project was complete I needed to work to improve the efficiency and draw rate. It was still a novel experience, but I'm fairly sure after the twentieth time I had to spend three and a half minutes grabbing transfer conduits while focusing on activating every nanite in my system at the same time it would wear a bit thin.

Once that was completed I started work on my computer system. The night was getting on and I would probably have to put my alchemy work on hold until tomorrow. Those potions might be amazingly useful, but there was a serious time sink involved in getting to a place where I could make them without being discovered. The abandoned chemical factory remained the best idea I had, but it took a long time to make that walk. Taking my motorcycle had been my plan, but in that neighborhood I would probably attract less attention if I showed up in full cape costume.

Weirdly, that unmarked van the Undersiders boss had provided would be perfect for that application. That is, it would have been if it wouldn't have exposed the location of my secondary base to a parahuman crime lord rather than just to the residents of one of the more run down areas of the Docks.

The Celestial Forge missed a connection to the Clothing constellation as the transfer finally concluded. With four transfers worth of nanites and a proper assembly structure I was able to fabricate computer parts at a greatly accelerated rate. My Rationing power was still effective at the nano scale and was proving to be incredibly useful. A major portion of this kind of work involved stripping down other materials. Since I wasn't working with pure elemental samples that meant I had to pick apart my feedstock to remove impurities or hunt for trace elements that I needed. Rationing let me make sure that any odd elements or useful compounds were properly squirreled away for later use. If you think that kind of thing is handy in vehicle manufacture imagine what happens when you're working on an atomic scale.

The real problem with working at an atomic scale was, well, you were working at an atomic scale. I could construct incredibly advanced components, but the more complex they were the longer it took, especially if I was building anything bigger than a grain of sand. I was manually directing everything. Holding the complete plans for a processor in my mind was hard enough. Without external reference I just couldn't manage construction of the more complex items I knew how to build. Actually, without the mechanical mindset that came with Master Builder I probably wouldn't have been able to manage this at all.

I could still handle assembly of processors, sensors, and various computer components. With some creative integration with the server parts I still had available and a bit of abuse of my latest power I was able to complete a combined computational core/neural interface. The work took long enough that I was able to make another transfer of nanites before I finished and it was close to midnight when I finally finished everything.

Despite the somewhat improvised and rushed job the project came together well. With my style powers it basically looked like a chrome throne positioned to overlook my workshop. Decadence had more than saved my rough work from looking anyway sloppy or unpolished, and that wasn't even counting the effects Bling of War and Stylish Mechanic were having. The point was that I now had a properly powerful central computer for my base, not that human crap I'd had to work with before.

Okay, that was another one. Probably time to start putting quarters in a jar.

Alien mindsets aside I had a proper mind-machine interface directly hybridized with the most powerful system I could build. That is, could build without getting into exotic physics applications. It was close to the level of those ancient church computers from my Laboratorium and much less creepy. There was still a little creep factor with the read/write access the thing had with the brain of anyone who sat in it, but that was the point. Proper speed-of-thought access to a digital system.

It was late and I needed sleep, but there was no way I was going to leave testing this until the morning. I climbed into the seat and started the neural mapping. It was a complicated process even with how technically advanced the system was. I had a conventional interface to help guide things and was working in machine code to build the framework that would let me directly access the computer with my mind.

Process came in a series of flashes. I was effectively writing and reading directly to my brain, an insanely dangerous process for anyone who didn't know what they were doing. Each calibration triggered a bout of synesthesia where I could suddenly hear the color purple or thought the room smelled like a fog horn. But with each flash I felt the connection grow deeper and more substantial until the room fell away and suddenly I was existing as a computer system.

The difference between building the interface and computer core separately and combining them with my Hybridization Theory power was immediately apparent. This wasn't directing commands to the system, it was like the entire computer was an extension of my body. I could feel every process running and sense its connections to every other system in the workshop and apartment, from the still running driving simulations on my motoroid to Garment's continued meandering through cape forums. If I could scale this interface down to a reasonable size I would be able to assume direct control of any vehicle I could create like it was my own body.

I needed to check on the development of my Fleet program and this was the best space to do that. I partitioned a section of processing resources and connected with the now laughably primitive control system piloting my bike. I was able to gain remote access through a virtual environment and see how the software was developing. I immediately found a major problem.

In a world where any tinker can churn out a shockingly well programed drone most people wouldn't expect there to still be a place for robotics engineering. Most people think that about science in general and are kind of blind to the fact that conventional technology advancement continues even when people are building laser guns and teleporters in their garages. Trying to get an actual non-tinker robot to develop certain skills can be challenging, particularly when you leave exploits in the environment for them to take advantage of. Try to teach a robot to avoid obstacles and it starts driving in a way where its sensors can't detect collisions. Train it to pick up green marbles and it will find a way to point its optical sensor at its own power LED. Those kinds of blind stupid exploits are all over the place and my A.I. had found its way into one.

It was designed to simulate piloting a bike effectively. It was also responsible for programing the test environment it was using to run simulations. In short it had managed to learn to perfectly drive a motorcycle without crashing provided it was on a perfectly flat straight road that was about fifty thousand miles long.

This was probably a consequence of leaving the program running without input for so long. With the processing resources of the core computer I could accelerate development, but there was still the problem of it potentially optimizing along another stupid path. It needed some kind of counter agent to actually drive improvement.

And I needed data management resources. Maybe this could present a solution to both problems. I set aside the Fleet A.I. and started work on a new neural network. It was basically a survey program, designed to analyze and simulate environments. I could initially feed it map data for it to create virtualizations of roadways for the Fleet program. It would help the other program's pathfinding development, and prevent those errors that grew in isolation.

The work came together slowly, but in many ways better than when I had set the basis for my fleet program. I was working with a lot more technical knowledge at this point and was able to make subtle optimizations that it was too late to include in the other program. It started basically, with a generation of flat 2D maps for the Fleet A.I. to develop on, simple geometric shapes. Eventually the two programs were playing off of each other with Survey designing simplified models of entire cities with rough three dimensionality and Fleet picking its way through them.

The development was fascinating to watch. Survey was pulling data continuously and starting to extrapolate details from incomplete sources, generating estimated road conditions and visibility estimates. Fleet was massively improving as well, actually stressing its handling and navigation skills.

I was in the middle of all of it. Incredibly I could practically sense the development of both programs and the feel of the artificial world being constructed around me. It was easy to get caught up in the sensations, but eventually the exposure became uncomfortable. There was an off-putting sense of motion, and disorientation in something like a rhythmic sense, almost as if I was being shaken.

Hold on.

I disconnected from the interface to find a frantic Garment standing over me. Concern spiked as I took in her appearance. I had never seen her this upset. It wasn't just the way she was moving. There was a slight delay in the way her clothing synchronized with her glove movements. It was like she was having trouble literally holding herself together.

"Garment? What's wrong?" She made some frantic gestures towards the workshop exit and I followed her trembling form as she led the way back to the apartment. I quickly checked my watch. 3:34am. Somehow I had completely lost track of time while connected to the system. What could have happened while I was out of it?

There was no obvious sign of disruption when I exited the workshop. The apartment looked fine, but Garment was frantically gesturing towards the laptop sitting on my old desk. I approached and immediately saw the source of her distress.

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In the reply field Garment had started typing something, but had apparently given up to come get me. The only thing there was a brief string of letters spelling out "I M SORRY".

I looked over the list of bans and infractions, then at Garment's distraught and much more importantly disheveled appearance.

"All right," I sighed and gave her a tired smile. "Let's see what we can do."

Jumpchain abilities this chapter:

Hybridization Theory (Zoids: Legacy) 400:

So one day you had a bit of spare time after your daily Zoid admiration hour. After taking a close look at your favorite Gojulas and your favorite Mad Thunder, you decided that if the Gojulas could wield the Mad Thunder's Magnesser Drills like an arm weapon, you could probably reenact that scene from the show you watched two days back on the professor's hi-def television.

Those mechanics can slap on parts and scavenge however they like. You can literally merge two machines together into one, with twice the processing power as before. Mind you, Zoids typically won't respond well to suddenly sharing a body with another core and another mind, but you'll have ethical uses for this...right?

For most mundane machinery, you don't need any power source besides your own, but be careful that should you make your machine too big, the internal power supply might not be enough to feed it.