Chapter 23: 18 Regroup

I disappeared into the dust choked rows of storage lockers ignoring the sound of the chaos behind me. I didn't expect my motoroid to accomplish much, and that was largely the point. Fleet's ability to direct the machine, both in motorcycle and bipedal mode, had improved dramatically but that only marginally extended to combat. The robot form had enough dexterity to handle itself, but there was no real combat programming beyond basic ability to swing the weapon. That was fine since I didn't really intend for it to hit anyone.

None of those conscripts could meaningfully damage my motoroid or my drone, so I just needed to keep them wary enough to stay clear. Bakuda had dozens of bombs that could utterly wreck them, but the motoroid was agile and the drone was disposable. They should be able to avoid or intercept anything coming their way. That would let them tie up the ABB force long enough for me to regroup with the Undersiders and plan my next move.

I picked my way past critically damaged storage lockers over uneven ground with pandemonium behind me and my heart hammering in my chest. My body was swimming in adrenalin and I felt light headed. I really couldn't believe I just did that. During the faceoff I had just focused on the next step, on trying to avoid showing any weakness, but the gravity of the situation was creeping up on me. This was full on life or death conflict, and the first time I had seen anything like it since my fight with Oni Lee. That seemed like ages ago when it was really what, six days? Actually slightly less than that.

Without the mindset of my military engineer power I had no idea how I would have been able to manage this. Even as I felt like panicking, instincts drew me forward, away from hostiles and towards allies and a more defensible position. I took a deep breath and pressed on. I could put another quarter in the jar later. Right now I was just grateful to be able to stay functional, no matter what that meant for the integrity of my mind.

I was following my sense of the equipment I built for Taylor along with her trail of insects when I felt the Celestial Forge. It made a connection to the Time constellation using every ounce of reach I had to spare. It wasn't the largest mots I had connected to, but the ability was so ridiculously overpowered that it nearly made me lose focus on what I was doing. Given the significance of the danger I was in that's really saying something.

The power was called Workaholic and was practically irreverent in how broken it was. In effect it boosted the output of all of my crafting. Either I could produce five times as many items, or what I was building would be roughly three times the size. By three times the size I meant three times in one dimension, so significantly more in total volume and mass. Actually, it worked out to slightly less than three times, since the mass would increase by a factor of twenty five rather than twenty seven. That had a nice symmetry to it. Either five times the finished product or five times five the material output.

The power would have been significant enough if it just let me boost my production speed, but there was another massively impactful element to it. The amount of initial resources required didn't change. I could start with the parts to build one robot and end up with five, or a robot nearly three times as tall. And the power was practically irreverent about the fact that it was making logistical requirements meaningless.

It actually felt like the ability was designed to be exploited. I could build something, break it down to base materials, and then use those materials again. Each time the multiplying effect would be applied. As long as I had what I needed for the initial construction I effectively had infinite resources. If was almost as if the universe had gotten fed up with all of my struggling with logistics and just wanted me to get to crafting.

Not that I'm complaining or anything, it was just a lot more significant than I expected from any mote of its strength. Also, having your entire logistical methodology upended in the middle of a battlefield was a bit difficult to process. Instead I put it out of my mind and pushed forward towards the location of my knife and baton.

Once I had a couple of rows of now damaged lockers between me and the courtyard the amount of dust in the air dropped to manageable levels. The impact on visibility had been drastic even away from the blast site. Within the courtyard I doubted they could see five feet in front of them. A quick check on the link to my motoroid and drone confirmed that was pretty much correct.

I made a note to build some proper visual enhancements into my visor. I had wonderful scanning tech in my omni-tool, but there was a whole range of possibilities for optical augmentation available to me. In fact, there were a lot of upgrades I could apply to my personal loadout, and it wasn't like I was working under a resource crunch any more.

Just a dire time crunch I didn't know about that had led to this rushed and sloppy rescue mission.

I had a sense of the equipment I was tracking, but that was 'as the crow flies' and I was currently working my way through a maze of storage lockers. I could vault to the roof of any one of these without trouble, but that would defeat the entire purpose of causing a distraction and slinking off. Fortunately it seemed Taylor's control of her bugs was at least as good as I had suspected. I wasn't just following a scattered path, she was spelling out directional arrows with insects as I went.

I started to accelerate down the rows of lockers, slowing only to periodically check my omni-tool's readings. The route seemed a bit convoluted, but from the looks of things Taylor was directing me around active bombs and past devices that had already exploded. It provided a wonderful and horrifying tour of what Bakuda was capable of as well as extensive justification for my passenger's concern about her rampage.

I passed lockers that had turned to glass or melted into a puddle of liquid. In one area the path dipped as a perfectly spherical cut had been taken out of it and the surrounding lockers. Exotic effects, like sprays of corrosive green slime, were mixed with the signs of more conventional explosives, though those were still drastically powerful. Conventional was a relative term since I was sure one of the blast showed indications of a fuel-air mixture explosive and another seemed to have deployed a shower of white phosphorous.

It wasn't the scale of the damage that disturbed me, nor was it the exotic effects that I knew I had no defense against. The horrifying element was the collateral damage. Bakuda's inclination to send a tinker tech bomb at me with her own people in the blast radius was clearly not a new occurrence. I saw the signs of at least a half dozen conscripts who had been caught in the effects of her bombs. A portly man partially reduced to a gooey splatter, a pair of scorched shadows on one of the walls with no trace of the people they came from, or the bodies of people who were 'just' subject to normal explosives.

I found myself leaning even more heavily on my passenger and military experience to force myself forward. I had a feeling this would turn my gourd later, but right now I had a job to do.

My meandering route had taken me deeper into the facility, but I was close enough that I could practically feel the slight separation between my knife and baton. With one final turn I found myself mask to mask with the newest supervillain of Brockton Bay.

From the look of things most certainly she had seen better days.

This wasn't the Khepri that had struck a tall, imposing image as she strode out of the bank and dismembered Aegis without a second glance. Taylor was panting for all the air she could pull through her mask. One of her yellow lenses was cracked and her hair was matted with sweat. Her costume was streaked with dust and soot and from the way she was standing she seemed to be favoring her left side. The baton was in her right hand and she held the knife in a reverse grip in her left. Both weapons were shaking slightly from the force of the death grip she had on them.

She may have been the last Undersider standing, but earning that accomplishment had clearly taken a toll.

She barely reacted upon seeing me, instead struggling to catch her breath. I took a moment to check my omni-tool for readings on any nearby bombs or hostiles. Cinderblocks weren't the best medium to scan through, but from what I could see the immediate area was clear. Taylor had finally reacted when I started manipulating the holographic interface that sheathed my left forearm.

"It looks clear." I offered. "From what I can see there aren't any explosives or ABB in the immediate area."

Taylor nodded at my words, but kept panting. "I know. Been tracking. With bugs."

I raised an eyebrow. "You can do that?"

She nodded, still fighting for air. "Can sense them. Not enough for more than that. Been running." She sucked in a deep breath through her mask. "Running non-stop."

It was a grim prospect and I didn't envy her it. I took a look around this part of the improvised arena. Between the traps and the swarms of conscripts it must have been a nightmare. There was damage from exploded bombs and nearby another one of the jeeps had crashed into a storage unit and totaled itself. It seemed to have veered off course, so my guess was either Brian or Alec had disrupted the driver.

For some reason all the seats of the jeep were pink. I hadn't thought anything of it at the time but the seats in the other jeeps had been red, orange, and blue. I groaned internally at the implications. I know this place was a maze, but it was full of conscripted civilians and was being used to hunt teenagers. Who could think it would be good humor to add a Pac-Man reference to that kind of nightmare?

"Uber and Leet?"

Taylor cringed and nodded. "Hired, signed up, something. I don't know. It's not like one of their normal shows. They've got their shit together for this."

It was weird hearing the normally reserved girl swear, but I'm pretty sure this situation warranted a free pass for as much profanity as you could want. I had some choice phrases of my own being held in reserve.

"Seriously? Uber and Leet?" Honestly, I had pretty much dismissed them as a factor. The idea that either of them were being considered a serious threat, particularly for the Undersiders, was a jarring concept.

Taylor had finally caught her breath and relaxed her hold on her weapons from 'death grip' to merely desperate. "They've been pulling out stuff from all the earlier shows. And it's been working."

"Seriously?" I couldn't keep the skepticism out of my voice.

Taylor nodded. "No failures yet, but they keep switching stuff around. They have some kind of new system for how they manage it." She sounded tired and despondent, and the idea that Uber and Leet had been a factor in driving her to that state was concerning.

To be completely honest, few things were more frightening than the idea of Uber and Leet with their shit together. I hadn't even considered them in my concerns when charging into this mess. I'd figured Bakuda wanted to bulk out her numbers for her debut, maybe tap into their normal audience to help build her rep. I didn't thing they would actually be a problem.

I would say I was surprised by them being a party to something like this, but I didn't know them well enough to really make that call. Their broadcasts had been common enough viewing at college that I had picked up some level of familiarity just by osmosis. Their jobs tended to have a mean spirited edge, but it never seemed like it was designed with a malicious purpose, just that they took the joke way too far. More a lack of moderating influence than a desire to do harm. Even then, people who didn't support what they were doing still tended to tune in to see them fall on their faces.

Make no mistake, the technology Leet could bring to bear was incredible. Compilations of their early jobs were still some of the best examples of what a high level tinker could manage. They just spiraled downward fast. Breakdowns, malfunctions, or catastrophic failures became more and more common. Uber started having to carry the team, and even then he could barely stay ahead of the buggy gear.

I'd heard dozens of theories for the drop off in the quality of Leet's work. Some people thought he was working with some exotic resource that he was running out of and trying to stretch across his later inventions. Some said he was getting complacent, letting quality control go and allowing more bugs making it into final products. There were some thoughts that his power might be failing, but people had such a shoddy understanding of how tinkers worked that there were no clear rulings on that.

Even with my expanded understanding I wasn't sure what the reason was. Tinkers with open specializations usually had some obscure limit on how they worked or what they could build. I hadn't looked into the situation enough to even try to figure things out.

Fortunately there was still no sign of anyone else in the area. A quick check on my drone and motoroid confirmed it was still chaos in the courtyard. Bakuda had tried a couple of potshots, but my drone was able to intercept them. At the moment the professional ABB members were scrambling for new equipment while the conscripts were in chaos. We had at least a few minutes.

"Are you okay?"

The look she shot me suggested she had some choice words about that question. Instead she did her best to answer. "Tired." She took a breath. "Heard you from before. Contract?"

I nodded. "Tattletale set up a deal for healing technology. She rather insistently called it in earlier tonight."

The Celestial Forged missed a connection to the Crafting constellation as Taylor responded while half-collapsing against the wall.

"Healing? You can do that?"

"Yeah, I'm guessing she didn't fill you in on the details either."

Taylor shook her head. "She's not great with that." She glanced towards the sounds of chaos from the courtyard. "Uh, this is a little far to go for a healing contract."

I snorted. "If Tattletale thinks I'm not tagging hazard pay to my bill she's got another thing coming." Taylor didn't seem to find the concept that amusing. "Do you need any healing?"

She sagged slightly at the question. It was obvious she did, but this seemed a better way to handle it than the practice of drive by medical care that I established with Panacea. "Yes. I mean, probably? There's been so much I don't even have a good idea of how bad things are."

"Right." I reached out. "Let me take care of that first."

She looked at my hand with concern. "What do you need to do?"

Right, her last experience with a 'healer' was when Panacea was threatening her with cancer and morbid obesity. I did my best to convey a non-threatening demeanor.

"Contact is enough. It will work through gloves and the suit. Is the shoulder alright?"

She nodded cautiously. "Left one? Right side caught a burst of something when Bakuda was dropping grenades from the courtyard."

I reached out and put my gloved hand on her left shoulder. This was also the first time I'd been able to really examine the costume. The fabric was tightly knit, and given her powers I was willing to bet that it was made of spider silk. I could tell the entire thing had been woven as a single piece rather than stitched together. It was impressive work. I mean, I could do better, but I had powers for that. She had obviously been leveraging her bug control pretty thoroughly.

I put the topic of costume design aside and focused on my nanites. Glowing blue circuitry lines appeared on my arm and spread across the surface of her costume as the tiny machines went to work. Through her lenses I saw Taylor's eyes go wide at the display. It only took a second of feedback to figure out what I was dealing with.

She was a mess.

I was honestly surprised she was still on her feet. It looked like she'd been running on a sprained ankle for a while now. She had numerous bruised ribs and that was on top of the two that were cracked. That should have made breathing agony, but somehow she was still managing. She had picked up enough contusions that her entire body was probably blooming into a giant bruise as we spoke. I was even getting evidence of earlier injuries. Possibly from training, or so I hoped because the only other explanation I could think of would be abuse.

I set the nanites to task. They were designed for much worse than this, and considering they didn't have to rebuild or replace any body parts it was basically a milk run for them. As her injuries started to vanish Taylor practically collapsed into my hand, but thankfully managed to stay upright. It was a relief to hear her breathing normalize.

"Doing alright?" I asked, looking down at her.

"God. I mean, yes, that's a lot better." She rolled her shoulders and took a deep breath. Her posture had become a lot less stiff, like she was coming back to herself somehow.

It occurred to me that at this moment I had an opportunity to bail from this mess. Taylor was safe. I could use my Escape formula to teleport both of us out of here, call back my motoroid, and get the fuck out. Assuming Bakuda kept the knives I would be able to track her down later. With the power I just received a few hours of crafting would let me put together a set of gear that would take her and all her forces to pieces. And all I would have to do is abandon four critically injured teenagers to whatever fate Bakuda had in store for them.

I didn't really like the Undersiders. They were nice enough as people, but I resented what they had come to represent. A lot of that was on me, but they had kind of come to symbolize the mess that came from reliance on my passenger. Being entrenched on the wrong side of the law, facilitating supervillains, and the association with an unknown crime lord all came about because I decided to blindly follow my passenger's lead. But that was ultimately my decision and I didn't feel right leaving a bunch of stupid kids to the horrors of this situation just because I regretted my own actions.

That was of course assuming I could even convince Taylor to bail. My passenger suggested she wouldn't be likely to abandon her friends, so short of knocking her out or suddenly getting a persuasion power from the Celestial Forge it looked like I was down to my original plan.

"What about the others? Do you know what happened to them?" I glanced briefly in the direction where I could sense my stiletto.

Taylor suddenly became agitated and she nodded shallowly. "Bakuda got them. I could only tell so much through my bugs, but it wasn't good."

I tensed as I asked the question I'd been dreading. "They still alive?"

Taylor shrunk into herself slightly. "Yes, but..."

I cut her off before she could go any further. "Good enough. Let's go."

"You don't understand, what she did..." She was becoming increasingly agitated.

I shook my head. "If it's not dead I should be able to handle it."

"What, seriously?" She pushed herself off the wall and approached me.

I shrugged. "It's good healing technology."

"That's not..." She stopped herself, shuddered, then continued. "Look, some of the things that were done, that Bakuda's been threatening, I don't think you can come back from something like that."

I gave her the most compassionate look that I could under the circumstances. We were two people with full face masks trying to communicate nuance to each other, which was just a recipe for frustration.

"It's really, really good healing technology. Trust me, those knives aren't the only thing Tattletale managed to get an insane discount on."

She looked at me uncertainly, then slowly nodded. I'm not sure if she was convinced, or just going along with it. I guess at this point she didn't have that many options. From the sound of things Bakuda had brutally cut her way through the Undersiders one by one. I didn't know what to expect, but the remains of the less lucky conscripts were telling enough.

"You can sense through your bugs, right? Do you have a location?" I had a rough indication of the direction of my stiletto, but that wasn't something I wanted to advertise. Also I had no guarantee that it wasn't sitting on the hip of another ABB gang member.

Taylor nodded. "Tattletale's closest. I know the route, but it isn't safe."

I pulled up a layout of the facility on my omni-tool, marking our location and every bomb I'd been able to detect. Taylor looked at the device hungrily.

"I can probably deal with most of the bombs. A lot of the triggers are using conventional detection methods, motion sensors or the like. Those are easy enough to fool."

She nodded and indicated a location on the map. "Tattletale's there. I mean, what's left of..."

"Right." I cut her off before she could get caught up in things and shifted the map to a zoom of the possible route. "Best to stay low. They should be pretty distracted, but I don't expect that to hold if we start jumping roofs."

"What's going on over there anyway?" She glanced towards the courtyard where the sounds of chaos and occasional impacts echoed forth. "I have a few bugs, but it's all over the place. I haven't been able to pick things out."

I grinned at her, even if my mask obscured it. "I left my robot and drone to keep them occupied."

She went still and tilted her head. "What? When did you get a robot? Robots?"

I made a dismissive gesture. "Friday."

She gave me a flat look through the yellow lenses of her goggles. "But didn't you come in on a motorcycle? And what happened to that armor you were wearing?"

I grinned a little wider. "Same answer to all those questions."

"Excuse me?" I was actually grateful to hear the exasperated tone over the grim, nearly defeated attitude she'd been showing since I ran into her.

"Motorcycle transforms into power armor that can function on its own." I shrugged. "Really all power armor should be able to if you know how to program it right."

She squared off against me. "And you built that on Friday?"

"Well, some of Friday." I responded flippantly.

"How long did it…" She cut herself off and started shaking her head. "What about that healing thing?"

I held up a hand. "Perfectly safe, but I'm going to have to hold off on the details."

"Great." She let out a breath. "What, was that a Saturday project?"

"No, I've been able to heal since before I ran into the Undersiders."

She looked like she wanted to follow up on that topic, but seemed to decide against it. "What about that thing?" She pointed at the glowing mass fields on my forearm.

"Omni-tool. Combination computer, scanner, and micro-fabricator."

"That from Friday too?" She gave me a flat look.

"This afternoon actually. Look, we should probably keep this to what's tactically relevant for the moment."

"Sure, alright." She glanced at the display again. "It can detect Bakuda's bombs?"

"At least some of them. I can't pick them up through solid walls, and some are easier to detect than others. We should be alright, but don't let your guard down."

She tightened her grip on her weapons. "Believe me, I won't."

We started picking our way through the network of storage units. Taylor only seemed half present and I found myself wondering how much information she was getting from her bugs. Fortunately she deemed to enlighten me.

"This place is wrecked." She glanced between the uneven ground and the cracked cinderblocks of the locker walls. "There are fissures through the foundation that extend to the outer walls." She considered things. "At least we have more ways out now. There are collapsed units and damage everywhere." Taylor shook her head. "I'd hate to think what would have happened if Bakuda did that inside the city."

"Sorry, did what?" I asked as we continued walking. She wasn't wrong about the damage. The shattered foundation had a tendency to shift angles between steps. The uneven ground made it impossible to maintain a normal stride.

"You were there right? Whatever she set off in the courtyard that did all this." She gestured around us.

"Oh..." I let the word draw out somewhat awkwardly.

"Oh what?" Her focus seemed to shift back from her power to her present surroundings, though it was less of a transition than I would have expected.

"Yeah, that wasn't Bakuda." I kept walking and ignored the girl glaring at me.

"Excuse me?"

I shrugged. "I figured I'd need something dramatic to put her off balance."

"Dramatic." Her voice was flat. "So you just grabbed a seismic weapon you had lying around?" There was an implication of 'why did you have a seismic weapon on hand and what were you planning to do with it?' that was strongly implied.

"Well, I didn't have it lying around, but when I got the call I figured I should try to get something ready." I knew I was needling her, but her exasperation seemed to keep her from dwelling on the darker aspects of the situation.

Plus it was fun.

"Are you telling me you built a weapon that did all this..." She gestured at the array of splintered concrete surrounding us. "Before you left for this rescue?"

I grinned. "Well, not BEFORE I left."

"What?"

"The bike has autopilot so I was able to get some work done on route."

"You made it in the time it took to ride here?"

"Well, it didn't take the entire time."

It turns out you can indeed see someone gape through a full face mask if the expression is strong enough. As amusing as this was, it did the job of getting her mind off what had happened to her teammates. I needed Taylor on task, so anything that kept her from ruminating on recent experiences was a plus.

As she processed the impossibility of my power I considered the nature of her own abilities.

"You said you could tell the whole facility was damaged?" My question seemed to draw her out of whatever train of thought she was working through.

"Uh, yeah. I can sense the location of any bugs in range. It's about three blocks, give or take. I get information from their senses, but it's hard to figure out."

I nodded. "Any limits on quantity or control?"

She shook her head. "As long as they're in range there's no problem. There's just so few bugs out here that I don't have much to work with. I've mostly been scouting with them, sometimes I've been able to throw people off, but nothing good for combat."

It made sense. The girl had all the traits of a serious master, range, scale, precision, and lethality. She could easily become a prominent cape, though I still wasn't seeing the application to actually saving the world.

That was something I was going to be keeping to myself until I could at least figure out the basics of it. Revealing that kind of detail would either cast my 'thinker power' into question or prove an invitation for every crazy nihilist on the planet. Worst case scenario it could even bring down the Endbringers. I hated having to deal with the entire mess myself, but I didn't see any other option. At least I had been able to pass off a reasonable explanation for the reason I was looking after her.

The Celestial Forge made a connection to a small mote from the Resources and Durability constellation. This one was called Element Analysis and it allowed me, with some work, to identify the elements of any material. More importantly, with some basic resources I could break anything down to its base elements. That would have been a huge boon for my nano assembly, but coupled with Workaholic it was pretty much an invitation to unlimited resources. With two powers I essentially had no logistical limits on what I could make. I would be able to build anything.

I just had to make it out of this situation first.

"Hold up." I stopped Taylor at an intersection. With my scanner we had been able to skirt most of the bombs but unfortunately the area was too saturated to provide a clear route. "There's a bomb." I pointed out an innocuous looking soda can on the ground that concealed one of Bakuda's devices.

"Can you handle that?" She looked apprehensively at the piece of litter.

I smiled at that. "It's using a standard ultrasonic transducer for its trigger. I mean completely standard, like store bought. I think she was throwing together everything she could for this mess."

Taylor nodded and I noticed a bug swoop past the can. "I can feel it. Sort of. Is that what she's using for the bombs?" There was a hopeful edge to her voice.

I shook my head. "Not all of them. This thing would be a lot easier if that was the case. I've been able to pick up more than a dozen different trigger mechanisms. I have no idea what the hell she's doing as far as these designs go."

That wasn't completely true. I had a rough idea, but I didn't want to sidetrack Taylor with tinker theory right now. Bakuda was showing signs of being a chaos tinker. Her work was all over the place and didn't seem that well directed. There were variations in trigger mechanism, area of effect, and even subtle differences in her exotic devices. I'm pretty sure she was just pointing her power in the right direction and seeing what came out.

It wasn't a possibility I enjoyed considering. While it meant she probably would have difficulty repeating certain designs exactly she would be building on previous successes and producing explosives with more variation that anyone would be able to account for. Even the drawback of being a chaos tinker, extensive testing, was completely side stepped by the presence of Oni Lee. Add in the mystery thinker coordinating things and you had a real nightmare scenario.

"So do we go around? Over the roof?"

I shook my head. "No route past, and the rooftop could give us away." I checked my omni-tool. I was specialized as a mechanic, not an operative, but I was still an engineer. Sabotage was basic battlefield practice, and typically against much more advanced systems than this. "I can overload the sensor without damaging the rest of the device."

Taylor watched my omni-tool intently. "How long will that ta..."

Before she finished speaking a guided surge of electricity jumped from my omni-tool to the soda can. There was a crackling sound and a wisp of smoke from the device, but no explosion. I checked my readings again.

"All clear, trigger's offline."

Taylor followed me as I cautiously approached the device. I pulled out my Diagnostic Tools when we reached the can.

"Let's see what we have here."

I worked the scanner while Taylor peered over my shoulder. When I got a look at the internals I let out a dry laugh.

"What?"

I turned to face her. "Bakuda must think she's funny. This is an ultra-high pressure liquid spray, built into a soda can."

"Yeah, that seems like her. What, is it like, poison or acid or something?"

"Doesn't need to be. At this pressure it's basically a water jet cutter. It would slice apart anyone it hits. Because of the pressure involved and the dissolved gas in the fluid even if you survived the attack you'd start to precipitate gas into your blood. Unless they got you in a hyperbolic chamber right away that would finish you off."

I could see her posture turn anxious at the thought. "Is it safe now?"

"The detonator's fried, and there's no remote trigger." I examined more closely. "Hold on."

"Hold on?" Taylor started edging away from me.

I stood up and packed away my scanner. "We need to move."

"What?" She looked at the bomb and seemed ready to bolt.

"It's not going to explode." I assured her. "But it had a link to Bakuda's systems. She'll know it's been knocked out, and that means..."

"She's coming."

"Her, or someone else. Or some grenades. So, we need to move."

I didn't need to tell her twice. As we moved I checked in with Fleet and Survey. Things were still chaos in the courtyard. Fleet was getting plenty of practice with those turbines, and to devastating effect. Since you don't see the thrust coming out of a jet engine so it's easy to imagine the flow as something like a light fan. In reality it's the kind of force that can send vehicles flying. My motoroid's turbines weren't on the level of a commercial airliner, but they were more than enough to badly inconvenience everyone in the area.

It also made landing a hit with a grenade a nightmare. The dust made aiming difficult, enough that my drone was picking as many shots out of the air as Survey could manage. Those that got through the turbines were able to send off course. That had its own consequences, as I was fed footage of the grisly after effects of a misaimed grenade on a group of scattered conscripts. I was able to push through it, but Taylor seemed more seriously impacted after glancing at my display. Rather than break down she seemed to withdraw into herself, which didn't seem like a good sign.

I noted more professional ABB members returning from somewhere holding what looked like rockets. Those would be significantly harder to dance around, but I guess I couldn't count on Bakuda pursuing a losing strategy forever. Hopefully we could collect the Undersiders before she got her act together enough to send someone after us.

"Two people are headed our way from the courtyard." Taylor's voice was borderline robotic and I wondered how much focus she was putting into her insects.

"Conscripts or gang members?"

"No," She swallowed. "It's Uber and Leet."

I never thought I would hear someone say those words with anything close to that level of concern and apprehension. "How long do we have?"

She shook her head. "Not long, they're using something to move over the roofs of the units. They're..." She trailed off and glanced at my map. "They're circling around, between us and Tattletale."

I cursed internally, but I guess our target would have been obvious. I pretty much declared my intention back at the courtyard. I considered trying to take the rooftops as well, but I didn't trust Taylor's footing and I was operating on accelerated physical conditioning and out-of-universe military training. I thought I could handle it, but didn't want to risk it while in the middle of a literal minefield.

We did make decent time, particularly since stealth wasn't the concern it previously was. I was freely frying bombs to open up routes with only a couple of close calls, one that detonated when disabled and one that was camouflaged beyond the ability of my sensors. Taylor was thankfully able to point it out and saved me from possibly blundering into a mystery explosive.

We had nearly reached Tattletale when Uber and Leet decided to make their appearance. By that I mean they literally made an appearance. There was a flash from the roof of one of the storage lockers and a blue backdrop appeared. Music started playing that I vaguely remembered from Mega Man stage selection, then the two least successful criminals in Brockton Bay appeared and started posing in front of it.

Taylor tensed, though from a surface level examination of the pair it was hard to share her apprehension. They looked like someone had covered them in glue and rolled them through a costume shop. No two items they were wearing seemed to come from the same game. I could pick out a few of them, such as the white gloves and Bowser horns from their Mario themed mint heist, but there was too much clutter to sort out anything. There was a mix of armor, martial arts clothing, cartoony weapons, and strange gadgets. I thought their outfits looked a bit disjointed back at the courtyard, but apparently they had added even more equipment in preparation for this.

They actually kept posing before the holographic backdrop as their names appeared beneath them in a blocky eight bit font. They were interrupted by the beeping of what sounded like a watch alarm and Leet made a cutting motion. While Uber finished his pointless showmanship Leet worked some device on his belt causing the music to cut off and the backdrop to collapse into motes of light. Almost immediately there was a crackling sound as a trail of smoke rose from the device, though Leet tucked it away and Uber made an attempt to distract from it.

To his credit few people could distract as well as Uber could.

"So, Apeiron has reunited with his Lady Khepri." He was using what I always thought of as his 'movie trailer' voice, booming and overly dramatic. "Are they bad enough dudes to rescue the Undersiders before time runs out?"

Next to me Taylor brought both weapons up in a defensive formation. "So, how do you want to play this?" She asked in a not-quite whisper.

I looked up at the pair of villains and sighed. "Frankly, I'm considering just blasting them full force and getting on with this."

Taylor shifted her stance and glared at them. "You know, I think I'd actually be alright with that."

The villains stopped posing and each dropped a hand to an item on their belts. "Hey, we can hear you." Leet called down to us.

"I'm well aware." I drew my eyes across them. "So what's the deal? This is a bit gruesome for your usual work."

Uber stood slightly taller as he answered in his over dramatic voice. "Personal request from a long-time fan. How could we refuse?"

"Simply and directly while you still had a shred of decency?" I glared up at them. Operating against an elevated position wasn't doing my military instincts any favors. "I assume you're referring to the ABB's new thinker. Anything you'd like to share?"

"I'm sorry, this is a spoiler-free confrontation." He wagged a finger from his free hand. "Wouldn't want to ruin it for the folks at home."

And that reminded me. These bastards streamed everything. Usually with enough of a delay to not actually give away their crimes, but they wouldn't be running with this level of showmanship if they weren't playing to an audience.

Well, probably an out-of-state audience considering the city and surrounding area was dark, but this would no doubt end up online at some point. Without looking I entered some commands through my omni-tool's haptic interface to scan for broadcasts, which I probably should have done from the moment I knew they would be on site.

"So what do you get out of this?" Somehow I doubted they would be quite as good at keeping secrets as Tattletale. It was a balance between drawing this out to get information and the potential of Bakuda rallying the ABB. Still, I needed to know about this thinker for one critical reason.

My passenger had nothing on them.

There was absolutely no reaction, no fear or confidence or affection. Not even indifference. It was just confusion. Whoever this was the safety net that had carried me was proving useless against them. Tattletale mentioned not being able to get a read, so there was the terrifying prospect of a stranger or counter-thinker power at work. At this point all I had was that Bakuda didn't like her and there was something about providing timing to the ABB. As such I was willing to stretch out this nonsense if there was a hope of filling in that terrifying blank spot.

Huh, I was going into a situation with the level of uncertainty normal people faced all the time. It's kind of incredible how quickly I got used to not having to deal with that.

"What we get is a chance to demonstrate our art, our passion, for a true fan of the craft."

"You see this as art?" I gestured at the damage around us. Okay, more than a little of that was due to my own efforts, but the effects of Bakuda's bombs were still prominently visible.

"Games are art. And in a world of chaos we're keeping that medium burning in the public consciousness."

"You tried to kill me with a jeep." Taylor's tone was a harsh contrast to Uber's showmanship.

"Oh. Hey Uber, she's the one that brought down Pinky. I wondered who managed that." Leet fiddled with some device pulled from his backpack and a series of sound effects played that even I could recognize. Power pill. Pac-Man eats ghost. That sound of the disembodied eyes rushing back to the center of the maze.

Taylor was not amused.

Just then the Celestial Forge connected to a mote from the Quality constellation. It was called Unnatural Skill:Smith. Once again, it functioned exactly as advertised. Absolutely legendary, unnatural skill at craftsmanship. Unlike Smithing this power had both breadth and depth. It covered everything from ancient weapon craft to advanced technology. It even gave the dexterity for high detail work and the knowledge to accomplish borderline supernatural feats.

Given the level of work I was capable of I was starting to wonder when it would actually count as supernatural. Considering my previous level of skill was approaching that realm, and this compounding with everything else it seemed like the distinction was becoming largely academic. I mean, with this I could build things that changed size, make modern technology with medieval smith tools, and work with actual supernatural metals.

Those would be fun to try to transmute, especially the bone steel. Really wasn't looking forward to that.

None of that was going to help me in this mess, so I put it aside and focused on the current standoff. After Leet little performance Taylor had fallen silent and was staring daggers at the villain tinker. I felt I should probably try something.

"Last warning." I reached towards one of my reagent pouches. "Get out of our way and you get to leave without a beating." From the way Taylor tightened her grip on the baton I was guessing she was more in favor of issuing said beating.

"No can do." Uber stepped forward. "We're seeing this through to the final level."

Leet moved next to him and struck a pose. "You aren't dealing with some shovelware knock off. This is classic, remastered, HD re-release Uber and Leet." He raised a finger towards us. "And you're going dow..."

He was cut off by a shotgun blast of concrete fragments. Taylor had smashed her baton along the wall of a storage unit. The enhanced impact had launched a spray of powder mixed with larger chunks of cinderblock at the pair. Uber recovered quickly, but Leet slipped and started to slide off the roof.

I grabbed my reagents and began mixing them as Uber started running in place. The red sneakers he was wearing created a kind of ring shaped blur as he built up speed. I quickly threw down the mixture for Flash. It was still my weakest formula but this time I wasn't pulling my punches. At full power and with it spread over only two targets they would be in for a visit to the burn ward and a lengthy recovery.

As the sparks wheeled out of the mixture Uber leapt into a ridiculously fast somersault while Leet dropped from the roof and grabbed something from his belt. The fire washed off him as familiar music started playing and his body began to flash. He held up a fist sized golden star and glared at me.

There was a pulse around Uber's spinning body that dispersed the flames and launched the burly cape towards us. I stepped forward and braced myself while Taylor dove out of the way.

The spinning dive collided with the effects of my Force Field formula, dispersing it but otherwise accomplishing precisely nothing. Inexplicably he bounced up into the air while still spinning and returned for another attack. The man hit like a truck, but between my reinforcement and low stance I shrugged him off. This time I was able to angle my body in a way that repelled him towards a nearby wall. In a display of acrobatics he kicked off the wall and landed on the ground, immediately building up speed again. That could have either been the equipment or Uber's power at work.

Taylor had climbed to her feet and was raining blows upon Leet's glowing form with her baton. Each of those strikes would have taken out a security door, but they didn't even budge the tinker. Still, he was attempting to put some distance between them as he fumbled with the equipment on his belt.

Uber started bouncing back and forth between the walls of the storage lockers with blinding speed. With each pass he took a shot at me. The blows did no damage but were unbalancing enough to stop me from drawing any more reagents. I was getting ready to queue up a plasma round from my omni-tool when another of those electric watch alarms sounded.

Uber immediately stopped and kicked off the oversized red shoes. He strode forward like nothing had happened, but I could see the shoes begin to twitch and seize on the ground.

"So I wanted to ask..." He dropped into a fighting stance and the wristbands on his arms briefly flared with blue flames. "Autobot or Decepticon?"

The question was so unexpected that without my military memories I probably would have dropped my guard. Instead I raised my omni-tool while reaching for a set of reagents. "What?"

"Your robot transformer. Autobot or Decepticon?" He started circling warily, but was clearly enjoying the banter. I didn't share his amusement.

"You want to talk about the ethical philosophy of drone software in the middle of a fight?" I mean there was devotion to a theme and then there was pure insanity.

"Come on, don't hold out on us." He darted forward and feinted with a jab before pulling back.

"It's neither. Which should have been obvious."

Uber actually seemed taken aback by that. "Seriously? But that doesn't..."

"Dude!" Leet called from where he had managed to pull back from Taylor's assault. "Tripredacus Council!" He had to shout over that stupid Mario Starman music that kept playing.

Uber grinned. "Of course. Third party agent. Should have seen it from the design."

"Obviously." Leet threw down the pokeballs he had pulled from his belt and in a flash of light a trio of creatures the looked like living cartoons appeared between him and Taylor. I recognized Charizard, but had no idea who the other two were. They looked something like salamanders that had crystals randomly attached to their bodies, so I'm guessing they were legendaries from one of the later games I never bothered with. There was another alarm sound and he quickly tossed the star aside. His body stopped flashing as the effect transferred to a patch of ground around the thrown piece of tinker tech. Said patch shortly began glowing a concerning color and emitting a column of smoke.

"Timing." The answer to this hit me like a flash.

Uber stiffened. "What?"

"It's all timing." I mixed two parts ash with a piece of iron and threw the reaction behind me. Black mist flew from the glowing mixture and formed dark clouds above the three hard light monsters. With a thunderous roar a trio of lightning bolts struck them. Their holograms flickered out, leaving fried emitters to fall to the ground. Khepri began to advance on an undefended Leet.

Uber's eyes darted over to his partner, then back to me. "You don't know what you're talking about."

I just grinned. "You haven't fixed the problem with any of your equipment. You just know when it will fail."

"So what?" He brought his wristbands together at his side, then thrust his hands forward with a cry of "Hadouken!"

The plasma ball rolled off my coat without meaningful effect. Clearly this was hitting a nerve and I meant to press it for all it was worth. "You're still the same screw-ups as before. You just have that new thinker propping you up."

In the corner of my eye Leet was messing with the latch of a case that had an octagon made out of red and white triangles on the cover. In his haste the lid flew open spilling small disks across the entire area. I shifted my focus back to Uber. The cape's wristbands were glowing as he slid forward into some kind of spinning uppercut. Luckily I was just able to dodge the strike.

Uber spun out of his failed punch and moved in for a grab, but I managed to counter his lunge with a slight motion of my blocking hand. My micromanipulators combined with the new dexterity from Unnatural Skilll were adding a level of precision to my blocks and punches I never would have imagined. I nearly turned the swing against him, but Uber was stronger than me and his power improved his fighting to near perfection once he had focused on a technique.

"The gear works. Doesn't matter if it's for a minute or an hour. It's just like managing battery life." He swung in with a rapid series of blows that I managed to deflect with minimal movements from a tight guard.

"You're ignoring the issue. Trading one problem for another. It's just going to blow up in your face again." Leet seemed to react to that, but I kept my focus on Uber. My combat training was carrying me through the fight by supplementing and mostly overriding my limited boxing experience. I did have to constantly remind myself not to activate my omni-tool's melee contingency. That thing could range from 'very lethal' to 'spectacularly lethal'.

"Gamers are used to working against the clock. It's a welcome challenge. We're going to show the world what Uber and Leet can do at the top of their game!"

He was gaining the upper hand. Uber was stronger, had more experience fighting capes, and was running a power that quickly brought his techniques to perfection. Despite my best efforts he managed to slip past my guard and land a grip on my shoulders.

For some reason the grip was stronger than it should have been, seemingly due to the effect of some kind of attractive force from his belt. And the red briefs he was wearing. The full implications didn't hit me until Uber had already flipped me upside down and launched into a spinning pile driver.

The ground lurched away as we rocketed into the air. I felt my stomach try to drop out of my throat and had to fight off intense dizziness as I stared at the spinning ground from a terrifying height. It was the kind of situation that made you quickly reevaluate your previously agreed level of restraint.

Closing distance to a tinker can seem like a good idea. Closing distance to a combat engineer is much less of a good idea. Closing distance to a combat engineer who is faced with a head first spinning body slam and thus no longer that concerned about lethal force is a down right terrible idea.

I triggered the melee contingency on my omni-tool and sent a burst of high energy plasma, fabricated from my energy and omni-gel reserves, directly at Uber. To my surprise it was accompanied by four more jets of plasma, because I can't turn my powers off and apparently Workaholic counts omni-tool fabrication as part of that power. I only had a fraction of a second to make sure it wasn't a single burst twenty five times the size. That would have reduced Uber to the consistency of an overcooked pork chop.

I doubt he was grateful for that consideration from the way he screamed and launched me away from him. As we were at the peak of a thirty foot jump I slammed down onto the edge of one of the storage units before dropping to the ground. It wasn't a pleasant sensation, but aside from being a bit jarring and disorienting I was fine.

The same couldn't be said for Uber who was nursing singed flesh and peeling off ruined pieces of equipment. The Celestial Forge missed a connection to the Time constellation as we squared off again.

"So that's it? All this madness for the sake of your egos? You're trying to convince people you haven't been churning out crap all these years?"

"Fuck you." The harshness of Leet's voice surprised me. Apparently that cut closer to the bone than I imagined. A quick glance showed things weren't going that well for Taylor. The disks Leet had scattered on the ground were some kind of fabricators, pulling in material from the broken concrete surface into animated constructs. It created the effect of a field of zombies clawing their way out of the earth. The sheer volume of them had put Taylor on the defensive. She'd finally brought my knife into play, but there were two zombies waiting for every one she dropped.

"Easy Leet." Uber placated. "Don't break character."

I wasn't about to let things stand at that. "No, let's hear it. If you're stepping up from petty theft to terrorism I want to know the reason."

"Petty!" Leet screeched. "I'll show you petty!" He fumbled with his backpack and produced a large gun with a thick glowing cylinder for a barrel and a series of claw like protrusions at the front.

Uber smirked at me. "I'd say not to let him bait you, but this is going to be good."

The barrel of the gun glowed orange as he adjusted something and a piece of debris jumped up to float in front of it. Leet angled the chunk of concrete with seemingly no effort and launched it towards me at an insane speed.

My reinforcement was more than enough to take the hit but there were Newtonian effects that I couldn't compensate for. More pieces of debris started flying towards me in a disorienting stream. It didn't help that Uber was launching into some kind of spinning lariat at the same time. Together it would have been an impressively coordinated attack if not for the fact that Leet immediately began choking on a cloud of insects and another of those watch alarms started to sound from Uber.

I was very grateful he decided to wear the wrestling briefs over his costume. You would think that was a given, but there were horror stories about some of their more spectacular failures.

Apparently Taylor had been able to coordinate the insects without the slightest pause in her zombie slicing. She moved through them like a maelstrom, the speed enhancement of the wind runes on full display. The knife seemed to be flying out of her hand as she fought. Even the seemingly endless supply of fabricated zombies was having a hard time keeping up with her.

If she wanted to distance herself from what happened to Aegis this was a crap way to do it. Leet was watching her nervously while checking some reading on the case that had held the zombie disks.

"Fuck it." He called over the melee while swatting away more bugs. "Uber, time to end this."

The burly cape grinned at me. "You don't know how long it's been since we've been able to use this."

"Think it'll have any more luck than your last nonsense?" They were frustrating, but I still didn't want them dead. An Overload burst from my omni-tool should put them down without any seriously lethal damage. I selected the blast while Uber took a guard position with his arms and raised his front knee.

"Don't underestimate us." There was a flash in front of him as he screamed "Shun Goku Satsu!"

The cape blurred as he surged forward. The burst of electricity from my omni-tool passed harmlessly through his shadowy form. Then he was upon me and everything went dark.

I can't explain the experience that followed without resorting to levels of profanity that would make a longshoreman faint. On a basic level I was suspended in a void as blows rained upon me, but that was not even scratching the surface of how bad the situation actually was. Each hit sent a tearing sensation right through the core of my being. My durability was still there, but did nothing for the pain and the damage still piled up. The pain was especially bad. It was like this was designed to be particularly torturous.

The blows weren't really blows, it was more like someone was reaching into my body and tearing things out of alignment. I tasted blood in my mouth and felt the splintering of bones. Muscles tore and agony rippled through my entire body.

When the world faded back I was lying on the ground and Uber was standing facing away from me with a large Asian character glowing on his back. To my even greater annoyance he launched into a grandiose speech.

"Raging Demon. Attacks the targets soul with the karmic weight of their sins."

"Fuck your soul" I choked out as I pulled myself to my feet. "That was a dressed up concentrated spatial disruption."

"I'm impressed you're still conscious." He played it off like a joke, but there was some real concern in his expression. "Few men can stand before that kind of power."

"It was certainly an inconvenience."

He frowned. "Those injuries..."

"Are nothing." I focused on my nanites and blue lines spread across my costume. I could feel the damage from the stupid attack vanish as they rebuilt my body. In the end the only sign of the attack was a series of tears across my costume.

Damn it, Garment was going to be furious with me.

Uber was gaping at me and Leet had stopped fiddling with a copy of Link's sword to join him. I turned to Taylor, who had been able to whittle the zombie hoard down to a pack defending the villain tinker.

"Khepri, how are you managing?"

She smashed a zombie's chest with her baton, causing it to collapse into a pile of the concrete it was formed from. Without looking she took the head of another with her blade. "Not enough bugs around here." She was playing things casual, but I could tell the constant combat was wearing on her endurance. I reached for one of my more obscure formulas.

"Oh, right. I meant to give this to you earlier. Either it'll solve that bug supply problem, or maim Uber and Leet within an inch of their lives."

"So win-win?"

I had no idea if this was going to work. If Taylor could interface with it then with her level of control it should let her protect herself for the rest of this nightmare. If not it was still one of my better attack formulas and would take Uber and Leet out of the fight barring anything short of additional invincibility gadgets.

Why did those have to be so common in videogames?

I mixed the two drams of water and one of vinegar. The reagents for my Sting formula. Because Evermore Alchemy was all over the place of course it had a way to conjure insects. I tossed down the mixture and it floated through the air before forming into a facsimile of a wasp's nest. Then the entire mass exploded into a swarm of insects that would put Japanese hornets to shame.

In normal circumstances they would blaze towards the target of the formula and tear into them, expending themselves after a single powerful sting. Instead the entire cloud held position before flowing over to Khepri. She seemed contemplative as she held them in a tight orbit around herself, then sent a single insect towards an approaching zombie.

It blasted through the creatures head like a gunshot before vanishing. Her posture shifted to an amused stance as the swarm dispersed, taking out the remaining zombies and tearing into Leet's equipment.

Uber moved to help him but this time didn't have his spatial nonsense defending him. My overload blast caught him and he collapsed into a flailing mess, various pieces of equipment sparking and twitching. I moved over and secured the barely conscious cape in a headlock.

"So I guess we can call this. Are you going to admit defeat or should the beating continue?"

Leet looked to me over the remains of his minions and twitching form of his teammate. A particular explosion from the direction of the courtyard seemed to catch his attention. He brought a finger to an earpiece and smirked at me.

"You think you've won? We just accomplished everything we set out to do."

I glanced down at my omni-tool and saw the reason for his smug demeanor.

"What's he talking about?" Taylor was drawing the ring of alchemical insects closer, causing Leet to tense, though the tinker didn't back down. Instead he turned to her and gloated.

"What I mean is that Bakuda has just..."

"She's taken out my drone. Rocket strike."

The tinker glared at me but continued. "That's right. Now that the cover's gone your robot will be next, then you'll have the whole of the ABB hunting you down."

I sighed. "I can't believe you were stalling us to take out my drone."

His smirk grew a cruel edge. "Didn't see that coming? What, didn't plan on loosing that in the field? All that wasted time and effort suddenly up in smoke. Thought you were the hot shot new tinker, huh? How does it feel to lose?"

The Vehicles constellation passed by without a connection. "You don't understand. I can't believe that was the point of all this. Just to take out a drone."

Leet was becoming agitated. "You can pretend it doesn't matter all you want, but your still down an asset. You've still lost all the time and effort it took to build it."

"What, this effort?"

I raised my omni-tool and began fabrication of a new drone. The capacitors had long since recovered from the last deployment. Oh, and with my Workaholic power insisting on affecting everything I did the single fabrication expanded to five drones. They appeared arranged in a pentagon formation behind me.

"Did you just make those? All of those?" His eyes were jumping between the rapidly spinning bugs and the array of glowing drones.

"What, you thought I was teleporting them in? Or using some kind of spatial pocket? Please."

"Leet…" Uber gurgled from beneath my hold. "Think it's time…" He struggled for breath against my arm. "For a reset."

The tinker nodded apprehensively. His hand dropped to a thick blue bracer. Suddenly his body vanished into a thin beam of light that launched into the sky. Beneath my grip Uber dissolved into a cloud of expanding spheres.

"The hell?" The insects she was controlling seemed to react more than Taylor did.

"Mega Man reference, I think. Covering some teleport effect." Given the rest of what had been displayed teleportation wasn't beyond the pale. I climbed to my feet as Taylor sheathed her blade.

Huh. That was the first time she had put it away since I had found her. It seemed like a positive thing.

I keyed some commands to Survey. My omni-tool wasn't really designed to command more than one drone, but between the A.I. coordination and the cheating nature of Workaholic it could be managed. Taylor watched as the cluster of glowing constructs rose into the sky and sped towards the courtyard.

Oh, they were going to ruin someone's day.

"Alright, let's get Tattletale before any other idiots show up."

Taylor nodded to me and we pushed past the aftermath of the fight towards the next member of the Undersiders, and hopefully, finally, some answers.

Jumpchain abilities this chapter:

Workaholic (Sonic The Hedgehog) 300:

Sometimes you wonder how some geniuses are able to build entire armadas within days or weeks of their last defeat. You become a walking factory of production. Building in masse is something that comes without issue to you. That one bot that took a week to build? Now that one bot is now 5. Or roughly 3x the size it was before. How do you even have the resources to build so much you say? The hell if I know.

Element Analysis (Bomberman 64: The Second Attack) 100:

With a little elbow grease, you can easily identify the elemental composition of ANY material and with the right resources, break it down to its base elements for further use.

Unnatural Skill:Smith (Percy Jackson) 200:

Whether from your heritage or just being that good you've got one particular mundane skill that your feats with border on supernatural. Whether you're a smith on the level of the Cyclopses, a near prescient tactician or a swordsman who is ny unstoppable with a blade your feats will be legendary. You are on a level within your skill such that only other beings of legend can hope to match you. This may be taken multiple times. You may not choose magic but you may choose a particular application of magic if you have it already (so curses, enchanting might work, more specific gets a bigger boost).