Spark, Smoke

With my leg still healing and no school, I didn't have much I had to do while I waited for the doctor's appointment. But since I discovered that my powers didn't stop me from giving the powers I made to other people, I barely slept.

I was still careful about what I researched, mainly sticking to the PHO Brockton bay threads to learn more about the cape scene rather than any deliberate searching, but I probably spent more time simply lost in my thoughts, using Mindscape to work out what I needed.

If I thought about it in gang terms, it was actually pretty simple. I wanted to start a gang, and take territory until I controlled all of Brockton Bay. Apart from the boundaries, where you get gang fights, Empire territory was relatively safe, if you were white. It wasn't the best. The empire would shake people down for protection money, they still sold drugs and stuff, and even if you ignored the empire, the other gangs got through every now and again.

I'd be like that, but better, since I wasn't a racist piece of shit. Maybe I'd be like Marquis. I could remember moving here with dad because the house used to be in Marquis territory and that was better than our old place, even if that place was bigger.

Though I'd have to find out why. I was six and dad didn't tell me much. I'm fairly sure I wouldn't remember without my super-powered memory.

I mean, I wouldn't actually be starting a gang, I'd probably be more like New Wave. I know they basically held territory downtown, where they patrolled, and that was pretty safe.

I'd need more people, but the more charges I got, the easier it would be to pull off.

As my latest one took form and an even twelve sat in my power I felt more confident than ever.

The two biggest gangs in the Bay, if you went by territory were the ABB and the Empire. The ABB basically worked because of Lung. They had a lot of normal gangsters who did the day-to-day stuff, but if any capes attacked they risked Lung coming out there and just stomping his way through the fight. There wasn't anything that anyone could do about it. Lung had fought off the entire protectorate. Oni Lee helped a bit since he could move pretty quickly, but the ABB basically just relied on Lung to keep the other gangs away.

It would take me a long time to match Lung. even if I didn't spend any charges and kept getting these bursts of five or six charges once a week or so, I'd need months to gain enough power to pull something like that off.

And then I'd need to build up a reputation scary enough to keep people from attacking. There were apparently a lot of gang fights when Lung first showed up here.

The other gang was probably a better model for me anyways. The E88 had a ton of capes, who were individually weaker but they could be in more places at once. Instead of basically being a threat of punishment for encroaching on their territory, the E88 had enough capes that normal people causing trouble were basically guaranteed a cape fight. They could effectively police their territory with their roving thugs being able to call in cape support fairly quickly.

But the real big deal was Othalla.

Othalla was a healer. Well, she could give people regeneration, but same thing. It meant that their capes were down for a lot less time than they would be otherwise. If they didn't have Othalla, all it would take would be a few broken bones for their numbers to drop far enough that Lung could probably stroll in there and take them all on.

The other thing was movers. Squealer was basically the only reason the merchants had any territory since it meant that she and Skidmark could get to a fight faster than any other team really.

Hell, Velocity was the one who broke up most of the gang fights in the city. So I'm pretty sure he's the only reason why anyone respects the protectorate in this city.

I'd have to do proper research, but mover and healing powers I could give to people were probably a good idea anyway.

Maybe like… a portal power or something. That sounded cool.

Even with my reserve of eight charges, I had four charges that I could use, almost five I noted, as the spark continued to grow quickly.

Healing was probably more useful. I was going to see the doctor tomorrow, and I'd probably be able to take this bloody cast off then. If I was careful I'd be able to heal my leg after that and start getting into shape properly.

Actually, my doctor worked and Brockton General, and I know Panacea went there…

If I wanted healing powers, I should probably look at one of the best healing powers there was first.

Yes. Given how inconsistently I seemed to get charges in the first place, using what charges I had as effectively as possible was important.

I hadn't looked up Panacea's schedule recently, but even if she wasn't there at that exact time, I knew that if I did this power right, I could figure out some other way to get in range.

I considered my options for a while. Regardless of what powers I make in the future, this power was going to be important. I'd be using it to learn how powers worked, and how to use my powers effectively. I could afford to spend a few more charges on it.

I eventually settled on three powers, which would use a total of four charges between them.

The first was more general. Mark was a power that extended the range of my other powers. It let me 'mark' a thing and use that thing as the origin point for any of my other powers, including Projector. I only could only mark one thing at a time, but it would last until I dispelled it, and because it was so simple, I'd managed to squeeze out enough range that I could have a mark on the other side of the city without issue.

I could make one at Brockton General and just leave it there so that I could catch Panacea when she came there.

Still, I hadn't addressed actually studying her power.

Splitting it in two turned out to work the best. The first power, with one charge, was Power Scanner, which as the lame name implied, allowed me to scan the powers of any parahuman I applied it to.

I could then analyse it with Power Lab. Power Lab was my first level two power, Power Lab allowed me to study the information I got from Power scanner, seeing the parts the power was made of and how they connected to each other.

I'd split it into two parts because the analysis required two levels all by itself anyways, and adding the scanning into it pushed it into a low level three. Splitting it off and bulking out Power Lab with the ability to compare two powers made the most of that level two charge while allowing me to get another very important feature into Power Scanner.

I'd read a few theories that Tinker powers were like instruction manuals, which gave their wielders more information. I wasn't sure how accurate that was, but I figured that powers had to store some information. Like the location of Mouse Protector's marks would probably have to be stored by her power somehow. Or the information thinkers got was from their power, right?

So I figured that I needed to be able to pull information from the power too.

I'd been forced to set a speed cap of sorts on it to get it to fit in one charge, limiting me to pulling information as I focused on it. As it stood, when I scanned the power I'd have some general terms of the information the power provided, I'd be able to focus on the direction it was pulling the information from and be able to see that information. I'd even be able to attempt to get information from other parts of the power. Power lab should help me figure out how the information was structured and let me find out how to get related knowledge.

Since neither power actually had any information storage, relying on the perfect recall provided by Mindscape to hold that information, I could only copy information as fast as I could comprehend it. Which wouldn't be too fast now, but I had been considering mental acceleration for quite some time. Turning the powers on myself, I'd already confirmed that the powers stacked with my multi-tasking, which let me process things ten times faster than it would be without it.

The loss of four charges still pained me though, even if I had gone back up to ten in the process.

I had a feeling Panacea's power was going to be expensive and I didn't want to spend charges on other things right now.

But at the same time…

Once I had scanned Panacea's power, I'd have that information forever. I'd be able to wait as long as I needed to for the charges to replicate it or make my own version. It wasn't like I hadn't already planned to wait until I was in shape before I went out.

Since it had started, it's been gaining charges fairly often. The sparks weren't consistent in how quickly they grew, but at this point, it was safe to say I'd get more.

Spending a few more charges on powers I'd probably make anyways was worth it, wasn't it?

I lay in bed struggling with the decision.

Screw it, the x-ray was tomorrow, and checking Panacea's schedule wouldn't put me on any watch lists.

If it seemed possible to catch her tomorrow, I'll hold off on spending the charges. I could wait one day to make the decision. If not, then I'll probably have to wait a while to catch Panacea, and I'll probably just make up the loss in the meantime.

I floated my laptop over to me and started looking up Panacea's schedule.

Maybe? She did go to Brockton general on Mondays, but her schedule was noted to change when she was out of school, so maybe.

That said, my plan of catching her at the entrance was apparently not the best idea. There had been a mob incident a few months ago, and since then, Glory Girl has taken to flying her in from the roof. I'd have to somehow target the roof access in order to catch her.

Could I even do that?

Reading more of the thread on her, I started to develop a plan.

She did a lot of work on cancer patients, and I knew from my last x-ray that the oncology department was pretty close by. I'd be able to catch her then.

But as I considered that I realised that I had a problem. Projector's range was only about ten yards, and I hadn't considered how long it would take me to scan her power with the new limitations. I'd probably have a few seconds, fifteen max in order to get a good look at her power.

That… that wouldn't be enough. Even with ten lanes all going at it.

My first thought had been to use Projector to transfer the mark onto Panacea, which was probably a decent idea, but neither Mark nor Projector gave feedback outside of successful activation. That didn't give me nearly enough information to mark her.

My second thought was to try and follow her with the mark, projecting sections and remarking parts that she appeared in until she stopped somewhere.

That wouldn't work I had to mark something and without any feedback from Projector or Mark, I couldn't just mark nothing.

I could spend a charge, Being able to see from my projector would be pretty cool…

Though I'm not sure.

I thought about it for a while, considering different options before something occurred to me.

I'd initially thought of setting Mark to specify a location, before deciding that it would be more useful to be able to mark something that was moving. I had thought that the charge that freed up was because I'd limited the power. But what if I'd made the power simpler instead.

A location was still a thing, after all.

I turned my power analysis powers on my own power and started analysing.

Analysing it this way was strange, especially as I focused on it to dive deeper into the details. The power apparently wasn't as simple as I thought, as it had a fairly complicated section that would parse whatever 'thing' it was that I was targeting based on my mental image of it.

It then placed some sort of power-based node on that thing, which would follow that thing somehow. I couldn't really understand what I was seeing at that level of detail and would link back to me, allowing me to send my powers through the link.

But as I considered what I'd learned I noted that nothing of what I'd learned said that I couldn't mark locations. It actually seemed that the targeting information was a lot looser than I thought.

I might actually have enough information to mark Panacea directly. I needed to test it though. But how.

Looking around the room, I realised that it was already almost dinner time. Jenny was still out, so mom would probably be bringing it up. If I could mark her, then I knew it would work.

I started off small. Using my Projector to mark my door. Just to check, I projected a small light in front of it.

When it didn't work I paused. The mark took.

After listening again to make sure no one was upstairs, made a brighter light. I shut it off immediately, but the light shining in from under the door was enough to confirm that I had succeeded.

It seemed that for some reason, the power thought that the… front of the door was the front of the door.

No that made sense. I don't know why I thought it didn't.

Summoning another light behind the door, I confirmed I did indeed successfully mark the thing.

Realising that I didn't actually know all that much about the marking effect, I decided to experiment a little.

I started simply, by making the door glow. The door promptly lit up. But something about it seemed interesting.

The door lit up. Not a point on the door.

I suppose it made sense, the mark wasn't a real thing, it was pretty much the entire object.

But then I thought about it.

Could I mark the house? Mom was definitely within ten yards of the house.

Shrugging I gave it a try.

I paused, realising I couldn't make the house glow if this worked. The mark power didn't do anything if it failed, the mark just failed. I hadn't really thought of what happened when it failed.

Umm… what do I do?

I just needed some way of telling if the mark succeeded.

Without risking outing myself as a cape.

I really should have put some way of figuring out if something has changed in my power.

If something had changed in my power.

I winced at my own stupidity, and dispelled the mark, before setting one of my lanes to analyse my mark power.

I got a sense of the mark part of the power, before trying to mark the door.

I watched as the mark appeared as a part of the power, and I got the sense that the power was somehow in two separate places at once. I didn't really get how that worked.

Still, now that I knew what the mark looked like on the door, I tried to mark the house… and watched as the mark disappeared.

Well, that was a confirmation. I couldn't mark the whole house. I'd have to experiment more with that when I got the chance.

Still, I did want to see if I could mark something just with the mark and projector, and now I had better tools.

So, I tried again. After marking my door, I tried marking the railing, but that failed. Though I'm not sure if that's like the house.

Well, Jen's door is across from mine, and I can mark my door, so I should be able to mark that if marking through Projector works.

So, I tried to mark Jen's door.

That did successfully mark.

I tried to figure out how to get the mark to mom, I couldn't mark the railings, and the Projector for Jen's door wouldn't reach the kitchen…

Or would it? I called up a mental image of he house, and well, our rooms were above the kitchen.

No guarantee that mom's in the kitchen…

Meh, it's worth a try.

I attempted to mark her, but it didn't work.

Well, maybe she wasn't there. Umm… There's a box of cereal that's on the fridge that should be in range. That works.

Okay, let me try the fridge? That was a successful mark!

It took a few more missteps, but I did manage to mark mom.

I had figured out that, for some reason, the entire object had to fit inside the projector area for the mark to work. That's what seemed to be the issue.

So if I made a larger projector I could mark the house?

I'd have to think about it.