Crazy

"We've tested Panacea's counteragent on thirty PRT agents, and that girl you brought in, and other than causing slight genital itching, and a temporary blue tinge to the skin it works perfectly as a vaccine," Director Tagg said.

I probably shouldn't have encouraged Panacea to add the itch. The blue color would help differentiate the people who were vaccinated from the others, and it would fade in a few days.

Piggot had been deposed for political reasons I wasn't privy to, and I couldn't get enough from the emotions of the normals to get a good read on the situation. The parahumans hadn't been informed either.

"Dragon is deploying as many of her suits and as many craft as she can spare, and we're putting every flying cape we have in play."

That was a large number of heroes actually; this was being treated as an S-Class threat and the Truce was being enforced. All of the capes who agreed to come would receive immunizations beforehand.

"You've got an army of flying capes," I said. "And I still technically have a kill order. Shouldn't I be out looking for Bonesaw?"

"I can see why you'd be concerned; the Protectorate has been informed that you are not to be interfered with," Tagg said. "Especially considering your cooperation with defending PRT headquarters. You saved lives there."

"By killing three thousand of my neighbors," I said. "You guys really should have destroyed the virus, or at least had Panacea make a counteragent right away."

At least I'd gained four levels of Bone Garden, taking me to level nine. It wasn't a line of sight ability, and couldn't be targeted through the eyes, but I could use the eyes to determine a place to set the effect within nine hundred feet of me. The whole effect seemed to be a circle nine hundred feet in diameter by one hundred feet tall.

Experimentation had shown that I could turn the circle on its side, creating a line one hundred feet wide and nine hundred feet high.

I only had about sixty feet before the curve rose above human height, and at the ends of that you got weird effects like zombies with bones growing out of their scalp and then running off.

It was decent in a city street, and it didn't murder a lot of innocent people, but it was still a lot less than what I was used to.

I'd gained four levels of Blade Storm, taking me to level 13. I could do 650 points to everyone in a 325-foot radius, and I could choose who to affect in that radius if I could perceive them.

Six levels of Far Strike had given me 180 hit point strikes. It was less effective than the other powers, but it was invisible and useful.

I'd gained another Arcane Eye too, bringing me to a total of eight.

"We weren't aware that she could," Tagg said. "It was believed she was only a healer."

"I've got an…insight into parahumans. I got it from Jack," I said.

He winced.

"The Truce will be enforced," he said. "Even villains can see that if this virus reaches their cities, the results will be catastrophic."

"Anyway, you won't need that many flying capes," I said. "I've designed a simple bomb designed to spread biotoxins into a wide area."

"You're a tinker now?" he said flatly.

"I've picked up a few tricks," I said. "Anyway, by using mostly glass for the components, along with a few simple household items that I…uh…scavenged from the houses of some dead Na…uh…citizens, I've managed to create five hundred bombs with which to cover the city."

He stared at me.

"Panacea used the biomass from the zombies I killed to make the countervirus, and we've already got half the bombs loaded."

"You can build bioterror weapons," he said flatly.

"Well, Mannequin had some designs for delivering pesticides for off world farming," I said. "And I had some bomb designs from…a bomb tinker I picked up."

"Bakuda," he said.

"Not Bakuda," I said hurriedly. "I know nothing about that. I picked up a minor bomb tinker along the way."

"Are you sure they will work?"

"I had the designs looked over by Armsmaster and Dragon," I said. "As long as I keep them over a hundred feet over the surface, there will be maximum dispersal and nobody will lose their vision from the glass fragments."

"Did you have to use glass?" he asked.

"I've got glass powers," I said. "Which means that I don't have to use a tinker's lab to produce most of the bombs, except for the parts that can't use glass. It speeds up the production by five days."

"And who will distribute these bombs?" Tagg asked.

"I can cover the entire city in about ten minutes," I said. "But Dragon will be supervising, and the protectorate heroes will be allowed to do some of the work near the PRT base."

He frowned, then checked his pad.

"There's normally a much more in-depth review process for this kind of work," he said. "But this is an emergency. The government is really close to launching a strike on the city."

"Do you think I could sell the government back its own F-16s?" I asked.

He pinched the bridge of his nose.

"You think you could steal government fighter planes," he said. "You don't think they'd be a little large for your inventory?"

I frowned.

I might have to start increasing my strength, or maybe find other capes with extradimensional storage spaces.

"How much does an F-16 weight?" I asked.

"They'd be more likely to use F-22s or F-35s," he said, "to support Stealth bombers. Some of those have tinkertech added to make them extra stealthy and difficult to deal with."

"So, they'd be even more valuable." I said.

"You aren't going to war with the United States government," he said. "Because we're going to make sure that they don't have to destroy this city to save everyone else."

I nodded.

"I don't really have a place to put a bunch of airplanes anyway. Where would I sell them? E-bay? Craigslist?"

"Let's go over exactly what you are going to do," he said. "And what you are going to do if Bonesaw decides to interfere with the destruction of the zombies?"

"You're still bringing in the big guns?" I asked.

"The vaccine won't repair the remaining infected," he said. "And those will likely keep killing, even if they can't infect someone else. The zombies remaining have stopped coming out in groups; they're learning."

I nodded.

Doing a house to house extermination would be annoying, and it likely wouldn't get me that much stronger either.

"Well, it'll be good to meet everyone and learn their powers," I said.

His look was disturbed, and so were his emotions.

"I wouldn't take advantage of a truce," I said. "But I might trade someone a healing for a voluntary collection."

Clockblocker had already approached me about his father, and I'd already agreed. His father had been moved off site, but it wouldn't take a lot for him to get me the location.

If he'd been at the general hospital, I'd have already healed him when I was clearing people out before the attack by the Slaughterhouse.

I think he also felt guilty about his role in attempting to assassinate me.

"Well, I need to get back to finishing the bombs," I said. "It won't take more than a few more hours."

I blinked two floors down to the area that had been designated as my lab, but I could still hear Tagg yelling at Armsmaster through the wall for not informing him about my bomb scheme before the meeting.

It was almost ten minutes before Armsmaster stepped into the room.

"It looks like the work is going well," he said.

"What do you think the odds are that someone takes a shot at me tomorrow?" I asked.

"Slim," he said. "It'd be a violation of the Truce. You aren't worried, though."

"Only if they interfere with the distribution," I said. "It's not going to reach everyone."

There were people living in basements that wouldn't be infected.

"We can reach those who are not affected," he said. "But we'd never be able to vaccinate two hundred thousand people, not when some of them are turning."

I nodded.

The other point of me teleporting all over the city in a particular pattern was that it would give me the coverage I needed to find Bonesaw, assuming she was still in the city at all.

While my anger over Emma's death had faded somewhat, I needed her power to heal my Dad.

"I need to get back to work," I said. "If I'm going to finish this."

*********

"That's it, then," I said.

I had four tons of bombs in my inventory, each designed to spread the virus in the maximum range before it hit the bottom.

"The Truce is in full effect," Legend was saying.

All of the capes now had a blue tint to their faces, except for those who had been deemed likely to be immune like Alexandria or some of the Case 53s.

"Any attempt to capitalize on a Kill Order against anyone participating in this operation will be considered a violation of the Truce and will be treated as such," he said.

An out of towner raised his hand.

"Why are we killing these people when you have a cape able to detransform them here in the Bay?"

"The transformation tends to wipe their brains clean," Legend said. "Even if Panacea was able to work on brains, the information in those brains would have been wiped away, leaving them in a vegetative state."

Also, Panacea had told me that she couldn't return them to their former faces without knowing what those looked like. Most of the zombies had no identifying clothing. Apparently, they tended to rip out of them during the transformation. Even things like gender were sometimes not clear.

"These things are dangerous," Legend said. "They have no mercy. They have the mind of an Endbringer in the body of a low-level brute."

He'd gone over the abilities of the various types of zombies that had been seen in the Bay.

"Are any of them likely to have additional Parahuman powers because they were former parahumans?"

"That's unknown," Legend said. He glanced at me. "The Bay doesn't have many remaining capes, and most of them are accounted for. Of the ones that are left, the most dangerous are Bonesaw and Hatchetface, who are unlikely to be affected, and Lung, who has regeneration and may be immune. Do not under any circumstances approach any of these Capes without coordinated backup."

"There's the Merchants," I said. "And anybody who may have triggered in all the chaos."

He looked at me and shrugged. "We won't know until we go in."

We were standing outside of town, besides thirty-foot-tall sections of prefabricated walls. Every country had these in preparation for a Simurgh attack. They were modular, easily moved, and cheap enough that you could enclose a reasonably large city in a short amount of time.

They had to be touch enough to withstand ramming attacks from cars, deep enough to discourage tunneling, and high and slick enough to keep people from trying to climb.

There were weapons and soldiers posted along every ten-foot section of wall.

Simurgh containment guards were rotated every couple of months due to the stress of the job. Hopefully these guards wouldn't be here that long.

Legend nodded to me.

"You've been given a go," he said after listening to his earpiece.

Nodding, I appeared at the first grid location, and I dropped on of the bombs. It began falling, and by the time it shattered, delivering its payload, I was already to the next spot.

In rapid succession, I jumped from one place to the next, and behind me the bombs went off in succession.

I was almost done, with only the Trainyard left when I detected…something. It felt like parahumans, but the effect was garbled to Intuitive Empathy.

Dropping the last of my bombs, I blinked to a spot over the trainyard.

The world exploded around me as I felt a blast of pure cold hitting me. I fell, surrounded by ice that was growing thicker by the moment.

-20 HP!

+1% COLD RESISTANCE!

I blinked to the opposite side of the trainyard, and I stared down at the monsters down below me.

A large machine was sitting below me; it looked like someone had taken a monster truck with gigantic wheels and they'd added the barrel of a cannon to it.

Squealer was sitting in the driver's seat, but she no longer looked human. She looked like a weird amalgamation of zombie and human, and she was staring up at me with a baleful light in her eyes.

Had the drugs she usually steeped her body in slowed the progression of the virus, or had she used tinkertech outside of her vehicle specialization?

No…if it had been drugs the other merchants would have been partially immune as well, and I was facing a crowd of a hundred zombies.

It looked like Skidmark had been eaten before he could transform, and Trainwreck was in his normal armor, but Intuitive Empathy told me that he was partially infected as well.

The ice crashed to the ground without me inside of it.

"Bladestorm," I said.

Trainwreck and Squealer were the only ones who survived a couple of bladestorms followed by fire to burn the remains.

Squealer tried to hit me again with her ice ray, but I ignored her to focus on Trainwreck. Her weapon was too unwieldy to easily hit me, and Trainwreck was stronger.

I could use Bone Garden, but I wanted to hit something. I hadn't had an old-fashioned fistfight in a while, and the Merchants were weak enough that I didn't have to be efficient or to worry much.

I punched his armor, and it dented.

He punched me back, and I easily avoided the attack.

A blast from behind me, and Intuitive empathy still worked well enough for me to dodge to the side and let Trainwreck take the hit.

I punched him over and over again, and I managed to barely life him over my head to throw at Squealer. She blasted him again.

I blinked into her vehicle by her side, and I blasted far strikes into her head until I was sure she was dead.

A touch of her blood, and a popup appeared.

NEW SPECIALIZATION ADDED!

VEHICLE TINKER!

SPECIALIZATIONS NOW WORK AT LOW INTERPLANETARY LEVELS WITHIN SPECIALIZATIONS, AND NEAR FUTURE LEVELS IN RELATED SPECIALTIES!

YOU ALSO GAIN EXPERT DRIVING AND PILOTING SKILLS AS PART OFTHIS SPECIALIZATION!

Looking at Squealer's setup, I suddenly understood it. I inventoried her body, and I blinked into the driver's seat.

Putting it into gear, I skidded forward, squealing around the corner as Trainwreck lumbered toward me.

I grinned as I blasted him.

Squealer hadn't had the dexterity to work this thing properly, but I did. I blasted him with the ice ray, which slowed him down.

He struggled to move through it, and the ice cracked.

I hit him again and again, and he was soon trapped inside a shell of ice.

Ironically, the freeze ray began to overheat, so I inventoried the entire vehicle.

It was cool enough that I'd probably put it in a garage in whatever off world lair I eventually created.

Maybe I'd have a trophy room with the corpse of a dinosaur and a giant penny from a world where people were the size of mountains.

Dad would live with me in my mansion; if I picked up enough tinker specializations, I'd eventually be able to build things that would let me build houses.

I had a feeling that most tinkers couldn't actually see the designs in their heads, but I could.

I blinked over to the top of the ice pile, and a moment later I blasted over and over with far strike, until the blast penetrated through the ice and through his helmet, and then into his brain.

Reaching down, I was barely able to touch a bit of brain, but that was enough.

NEW SPECIALIZATION!

SCRAP TINKER!

YOU CAN USE TRASH AND DISCARDED ITEMS TO CRAFT DEVICES! THEY WON'T BE PRETTY, BUT THEY'LL GET THE JOB DONE.

SPECIALIZATIONS NOW WORK AT MID INTERPLANETARY LEVELS, WITH RELATED SPECIALTIES AT LOW INTERPLANETARY LEVELS.

This was actually useful!

Trainwreck had been limited in what he could build, due to a lack of designs in his template. However, I had specializations in several other categories now.

Between bombs, interplanetary travel and vehicles, there was a lot of common ground, and I could now use scrap to do it. I'd heard that there was a glass tinker in Toybox.

What would it take for her to agree to a beating?

The world lit up in the distance, with a bright flash of light. I immediately blinked there.

Capes were floating in the air, staring.

"What happened?" I asked.

Fire was spreading throughout an old warehouse store, one that had been abandoned years before when the national chain had gone bankrupt.

Legend was staring.

"The military says they just bombed Bonesaw's last known location," he said.

Intuitive empathy told me that he was just as confused as I was. Capes should have been involved, and for some reason the normal people had sidestepped the normal chain of command.

I waved my hand, and a moment later, the fire winked out.

Blinking downward, I saw the remnants of some spider bots. They were outside being even related to my specializations, so I couldn't do much more than recognize that they were some kind of helper bots.

There was the skeleton of a small child, with the familiar cybernetic enhancements. There wasn't enough left for me to get a read on her powers.

My mind went blank for a moment.

Blinking into PRT headquarters, I yelled, "Tagg!"

He stood up; his face resigned. His emotions said that he expected me to kill him, but that he was resigned to that fate. He believed with every iota of his being that he had done what was right.

"Why?" I asked.

"Giving anyone her powers would be dangerous," he said. "You…aren't stable. Panacea can make plagues, but a bullet to the head would stop her if she went rogue. You would just go to another universe until you'd built enough diseases to destroy a hundred worlds."

He was quiet for a moment.

"I don't dislike you personally, despite your disrespect for authority, but some things no one should have."

I raised my hand to him, but then I stopped myself and closed my eyes.

"Planeswalk," I said, without any sort of mental destination in mind. Maybe I'd find some new perspective in a new world, or at least something I could use instead of Bonesaw's power.

I'd see how I felt after I got back.

As the world shifted around me, I wondered how Bonesaw had evaded Intuitive Empathy. Maybe she'd been out of the city the whole time, and the PRT had faked her death?

No, that would be crazy.