[ ] Picking up the Pieces, Part 2
Emigration 4.6
Tuesday, March 22
Picking up the bowl of ground hamburger, you carry it over to the table where the tortillas and lettuce and cheese are already waiting. A quick, simple meal, but still miles away from those you and your dad have shared for the last couple of years. "We really should have taco night more often."
"I don't know," he replies with a smile. "Let's wait and see how Sam's digestion handles it. If raccoons react to spicy food like dogs do…."
Samantha gave him the dainty sniff that comment deserved and settled herself at the table. "I am a lady. I do not get gas, and I certainly would not spread it around the house. That would be rude."
"You're the rudest and crudest of all of us," you remind her, earning a betrayed glare from her and a quick laugh from your dad.
Conversation dwindles while you eat, appreciative moans making up the majority of your exchange. When you take a break from your munching, though, you ask the question that's been bugging you for a while. "You've been busy this week. Are the guys already out poking at the gangs?"
"Not as much as you'd think," he says after wiping his mouth. "A lot of the work so far is research. Finding out what territories the gangs have claimed, which capes are part of which groups, stuff like that. And finding out what kind of business they're involved with, too." He grimaces. "Taking the Merchants' money and handing over their drugs was easy work, honestly. A lot less dangerous than tangling with Lung or the Empire would have been. And I got the feeling that the Protectorate was more accommodating because we were focused on shutting down the drug trade. We might have had more trouble if we had gone around grabbing skinheads who could protest that they weren't doing anything, but busting dug dens? Pretty cut and dry."
"So you're sticking with that for now?"
"Yeah. Several gangs make a nice chunk of money off drugs here. The Winter Hill gang is the big name since they have an actual drug Tinker, but they also have a bunch of capes to call on. Not as many as the Empire could, but still enough to rival the Protectorate and Wards. The Warlocks are smaller dealers, but they're also more violent. MS-13 is the big name in cocaine, and Cadejo makes sure they keep that title." He shrugs. "And then there's the Fairyland gang, who should be the easiest to deal with."
You take a moment to remember that name. "Isn't that the Disney princess gang?"
"Yes," he agrees with a sigh, "it's the Disney princess gang."
Samantha snickers. "You know if they beat you, you're never going to live it down, right?"
"…Let's just cross that bridge when we come to it."
The three of you stick with small talk for a while longer before your dad finally has to leave for work. Once you've cleaned the dishes, you head upstairs to your bedroom and peek in. "How's it going?"
Perfect Storm lets out a hollow sound not unlike a deep bell. «Analysis slower than expected. Passive scan inconclusive. Active scan unfeasible. Power requirements excessive.»
"That's not that unexpected," you tell it. "The thing was part of a spaceship. I'd be surprised if it didn't take a lot of power."
Of course, that it gobbles up so much power isn't a good thing right now. If Perfect Storm can't scan the computer core or whatever that tube you found is, it can't get any information off it. And if it can't get any information, looking for that thing was a waste of time.
You think about it for another couple of seconds before offering, "What if we tried what we did in the ship again? I feed you mana, and you do the whole cord thing and power it up?"
«Mistress nearly collapsed last time.»
"True, but things are a little different now, don't you think? If I pass out, I won't drown, for one. And last time, you were putting power through that a chunk of the ship. It won't take as much power just to run this. Besides," you add when Perfect Storm doesn't reply, "we don't have to run it for very long. Just long enough for you to get a scan."
«That is possible. If Mistress desires it, it will be done.»
Picking up the blue jewel, you offer Perfect Storm the power at your disposal. It drinks deep from your mana, and then the dark purple casting marks reappear and cords zip out to the various couplings. "How long do you think it'll take?" you ask when the magic drain begins to itch and burn.
«Not… much….»
Blue-white sparks spit from the tube and do their best to form the same holographic screens your Device is so fond of. Noise soon follows, garbled and unintelligible.
«Mistress,» Perfect Storm says in something approaching alarm, «this is not a computer core.»
"DCYP Ahvunlan Lussyht."
You blink at the spray of sounds. Was that… speech? It sounds like it, kind of, but nothing you've ever heard before.
Actually, scratch that. You have heard this before. When Perfect Storm first landed, it spoke in some other language, presumably the language of its builders. And if this tube isn't a computer but is speaking to you… maybe it's something else that would be a necessity on a spaceship.
You found their radio!
"Drec ec Meaidahyhd Depinuh uv dra DCYP," the man on the other end of the line barks out when you still don't say anything. "Oui yna eh emmakym buccacceuh uv y DCYP jaccam. Etahdevo ouincamv yd uhla!"
[ ] Talk back. Perfect Storm should be able to translate the aliens' language for you.
Emigration 4.7
«Translation active.»
You shoot Perfect Storm a grateful nod. You don't know what this guy said, but he sure doesn't sound happy. For a moment, you consider hanging up from fear that he might figure out you have Perfect Storm and demand it back, but then you shake away that flight of paranoia. What are the chances that he's going to ask about one specific Device?
Not to mention, if you hang up now, the chances of ever finding out about its origins drop down to nothing. You owe Perfect Storm way too much to do something like that.
Clearing your throat, you ask in as innocent a voice as you can manage, "I'm sorry, can you repeat that? I couldn't make it out."
"I said, this is Lieutenant Tiburon of the TSAB," he says. His voice has lost much of its anger, yet none of the steel lurking behind the emotion. "Identify yourself."
"Cal—" On second thought, maybe introducing yourself by your cape name isn't a great idea. The PRT agents and Velocity both thought you were a villain based on your name and your Barrier Jacket, and while this Tiburon guy can't see what you look like, he can still react to your name. You'd rather not make a worse first impression than you may already have. "I'm Taylor." Nothing else appropriate to say comes to mind, and then you hear yourself continue, "Hi?"
Really, brain? Really?
A long pause follows that as Tiburon no doubt is just as dumbstruck by your unattended mouth as you are. "Hi," he finally answers. "You're… rather more friendly than I expected."
More friendly than he expected? What? How would he even come up with any idea about what you're like? "Maybe that'll teach you not to judge a book by its cover, won't it?"
"Strange idiom aside, you are in no position to take offense at someone judging you. Did you truly think we would stand aside and ignore someone illegally seizing the Agharti?"
…Okay, so the chances of Tiburon asking about one specific Device are actually pretty high. And Agharti? You examine Perfect Storm before shaking your head. Nope, still not seeing it. Your Device just does not look like an Agharti. "I didn't steal the Agharti. I found it on the ground. And considering it accepted me as its user without a single complaint and said it wanted to help me, I don't think you have much say in the matter," you add with more than a touch of defiance. You aren't parting with Perfect Storm so easily, no matter how much he dislikes it.
"What are you talking about?"
"What do you think I'm talking about? The Device I found. Wait," you say as you see through the comedy of errors approaching at warp speed, "what are you talking about?"
"The Agharti. The XIX-class dimensional frigate whose radio you've hijacked." You hear him sigh, the sound familiar from your father's own after a long day where nothing went right. "Something tells me I'm not going to like the answer to this, but you aren't a pirate, are you?"
"Why the hell would you think I'm a pirate?!"
"Because the last communication we received from the Agharti's Enforcer afloat was that multiple vessels were approaching at high speeds and were expected to be pirate craft." Oh. That does make more sense, except for, you know, the whole magic space pirate thing. The more you find out about Perfect Storm's old world, the more it sounds like a cheap sci-fi movie. "But if you aren't a pirate like we thought, then I need to know how you got ahold of this radio even more."
"From what was left of the ship."
"…What was left of the ship?"
"It, uh, broke apart when it hit our atmosphere," you say slowly. "Sorry. This is the only piece I managed to salvage."
"Wonderful. Which members of the crew are you in contact with? I need to debrief them immediately."
"I guess you didn't hear me a second ago," you tell him. "The ship broke apart during entry and crashed. I don't think any of the crew could have survived that."
"I heard you, Taylor. But the alternative is that you found part of our ship, repaired highly specialized and complex machinery without our engineers' aid, and yet you did not report its discovery to the TSAB. That doesn't reflect well on you. How are you even powering it?"
Looking down at the deep purple script and the cords connecting Perfect Storm to the radio, the corner of your mouth quirks up. "Very carefully."
Tiburon doesn't react to that and pushes on, "I've backtraced your carrier signal and have an approximate location for you." He what?! "You aren't too far from Delnarib. Contact the TSAB outpost there and tell them that you've found portions of the Agharti, and we can both forget the part about you toying around with it instead of telling anybody." Perhaps realizing how his demand could be taken, he continues in a kinder voice, "Not to mention, this could be to your benefit, too. If you're as good with this kind of machinery as you claim to be, I can think of a few people who'd be willing to talk to you about changing jobs. I can almost guarantee you'll get better paid than you are right now."
"That's a great offer and all," you tell the lieutenant, "but there's just one small problem."
"What is it now?"
"What or where is Delnarib?"
"Let me check something…. No, Delnarib is its local name, too. What world are you on right now, Taylor?"
This had better not blow up in your face, even if it feels almost like giving some stranger on the Internet your home address. "Earth Bet."
"What the…. Okay. Okay. What are your nearest dimensional neighbors?"
"I guess Earth Aleph." Tiburon stays silent, clearly waiting for you to continue. "That's the only one I know."
"Of course it is. I can't tell you exactly who to talk to," he adds before you can say anything about his tone, "but you need to find a large city with interdimensional communications or maybe even someone who has experience with dimensional transfers. Either way, you should be able to find someone who knows how to contact Delnarib or knows how to talk to another world that does have that information."
"Yeah, that's going to be a little difficult. No one on our world knows much about dimensional communications or whatever. I guess the people who work with Professor Haywire's portals would," you correct yourself, "but that's just between us and Aleph. And dimensional transfers? Nope."
"What kind of piss-poor mages do you have on your world?"
Narrowing your eyes at the radio tube, you cross your arms. Piss-poor mage? Who does he think he is? "You want to talk to a mage on Bet? I'm all you got, so you'll just have to make do."
"…You're the only mage on your world?"
"That's right. And you wouldn't even have me if I hadn't found Perfect Storm and started learning about magic from it."
A strange sound comes across the radio line, almost someone trying to mimic a wet finger running along a balloon. Is this the sound of a grown man holding back from screaming in frustration like a little girl? Tiburon starts talking again, and you have to strain to hear him. "Are you kidding me? I don't get paid enough to deal with this shit. Taylor," he asks in a louder voice, "could you hold on for just a moment? I need to make a quick call to someone who will want to talk to you a little—"
The connection fizzles out, and all the cords pull back into Perfect Storm's rapidly vanishing casting arrays. "What are you doing?" you demand.
«Mistress's mana levels dangerously low. Risks of continued communication too high.»
"No, they're not. I'm perfectly fine." You push yourself to your feet – when did you sit down on the floor? – and then Samantha has to catch you when the room whips around at a hundred miles an hour. "Okay, or maybe you're right. Ugh."
Your Device floats into your hands and vibrates. «Linker Core strain detected. Time required to heal. Further use of Mistress's mana to power communication system inadvisable.»
"How are we going to talk to them, then?"
«Mana collector or generator necessary. Can be constructed by mage with Transcendent Gadgeteer template installed. Guardian Beast of the Gear also a possibility.»
"Neither of whom we have," Samantha cuts in, "so how about a solution that we can actually put into practice?"
«Unknown, but commands by Mistress to power communications with Mistress's mana will be rejected. Override protocols activated to prevent intentional user self-harm.»
«Sole exception to sovereign-level authorization.»
That puts an end to that, doesn't it? It isn't like you can power the radio without Perfect Storm's help, and if it flat-out refuses to do it, there's not much you can do but try to change its mind. Later, though; not now. Forcing the issue now will just make your Device dig in its heels.
«Mistress needs rests to recover her mana,» Perfect Storm continues. «No magic usage today or tomorrow. Minimal for at least three days after that.»
"Okay, okay, I get it. Never would have pegged you for such a worrywart." The Device says nothing to that, but as Samantha helps you to the living room so you don't fall flat on your face, you have to admit to yourself that it maybe has a point.
Just a little one.
[ ] A Dragon's Hoard
Emigration 4.8
Thursday, March 24
Staring at the open browser window, you reconsider once again what the hell you're going to say. You were lost on what to tell Dragon immediately after receiving her email, and in the two weeks since, you haven't come up with anything spectacular. That's without dwelling on the little fact that it has taken you two weeks to say anything. You really hope Dragon won't think badly about you after postponing this for so long.
Samantha purrs from her spot in your lap, and you stroke her soft fur for a moment. Once you had mostly recovered from draining your mana to power the radio – recovered enough to walk without the room spinning, at least – she had shifted into her pet form and stayed like that. Her drain on your Linker Core is apparently lessened significantly when she is small like this, and even though Perfect Storm had said that maintaining her human form would not stress you, she is insistent. So long as you aren't supposed to cast any magic, she will stay an unremarkable raccoon unless you need her to keep you safe.
And you've allowed yourself to get distracted again. Dragon! What are you going to do about Dragon? It was one thing when you thought you had a computer core from the crashed ship, the Agharti; you aren't a Tinker, but there might have been information on the system that would give you just enough of a background that you could pass for one through the course of a casual conversation. But you didn't find a computer, did you? You found a radio, which leaves you with no more knowledge than you had before.
Knowledge pertinent to this discussion, that is. You got quite a bit of info about angry space wizard cops, but that terrifying nugget is one you have no idea what to do with just yet. Particularly the bit about them now knowing where you are.
«Mistress need not contact the Dragon at this time.»
"No, I really do," you tell your Device. "I just don't know what to say."
Stretching out in your lap, Samantha suggests, «Why don't you start with 'Hi' and go from there?»
A fat lot of good that suggestion is, and from the twinkle in her amber eyes, she knows it. You give her tail a gentle yank in retaliation, smiling at her when she glares up at you.
Okay, enough distractions. Time to type. "Dragon," you read aloud as you type out the private message, "I apologize for the time it has taken me to reply. I have been rather busy— No, that doesn't work. She's a hell of a lot busier than I am." Your fingers tap dance on the keys of your laptop while you think. "Settling in to a new town took me longer than I expected. I know you're probably busy, but if you want to chat sometime today, I'll be free. If not, just let me know. My schedule's pretty open most of the time. That should work, don't you think? Friendly and casual?"
«Sure. It's not like she's going to get huffy at you because you were too informal. It's an email on PHO.»
"True." You hit the send button and lean back. "Now we just have to wait for her response. Storm, can you keep an eye on my account and let me know when she replies? I don't want to keep her waiting—"
The computer dings.
«The Dragon has replied.»
"I noticed," you say in a dry tone. Opening the message, you find only a link leading to – according to Google – a video chat site known for its strong security. "Hey, just deploying my Barrier Jacket won't strain my Core too badly, would it? I don't think an old t-shirt is the thing great first impressions are based on."
«Video stream can be edited prior to transmission.»
"So that's a no, then?" Perfect Storm does not deny it, and with a small sigh you click the link. "This had better not blow up in my face."
The page loads, and the little screen in the corner that shows what Dragon is going to see shows you as you are for a brief instant before it blacks out. When it comes back, your digital self is wearing your Barrier Jacket and sitting in front of a featureless black background. Right after that change is made, the main screen comes to life and reveals a woman's face, her 'skin' made of blue characters falling from the top of the screen. Dragon smiles, and you stare as the symbols briefly flow around the changing shape before resuming their straight downwards march. "Good afternoon, Calamity Witch."
You'd think having a private chat with Alexandria would have inured you to talking to world-famous heroes, but your tongue is still tied for a moment before you clear your throat and reply, "Good afternoon to you, too. You can just call me Calamity if you want. I know my full name's a bit of a mouthful."
"It's not the worst I've ever heard. That prize goes to a Native American hero I met once," she says when you look at her curiously. "He was an Alexandria package who called himself He Who Flies Among the Eagles. Stereotypical, maybe, but certainly memorable. He also refused to shorten his name, which probably played a role in why the PRT gave him the nickname Flyboy."
"He didn't take that well, did he?"
"Not in the slightest."
You chuckle lightly, which is the reaction Dragon is going for if her widened smile is any indication. "I hope I didn't distract you from anything important, but I figured two weeks without any answer was pushing the boundary of rude."
"You didn't need to feel obligated to reply," the legendary Tinker replies with a small frown. "I just wanted you to know that you could call me if you wanted to. As for interruptions, you actually caught me at an opportune time. I was just finishing up a report about the Cornell incident for the PRT."
"Cornell…. You mean about how everyone in that auditorium was turned to stone?" She nods. "That is a scary power. I know there was talk on the news about some people saying it might have been an accident, but was there any proof of that?"
Dragon sighs and shakes her head. "That is part of what is in the report I mentioned. Some of the evidence the initial investigators found proves that this was definitely not an accident, if for the sole reason that the parahuman in question is not a Shaker as first thought. She is a Tinker. More specifically, she is possibly a bomb Tinker."
"Bomb… Tinker?" you repeat hesitantly. Did you really hear that right? "Powers are weird."
"Yes, they are. I do not believe that powers determine whether someone becomes a hero or a villain, but then instances like this come up that make me wonder." She smiles. "And speaking of heroic Tinkers, how are your projects coming? Most Tinkers reach their peak production volume at the beginning of their careers when they are still finding their limits. I remember my first projects," she says in a fond voice, "and even if they are crude compared to what I do now, they still have a special place in my heart."
"Uh…." Great start, Taylor. That's really Oscar-worthy acting right there. "I…. I've been a little busy just getting the lay of the land here. All the little hassles that come along with moving, you know?"
She hums distractedly. "Once you finish setting up your workshop, feel free to contact me if you ever want someone to bounce ideas off of. I have always enjoyed collaborating with other Tinkers." With a light laugh, she adds, "Which reminds me that I don't even know what your specialization is. Few Tinkers can achieve the variety of effects of which your staff is capable. Durability, plus pyrokinetic blasts, plus unassisted flight, plus force fields? The only specialty I can think of that could manage all that is energy manipulation of some kind, which is so broad a field as to put you close to Hero's level. I don't know that even I could put all those functions into a single machine, and that doesn't even come close to how you made yourself completely immune to the Simurgh's Scream. It should come as no surprise, but that has been a holy grail for Tinkers ever since she made her first appearance.
"I suppose the question I have been dying to ask is somewhat obvious now," she concludes with another laugh. "How did you do it?"
Well. That's a tricky question, isn't it?
[ ] Tell her what little you know about the alien space wizards and their tech
Emigration 4.9
For a long moment, you hold your tongue. So many ways to approach this, but there is no way to tell which is the best, and you're only going to get one shot at this.
Lying to Dragon is incredibly tempting just for how safe it is. Play to her expectations, claim you really are a Tinker. She even gave you an out! Energy manipulation is such a broad category that everything you can do fits under it, and considering that's what magic is, you wouldn't even have to make too much stuff up. 'Science up' the magical theory you've been learning just like you had Perfect Storm do to its information about telepathy, and you actually could pull it off.
But that would be just another lie, and a lie that will do nothing but buy you a little temporary comfort. Eventually she will expect you to work on some projects, and when you can't do it, she'll get suspicious. Even if you do as Perfect Storm suggests and give someone a Device that lets them be a magic Tinker, that doesn't solve the larger issue. Tiburon said he knew where you are, which means eventually someone is going to show up to reclaim their ship. That is a problem much larger than you, and there is no way you'll be able to hide it all on your own.
So you have to tell Dragon the truth, at least to some extent. While it's true that you don't know all the details about how Perfect Storm works, saying only that you found it laying on the ground would still lead to all the same problems lying would. It might even make things worse since she might think of you as no different than the Dragonslayers, a group of criminals who make it a habit to attack Dragon and have even beaten her occasionally, stealing her stuff as they ran away. Sure, you didn't steal Perfect Storm, but you certainly didn't spend too much time looking for its creator prior to the whole 'I come from outer space' revelation. That's too big a risk to take.
Only telling her about magic is little better. You won't be the first cape to claim that their abilities are mystical, and even if you frame it differently, that well was poisoned a long time ago. Myrddin, for all that he's the head of Chicago's Protectorate office, is widely regarded to be a kook, and then you have villain groups like the Adepts in New York, and the Eye in Las Vegas, and the Brujas in Los Angeles, and the Heretics in Montana, and…. Well, there are more than a few of them, and no one believes that they really do have magic powers.
If you won't lie to her, won't tell her the bare minimum, and can't limit yourself just to magic, there's one other choice that you can see. You'll have to go all the way and tell her the whole truth.
"That… is a bit of a complicated answer." Dragon's avatar gives you a look of confusion. "I guess I should start with the easiest thing. I'm not a Tinker."
"But your staff—"
"I didn't build Perfect Storm. I found it." Is that the anger you were afraid of? It's hard to tell from her fake face, no matter how expressive it is. "I was just walking through an alley and found it on the ground. Then it started talking," you add with a laugh, "which scared the life out of me. It didn't remember who built it or even what its real name was, and because I was the only person who paid it any attention for as long as it had been laying there, it offered to give me whatever I wanted. I asked to become a hero, and, well…."
"It… offered to give you what you wanted?" Dragon repeats slowly. "Because it was thankful? You make it sound… sentient. Even sapient."
Lifting the small blue jewel up into the camera's view, you say, "Dragon, I'd like to introduce you to my Intelligent Device, Perfect Storm."
«It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.»
Dragon apparently heard that, no doubt because Perfect Storm was pumping its telepathy into the video stream, and her eyes grow wide. "Intel— You're an artificial intelligence. And not a simple one, either, are you?"
«Correct. Complex intelligence and problem-solving capabilities are required to assist my mage as per design. Emotional capabilities necessary to understand user's priorities. Full intelligence was deemed the most efficient solution.»
"Your…." The Tinker looks back and forth between you and your Device several times. "Your mage?"
You nod. "That's complicated part number two. Or three, if you consider an Intelligent Device being an AI as number two. All of 'my' abilities are based on the magical theory Storm's been teaching me."
"I know that parahuman abilities can seem incredible, even magical," explains Dragon patiently, "but they really aren't. They are all rooted in science. We might not understand exactly how they work, but there is a reasonable explanation for them."
"Apparently that applies to real magic, too. When you said that you thought my specialty was energy manipulation, you weren't that far off. It's just that it uses a specific form of energy. Storm calls it mana, and I don't have a better word for it. I still can't wrap my head around exactly how it works," you caution, "but all of my spells are weird computer programs. I dump mana in, and somehow the spells turn that energy into all those different effects. They're complicated, extremely so, but I'm slowly figuring out how they work and how to make them do different things than they're programmed to do. I can even cast a few of them without needing Storm to do the calculations for me."
You carefully don't give away just how proud of that you are. You can't do much without Perfect Storm's help – make a single Flare Shooter that provides light but little else and kinda-sorta hover for a couple of seconds – but it's still progress!
"That's impossible." Dragon's flat denial cuts through your enthusiasm. "A parahuman's abilities cannot be taught. Either you have them or you do not. Tinkertech can do amazing things, but it is still a manifestation of parahuman powers. People have tried to do what you claim, hundreds of times. It just doesn't work."
"And if Storm's powers were parahuman, you'd be right. But they don't."
"It still had to be built by a parahuman—"
Now it's time for the hardest part of your explanation, the part that could really get you labeled as a whack job. «Storm,» you ask as inspiration suddenly strikes, «you didn't happen to record our trip down to the ship, did you?»
The image representing what Dragon sees is replaced by a view of ocean waves, and she falls silent as she follows you under the surface. "Do you remember those green meteors that were on the news a couple of months ago? Storm suspected that they might be parts of the ship it was on, so it tracked down where they most likely fell."
The remnant of the ship appears on-screen.
"That's what we found."
Dragon's digital face is perfectly, creepily still while she watches the video. Looking down into the abyss, moving through the ship, Perfect Storm projecting its weird wire-things, recovering the radio, and then your frantic struggle to get out before you were dragged to the bottom of the ocean. And even as impressive as that is, part of you is just glad that it doesn't show you in that embarrassingly skimpy swimsuit Storm stuffed you into.
"Huh," the world's premier Tinker says once the video is done. "That…. Mmm. I am not saying that you are lying, but you hopefully understand that it is a relatively simple undertaking to fake footage like this. Many movies have been made with that exact premise. If you are agreeable to it, I would appreciate you giving me a copy of this video so I can analyze it."
"Sure." You didn't fake the video, so giving it to her can't hurt. Speaking of things that can't hurt…. "Would you like a copy of some of the theory texts Storm has? So you can see that I'm not lying about that, either?"
"Very well. It could make for interesting reading." You give Perfect Storm a look, and it sends the files over. "Thank you. I would like to discuss an alternative explanation for your abilities, though. One that is not quite so otherworldly."
"I already said Perfect Storm knew all of them before I did, and you were the one who said that capes can't teach other people their tricks," you point out.
"I did, but there is one exception where powers can be learned. You could be a parahuman yourself. More specifically, a power mimic. It would explain quite a lot," she says to your doubtful expression. "You presumably spend the majority of your time with Perfect Storm. It shows you a new ability, and after a few times seeing it, your own powers kick in and let you duplicate it. Since you do not spend much time with other capes, not even your own team leader, you have not had a chance to learn their abilities, and as such it looks as though you do not have powers yourself but are instead learning what Perfect Storm teaches you."
You frown. You spend time with your dad, and you haven't picked up his powers. Is it even possible for someone to be a cape and not know it? Besides, you know what you saw, and you believe what Perfect Storm told you. If it says you're a mage, then that's that. "What about Samantha?" you ask once that idea pops into your head. "I spend plenty of time with her, but I can't turn into an animal or go super fast."
"If I remember correctly, there is a note in Samantha's dossier stating that she is a Case 53 but denied being one. That excuse could fly when it was assumed that you were a Blaster, but keeping in mind that your staff is Tinkertech?" She tilts her face. "Case 53s are feared and kept at arms' length by the general public, which is extremely unfortunate, but they are still less scary than even the thought of a sapient being created by some mad Tinker. If she happened to be a creation by Perfect Storm, perhaps someone literally designed to be a complement to your own fighting style? I could see your mimicry not working on her.
"Thankfully, there is an easy way to see who is right," Dragon says before you can react too visibly to her figuring out Samantha's secret origins. "I can get in touch with the Philadelphia PRT and see if you could arrange an anonymous MRI at Penn Presbyterian for you." Your face displays your confusion. "All parahumans have two additional lobes that are not present in normal humans. If you have them, an MRI will find them, and that will further support the idea that you are a Trump of some kind."
"And when you can't find these lobes?" you press.
"If we do not find these lobes, then we will have to revisit your claims of magic," admitted Dragon. "But let us speak of that once we have the results."
"I'll have to think about it."
Dragon nods. "I understand. If you decide to go through with it, just send me a message. Now, if you will excuse me, I have video footage to go over. Have a pleasant evening, Calamity."
"Bye to you, too." The video chat ends once Dragon signs off, and you lean back in your chair. Perfect Storm drifts over to hang itself off your neck, and Samantha nuzzles your hand. "Well," you say with a sigh, "I suppose that could have gone worse."
You'll notice that even though the "Mention the crashed ship" subvote didn't get anywhere close to the support it needed to win, I still included it. I had actually already planned for that to happen for the simple reason that the ship is the best evidence you have that you're neither lying nor crazy.
You get a prezzie today! As you can see, there's a special option for next week's subquest selection, marked yellow for your convenience. If you don't take it now, it won't be available next time. But will it give you anything you value? That's something you're going to have to decide for yourselves.
Party Hardy! – You could use a break from heroing, at least for one night. Go to the party Kayleigh told you about.Picking up the Pieces, Part 3 – So that was a thing. Unfortunately for you and them both, dealing with angry and upset space wizards is way outside your areas of expertise. You need to talk about this with someone, but who? And how are you going to prove that you aren't crazy?Who do you talk to?What else are you doing at the time?A Dragon's Hoard, Part 2 – In case you missed it, Dragon is more than a little doubtful about your claims of using alien magic, even with the video of you finding part of the ship. She wants proof? Fine. Get the stupid MRI and prove to her that you're no simple parahuman. You are a mage.Snark Hunt – Okay, maybe you should have helped out, after all. Reports are coming in that not only have Valefor and other members of the Fallen shown up, the Teeth are no longer in Boston. Three guesses where they're headed now.Monstrous Menagerie – Those monsters had to come from somewhere. Have Perfect Storm do some digging, and then investigate where there seems to be the most activity. Maybe you'll get lucky.Helping Out the Little Guy – Look for trouble in your new home and stop it. You can write in for someone to come along with you.Hanging Out – This is a bit of an experiment. Pick someone to spend time with outside of combat. Write in the who, what, and where.Know Thyself – Spend a free period training in the simulator. May be chosen twice. Write-in for which spell to practice.
Saint closed the office door, moving slowly so that he wouldn't disturb the over-full coffee cup in his hand. Then he walked over to where Dobrynja was sitting at the computer terminal, eyes fixed on the monitor and its dozens of open windows.
"Did I miss anything?"
Dobrynja jumped in his seat. His hand shot to his chest for a moment, then he twisted around to give Saint a glare.
"That," he growled, "is getting very old."
Saint rolled his eyes.
"It's not my fault you're twitchy. Here." He handed over the cup, then shooed the other man out of his chair. Dobrynja promptly started swearing as some of the coffee spilled onto his futuristic-looking bodysuit.
Saint took his place at the terminal, eyes flickering over the monitor. Multiple cursors moved across the screen as he used both hands and feet to bring different windows into the foreground. His gaze was already starting to unfocus, his brain slipping into that peculiar state of mind he needed if he wanted to keep up with the sheer flood of data.
Not that he actually ever managed to truly keep up.
A new window popped up, showing a young woman with brown hair, a mask and a witch's hat in front of a black background.
Voice modeling program loading… Complete.
"Good afternoon, Calamity Witch."
Saint leaned back in his chair as Dragon started bubbling at the new tinker. It was in moments like these, when she sounded genuinely excited, giddy even, alive, that Saint almost doubted whether he was doing the right thing.
Almost.
A slight slurping sound, which immediately turned into gagging, told Saint that Dobrynja had finally tried his coffee.
"God dammit, did you put vodka into my coffee again?"
One corner of Saint's mouth twitched upwards. "You're a valuable member of the team, Mischa. If a little taste of Mother Russia now and then is what it takes to keep you from getting homesick, then I will gladly shoulder that cost."
A pair of knuckles rapped painfully against his head.
"I've told you before, it's a waste of good vodka and mediocre coffee." Another slurp, followed by an audible shudder. "This shit tastes horrible."
Saint grinned, Dobrynja's disgusted grimace vivid in his mind without having to turn around and actually see it.
"Doesn't keep you from drinking it, though."
The russian man snorted.
"Of course not. Just because you have no appreciation for-"
Something Dragon said to Calamity Witch caught Saint's attention. He held up his hand in a warding gesture, cutting Dobrynja off mid-sentence.
"…Simurgh's Scream. It should come as no surprise, but that has been a holy grail for Tinkers ever since she made her first appearance.
"I suppose the question I have been dying to ask is somewhat obvious now," she concluded with another laugh. "How did you do it?"
There was a long pause during which no one said anything. The only sign that the stream hadn't crashed was the fact that Calamity Witch was fidgeting in obvious discomfort.
"That… is a bit of a complicated answer." She said at last. "I guess I should start with the easiest thing. I'm not a Tinker."
"But your staff-"
"I didn't build Perfect Storm. I found it."
Huh. Saint exchanged a look of raised eyebrows with his team-mate as the cape described the circumstances of her discovery. Luck like that almost qualified as a parahuman power in its own right.
"It… offered to give you what you wanted?" Dragon repeated slowly. "Because it was thankful? You make it sound… sentient. Even sapient."
Calamity Witch collected a blue gemstone with a diamond cut from somewhere off-screen and presented it to the camera. "Dragon, I'd like to introduce you to my Intelligent Device, Perfect Storm."
«It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.»
Saint's breath caught.
"Intel— You're an artificial intelligence. And not a simple one, either, are you?"
«Correct. Complex intelligence and problem-solving capabilities are required to assist my mage as per design. Emotional capabilities necessary to understand user's priorities. Full intelligence was deemed the most efficient solution.»
…
Dobrynja set down the empty cup.
"I'll go get Mags."
- - -
I wanted to write an omake about Uber and Leet. It would have featured an Uber with a creepy stalker crush on our favourite Person of Mass Destruction, them finding out about magic, atttempts to find someone with a reparo spell to fix Leet's degraded projects and, finally, Leet cobbling together an unholy abomination of technology in a manic-depressive bout of mad science, with the goal of giving himself a linker core so that he wouldn't be an anchor attached to his best friend's leg anymore, overwhelming odds of torturous death (or worse) be damned.
[ ] A Dragon's Hoard, Part 2
Emigration 4.10
Monday, March 28
"Miss Smith? We're ready for you."
It takes you a moment to realize that the nurse is talking to you, but you stand from the waiting room chair and make your way over with a sheepish smile. The nurse pays it no mind, instead going through the normal hospital routine. Weight, height, blood pressure, heart rate. Once all the gadgets have been put away, she gives you a sideways look. "You recruits just keep getting younger and younger."
You look away and give her a little shrug. You initially wondered how Dragon had managed to square away this appointment in only a couple of days, but the information packet you picked up from the Protectorate base instead of going to school for the day explained quite a bit. This is apparently standard procedure for anyone who applies to join the PRT; just as you were told when you first tried to register the Privateers as a hero group, the Protectorate is for parahumans while the PRT is for unpowered humans, and never the twain shall meet. If somebody wants to be in the PRT, she needs to prove that she isn't a cape.
All that being the case, it still strikes you as a bad sign that this woman already knows that the PRT sent you here, even if she's wrong on the why. Then again, you'd have trouble finding a name much more pseudonym-y than 'Jane Smith'.
"I'm not sure I'm allowed to talk about it."
"If you don't want to, you don't have to. If you're just worried about violating confidentiality, though, you don't need to worry. The PRT and Administration made us sign a stack of NDAs as tall as I am before they would tell us what was going on. Not like they had much of a choice," she adds with a slightly mocking scoff. "It'd look suspicious if a bunch of people submitted release-of-information forms to send radiology records to the PRT, and there's no way they'd get the scans any other way unless they subpoenaed us. But that was taken care of long ago. What department are you applying to?"
After a few seconds of silence, she shrugs and lets it go. "Come this way and change into some scrubs. You don't have to get in a gown, but we need to make sure you don't have any metal on you, so make sure you remove any earrings or other body jewelry before walking in. You don't have any braces, dental posts, or steel surgical clips inside you, do you?"
Several minutes later, you walk into the scanning room, the gigantic upright doughnut of the MRI already humming in mechanical anticipation. "Go ahead and lie down on the table," a man's voice says over the intercom. "You'll need to be as still as possible while we get the images. Try to keep talking to a minimum, but you can swallow and breathe normally. It's going to get a little loud, but just bear with it. This should only take thirty minutes or so."
Thirty minutes. Okay, you can do that. Lying down, you close your eyes as the table slides into the machine. Thirty minutes, and you can show Dragon that your brain is perfectly normal.
xxxxxxxxxxxxx
"How is that even possible?"
"I'd just like to know what all that means," you yourself pipe up.
The PRT physician sighs and spins around on his stool to look at you rather than his computer screen. "I don't know how much you know about parahuman neuroanatomy, but the gist of it is this. Most people have no hope of becoming a parahuman. Doesn't matter how much they want it, how terrible the worst moment of their lives are, nothing. The small proportion who do have that chance all have an extra lobule located somewhere in their brains named the corona pollentia. Having a corona doesn't guarantee that they'll get powers," he adds, "but it makes it possible. If someone with a corona eventually becomes a cape, they develop a second growth called the gemma. We don't know exactly how these lobes work, but since we've found them in all but the strangest Case 53s, we're very confident they they are necessary for powers to work.
"Your brain, however, is interesting." He turns back to the computer and clicks a few things to pull up a black and white picture. "Look here, between the two halves of the frontal lobe. Do you see this circular structure? That should be your corona, but there's something wrong with it. It's been replaced almost entirely by scar tissue. There isn't any sign of a gemma, either. Frankly, I'm just as stumped as Dragon on how you can have powers with a brain like yours."
The digitized face of the heroine turns to regard you for a long moment. This is definitely a blow to her theory that you're some kind of power-copier, though you're just as surprised that you apparently can never gain powers of your own. Not that it's necessarily a disappointment. If someone came over and offered you the choice between gaining powers and keeping your magic, you'd side with the latter in a heartbeat.
Not to mention, the whole 'get powers at the worst moment of your life' thing is kind of off-putting. If living through the locker incident wasn't enough to turn you into a cape, you don't even want to consider how much worse things would have to be for it to happen. Speaking of bad things that could happen…. "It isn't cancer, is it?"
"What about function?" Dragon asks at the same time. "We cannot rule out the possibility that what looks like scar tissue is actually a gemma growing within the corona. It has never happened before, but that does not mean it could never happen."
"True, but not in this case." He brings up a colored image which means just as little to you as the grey one did. "The activity is normal in the rest of the brain, but the corona has nothing. That's consistent with scarring, not dense neural tissue. We'd also expect greater blood flow if this were any kind of tumor," he tells you with a gentle smile, "and cancers are rarely symmetrical, which this certainly is. Even these trails, which I can only speculate were once white matter tracts connecting the corona pollentia to the corona radiata – which has nothing to do with parahuman powers despite the similarities in their names – are mirror images of each other. You don't have to worry about that. You're perfectly healthy, neurologically at least."
You shoot Dragon a satisfied expression only to see her mulling something over. "I would like to recommend one more test before we chalk this up as a strange impossibility," she finally says. "I understand it is inconsistent with how brain tissue normally works, but this study was, out of necessity, done without you using any of your powers. If we measured neuronal activity while you were on patrol, perhaps using ambulatory EEG, it would give us the most definitive answer."
The doctor shook his head. "Except an EEG wouldn't tell us where in the brain the activity's coming from. An estimate, sure, but we couldn't prove that it was coming from the corona as opposed to her frontal lobes."
"Agreed, but if there was a change in signal when she flies or fights compared to baseline mental or physical activity, it would indicate that something activated that hadn't before. Something like an abnormal gemma."
Looking back at you, he shrugs. "It's up to you, Calamity Witch. I think it would be a waste of your time, but if you want to give it a shot, we can set it up tonight. We just need to know so we can make the calls."
Originally I was just going to throw you into the patrol, but that's not really fair to you. Dragon can't force Taylor to participate in her experiment, after all.
[ ] Pull the plug – You gave Dragon the information she wanted. One more study won't tell her anything different if she's going to be stubborn about it.
[ ] Wear the EEG – Dragon still has her doubts, but they're crumbling while you watch. Go on patrol so they don't have even a single leg to stand on.
-[ ] Do you want to bring someone with you?