"Icarus," You say. "I'm… I'm Icarus. Flew way too close to the sun right there, after all."
Armsmaster nods, and Challenger gives you a lighthearted chuckle. She helps you to your feet, and you brush off your hoodie. You make a note to put together more of a real costume, not that you'd had time to actually wear it the whole thing if you had one.
"How did you even recognize that guy as Lung?" Challenger asks. "All the photos of him at that scale are blurry and messed up."
"I know things," You say.
"Is that because you've been around a while, or because of your powers?" Armsmaster asks. There it is.
"Heh, I'd answer that question, but the Protectorate records are kind of like a sieve," You drawl. It got pretty legendarily bad, a few years from now. You're not sure if that's just because Coil had his moles in the PRT, or that bitch Tattletale existed.
At that, Armsmaster makes a face. "The Protectorate keeps our records under the highest security clearances-"
"That any director across the country can use their access codes to unlock," You say, rolling your eyes. "Any thinker worth their salt can pull those from thin air or intercept the signal and sell the data to the highest bidder."
"But-"
"Alright, Armsmaster," Challenger says, grabbing his shoulder. The man relaxes slightly. "Icarus doesn't want us to pry, and anything we don't hear we won't put in the report."
"Thanks," You say. "Now, before I head out, I can tell you everything I have about Lung."
As you talk, the PRT are slowly packing up, clearing out the bay, and putting out the fires. Once you're done thing you notice, as you scoop your bike up and head out, you have a moment to see Armsmaster from the back.
His armor is charred. Not just burned, but boiled. The metal had taken so much heat and so much damage that even the compressed, alloy plating had started to denature, the molecular structure peeling apart.
That sort of heat… definitely would have killed you.
Armsmaster had saved your life.
In that last moment, in your first real outing as Icarus, you were closer to death than you'd been in years of being a D-list villain.
... Man, fuck your power.
You're staring at the empty store again, waiting at the counter. You'd already done all your mopping today, and a nine year old kid came in with his angry mother to turn in a copy of GTA, but other than that it's been dead.
If it weren't for the fact that Babbage Games was a chain, this store would have shut down years ago. Instead it's being kept aloft by the much better-supported neighbors in other towns.
You need to build more tools. More tinkertech. You're not entirely sure what you'll work on next, but you don't exactly have the resources to play around. All you've got is the cash out of pocket. It had taken you half a month to get this far, just to save up enough to build the Power Interface Device.
You sigh.
That's through the safe channels, anyway.
If you went junkyard-diving you'll get a lot more resources, but that would basically scream to the world "Hey, I'm a tinker, look at me, kidnap me!". Might be worth it, actually. The biggest risks would be Coil, the Empire, and Chorus, and none of them touched you last time.
Another option would be to turn to more nefarious means to make money. You've realized that you have information people don't, just stuff you've picked up from the future. You could try your hand at being an infobroker. Sell what you know. But that comes at a risk, too- you won't be a 'tinker I have to kidnap,' but a 'thinker that might sell *my* data'.
If you had real gadgets, you could do some escapades. Thefts, villainous stuff… Or even just more vigilante stuff, stealing from villain groups. But you don't have any tools for that, so that's not really an option.
… Or take it slow. Your job gets you cash, even if it's not a lot of it, and you can keep rummaging through garage sales and craigslist ads. It's the safest option. You think your power's figured out the difference between cape time and non-cape-time at this point, too. It might not get too mad unless you take it slow forever.
You tap your fingers, thinking.
That's not the only decision you have to make, either.
Even if you built the Leech, you can't exactly use it. Not bereft of any other tools or devices. You know- from your last experience with the Power Interface- that your power won't interfere with building the Leech at all. But it'll still count, if you want to build anything else with the same sensory, scanning tech the Leech uses.
You'll need to design something else. Something that's actually useful- either in a cape fight, to produce resources, or maybe even to use as an infobroker.
You pull out your notebook, casually setting it in the one spot none of the cameras can see, and begin to sketch out a design.
Depending on how you choose to gain resources, certain amounts of time will pass before you're ready to construct something new. During that spare time, however, you can design new blueprints.
As far as write-in options go for designs, how you describe how a device functions will help with its keywords. For example, a set of wings that function through gravitics would use up different keywords than a set of wings that use inertial thrusters.
[] [Resources] Take it slow. Work at Babbage Games. Design your stuff, finish your costume. You'll get resources eventually.
[] [Resources] Junkyard Diving. If you don't get caught, nobody will know you're there. But if you do, you'll be easy pickings.
[] [Resources] Infobroker. It won't work for long, since you're not actually a thinker, and you'll be directly contacting the sort of people who might want to kidnap you.
The cargo container is quiet and smells like rust. However, with the lighting equipment you've rigged up, along with the green screen, the small, laptop in front of you, nobody would be able to tell you weren't in some sort of professional studio.
This isn't the first time you'd used Numberman's servers for your own purposes. Nobody could crack his encryption, and you'd been able to start using it after the first year of your stream.
He was strangely willing to allow you to use it, especially after you offered to pay him in information instead of cash. Just a week's warning before String Theory was caught, and now you have free use of his encryption.
"Connection Established," You say into the webcam, trusting in your software, your non-Icarus mask, and Numberman's encryption to keep your identity secure. "What kind of information do you require?"
"I want whatever you can find on Coil, of Coil's Organization," comes the response, voice warped through a modulator.
"You know my terms," You respond. "I'm unwilling and unable to give any information on personal identities. But this is extraordinarily rare information. Coil is not a very popular figure. I'll have to charge a premium."
"But you do have significant information about him, yes?"
"I even know his power," You respond.
There's a momentary pause.
Then, the figure reaches out and presses a few buttons on his keyboard.
The webcam flicks on, and you're staring at Coil himself.
"And now?" He asks.
You almost freak out. It takes all of your practice and time spent staying in-character to stop yourself from flinching. What would a badass who knows everything do? How would he respond?
You raise your head slightly.
"With the right incentive, I am perfectly willing to forget anything I may happen to know about you," You respond. "Including your power. You won't have to worry about others purchasing information about you from me. After all, I'm sure you've already used it to steal quite a bit of information from me, haven't you?""
He doesn't seem happy, underneath his mask, but the two of you begin to negotiate. You're glad you went under an anonymous identity, with a new mask for this.
If he ever finds out who you actually were, you're probably kind of fucked, but after this, you'll have made enough that you shouldn't need to worry resources for a while. The anonymous infobroker can vanish, and Icarus can emerge as a proper tinker.
High risk, high reward. At least nothing went wrong, right?
Infobroker Roll Results: 53
A part of you wants to quit, now that you've got quite a lot of money from Coil, but that's how an idiot would react. You're still getting paid, It's taking up hours of your time, and it's publicly available information. Other people can look into little ol' Stuart Pierce and see he's wasting most of his time at this shop. He can't possibly be a tinker.
They wouldn't realize how dead the place actually is. The majority of the time you're getting paid for, you're able to work on your blueprints and designs. Work time is design time. It's a perfect cover.
You're putting your finishing touches on one of the other designs you're toying with- a multifunction recycler/fabricator, a simplified version of the replicator when you come to a realization.
You need to decide what you're actually going to do.
You have the Leech device's design. The deal you'd made with your power. It's all about your power. You'd gone out to save Challenger in part because of it, to make it happy. Not because you want to be a hero or anything, you just… didn't want to let her die when you knew you could save her.
You have money, now. Not an astounding amount, but enough to get some real tinkertech made. You've talked with Numberman's agents, and you're having them deliver resources to random places, spots for you to secretly pick them up. You'll have some real tech soon… but what are you going to do with it?
More money? No. Money's always been a means to an end, for you. You wouldn't need to invest it back into tinkertech, if you just wanted cash.
No.
You… You don't want to be laughed at.
You want the world to look up at you. You want them to admire you. To look at Icarus the way they do Dragon, or Hero. To fear you like they do Mannequin- well, not exactly like Mannequin. But you…
That's what you want. You want to show them all how powerful you can really be.
You could join a gang. Make yourself essential to a group. Hell, you could start one of your own. You know about some useful, badass capes who'll be triggering soon. You've gotten your ass kicked a lot… so maybe you could go recruiting instead,
Or focus on the Leech Device. There are tinker capes that'll start triggering soon. Blasto's in Boston. String Theory is still in court. She's not going to the Birdcage yet, but she's going to. What kind of tinkertech could you build if you took her power? The strength to build a device powerful enough to blow up the moon?
You still haven't decided what you're doing until you see Zach stepping in for his evening shift.
"Yo," You say.
"Hey." He responds. "Anything happen today?"
"Here? As if," You respond. "What about out there?"
"Heh, a new ward popped up," Zach says. The cape maniac that's becoming easier and easier to not think of as Uber smirks. "Get this? He called himself 'Clockblocker'. Clockblocker! He stops time."
Heh. You snort.
"Nice," You drawl.
"Have any plans for the weekend?" Zach asks.
Building some tinkertech, you don't say.
"Friend's birthday," You lie.
"Nice. Have fun," He says.
You nod, and turn to leave as soon as he clocks in.
The entire bike ride home, you're thinking. Planning. You know some things about the future, but not a lot. You could look into what you remember, into what's left…
You'll have the time to build one device before undertaking whatever Action is voted.
Resources are the ingredient used to produce tinkertech. Each device has a cost that usually spans between 1-3, with more for extremely powerful or exotic devices. If you lack the resources to construct something, you'll still be able to build it- it'll just take much more time as you slowly gather things.
The small ad-hoc laboratory in the trainyards probably looks like a serial killer's lab.
There's a lot of stuff here. Trash. Discarded animals, between long-dead and dead-yesterday. The more exotic parts had to be Medical tools covered in hand sanitizer, powerful microscopes running off a battery, a bunch of old chemistry sets corroded and worthless. You're sure the homeless neighbors near think you're making meth in here, since you had to open the door a bit to fan out the fumes, even with the respirator in your mask.
This is probably one of the stupidest things you've done. You've heard all the rumors. Heard tales of certain kinds of tinkers who slowly trade out their humanity. It happened with Mannequin. Lab Rat was caught because of it, and Jamestowner was slowly losing what little sanity he had left.
The eggheads have all sorts of terms for different kinds of tinkers. Specialists, Focal Tinkers, etcetera. You never fit any of those categories, but the Mad Scientist shit is what you were always a little worried about.
But your power's downside… the backlash. You couldn't have two downsides. If your power had the ability to break you, to ruin your humanity, it would have taken away your caution first.
When you were designing it, you were planning it to be a potion. Drinkable, you know. But stomach acids and your enzymes would destroy the mycelial sheaths holding the retrovirus, and the treatment wouldn't take hold.
So it's two parts. A syringe, then a vial. Syringe for the retrovirus. Vial for the metabolic boosters. Both of them decanted, both of them ready for application.
Yeah. Retrovirus. You're altering your body on the genetic scale. Some real skeevy, risky shit. The exact sort of shit people panic and rave about. If this was in the future, where people knew about Leet, and knew you'd been making this? Someone would have been on your doorstep with a shotgun.
But they don't need to. You haven't touched anything related to this tech, and you've never brewed anything like this. That said… This time you have the container sealed, nearly airtight. The makeshift explosive is already set to a timer, plugged into your phone. Just in case things don't work out, and you don't regain consciousness.
You stare at it. Then you stare at your surroundings. Then the brick of nutrient bars. The open bottles of drug store nutrients, already finished. A protein shake to wash it all down.
You sit down, and begin to stuff your face. Chewing. For a good half hour, you just eat bar after bar after bar. You eat so much you're starting to get sick of the granola texture and fake chocolate taste. When you can't eat any more, you pop open the protein shake, and carefully, slowly sip at it.
You're hesitating. You can feel it. Everything in your nature is screaming to back off. To be more careful. You hadn't lived that long as a cape by being reckless. But being careful is why you'd been a loser. Why you'd been a fucking joke.
You're doing crazy shit. Real crazy shit. You close your eyes for a moment. You don't have your full costume here, so you put it on mentally. Not your Icarus costume, but a different one.
You imagine Balminder's lab. The corpse. The body. The alarm, the panic. You envision picking up Balminder's glasses, stained with blood. You pop out the lenses, and put it on your nose. You mentally pull on the labcoat. You imagine what you might look like with them on. Hojo again.
Always Hojo, for the crazy suicidal shit.
When you open your eyes again, your hands are steady. Almost too steady.
You press the syringe against your arm. You're already expecting the pain- the pinch- but somehow you don't flinch. Leet would have flinched. Probably screamed and broke things and messed up the procedure. You don't know if Icarus would have. But Hojo doesn't.
You press on the plunger. All of it, until all of the serum, the retrovirus, made from your blood, treated with the genetics of the half-dozen carcasses sharing the shipping container, is completely gone. Until it's empty.
You pull it out, and set it aside. Then you poke the syringe into the container of soap and pump the syringe a few times, just in case.
Nothing feels different. It wouldn't, of course. Left alone, this treatment would make minor changes over the next seven years. It would never fully express itself unless it's breaking down…
Which is what the rest of the potion is for. You glance down at it, at the strange orange bubbly color.
It's a familiar color, one reminiscent of a videogame sprite. It reminds you of pressing new game, loading in, walking all the way to the shopkeep, looking for potions. Elixirs. Doing it over and over again as the night drags on, trying to get your stats to the maximum.
"I sense a soul in search of answers," You say aloud, a small grin on your face. Sometimes, the references are just for you.
You drink it, despite your bloated stomach. It burns, the whole way down. Chemical burns along your tongue, your throat. Your windpipe. You resist the urge to cough, which grows stronger and stronger.
Then, without any more hesitation, you start the timer. Twelve hours until the shipping container burns down, you inside it.
It should be enough time. Ideally.
Your heart starts to pound.
Your limbs begin to shiver, adrenaline pumping through it.
Your gut coils, and begins to burn. You feel your stomach frothing, but despite the adrenaline in your system, despite the sudden slamming of your heart, the gasping for air, your vision begins to blur.
The sedative takes hold, and your body slumps to the ground. Hazy, half-focused eyes are forced to just look at the timer, slowly ticking down.
You stare. And stare…. And lose consciousness.
Augmentation Potion Results: 97, Critical Success.
God fucking damn it, do your bones hurt. They shouldn't hurt this much. They should just be aching now, at this point, but your nervous system is so much stronger, and there's so much extra noise in your head that you're able to focus on them all simultaneously.
You were hoping for Brute powers. Durability and strength. You didn't exactly want to become a wall of meat, not exactly, but strength would be nice.
And it is! It's pretty great! You're fit, now. Beyond fit- your strength is only slightly below peak human, and that's just because your build is the same as it used to be. It's just physics, really. A three-hundred pound weightlifter had that much more muscle and mass to play with. You, on the other hand, lost weight. You're barely over a hundred fifty, soaking wet. Which makes it a little impressive that you could lift about the same amount.
The real boost you got was the Mover and Thinker powers. Your strength made for a direct sort of speed boost, especially considering how light your body is. Beyond that, There's a kind of flexibility in your body and mind, now, a hyperfocused sense of balance. A focused set of every sense, in fact. Sight, hearing, even touch and smell and taste. It's all beyond peak human. Your reflexes, too. You might not be able to dodge a bullet- you don't actually have powers, and the tinkertech was in the potion, not your biology- but you can dodge where a gun's pointed.
It's so weird. Clumsy, stumbling Stuart. Leet the failure. Now you've scaled a wall, almost alone, by digging your fingers into the creases between individual bricks. Now you feel like some kind of animal, some kind of alpha creature. Like you're part of the world, blended in with it. The wind itself seems to be telling you about New York, about the city. You peek through the binoculars at the detention facility. It's high security. String Theory is needed for her trials, so there's a small window of opportunity as she's being shuffled between the facility and the courtroom. But then there's also a window as she's going to be shuttled to the Birdcage, as well.
But that's when they're on their highest guard, no doubt. When her guards expect a rescue mission. The endless hours she's waiting in the detention center… that's when they don't expect it. But that's the most difficult.
It's become a timing game. After examining the places they'll take her, over the next few weeks, you've come to a realization that you have three strong options.
First. Design and build an ace. Some device that'll allow you to get your hands on String Theory. Phasing, Teleportation, maybe Hacking device to try and wrest control from some of Dragon's tech…
Now… Teleportation's always been a sore spot for you. That comes with the fact that one-sided teleportation is nearly impossible. Sending someone to a destination is hard. Receiving, on the other hand, is even worse. The computational requirements alone needs some kind of supercomputer. You can't just… beam someone up. The best teleporters have two sides. One receiver. One sender. So you've always been kind of fucked, as far as that goes. The best you could manage was an emergency receiver, and you'd had to go to Dodge, in Toybox, to build the actual transmitters. But this is early on, before your power hated you. You might be able to pull off a miracle with enough work.
Phasing might work. Especially if you could get your hands on Shadow Stalker for a bit, take some scans of her power. You'd have to worry about oxygen levels and propulsion, while phased halfway in subspace, but it should be enough to move underground. A proper vehicle would take quite a while to build, too. You might not have the time before they're shuttling her off to the Birdcage.
Finally… Hacking Dragon is kind of scary. Well, really scary. She hasn't been nice to any group who tries, and as soon as you do, you'll become one of the big names. Instantly. They'll figure out how to track you, put as many thinkers as they can on the puzzle, and hacking leaves traces. Traces you can't hide behind Numberman, because that's against his Terms of Service. And if hacking Dragon is bad, breaking Numberman's ToS is even worse.
Second option: If you're not building some kind of ace in the hole, a good idea might be to hire mercenaries. There's a few groups out there, a few blacklisters you could find. A real smash and grab kind of deal. Best timing would be before she's officially sentenced. Get them to grab String Theory, hide out somewhere in New York, use the device on her, and then leave her behind and skedaddle. The problem with that, well, is money. You've already extorted as much as you can with your foreknowledge, getting Coil to bribe you, that kind of thing. You'll need to somehow convince a group of mercs to work for you without a down payment, then welsh. Or somehow make the money in time… or maybe, owe someone some favors.
Third option. Try it solo without any new tech? It's not a smart idea, of course. But you've been around long enough, you can kludge some not-tinkertech stuff together. Set off some fires or explosives in the courthouse. Pull her aside. It might take them some time to find her if you plan it out right. The only problem is that you don't know how long the tech takes to work. You wouldn't want to come back to consciousness to find that you're in a cell alongside her as well.
Or you could just give up. Not your favorite option, clearly. You spent valuable bus fare to get shuttled all around the northeast.
Trait Gained: Superhuman. You've got the physiology of a low-grade Mover, Brute, and even Thinker. You now have peak-human grade strength and resilience, and your reflexes, senses, and balance is beyond humanity. This effectively grants you a 'Best of 2' roll for any major physical actions, such as combat or sneaking.
As part of Designing something, you can make attempts to scan various capes. If you're already on good terms with them, that'll involve trying to convince them. If you're not, then, well, it won't always be a friendly attempt.
As always, you have the freedom to write-in your own options or suggestions. This includes certain groups and what you might want to offer them.
[] [Action] You'll try designing an Ace. Something to build that'll bypass String Theory's security. (Allows Designing for this action)
--[] [Design] Teleporter. Really not compatible with your power, but if you do well in the designing phase it would be the easiest option.
--[] [Design] Phasing. Try to scan Shadow Stalker, build some kind of subspace phasing vehicle.
--[] [Design] Automated hacking device. Wrest control of a technological device. Might not work great on tinkertech, but it's better than nothing.
[] [Action] Mercenaries. You'll try and find a group with either the strength or the bulk to do some good work, or something you have the means to actually afford.
--[] [Mercs] Dragonslayers. They do good work against Dragon. They might be a bit too moral, though, and will likely want money first unless you're really convincing.
--[] [Mercs] Chorus. They're small time. The smallest, in fact, but they're in Brockton Bay, you can meet them in person to wow them, and they have powers that can come in handy.
--[] [Mercs] The Teeth. They've got a cell in New York. They're psychoes, and will probably love the excuse to wreck shit. Only downside is that you really, really don't want to piss them off or they'll hound you.
--[] [Mercs] The Adepts. Native to New York, and both fond and capable of underhanded, sneaky plays. You'd have to be, in order to stick around in Legend's town.She slunk through the streets of Brockton Bay. Her crossbow was sporting equipment, in middling condition. Stolen. A hockey mask and a taped-up hoodie made the most of her costume. She hadn't yet learned that with a cape she could stretch it out to use as wings, allow her phasing ability to catch more air and allow her to soar much further. She leapt from building to building, shifting into darkness at the apex of her leaps, allowing her reduced mass and air pressure to carry her the rest of the way.
It's only been a minute or two, and you've already discovered a few things. Air supply is a concern, first off. She's taking gasps before she jumps, and has to take a moment after landing to gasp again.
You stand up. Your own costume is just as cheap, but you've done a few tricks to make it look more tinkertech. Motorcycle padding to bulk your body out in the right way, as well as serve as armor. Your mask and helmet is the main focus of the costume- glowing purple stripes in a T-shaped arrangement serves as something people can focus on as eyes. Your gloves are fingerless- in case you need to pull something off like you did with Armsmaster. Reflective tape in spots, more LED tricks in others to give you a proper tinker look. You're still trying to form an image, but this is as far as it goes.
"Yo."
She whirls around. A bolt shoots toward your face and you panic. You reflexively backhand it into the air, and it goes sailing away.
Holy shit. That was faster than you thought. If it weren't for your reflexes -
You see a glint in the corner of your eye, and before you know it, you reach up to catch the bolt again on it's way straight back down.
"As I was saying," You try to exude confidence, like you'd totally planned that, "Yo."
"Who the fuck are you? You a nazi fuck?"
"Not Empire, that's for sure," You respond. "I'm Icarus. Decided I'd drop in and make you an offer."
"I'm not joining whatever scum gang you're part of," Stalker says. Behind her mask, she glares at you. You twirl the bolt between your fingers. These aren't real 'kill an animal' bolts, but they're still sharp enough to stick a dude. Especially if she uses her phasing power on them.
"Nah. I'm a tinker," You say. "Icarus. I wanted to study your power for a bit. Run a few tests and experiments."
"Fuck no."
"You sure? I mean… five hundred dollars would let you get new equipment. Like actually sharp bolts."
She's tempted, you can tell. But she doesn't respond, holding still. She draws back her crossbow in a threatening manner.
"... Not only that, you'll also learn more about your power. Any secrets I figure out, I'll tell you. Like how electricity's a bad idea."
"... You can tell?" She asks.
"I'm really good at what I do," You lie like a lying asshole. You'd had PRT records, once upon a time. "I can also tell you get a lot of drift. Add a cape to your costume, you should be able to spread it out on jumps. Turn it into a makeshift glider in your breaker state."
She fingers her crossbow. One more addition and she'll agree. You just have to figure out what she might want.
You did spend a bit as an infobroker, so the next thing you think about is her enemies.
"I'll throw in where you can shoot Hookwolf to make it stick," You say.
"Deal." She responds instantly. "Where?"
"The eyes." You say.
"... I mean, where are we doing these tests?"
Oh. That's what she meant.
"Just giving you an advance," You play it off. "This way."
Scanning Roll Result: 67. Success.
Shadow Stalker's power has a real love-hate relationship with electricity, you're finding. The makeshift faraday cage around her arm isn't sparking or buzzing, but the LED light is on, and the batteries are attached. You know it's working.
"I can't." She says. "It'll shock me."
"You're insulated. There's a layer over it."
"That doesn't matter with my power," She says.
"That will be useful information, once we test it." You say. "Or you can wimp out."
You're getting better at managing Shadow Stalker. She praises strength, and hates weakness- even in herself. With that, you find yourself trying to exude badassitude. Replicating Uber during streams, pushing a lackadaisical attitude.
"Fine." She hisses. She focuses, and the running faraday shield goes dark for a moment. Shadowy, intangible. You scan it, watching it for a moment. Then, curiously, you poke the edge of the shadow with a loose wire.
The electricity coils around the faraday cage, caught between the electromagnetic force in this universe with whatever subspace phasing Shadow Stalker's power is doing. The electricity coils around and around, before suddenly blowing its way off of her arm.
That is, the faraday cage itself ripped itself free from the straps, throwing itself itself off of Stalker's arm, and rocketing toward the wall. Still in shadow form, at least for a few moments- before it crashes against the wall, hard.
Shadow Stalker looks down at the points where the strap's velcro had come loose. Then over to the wall.
"It… pulled itself." She says.
"I know," You say. Your tinker power is already screaming propulsion. You just grin behind your mask.
"... Two layers, this time. Opposite directions," You say.
"Wait, wait wait." She starts.
You're already twining together the copper mesh. You press a button on your camera, looking over the recording as a dozen compasses, electric scanners, studfinders and more are all displaying their results. You know by now that it's not exactly you who needs to know the data. It's your power. It's just using your eyes as a window.
It already has most of what it needs.
"Then we'll see what happens if you crank an alternator while phased. That's going to be the real trick…" You start.
"The eyes. Shoot him in the eyes." Shadow Stalker starts muttering. You're not sure if she's talking about Hookwolf, or talking about you.
The design is done. There's already the chassis of an old panel van at a nearby chop shop you can use. Pay the guy a few hundred and he'll give it to you. Most of the actual innards aren't important, and the lack of an engine and wheels is more a benefit than anything.
Pros. The air isn't a problem. Gravity won't be a problem, either. It'll be using magnetic levitation, primarily, Keep it in an envelope of dual-layered faraday cages, you'll be gliding through the earth's magnetic field. Like tight-rope walking when everything on the planet has hundreds of tightropes orbiting the planet. If you touch anything electronic, you'll get shocked… and that'll suck the energy into the shielding, helping to power the device. Anything inside will be kept in a subspace bubble, effectively stabilized. You're also pretty sure that this is one of the few techs you'll build that'll be hardened against EMPs. In fact, that would probably help fuel the subspace bubble- the pulse being caught by the faraday shield would give it an extra kick.
Cons. It'll be visible from the real world. That's the major one. It won't be as visible as Shadow Stalker's 'you can see my bones' schtick, but a huge, van-sized egg of rippling, crackling subspace is definitely something that would freak people out. Another con. Moving through cabling and wiring at the wrong angles could slow it down. Worse the more energy passing through. At the right angles you'll get a boost, sapping power through the electrical grid. If anyone other tinker gets enough of a glimpse of it to realize that, they might be able to figure out a 'net' to catch it.
Another problem is that you don't have a lot of time. She'll be in the Birdcage by August. You'll need to pull some all-nighters, and spend some time in the junkyard to get enough equipment. Not only will this take all of your resources for the rush order, you'll have to figure out what to do with String Theory after that. You won't have the Leech constructed yet.
You sit at the desk, smiling and nodding to your manager as she hands you your check, and you make your way out of the building, thinking.
You'll be careful, of course. New costume, no names. You'll even redesign the Carrier once you're back, redesign its profile, color schemes, just in case you have to use it in the open again.
But do you really want to do this? Once you start building it, you don't think you'll be able to change your mind.
Fate Points: 0
Affinity: Neutral (2)
Resources: 3
State: Healthy