January 18th, 2011
I couldn't clear my schedule enough for that Sunday, but it didn't really matter - because I came up with a way to sorta-kinda be in multiple places at once instead.
Remember my Floating Engine mechanical pencil that I paired with a Camera Orb to take notes from across the city? Yeah, all I had to do was expand on the idea.
Fifteen carefully carved small Floating Engines could approximate a human hand, and thirty - a full pair of hands. A wooden head with a single cyclopean eye socket could house a Camera Orb and a network enchantment to make the entire thing intuitive to pilot. Ah, and there was another, dimensionally displaced Floating Engine (with storage space!) that was attached to every other part with spider web wire, and could PULL the entire array along, the same way Hanzo PULLED me.
I called it a Miko Doll, and according to my tests, I could even use it to craft tinkertech.
And sure, the first iteration looked kinda creepy - but first, I could kinda project my own dimensionally displaced shadow over it, and second - I was gonna commission Parian to craft some Miko Doll bodies, to go along with heads and hands, later. Also, who cared about 'creepy' when I could use it to tinker during all those endless meetings?! Not during the school or my mandatory breaks though - tinkering even during downtime was one certain, easy way to mentally slip into the cape kind of cray cray.
Right now, though - my first (and currently only) Miko Doll was putting finishing touches on a massive dimensional array all the way in the state of New York.
See, there were a handful of issues I wanted to deal with at once.
First, with all the spending going on, Land of Fantasy Ltd could use a bit of extra cash - especially if we wanted to stay operational after donating enough into the schooling system to make Winslow anything other than a glorified child penitentiary.
Second, I still needed a test subject for an idea of mine. The issue was, I had NO guarantee said idea was gonna work the way I wanted, instead of leading to some unfortunate consequences - meaning, I could not just post a job opening or test it on myself (or my friends). It was quite a moral quandary - I needed to test this idea in order to progress a branch of research that could help a lot of people, but I could NOT risk testing it on people all willy-nilly.
Luckily, there was ONE way to acquire both the funds and test subjects at the same time - going after capes with Kill Orders and S-class threats.
Now, I knew better than anyone that having a Kill Order did not mean the person deserved it - for a few months, the PRT had an unsigned one for me specifically, because of what happened to the Simurgh. However, I knew for a FACT that some of these people deserved every bit of scorn, hate and even harm sent their way - people like the Slaughterhouse Nine, for example.
I could not, however, hunt down the Slaughterhouse Nine specifically. They tended to travel in secrecy for weeks and months, leaving a trail of dead witnesses behind to be discovered long after they moved on - only to eventually resurface at a big city on a massive killing spree that could sometimes rival the Endbringers. A lot of other S-class threats had a similar issue - they were nomadic and very difficult to catch.
However, there were a handful of exceptions, including two on the American continent: the Machine Army in Eagleton, Tennessee, and Nilbog in Ellisburg, New York.
According to the info I got from Dragon, the Machine Army was just that - an army of self-replicating machines that were really difficult to destroy, used humans as batteries and parahumans as 'cores' for their specialised battle machines. They were probably the creation of some Tinker, except their creator PROBABLY was long dead, with the army just pursuing the goal of infinite propagation - otherwise, they would've been making VERY different moves. And what made it REALLY difficult to deal with was that the machines developed extradimensional tech - meaning, they were definitely on my list, once I had at least a squad of Miko Dolls to send there instead of my own fleshy body.
Nilbog, on the other hand…
The guy was THE biotinker - the kind the PRT was so damn jumpy about. He made literal monsters - self-propagating grotesque creatures straight out of Grimm's Fairy Tales, that hungered for human flesh, and each possessed the strength and ferocity of a discount cape. Supposedly, the creatures were all loyal to their 'king', and he was still alive somewhere in Ellisburg - which could not be said of thousands of people who previously lived there. No, he killed everyone in the town, and converted their flesh into his horrible, ugly monsters.
The more I learned about Jamie Rinke - Nilbog - the more I detested and hated him, and everything he represented.
And since I needed a test subject for an untested and potentially dangerous procedure - well, this nasty piece of work was gonna do just fine.
Which was why, the evening of that same Friday Victoria decided to talk dumbass at me, I went to the PRT building again - to meet with Director Piggot. She… was not exactly a fan, initially.
"You want to do WHAT?" she looked at me angrily.
"I want to erase the Ellisburg Containment Zone from the face of the Earth, and use Jamie Rinke as a test subject for a procedure that could potentially help a lot of people," I repeated. "Of course, even if he's alive by the end of it, I'm not going to release him into the wild again. That would be stupid."
"That's not the ISSUE here!" she slammed her fist against her table, before taking a deep breath, and continuing at a less aggravated volume. "Once a week, the Think Tank receives a number of questions about the status of every Containment Zone. Should we send our people there? Should we nuke them? Should we keep observing? And for Ellisburg, the answer is similar every week - if we do ANYTHING aggressive, either his monsters are released into the wild and become a roaming threat, or he releases a pathogen into the air that kills tens of millions of people."
I thought about it for a few moments. Those were NOT good news, of course, but… what I had planned kinda made his potential responses a non-factor…?
"You have a point - I'm not entering that situation if those are the consequences. But could you send a new query for the Think Tank? Just to make sure my plan wouldn't work."
"Have you forgotten that they have no way of predicting you specifically?"
"Why would they need to predict ME though? I'm a Tinker, after all," I smiled calmly. "All they have to do is predict some very straightforward tinkertech implementations."
By the middle of the explanation, my calm smile had been matched by director's predatory one.
It took the Think Tank three days to process the inquiry. The results were positive as long as I made sure the affected area extended a few hundred feet BEYOND the walls of the Containment Area - seemed like Rinke had sneaked a nasty surprise or two past the guards.
My Miko Doll was busy for most of yesterday, and half of today implementing specific dimensional schematics around the entire area - and now, as I sat in the conference room with Director Piggot, Armsmaster, Legend and Dragon, the Doll was performing the last few checks on the circuitry to make sure I did not miss a thing.
The air around the Containment Zone was full of Dragon's drones - I had just a few Orbs there as well, just for redundancy's sake, though unless her surveillance got knocked out by the light show, I was not gonna share my own feedback.
The reason for such attendance was relatively simple. The director was here as the head of the local PRT, Legend and Armsmaster - as heads of the Brockton Bay and New York Protectorate, and Dragon was a representative of the Guild - the Protectorate's Canadian 'sister' organisation that mostly dealt with international and S-class threats.
"I'm almost done applying the 'vibranium' dust to the key motes," I notified them.
'Vibranium' was a tinkertech metal made by some Protectorate-affiliated, long-dead Tinker and named after some Earth Aleph pop culture thing - I had no idea what it did, I just knew that there was a very limited supply, and even fewer uses for it.
Hell, even I didn't really need it, technically speaking.
The effect I was about to activate could be replicated by me at any time, using store bought paint and a paintbrush - and THAT was kind of terrifying for everyone involved. By claiming that this could only be done thanks to a weird power interaction with a VERY limited supply of exotic material, I could preemptively shift the topic of various governmental discussions from 'we have to find a way to control Miko of Paradise' to 'we HAVE to make sure she doesn't get any more of this metal'.
"I have already deployed electromagnetic and photon shielding around the secondary perimeter," Dragon noted. She had been really helpful as well - not only suggesting the use of 'vibranium', but ALSO taking responsibility for parts of the necessary security, as well as the containment unit for the aftermath. I kinda wanted to do something nice for her afterwards.
"Are you certain there's no way for Rinke to counterattack before you extract him?" Armsmaster looked at me.
"Yeah. He will be extracted AFTER Ellisburg is dimensionally separated from the rest of Earth Bet, but before it's destroyed," I answered calmly. It was a valid concern, after all, "Speaking of. How do they say it… 'All systems nominal'? Everything's ready, waiting for your go-ahead."
For a bit, Director Piggot just watched the screen with an unreadable expression on her face. I didn't mind - there was probably some history there. Maybe she lost someone to Rinke, maybe something else - unless she cared to share the story, I wasn't gonna pry.
Finally, after a couple of minutes, she nodded.
"Start the first phase."
"Got it, starting the first phase," I confirmed for the sake of the audience - and with a mental gesture, activated the first part of the colossal array.
Now, it was not PURELY a dimensional array. If it was, then the moment I activated it, the entire Ellisburg Containment Zone would've just disappeared without much fanfare, leaving behind a crater a mile deep. Nah, instead - it was ALSO sending a hue-shifted dimensional 'shadow' back to this plane, to allow the playback of what happened next without affecting anything on the conventional planes. As a bonus - the entire place was now seemingly made of very pretty prismatic patterns, as if someone splashed the aurora borealis all over it.
"First phase complete, Ellisburg is dimensionally isolated. Initiating phase two: extraction of Jamie Rinke," I informed the rest of the room.
With that, I guided the Miko Doll towards the centre of the city, where Nilbog's sole dimensional shadow could be detected.
I had no idea how Ellisburg looked before, but now - it looked like a very creepy, horror movie rendition of a fairy tale settlement, with whimsically-shaped and coloured houses, full of fairy tale-looking creatures that were staring at the suddenly changed sky and shouting something in a growing panic.
The Doll made its way past them, unperceived thanks to not being anywhere remotely near them on the W axis - and arrived to the place where the biotinker was located. For some reason, he was hiding underground, only connected to the outside world by some grotesque fleshy tube - the Miko Doll just appeared right next to him, and PULLED him to a different plane - one where Ellisburg was nothing but a rocky plateau for miles and miles.
He tried to yell something about being a God, and got a faceful of high yield Amulets for the trouble - sending him into unconsciousness.
"Jamie Rinke extracted and neutralised. Initiating phase three: the pyre."
With a flip of a mental switch, I activated the second layer of the massive dimensional array.
A moment later, it was as if gates of Hell itself opened beneath the grotesque settlement.
The buildings, the creatures - even the air itself caught on fire, as a massive tendril of molten, painfully bright matter arose through the centre of town, searing, melting, evaporating flesh, stone, dirt and bone alike. All around it, the earth bubbled, turning into formless, molten sludge, before disintegrating under the impossible heat and pressure.
Just a second later, there was nobody left to scream, nothing even remotely resembling a landmass left.
Two seconds later, there was no solid matter left at all, white heat overtaking everything.
Three seconds later, the dimensional array itself collapsed, only kept intact for that long thanks to the dimensional cushioning effect.
Four seconds later, the only thing left of Ellisburg was a crater, slightly smoking at the edges.
"Welp. Third stage completed. All targets have been neutralised," I nodded mutely, feeling...
...
"Holy SHIT," Legend blinked, before jolting, and looking at me. "Uh, I mean, 'holy moley'."
"I hated that place with the power of a thousand suns," Director Piggot noted, with a tone of grim satisfaction. "Introducing them to at least one was only fair."
Yeah, I guessed so as well. Creating a literal portal to the Sun was unnervingly easy, and horrifyingly devastating. It was also something of VERY limited usability - I was pretty sure Ellisburg was the only threat that could be effectively neutralised this way. Even the Machine Army, despite its relatively stationary nature, could not be simply cooked well past 'well done' and 'congratulations', because of their own dimensional tech.
And the sheer scale of destruction… yeah, I preferred not to repeat this kind of thing ever again.
"So," I sighed, "who's up to go meet the man of the hour, before he's subjected to any esoteric and potentially dangerous procedures?"
Still January 18th, 2011
I sat at the very top of the tallest part of the Rig, my hands holding a formerly hot cup of cocoa that had already chilled to being lukewarm, despite my climate control enchantments blocking off the worst of the winter winds. I… probably had been here for a hour by now. And honestly, I had no desire to move from this spot anytime soon.
It was a good thing that I cleared the rest of today's schedule in advance.
Somewhere to my side, I heard a soft, almost melodic whine of tinkertech thrusters - something I only ever heard from Dragon's creations.
It was kind of impressive, how life-like and extremely complex in its simplicity her tech was. I had only seen a couple of her suits (and a few other designs) so far - and they were all marvels of mechanical engineering, with a LOT of complex systems, backups and safety features, all to achieve a handful of relatively simple things - a complete opposite of the usual tinkertech fare. Dragon clearly made things to be as reliable and straightforward as possible - something I really respected in a Tinker.
If only our local blueberry tin can managed to learn a thing or two from her - just looking at his stupid 100-in-1 suit felt like witnessing a piece of junk held together by duct tape and prayer, to say nothing of his idiotic multitool halberd the guy could probably break by looking at it wrong.
"Penny for your thoughts?"
I turned to the side, where Dragon's suit perched on the roof right next to me, mechanical draconic head turned as if it was looking at me pensively. It was both impressive, and just a tad bit ridiculous - but in a good way.
"You really design these suits well, don't you?" I smiled, taking a sip of my not-that-great, cold cocoa.
"What do you mean?"
"For most Tinkers, if they were told to build a battle suit? They'd make this stupid monstrosity that has drills for hands, laser emitters for eyes, and shoots missiles out of its nostrils - all while looking like it was designed by a child with a mechanical engineering degree. But yours? Your suits can do body language. Body language! It has nothing to do with shooting a bad guy in the face, and I think it's brilliant."
"Ah. Well… I'm kind of a recluse, so my Dragon suits have to substitute for me being physically present - if that makes sense." She sounded a bit… bashful? "Also, my first suits were pretty close to what you described?"
"And then, you learned better."
"That, I did."
I nodded, and turned my gaze towards the distance - to the Brockton Bay skyline, highlighted by the setting sun.
There, at the edge of the horizon, the sky was lit up in this deep, nearly fiery orange against the usual greyish blue of a winter sky. It almost…
It almost looked like the city was burning.
Like at any moment, a great, horrible tendril of white would arise from the ground.
Like if I were to blink - the entire city would be replaced by a hellish inferno, and then reduced to nothing.
I could almost feel the terrifying heat slamming against my face-
"Maybe talking about it would help?" Dragon's voice pulled me back into reality. "Not necessarily with me, but…"
"I do have a therapist," I agreed, "She's been a lot of help. Without her, I probably would've tried to conquer the world by now, just to make sure nobody tries anything stupid ever again."
"That… would've been a mess and a half," she said carefully.
"Tell me about it. I'm only trying to revitalise Brockton Bay here, and I'm already so swamped with work and responsibilities, that going to school feels like a vacation to me. If I tried to rule the entire world, just the bureaucracy alone would kill me before any ragtag team of plucky rebels could even form!" I chuckled, though what little mirth I felt at the moment evaporated rather quickly.
My mind flashed back to Jamie Rinke - I could almost hear his animalistic, howling, desperate cries, once he realised what was done to him. Was he still wailing and throwing himself at the walls in his tiny, padded cell? At some point, he should've gotten tired of tearing up his vocal cords with all that shouting, but were these few hours enough for the suddenly and unceremoniously dethroned God King of Ellisburg?
Was it bad that I-
...
"You know, I've never found joy in fighting," I said plainly, eyes back on my already cold cocoa. "Glory? Honour? Seeking thrill? It's always felt meaningless to me. Even with Leviathan, I just felt like… like it wasn't an achievement, but a colossal waste. Waste of time, waste of resources, waste of effort, waste of a life. But the douchebag deserved to die, and nobody else was up to the task - so I grit my teeth, and killed him."
"And now, you feel the same about Ellisburg?"
"No. I feel worse. Like... I hate how easy it was. I hate how I could take so many lives at once, in one horrible instant. I hate how I could decide to erase an entire landmass, and be done with an entire town's worth of everything in a single weekend. And most of all, I hate that I don't even feel bad about it." I could almost feel the ash on my tongue. "Sure, Nilbog's creatures were dangerous - he made them to eat people, and use their biomass to make more of themselves. But there at the end, after they were trapped? Their panic was real enough - just like Leviathan's was. Just like Rinke's anguish at this very moment is real. And I just feel nothing about it - and I feel like I should feel SOMETHING, even just schadenfreude, or relief. Rinke is a bastard deserving to be shot to the head once the observation period is over, and his pet monsters were too dangerous to keep alive - so SURELY I should feel SOMETHING about their suffering, misery or deaths?"
Dragon seemed to think about my words for a few moments, processing them.
"Not... not necessarily," she replied soothingly. "Think about it. There are almost seven billion people in the world. Most of them are normal people, deserving love, compassion and empathy. And a fraction of a fraction of them are the likes of Leviathan and Rinke - those who only deserve force, as much as it takes to put them down. Do you really need to try to squeeze any empathy out of your heart for the latter, when there are many more people who deserve it much more?"
That…
Huh.
She was right, wasn't she? I had people who were still alive to worry about - why waste my time trying to feel anything at all about a douchebag who entirely deserved his fate worse than death?
"I... guess not. Thanks. This helps," I smiled. Who knew that my current favorite Tinker was also a philosopher?
Yeah, she was right.
Today's operation was a success. The threat of the Ellisburg Containment Zone was neutralised, and its former ruler was under observation, incapable of accessing his power. He was gonna remain there for about a month - and then, he was gonna be executed.
The operation itself wasn't even all that difficult!
The Miko Doll approached the unconscious Rinke, carrying a Camera Orb in a spider silk harness. Once it was close enough, its extradimensional Floating Engine PULLED it off the conventional planes, to a space adjacent to the extradimensional tendril that connected to someplace in Nilbog's head.
After a couple of minutes of working out a proper knot, the Orb was tethered to the tendril - at which point, the test subject suddenly woke up, screaming bloody murder.
The Doll was pulled most of the way back onto the conventional planes, only one of its hands left dimensionally shifted. One hand restrained the parahuman madman, and the other grabbed an enchanted knife stored in a container of the extradimensional Floating Engine, and slashed at the tendril at the base. As the knife had a typical 3.5-dimensional carving enchantment, the Doll did not have a hard time severing the weird appendage - after which, the injured appendage fled with the Camera Orb in tow, while Rinke's thrashing had turned downright frantic.
Putting the knife away, the still-shifted hand began carefully detaching what was left of the tendril from the guy's noggin - which took about ten more minutes of dealing with him.
After that, Jamie Rinke was left in his (dimensionally sealed) automatic cell provided by Dragon. He was almost immediately served a meal, so he could discover the joy of being unable to affect biological matter anymore in his entirely too predictable escape attempt.
Meanwhile, the Camera Orb was pulled along with the wounded tendril - and for quite a long distance too - across the W axis. And then, after what felt like both forever, and a single instant, it reached its destination.
I… was not sure how I was gonna explain THAT part to my friends. 'Hey guys, did you know that parahuman powers are granted by these huge eldritch monstrosities the size of a mountain connecting to a human brain?' was a… weird way of putting it. But it's kinda what I saw.
A hulking mass of crystalline flesh that fractalled and shifted in place, doing a decent imitation of a four-dimensional object. Because that's kinda what it was - an imitation.
How did I know it was just an imitation? Because it was harmed by a 3.5-dimensional knife. Otherwise, it would've been like a regular human being physically harmed by a weapon drawn on a piece of paper - absolutely ludicrous.
How could life even evolve 3.5-dimensionality? My guess was - either through generational exposure to exotic energies, or a very, very, VERY long evolutionary arms race. The latter was actually supported by these cross-dimensional tendrils - I could imagine some weird, probably aquatic critter evolving to hide under a rock and using a single long tendril to hunt for food.
Why were 3.5-dimensional mountain-sized eldritch abominations granting powers to 3-dimensional humans? Hell if I knew.
Either way, I needed to discuss it with my friends… probably, tomorrow, seeing how the sun had already set.
"Say, Miko, would you be amenable to a group project?" Dragon looked at me again. "I'm pretty sure your dimensional tech could synergise really well with my and Armsmaster's tinkertech."
On one hand, interacting with Armsmaster again - and even working on his clunky, overdesigned bullshit… Ugh.
On another - I did want to do something nice for Dragon.
"You know what? As long as my schedule permits, sure. Might be interesting to work with other Tinkers."
"Wonderful! I'll send you the details later today, and-" she suddenly stopped, and looked somewhere to the side, "Uh…"
"Something wrong?"
"There are multiple calls about a building explosively appearing in South Downtown. And… It's a Shinto shrine?"
"What."
"Is it yours, or-"
"It's not. Let's go," I downed the cold cup, and then flew down to the 'ground level' of the Rig to put it somewhere it could be retrieved. Dragon followed me. "Even if I wanted to open a second shrine - and I have my hands full with just one - you would've known about it weeks in advance."
"So, it's someone making trouble," she concluded, as we flew towards the city.
"The question is, as always, 'incompetence or malice?'. I'm not holding my breath for either," I deadpanned.
"Hm," her suit actually, physically shrugged. "Are you going there to apprehend them?"
"I'm going there to see if they're a danger to the public," I sighed. "I was recently told that even aside from my reputation, I can be unreasonably terrifying. And if, despite it, someone still comes to Brockton Bay to raise trouble and posture in my general direction? Either they're really confident in their abilities, orrrr…"
"Or they might not be particularly good at threat assessment?"
"Yeah, let's go with that."
"Well, hopefully it's all just a big misunderstanding," Dragon noted.
As we quickly flew towards the epicentre of the commotion, I did not have a lot of hope for that.
Still January 18th, 2011
There was a reason people separated the northern and the southern parts of Downtown.
North Downtown had been this city's financial and logistics centre for many years. It was where one could find Medhall, Stansfield Industries, Brockton Bay Central Hospital - and many, many businesses that catered to their businesses, employees and/or customers. Ah, and it was also where Arcadia was located.
The property values in the north of Downtown were also high enough that even ground-level employees of the local industry giants kinda required a second source of income in the household to be able to live there.
South Downtown, on the other hand, was mostly living apartments for those working in north Downtown, small businesses that catered to those who lived there, and warehouses of differing levels of abandonment. That time Kaiser kidnapped Tana and me, we were brought to one such warehouse - the Empire had a great number of them bought for various nefarious purposes, and their criminal side had squatted in an even larger number of abandoned buildings (along with some cheap rental apartments) whenever they were using the places for something decidedly illegal.
Once the Nazi gang went belly-up and Medhall started going through the arduous process of changing hands, a lot of their warehouses were sold off as an unnecessary expense - which, combined with the abandoned properties the Empire was squatting in, kinda crashed the market to the point where buying a warehouse in the south Downtown was barely more expensive, than buying one in the Docks.
I was well aware of that, because Land of Fantasy Ltd had bought several such lots, including two warehouses located right next to each other that were demolished and turned into one of my Arenas.
So it was not exactly surprising to me that someone else had a similar idea.
The execution, on the other hand…
I stared at what I knew for a FACT a mere month ago was two warehouses with an abandoned building in-between them. It was a place I'd considered for an Arena, before deciding it was way too close to Clarendon High - I wanted to improve the city's schooling situation, so the last thing I wanted was to tempt the school kids to play hooky, and go hang around the cool superpowered laser tag arena just two streets over.
Now, those three lots had been somehow replaced with a rocky hill about three stories high, with a torii gate at the base, leading to stone stairs, leading to a levelled plateau with a… Yeah, it looked like a Shinto shrine, and a weird one at that.
First, it only had a haiden - the building that served as the 'front' of the shrine, the one that people went to to pray and make donations. No honden to enshrine a kami, no shamusho - the administrative office - and no kagura-den, the building dedicated to ceremonial dances. No chozuya basin to wash one's hands and face upon entry either. There were, however, a pair of komainu (lion dog) statues in front of the shrine, to guard against evil spirits - a feature I thought of including in the Brockton Bay Jinja as well, but ultimately had to do without because the only experienced enough traditional Japanese stone mason in the Brockton Bay market was visiting his family in Canada, and was not able to return until it was too late to commission him.
Second, the shrine looked like… … …like it was out of scale, if that made sense. Like it was nearly two times larger than it was supposed to be - the stairs leading into the haiden looked like they had to be literally climbed by an average-sized person.
Third - there were powerful projectors installed around the perimeter of the shrine, casting eye-catching beams of light into the skies - and there were also almost painfully bright floating lights that made the shrine grounds almost look like it was the middle of the day.
Also, there was a large screen with a countdown - a bit under ten minutes at the moment - and this loud, cheery song about Jesus performing miracles, blasting from somewhere. Weird choice, for a Shinto shrine.
I checked on the progress of my Miko Doll - it was currently on its way here, and was gonna arrive shortly.
Good.
"If I'm not mistaken, those are flares," Dragon noted, after inspecting the floating lights for a few moments. "Possibly with an altered tinkertech composition, considering how bright they are, and their slow rates of deterioration and descent."
"Wonderful," I deadpanned. A new Tinker in town, that certainly was what Brockton desperately needed after Squealer's arrest. "Let's enter through the torii gate, on the off chance this is an actual Shinto shrine, and not an elaborate concert stage."
Despite the place reportedly appearing in an explosive fashion, there was no visible damage to its surroundings - nor did I see any chunks of concrete strewn about the surrounding streets. This, along with the flares, suggested a rather broadly-themed Tinker was behind all of this. Just to be sure, as Dragon and I flew up the stone stairs, I activated the Karmic Sonar - and saw literal hundreds of dimensional shadows on the shrine grounds.
Sigh.
There were just a couple dozen people on the grounds so far, and none of them were dressed in shrine uniforms. Such low attendance made a certain amount of sense - it was getting rather late, and people were either decompressing after work, going home or already trying to sleep. Also, while Brockton Bay was getting safer over the past year, most people still seemed to stay cautious about potential parahuman threats.
In fact, most of the gathered people were probably either the typical internet clout chasers who tried to film every parahuman fight they stumbled upon, people with skewed views on personal safety (but I repeat myself), and-
"Hello, Miko of Paradise? I'm Jessica Brown, from Brockton Bay News." Aaand reporters, yeah. There already was a microphone pointed at me by this well-dressed woman in her mid-20s, and a camera pointed at both of us. "What can you tell our viewers about this event?"
"I'm also trying to find out what's going on," I mentally sighed, trying my best to control my expression. Not because the camera was gonna capture it - Chameleon Circuit enchantment, remember? - but because I didn't want to frighten a woman doing her job. "Also, trying to protect the people here and the city, in case something goes wrong. Whatever is going on, it has nothing to do with Land of Fantasy Ltd or me. Excuse us."
I shortly nodded to them, and rose into the air, looking over the venue. Just seven minutes left until SOMETHING, and there were 24 people here already, including a handful of teenagers.
I activated my Sonar again.
Most of the shadows were underground. Meaning, the shrine there was most likely a public front. Maybe the entrance into the underground part was there, maybe it was somewhere in the side of the hill - or maybe, you could only enter the place through the sewers.
I did a mental inventory of what I had on me. I could ensure the safety of these people if necessary, but if the hill itself was dangerous to the surrounding city… Well, I could try to envelop it in a Barrier, of course - but I kinda wished I had Witch's Karmic Furnace on me, just to be on the safe side.
Finally, the Miko Doll arrived to the newest landmark of the city - and I immediately guided it towards the underground section, bypassing all that pesky stone and whatnot on the W axis, only to exit back onto the conventional planes once it found a good spot.
The underground portion looked… not very Shinto-like. More like a lab, or a mechanic's shop. Metal walls, ceiling and floor, harsh bright lights, the noisy, slow hum of ventilation fans. Then, there were metallic shelves and workbenches, covered in differently shaped trinkets - all with a characteristic tinkertech shadow…
Yeah, it looked like a stereotypical Tinker's lair - or at the very least, how I imagined one (sure, I was also a Tinker, but my warehouse was a lot cosier).
And in front of one of those workbenches stood who I assumed to be the Tinker in question - a girl dressed in white and blue stylised miko's clothes clearly aping my own Miko of Paradise uniform, and... wearing some sort of a green piece of headgear? From the back, it looked like a forest green full helmet. I could not tell, because she was facing in the opposite direction, working on something.
Last minute adjustments?
Now, I did have a drop on her - but maybe Dragon was right, and this was all a misunderstanding. Meaning, starting things with a beatdown was NOT something I wanted to do - meaning, talking to her. Good thing my Camera Orbs (like the one serving as the Miko Doll's sole eyeball) allowed me to talk through them.
I was about to speak up through the Doll, when the girl jumped in place, and whirled around to face the intruder.
"Ah! Miko of Paradise!" came out a weirdly monotone, almost robotic in its tone voice, as I stared at the Tinker in front of me.
Her headgear turned out to be a combination of an armoured full helmet, a rebreather, and judging by how she sounded, a voice modulator. It was also clearly stylised after a frog, with two large eye bumps on top of the head, with a black visor for its widely open froggy 'mouth' that projected… …uh… …my guess was, text emoji?
For example, it currently displayed a (◕ㅁ◕✿).
Weird.
"It's sooo wonderful to finally meet you! I'm Miko of Miracles, and I'm suuuuch a huge fan!" she declared in that same weird monotone while doing a cutesy pose, even as her face display switched to a ╰(⸝⸝⸝´꒳`⸝⸝⸝)╯. "May I have your autograph? Did you like my shrine? Ooooh, are you here to see the grand opening? Oh, what am I saying, you totally are! Ahhh, you're gonna love it!"
I…
I was not sure how to even process what I was facing.
"What… are your plans for this event?" I forced out the words, feeling my strength sapping away from my mortal coil with each passing moment around this… whatever this was.
It was so damn tiresome even just existing in the vicinity of someone with this kind of energy.
"Ah, but that would be telling!" she declared with a (╹∀◠) on her display. Then, after theatrically thinking about it for a few seconds - finger on the chin of her helmet and everything - she nodded with a ( ノ ^o^)ノ. "But fine, I'll tell you! Today, I'm just doing small things! Like officially opening my shrine for all visitors, and giving away alms! You know, things like gold and food!"
Alms…
Would've been far more helpful in a disaster area - like Boston after Behemoth's attack - but they were not UNhelpful either. If Land of Fantasy Ltd had the financial means to, we would've at the very least opened soup kitchens and budget eateries in the less-affluent parts of the city - but even with the killing-Leviathan kinds of money, we had to pick and choose what to invest into.
"I see… And after that…?"
"After that, I'm gonna make the Bay better!" her display switched to a ☀(▀U ▀-͠). "It's got so many issues, so surely little ol' me can help!"
"I… I see," I nodded mutely. "Then, I'll leave you to it for now, Miko of Miracles. I'll see you around…"
With that, I withdrew my Miko Doll from that Tinker's lair, and sent it to wait around, hidden off the conventional planes. I was, honestly, of half a mind to flee from the venue entirely, just so I didn't have to be around this new Tinker when the event started in just a bit over a minute, but…
Yeah, I couldn't leave, on the off chance something went wrong.
"Is everything okay?" Dragon asked me, clearly sensing my distress.
"I… met the Tinker behind this, just now." I could not help my weary sigh - I felt tired to my very bones. "This is gonna suuuuuck…"