Chapitre 1798: 5
Chapter 5: Drop 1-4
Author's Note: Well here we are, chapter 4. This is a bit sad for me, as my Beta for this story, becuzeitswrong, passed away of a heart attack in September. This was the last chapter he beta'd for me just a week and a half before he passed, so if you could review it, I would be grateful.
That being said, I am now in need of a new Beta, so if you think you can step into becuzeitswrong's shoes, PM me. As I am from Britain, someone who is knowledgeable with daily life in America, where Worm takes place for the most part, would be preferable.
RIP becauzitswrong.
"Damn you Sophia!" – Speech
'Why Emma?' - Thought
Drop 1.4
+++Taylor+++
It took me three weeks to be confident enough in my health that I regularly hit the Boat Graveyard to work out. After a week there, I added parkour to my repertoire, the large ships with their tight interiors and maze-like topsides perfect for pushing my movements. It was incredibly tiring at times and made my muscles scream in protest at the abuse they suffered, but the results were completely worth it. Or so I told myself when dragging my aching body home afterward.
The scalding hot showers in my bathroom upstairs really helped, too.
I also occasionally snuck out of the house at night in order to practice parkour in my civilian identity as well. It was easy to be relatively anonymous in the evening. The last thing I needed was for people to wonder why that Hebert girl was taking up parkour, then somehow connecting it with the new hero flying around and, oh, coincidentally, using parkour-like movements when moving around on the ground.
So, here I was again, out in the middle of the Boat Graveyard. This place was creepy as hell, what with the myriad of huge rusting hulks of ships partially sunk into the water. It had been created as an act of protest shortly after it had been apparent that the shipping industry in Brockton Bay was dying as a result of Leviathan's control of the seas and that there would be some serious layoffs all over the city, especially in the Dockworker's Union.
As a result of the layoffs, strikes happened. Present in the city at the time were a bunch of very angry people, as well as some very stupid people, but the worst was the small group that combined anger and stupidity to an extreme. Those were the people who hijacked a handful of ships, took them out into the mouth of the harbor, and sunk them, blocking the harbor mouth. It not only kept any new ships above a certain size from coming in, but it trapped there the hundreds of ships that were already present, they having fled to Brockton Bay to escape the threat of Leviathan only to find a threat of a different kind here.
The closing of the harbor killed off any remaining import/export businesses that were left in Brockton Bay and left the Docks a mostly deserted mess of warehouse space with the occasional boarded up factory thrown in. Lastly, it left even more people out of work as the Docks closed down completely. Thus the 'stupid people' part of the earlier comment.
This all happened when I was a baby. I only know as much about it as I do because Dad had to testify at the trials of the ringleaders of the 'Boat Sinkers' and was grousing to mom about it one time when I was six. As it turned out, six didn't mean stupid, and I still remembered his words to this day.
I was currently taking a cautious approach to moving over the water, using my hydrokinesis to keep afloat and make sure to keep away from any of the ships that looked as if they were too unstable. The interim costume I had collected still wasn't fully complete, so I wore a pair of dark jeans instead of the pants I wanted and a pair of old sneakers that were barely holding together, the sole of one forlornly dangling half off of the rest of the shoe.
Tonight, I was looking for one ship in particular, the one that my power had used as a template for the diagram of my soon-to-be base. It didn't choose just any ship to use for my design; it chose a massive cargo transport ship, one that the leader of the idiots who had created the Boat Graveyard had sunk personally.
At first, I hadn't realized that my power had used an actual vessel from the Boat Graveyard. But the shape that I had drawn on the paper had been hauntingly familiar from middle school lessons. It had only taken me a moment longer to recognize the shape there was that of an actual ship out in the harbor.
It was the MS Evermore, a general cargo vessel powered by a pair of huge marine diesel engines. Not a super tanker or anything, but it was still plenty large enough for me to gut the thing and make my own base inside, without anyone on the outside being any the wiser. It also had another advantage, a big one.
Most ships here in the Boat Graveyard had been picked over by the authorities, or one of the gangs, like the Merchants, the ABB, or Empire 88. However, the Evermore was anchored at the far edge of the Graveyard. Far enough away from the other ships that it would have taken hiring another ship in order to salvage it, an act which none of the gangs or the authorities could apparently either afford or be bothered with, so it had lain fallow there for over a dozen years.
All the more salvage for me, I thought in glee.
As I crept around the rusted hulks of the various ships, I began to question my decision. All of these ships were wrecks that were a few years away from crumbling to pieces. I really wanted to build my base in one of them?
My Tinker ability smacked me squarely in the back of the head and made its opinion clear… yes, I did.
Ignoring the incipient headache I could feel building, I spotted my destination at last. The command tower was painted white, albeit with numerous patches of rust scattered across it, but not the hull.
The ship's hull, which should have been painted a bright, cheery blue, and likely as rusty as the ship's superstructure, was mostly concealed beneath the waters of the bay as it rested there upon the bottom, a testament to the demented determination of those who had sank it.
I could just barely see the hole in the stern that had sunk it, peeking up out of water and likely extending far beneath it. Far too damn large to be even the result of a collision, the hole had been caused by the ship's crew and a handful of dockworkers aboard using explosives to sink the ship. Opening the bilge pumps would have done much the same thing without wrecking the ship's hull like that. Then again, they were trying to make a statement that no one would ever drain and raise the Evermore. That it would never again sail the world's oceans. At least, that is, without a great deal of difficulty and expense, so that was probably the reason for the overkill right there.
Taking a breath, I stopped using my water walking and plunged into the cold ocean beneath me. Forcing myself not to yelp at the freezing cold, I reached out and quickly heated the water around me until it was at least as warm as my skin, a much more pleasant sensation, and one that avoided the annoying issue of hypothermia.
Sinking down beneath the waves, I experimented for a moment with how to propel myself without swimming. I was ungainly in that regard, which made my having water powers somewhat of an irony. Still, being a great swimmer should be unnecessary when you had water manipulation powers like mine.
After a bit of experimentation, I found that I could jet water from the soles of my feet, acting like a jet ski's hydrojet. I had to throttle it down, though, after my first attempt almost sent me headfirst into the side of the Evermore. Getting knocked out and drowning when you were a hydrokinetic would be the height of stupidity so I was a lot more careful afterward.
Still, being able to zoom around underwater was cool. I did restrain myself from playing around (at least too much) as I was there for a purpose. Speeding towards the Evermore, I circled it once before entering via the immense hole in the stern. What the heck had they used to do this, I wondered? Dynamite?
It took me a moment to find a ladder leading up, ladder in this case actually meaning stairs since I was on a ship. Emerging from the water next to a wide open hatch leading to the next compartment, I staggered out of the sea and used my powers to draw the water from my hair, clothes, and off my skin, dumping it back to where it came from and then pulling a flashlight from a sealed plastic bag.
Note to self: invent waterproof flashlight. Or at least buy one when I could afford it.
The ship's hull was welded steel from the records I had searched online. Typically, ships built like that were meant to last about forty years before being scrapped. Even better, the Evermore had only been built a year and a half before it had been sunk twelve years before. Forty minus thirteen and a half hopefully meant twenty-six and a half years left before it might become untenable to inhabit. More than long enough for me.
Of course, how much time had been removed from the ship's life by being more than half submerged in the corrosive salt water of Brockton Bay's harbor remained to be seen.
As I explored the ship, I mentally logged possible useful items that were lying about, for raw materials if for nothing else. I made a mental note to find a way to melt down metal without compromising the hull any more than it already had been. I would have to be careful not to salvage anything important to the ship's integrity. All else would be fair game.
Soon enough, I came across a series of large rooms, the main cargo holds. Each contained several dozen cargo containers, most of which appeared intact. From my reading, I knew that container ships like this one had several different holds, laid out sequentially, each designed to hold twenty and forty foot containers using a rail system. The containers I could see all appeared to be of the smaller size, not that I minded as that just meant there were twice as many of them.
I had hit paydirt.
I hadn't been able to find out exactly what the cargo was that had been loaded onto the Evermore while it had been docked at Brockton Bay on the message boards I'd perused. However, considering the number of zeros that the insurance company had been rumored to have been forced to pay out, it had to be something valuable. One poster had put it at well over forty million dollars.
It made me wonder why Alexandria, Eidolon, or even Glory Girl hadn't just picked the cargo up. Or even another cape from another city. Alexandria was the strongest flyer in the world and combined with Eidolon's ability to use any three powers generated at random, it should have been relatively easy for them. Glory Girl wasn't in Alexandria's league, but she was easily able to pick up a truck, which was roughly something similar to how heavy one of these cargo containers were, so she, too, could have salvaged this at some point in the past.
On the other hand, Glory Girl was only a couple of years older than me; she hadn't gotten her superpowers until her freshman year of high school. By the time she'd gained her powers, it was unlikely that anyone living in Brockton Bay really remembered the Evermore; it and the value of its cargo pretty much forgotten.
Seeing that the bottom of the holds were flooded with highly corrosive saltwater, I decided to tentatively write off the bottom two sets of containers as too damaged to be of use. Once I'd cleared all of the water from the ship, I'd investigate them further, but for now the three upper layers of containers were a far better bet.
Carefully stepping through the hatch, I waved my hands at the water, and it flowed to the side. Some of it I shaped into a set of stairs, which I then made as solid as steel. Climbing down the ladder on the side of the hold, I approached the steps I'd just made with a certain amount of trepidation. I climbed them tentatively at first, then with more confidence. A moment later, I reached the topmost container and regarded it. No way was I going to be able to open the locked steel container with my weak and puny arms.
Calling a pair of… tentacles? Tendrils? Whatever... out of the water, I used them to break the locks, then to unlatch the door and tug it open. Revealed by the opening and the light of my torch was a load of…
"Solar panels?" I whispered aloud, eyes wide, as my Tinker sense kicked in to identify them.
I checked as many containers as I could and they were all solar panels. In every hold I went through. This was very good. Solar panels remained one of the more expensive commodities, still very much in demand. They were highly sought after in case of power outages thanks to Cape fights or Endbringer battles.
Additionally, with the disruption in the shipping trade caused by Leviathan, the rare earth metals they contained, things like indium and tellurium, made them almost more valuable to just salvage than to sell intact.
A smile crept its way across my face. I now had tradable goods.
Time to find a method to contact Toybox.
+++Waterworks+++
The next day, while home, I took delivery of my new computer with its built in modem. Once I finished setting it up, I headed to the library and started the hunt for Toybox. Not that I thought it would take all that long as I considered the group.
Toybox was an organization of Tinkers who were unaligned to either heroes or villains. Instead, they acted as Rogues, selling their goods for a profit. They moved frequently and traded on the black market; goods for materials, services for the same. Many Tinkers who didn't join the Protectorate or weren't shanghaied by a villainous gang generally ended up with Toybox, for protection if nothing else.
One of their members in the past, Net Worker, had set up an untraceable website that protected the location of anyone trying to access the site, whether heroes, villains, or Toybox members themselves, as well as any outside party attempting to contact them. It was something only a Tinker who specialized in writing computer programs could do
This much I had gathered from the PRT's own website. Net Worker had hacked the website over five years before and made alterations to it so that the PRT couldn't remove the information about Toybox, something that no doubt angered and frustrated the upper echelons of the PRT.
That it had lasted as long as it had was a testament to the hacker Tinker's skill, as the PRT had many Tinkers themselves as members, some of whom who surely had at least a little skill with computers and programming.
Toybox's own website, once I had accessed it and made sure that no one else was looking, was very basic. The screen was split into four quadrants, each with a title; [Buy/Sell], [Join], [Trade], [First Time Buyers/Sellers].
When I clicked on the last icon, another window opened up asking me to state a reason for contacting Toybox, a contact number that was either untraceable or disposable and a date and time that I could be contacted at.
Ha! Way ahead of you. Dad had finally broken down and given me some money to get new cell phones for me and him last week, which I did. I also took the opportunity to buy a couple of cheap, burner phones for when I wanted to call in crimes to the PRT Hotline as a hero.
I quickly typed in all the required information, momentarily cursing the unwieldiness of mobile phone numbers, then closed the web browser down and headed home.
+++Waterworks+++
Dad was in good mood when he came in from work, humming a tuneless song.
"What's got you so happy?" I asked as I set the beef stew I'd made for dinner on the kitchen table. "Lung finally get sent to the Birdcage?"
"Nope. The job the Dockworker's Union got awarded by the city, you know, the contract for one of the derelict factories?" Dad's face wore a wide smile as he spoke. "We've been hired to do all of them!"
"That's great!" I almost squealed in joy. This would keep the Dockworker's Union working for six months at a minimum.
I ran over and gave him a great big hug, which he happily returned.
"What made the mayor do this?" I had to wonder at the man's motives. The current incumbent, Mayor Christner, was usually heavily biased towards the bigger companies, rarely ever throwing a bone to the Union.
"Turns out that the big companies have been spending too much time twiddling their thumbs and not enough time actually doing any salvage." Dad smirked. "So the mayor got sick of paying money for work that wasn't being done, kicked the fat cats to the curb, and asked us to do it for the same price as he was paying the big boys."
I gave him a smirk in return before it faded into a happy grin. Recently, Dad and I have become a little anti-establishment. Hardly a surprise, given the way that I had been screwed over for the last fifteen months or so. Not that we were anarchists, but I considered a little healthy distrust of the government and authorities to be a good thing.
"The downside is that I'll be working long hours to coordinate everything," Dad continued after a moment. "The Union hasn't had a contract this big in years, so nothing can be allowed to go wrong. I'll be early to bed and early to rise and I won't see a lot of you. Sorry, Taylor."
"It's okay, Dad." I smiled at him. "The Union... the city needs this contract. Once you have everything shipshape, we'll have a father-daughter weekend. Grab dinner, do a little shopping, maybe even hit a carnival if one makes it to town. Sound good?"
"Sounds good," he agreed. "How are your studies coming along?"
I smiled at the question. "I'm either caught up with or have gone past the current point of my classes from Winslow. Aside from Chemistry, that is, as I'm still waiting on some of the materials. Once I get them, I'll do the same with it."
"That's excellent, Taylor!" Dad exclaimed happily. "Just goes to show how much that place was holding you back."
"It's just my work ethic," I demurred. "I try hard and I get results. That's all it is."
"It's still something to be proud of, Taylor," Dad told me in an earnest tone. "Most kids your age would coast along, doing the bare minimum needed. Your mother would be so proud of you."
I flushed at that last comment. "We should eat," I said, more to draw the attention off myself than because I was actually all that hungry. I was always uncomfortable in the spotlight. Something Dad understood only too well as he'd been the same at my age.
"Of course," he agreed with a knowing grin.
The next day, after Dad left for work, I put the battery and SIM card into the disposable phone I had chosen to use as my contact phone with Toybox. It wasn't much to look at, just a half inch thick silver-grey rectangle, its case made out of cheap plastic, but it would do. I was expecting Toybox to phone me just after lunchtime, so I got my morning jog and studying out of the way first, before getting out the last part of my plan, a basic voice changer.
I had no doubt that if Toybox wished to, they could easily find out who I was. What I was hoping for was that their famed neutrality would hold true. For years, ever since their founding, they'd refused to get involved in any hero/villain fights or even the Endbringer battles. They hated being double-crossed and threatened dire consequences on anyone who tried that with them, so I doubted they'd try anything with me either.
Still, there was no point taking chances. I set my phone next to the voice changer and pulled my drawing pad out. Its pages were now thick with designs for various Tinkertech devices, not all of them to do with water. I had found that for every three water-related tinker device I designed, I seemed to be able to design something else, such as a hard-light hologram projector or even a machine that pumped out handcuffs.
No way was I relying on zip-ties.
Despite my flippancy, it was actually much, much harder to come up with a design outside of my specialty than it was to design something that lay within it. At a guess, I would say that difficulty would also definitely translate over to actually building the things I drew up as well, but it would still be worth it.
Currently, I was sketching the design for a device that formed water into a pellet that could be fired as it were a bullet. I was considering altering my suit design to include it when the phone finally rang. I jumped in surprise before grabbing the voice changer, switching it on, and answering the phone.
"Hello," I said cautiously, my altered voice coming out at a lower timbre than normal.
"This is Cranial, from Toybox," a voice answered. It was female and brisk. "To whom am I speaking? Hero, Villain or Independent?"
"Independent," I stated, "For now, you can call me Waterworks."
"Uh huh. Lame name, but whatever," the woman replied. "What is it that you want?"
"Would Toybox be interested in a ship's hold full of solar panels?" I asked, ignoring how rude the woman was being.
"…is this a joke?" Cranial asked, her current tone far more serious than her earlier snarky one.
"I'm deadly serious," I said carefully. Clearly, she was interested, so I decided to go ahead and explain, "I seek to trade them for materials."
"Ah. A new Tinker with a water specialization to judge from the name," Cranial mused. "Listen, if you are a new Tinker, you're better off joining a group. If not us, then the Protectorate or a villain group. Tinkers do not make good independents."
"So I've heard. Unfortunately, I have authority issues." Understatement of the century there. "Are you interested in my deal or not?"
"Where did you get them?" Cranial asked.
"The Evermore."
"Those things? They'll be corroded and useless," Cranial said, her tone incredulous. Evidently Toybox had a long memory for minutiae. One ship's manifest out of tens of thousands worldwide after twelve years had passed was ample evidence of that.
"Some will be," I admitted. "But those that were left sealed inside the containers and not underwater look to be in good condition. Tell you what, if you can send someone to Brockton Bay tonight, I'll show them the goods and they can report back to you about their condition."
″If this is a PRT or villain trap…" Cranial warned, her voice trailing off to let me spell out my own fate.
I did my best to interject sincerity into my voice, "Far from it. So? Can it be arranged?"
There was a distant murmur, although I couldn't make out any words as Cranial apparently talked to someone off to one side for a moment. When she returned to me, her voice was brisk, "We'll be sending Dodge to you via teleporter tonight, twelve sharp. Where do you want to meet him?"
"The bridge of the Evermore. I'll be dressed in black and unarmed." I replied.
"Agreed," Cranial said shortly before hanging up.
I sighed in relief as I removed the battery from the phone and hid it again. That had gone far better than I expected.
+++Toybox+++
Cranial put the phone down and turned to look at Bauble. "What did the lie detector say?"
"Never dropped below 98% on the truth scale," the other Tinker replied. "As far as she knows it, she's telling the whole truth. Plus, she sounds sincere. Even earnest."
Pyrotechnical, seated nearby, whistled. "Been a while since someone has been dead honest with us. Dodge, you up for a visit to the city of the sunken ships?"
"Yay," the man said flatly and sarcastically. "Why can't I just drop off someone rather than doing it myself?"
"Because only you can use your teleporter, dumbass!" Cranial shook her head in exasperation. "You still haven't managed to work out the kinks in it for other users. Last time you took someone along on a trip, they barfed their guts up as soon as you arrived at the destination. Not the impression we want to make here.″
"Oh, right, that," Dodge admitted with a sigh. "What should I do once there?"
"Assess the goods: find out how much is still usable and how much will need to be recycled and what Waterworks wants in exchange for them," Pyrotechnical replied. "She's a new tinker, so she'll probably need a workshop set up. Offer her a place with us, although it sounds like she's planning on staying Independent."
"Got it." Dodge nodded. "What if she wants more than a basic workshop?"
"Depends on how many of the solar panels are in close to working order and how many we will have to recycle," Big Rig rumbled. The man was wearing a suit of powered armor and boomed whenever he spoke. "It also depends on what kind they are. If they're wafer-based crystalline silicon, give her a little leeway. If the majority is thin-film panels, give her whatever she asks for. She seemed confident that a lot of the panels were safe from water damage, so it seems likely at least some are undamaged."
"He could just take them, you know?" Glace, silent before now, drawled. "It isn't like she could stop him if she hasn't the tools to build anything."
"No!" Toy Soldier growled. "We don't get screwed over and we don't screw our customers over. That's the one rule everyone at Toybox adheres to. It keeps things civilized."
"Agreed." Cranial glared at Glace. "I was screwed over a dozen times before joining Toybox. It wasn't pleasant. I don't do that to people. If and only if she tries to screw us over, we do something about it. Not a nanosecond beforehand."
"Whatever." Glace sauntered off.
"Keep an eye on her," Pyrotechnical murmured to Bauble. "When we put together the goods Waterworks requests, make sure she's away from them. She's so full of sour grapes I can smell them from here."
"Gotcha," the gadget Tinker replied with a nod.
+++Taylor+++
The Evermore had been pointing inward, towards Brockton Bay, when it was sunk. The view through the shattered and cracked glass of the bridge was quite something in my opinion. From here, I could easily see the lights of the skyscrapers downtown, as well as a general glow from the rest of the city.
I had donned my black clothing again, and had supplemented it with a basic face mask; spray painted black, with the voice changer taped to where the mouth was. A slipshod arrangement, but it was the best I could come up with on short notice.
"A good view isn't it?" a voice asked making my heart race. I managed to keep a cool exterior though and turned around to see a man… actually, a teenager, wearing a yellow and green costume.
"It is," I agreed easily. "Dodge, I presume?"
"Indeed. Waterworks?" Dodge asked, extending a hand.
"Yup. Pleased to meet you, Dodge," I replied and shook his hand. "Shall we get to business?"
"Direct. I approve." The other Cape nodded. "Lead the way."
Shrugging, I led him into the bowls of the ship and into one of the cargo holds, where the majority of the solar panels were kept.
"Okay, I am both impressed and shocked," Dodge said. "Impressed that you managed to claim them and shocked that no one else has made off with them before now."
I shrugged. "Empire 88 and the ABB have been fighting over the more juicy sections of the city for years now. Before that, all of the easy pickings were taken by them, the Merchants, or the government. The Evermore is way too far out in the harbor to salvage without a ship, a helicopter, a strong flyer, or hydrokinetic. Too expensive or too rare outside of the Protectorate. These days, I don't anyone really thinks about its cargo that much, probably thinking it was ruined by all of the salt water."
Dodge nodded. Flying wasn't the most common power. Couple that with another powerful ability that would allow someone to salvage the ship and it grew increasingly rare. Aerokinetics were the best bet after fliers, or a sufficiently powerful telekinetic.
"Anyway, let's get to looking over the goods you have on offer." Dodge rubbed his hands together.
I gestured at the water in the hold and it shifted to one side and formed a set of stairs again, leading to the container I had checked previously.
"Holy… You are a Tinker, aren't you?" Dodge asked, shock discernible on the visible portions of his face.
I shrugged. "I am, but only as an accompaniment to my hydrokinesis ability.″
"Maybe a Blaster," the Tinker muttered. "How much can you control?"
"Last week, I experimented in the middle of the Boat Graveyard." I decided not to give out too much information to someone I didn't know that well yet. "I lifted quite a bit of the water in the Graveyard up into the air."
"Okay, you also have a Shaker rating with that ability," Dodge explained, excitement in his voice. "Christ. No wonder you want to be an Independent. Still, you do know that Independent Capes rarely last six months on their own?"
I sighed. "I know. However, the authorities really screwed me over recently. I'm not comfortable with the idea of being a Ward. And I refuse to be a villain."
"What about joining Toybox?" Dodge asked idly as he traveled up the water stairs I'd made as if they were an everyday occurrence.
I tried to explain how I felt. "I live in Brockton Bay. This place is my home. I refuse to live like a nomad. No offense."
"None taken," Dodge replied with a sharp nod. "Let's see what we have here… ah-ha! A bunch of eight percent efficiency, two hundred and thirty watt panels."
"Is that good?" I asked, impressed that he'd recognized them right off the bat.
"About average," Dodge replied. "Only a few types of solar panels exceed nineteen percent efficiency, mostly Tinkertech ones. The main thing though is that your panels are wafer-based crystalline silicon. Not the most valuable. But if all of these containers contain the same kind of panels, then Toybox will be very interested. They look to still be packed up and sealed, so any water damage should be minimal. I'll have to check the other containers, but this appears promising."
He checked container after container and they were all full of the same type of solar panels, packaged the same way.
"I notice that all the ones you have showed me are from the first through third layers of containers," Dodge noted after a while.
"I'm reasonably sure that the ones on the two bottom layers are corroded or badly damaged," I admitted. "I would value them as less than useless."
"Let's have a look, just to be certain," he said with a shrug.
Nodding, I cleared the water further away from one section of containers and let him look inside.
Unfortunately, his opinion agreed with mine. "Hmm… smashed and corroded… only good for scrap."
The next few containers were the same. Only a handful of them were in any state to be used.
"The amounts that are in either repairable or otherwise salvageable condition in the bottom containers are about twenty percent," Dodge informed me. "Given the circumstance, that isn't too bad. Combined with the conditions of the panels in the top three layers, I think you have something Toybox is willing to trade for, Waterworks."
"Glad to hear it," I replied, trying to keep my excitement out of my voice.
"So, and this is the big question, what is it you would like in trade for these items?" Dodge asked. "One thing that we are willing to give you as a part of the deal is what we call 'the basics'. A set of basic tools and materials that any Tinker will need to begin construction of the devices."
My heart started beating hard. That was exactly what I wanted.
"That would be… brilliant," I managed. "I have some designs I've been working on, but haven't been able to build. And-"
"Ouch. You must be close to a Tinker explosion," Dodge sounded concerned at that.
"A what?" I asked.
"If a Tinker can't build for a certain period of time and yet has ideas coming to them, once they get the materials to build them, they tend to lose track of time," Dodge informed me with a grimace. "That's what we unofficially refer to as a Tinker explosion; an uncontrolled orgy of building Tinkertech."
I winced. ″Ouch. Thanks for the heads up. Anyway, I have a list of items I need to build my tech. Take it back with you and let me know what will be alright for a trade."
I took the list out of my pocket and handed it to Dodge, who opened it and scanned down my list for a moment.
"Looks like you're looking to make some kinda semi-power armor." he said softly, "Why not go the whole hog?"
"I can use water as a replacement for plate metal," I explained. As a demonstration, I levitated some water and shaped it into a flat square, then made it as hard as steel. "Here. Try shooting that."
Dodge blinked before drawing a pistol and attaching a silencer to it. I watched carefully as he kept the gun pointed away from me the entire time. A second later, he shot the water square exactly in the middle. The bullet flattened against the water, making only a slight dimple in it, which almost immediately smoothed away.
The Tinker stared at the square for a moment before turning to me. "Okay, I can see why you don't need full power armor. Why not ask for some jetpacks or antigravity field generators for flight?"
I hesitated a moment, then answered his question by coating my body in water and levitating myself into the air.
Dodge gaped. "You've gotta be fuckin' kidding me! Hydrokinetic Flight! That's totally out of Earth Aleph comic books!"
"Apparently it's also my power," I said as I lowered myself to the decking and shed the water.
He nodded briskly. "Okay. Sure. That gets you a Mover rating as well, just so you know. So far, you have Blaster, Mover, Tinker and Shaker ratings. Can you sense the water? Create it from nothing or the air? Convert it into ice or mist?"
Deciding I'd explained enough about my power to someone whom I'd just met, I merely said, ″Actually, I'll just let those things be a mystery for now. I will say though that I'm under the Manton Effect." I added that to show that I wasn't too dangerous.
"That's actually a good thing," Dodge said. "One Cape like Drought in the world is more than enough. Anyway, even if you can't do all of the things I mentioned, I'd say you're a very powerful Hydrokinetic. I'll add in a power testing protocol we 'acquired' from the PRT a few years ago. Anyway, this list should be pretty easy to get. It'll take some time to gather it though. This time next week sound good to you?"
I nodded. "Sure. Give me a ring on my phone at midday and I'll meet you back here that day to finalize everything."
"Sounds good," Dodge said. "Can you lead me back up to the bridge? My current teleporter can only teleport me to and from specific, pre-set, locations."
"Okay." I started leading him back the way we came. Deciding to find out if he was willing to give any tit for tat, I asked, "So what's your specialty?"
"Personal movement," he replied. "Not just teleporters, but reflex enhancers, rocket skates, flying skateboards… that kinda thing."
"Oh. Like Kid Win's floating skateboard." I remembered seeing a picture of it online.
Dodged nodded. "Pretty much. Though I really feel sorry for Kid Win. He has Armsmaster as a mentor."
"Why's that so bad?" I asked.
"Armsmaster is anti-social, to put it politely," I could hear the grimace in his voice as he spoke. "The first thing he does with new Tinkers is tell them how 'crappy' their work is."
I felt my brows go up in surprise at that. In a tentative tone, I asked, "Would that be because of his efficiency specialty?"
"Probably, but the man has the subtlety and tact of a strategic nuke being used against a walnut when he does it," Dodge said with a laugh. "He is so exacting and demanding that I heard through the grapevine that he overworked Kid Win during his first six months as a Ward. Miss Militia had to say something to the local PRT and Director Piggot ended up ordering him not to push Kid Win as hard. Of course, Armsmaster didn't even understand what the problem was."
"That's awful," I said, and meant it.
"Yeah, and another good reason not to join the Wards if you're a Tinker in Brockton Bay," the Toybox Tinker added as we reached the bridge. "Now, I came in here, right?"
Looking around, I nodded. ″I think so.″
"Okay, then, see you next week. By the way, are you going to keep the name 'Waterworks'?"
"No," I admitted. "It's kinda just an interim name."
"Better pick another one soon," Dodge warned me. "Otherwise the PRT will put a label on you. And they suck at assigning names. Even worse, those names have a habit of sticking with you throughout your career. Think Chubster."
"I'll get right on it," I promised.
"See you later." Dodge pressed a button on his belt buckle and he just vanished.
+++Toybox+++
"You have got to be kidding me," Cranial stated, looking shocked.
Dodge shook his head. "I shit you not. The kid has some of the strongest hydrokinetic powers I have ever seen. Blaster 6, possibly 7. Shaker 5, Mover 3 or even 4 and Tinker 4."
"Bullshit," Glace said flatly.
The green and yellow suited man glared at her before going over to a computer linked to a hologram emitter. "Look…in the last thirty-odd years since Scion's appearance, only about two hundred or so Hydrokinetics have Triggered." He brought up a list of those names with the hologram projector.
"Uh huh, and..." Glace agreed, her voice trailing off into a question.
"All of them have been either Blasters or Shakers. Not both at the same time," Pyrotechnical put in as he studied the list. "That is what you were going to say, right?"
Dodge nodded. "Yup. The girl, who must be a recent Trigger, can use hydrokinetic flight, manipulate water density until it is as solid as Tinker-made steel and lift what must be at least a few tons worth of water at once. When I say one of the most powerful hydrokinetics, I mean it. The only hydrokinetic more powerful would be Leviathan with his Macrohydrokinesis. Most Hydrokinetics have barely been able to manipulate a few gallons at one time. That one Cape that works for Pepsi can barely control a single glass of that crap for their commercials."
"Linking her to old Levvie... not a good connection, dude," Pyrotechnic said uneasily.
"It's a fact; nothing more and nothing less," Dodge insisted. "The scales are completely different. Ordinary hydrokinetics are Chihuahuas, Waterworks is a Great Dane while Leviathan is a freaking Cerberus leading Mankind through the gates of Hell."
The room was silent for a moment.
"Hyperbole aside, what is your assessment of Waterworks' trade goods?" Bauble asked.
"We can definitely use them," Dodge firmly stated. "I'd estimate about eighty percent of the panels are still in good nick. The rest are only useful as either spare parts or to be melted down into raw materials. No thin-film panels, though, so rare earth metals are going to be scant in the salvage."
"Better than I'd expected from a twelve year old shipment," Toy Soldier remarked.
"The panels were stored inside of airtight containers and vacuum-sealed inside tinker-made plastic," Dodge replied, "I recognize the type of material; it was made by a joker of a Tinker called 'the Wrapper.' He died during an Endbringer attack about five years ago."
"Ugh… what a terrible pun," Glace moaned.
"Returning to Waterworks and her requests; can we have them assembled this time next week?" Pyrotechnic asked the room at large.
"The servomotors and titanium, yeah, definitely," Big Rig said with a nod. "The Basic Tinker Package should be easy as well. Why does she want Kevlar of all things?"
"She's making a kind of light powered armor, at least that's what I got from the shopping list she gave me," Dodge explained. "She doesn't need a full suit, thanks to her ability to make water as hard as steel, and she doesn't need a flight system, thanks to her ability to use hydrokinetic flight. This means that she can create a suit especially designed around her powerset and one that may even augment it to a degree."
Big Rig raised his brows in surprise. "Damn. Lucky that.″
Pyrotechnic nodded. ″Agreed. This is a good opportunity to get a combat-oriented Tinker on good terms with us. We've had some close calls with several Villain groups in recent years."
"Not to mention a few Vigilante and Hero teams," Glace added.
"Exactly," Cranial agreed. "We are Tinkers, but none of us have any combat related powers or specialties. If a powerful group like the Triumvirate or the Slaughterhouse Nine came for us, we have almost no way to protect ourselves except hiding. Dodge's teleporters are nauseating for everyone but him to use, but if we can build up goodwill with Waterworks, we potentially have a bolt hole with a powerful hydrokinetic as a guard if we need to bug out and hide in an emergency."
"Why the trust in someone Dodge has only just met?" Glace asked, her gaze cool and secretive.
"One, because she was probably the most honest someone has been to us in two decades, according to the lie detector records," Cranial explained. "Two, because she could have asked for far more than she has asked for. While that could be due to her lack of knowledge of the actual worth of what she had, I'm inclined to take it as generosity. And three, because Toybox hasn't had an emergency bolt hole in over five years. We need one, right now, before something goes wrong."
"Agreed," Toy Soldier grunted.
"I'm cool with it," Big Rig said, his voice still thunderous.
Looking from face to face, Pyrotechnical nodded. "Good. Start gathering the materials she asked for. I believe Waterworks needs to be a very satisfied customer in order for this to work."
État de l’alimentation hebdomadaire
-- Classement
Power Stone 
-- Power
stone