章 32: 8
8
Thursday 31st December 2010
I awaken in a burst of energy. My nanobiotics are apparently extremely good at countering the ATP burst and crash induced by the Med-X, something to remember in future, as I may be able to counter the Med-X before the crash with a bit of practice and research.
My mood is also flying high after the fight, while I made a few mistakes my commitment to go almost all out from the beginning and yet still managing to stick to non-lethal measures reinforces my commitment to at least attempting to not just murder everyone I meet.
The hit on Hookwolf is perplexing me. Mostly because the math just doesn't add up.
With all the buffs combined with the suit I was pushing 10x stronger than a human in the upper limits of strength. Ok cool, that's a lot of strength. But Hookwolf must have been pushing 250+ kg and I easily launched him the best part of a mile. If not more. And that as a counter charge too, as he was charging me at easily 30+mph.
The answer lies in the enchantment on the paper.
Or rather the ash in my workshop.
A little querying and testing gives me the answer I'm seeking. I placed a temporary enchantment to reinforce and to deflect. The temporary nature of the enchantment allowed the enchantment to be much more powerful than expected and explains why I felt so drained after the fight in addition. I must have poured every bit of magic into that paper as I could conceive at the time. The deflection nature took the force of Hookwolfs charge added it on to my own insane strength and then amplified it. Hence my launch of a new satellite for the bay.
The danger is that I drained so much of myself into that enchantment mid combat. Going forward I need to be much more careful about mid fight enchanting.
I go and pick Sherrel up, and we head for breakfast together.
After sitting down for breakfast, Sherrel starts chatting to me.
"I've gotta say boss, seeing that armour in action is something else. The boards were wild last night."
I chuckle
"Glory Girl showed me the GIF, I need to go grab a copy for my signature on the boards."
She laughs in reply.
"Hookwolf definitely didn't expect it, you've become quite famous in the northeast for that."
I finish my meal in companiable silence with Sherrel. We may have had a rocky start but we have become quite fast friends.
"Oh, I wanted to let you know, I helped out a fresh trigger, someone important for the future. I'm not currently planning on recruitment unless he's ultra against the Protectorate for some reason. But if he is, he seems like quite a powerful Brute so giving you a heads up we may have another member. He helped me take down Lung."
"Ok Boss no worries. I've dumped a bunch of resources off in your warehouse from the first expedition. Got a few more of those crystals you use as well, and also did a bit of hunting. I know you always seem to have food here but I thought you might find some of the hides and stuff useful. Plus, you do that alchemy stuff so there's stuff for testing. Those giant crabs are really tasty."
"Thanks, Sherrel, it's really appreciated. What's your plan now?"
"I'm going to take a day off today and work on a hobby project for travelling the city. Got myself a normal car I'm going to soup up now that we have that garage. Then I'm going to visit my ex-mom and get my documents. Then I'm going to register as an independent hero. The Prots never linked my name to my cape id before even though they probably know. So, I should be able to register safely."
This seems like a minefield of a subject.
"Do you need my help with anything?"
She smiles gently at me.
"No, this is something I have to do for myself. But ill call you if I need anything."
"Stay safe Sherrel, and don't hesitate to contact me if you need me."
Assault is calling me.
"I have to take this Sherrel, catch up later."
I answer the phone.
"Archon speaking."
"Yo Archon, it's Assault."
"What's up Assault?"
"Couple of things, I wanted to speak to you about yesterday, you seemed really pissed with us and I wanted to make sure there will be no issues before anything escalates."
"Assault. I don't control Protectorate patrol routes. What happened yesterday must have been strangely coincidental. A district of mostly minorities on the edge of empire territory, mostly Asian, is "too far out of the way" for a Protectorate or PRT presence to dissuade the empire while there were sightings at Arcadia. But funnily enough the Forsberg Gallery, more than four times the distance from Arcadia in the other direction can get a response? Do you know how this looks to me Assault?"
He's silent on the other side, so I continue.
"As far as I'm currently concerned Assault you've all embarrassed yourselves and I am utterly disappointed. While I'm taking on three of the Empires heavy hitters with backup from a healer and master sniper, and then having to deal with the Valkyrie twins as they retreat from your protection of Arcadia, You guys are struggling to hold off Kaiser, Krieg, Crusader, Night, Fog and Rune. The Merchants aren't at your back in the trainyard, The ABB were neutered. What the hell caused you to have to divert every protectorate resource away from the people you are supposed to protect?"
"Lung and Oni Lee are missing."
I go cold.
"What?"
"One minute they are in their cells, the next minute they are gone. Cameras just see them disappear into thin air. If it wasn't so laughable we would assume that the Empire arranged a breakout because it happened just as they started to deploy. We were in a scramble. No idea if they were invisible in the building, teleported away, or if we were under attack. We had to leave half of our forces back in the PRT building to protect the wards and the director. Someone has extracted two high value prisoners, one near guaranteed the cage right from under our noses. Armsmaster is spitting mad, Militia is on the warpath as she wanted to come back you up. Dauntless took on Kaiser, Crusader and Rune on his own and you saw his injuries. Battery nearly lost a leg to Menja which forced us to take a retreat to Panacea. It's a catalogue of fuckups Archon, but I didn't want to leave you on your own. Armsmaster ordered Velocity to break orders from the top to come back you up in the end. We were forbidden from leaving downtown due to the escape."
This seems too convenient. Lung and Oni Lee disappear just as I'm forced to deal with an Empire attack.
It stinks of Coil, but I got no feedback from his ability whatsoever. If not Coil. Then is it Cauldron?
A new player?
"Ok, fine let's take this one step at a time. Any sign of Lung or the Oni in the city?"
"None. It's like they are ghosts in the wind. Their disappearance will be in the news today. That should buy us time for more movements from the empire into ABB territory"
"Fine, I'll take you at your word for now that this wasn't some political manoeuvre to protect the rich areas only. I'm going to contact the Undersiders and see if their leader has heard anything."
"Be careful Archon. I know you confirmed they stopped being villains, but don't trust til you can verify."
"I will. What's happening with Othala and Cricket?"
"I shouldn't tell you, but out of interest of our further co-operation and the fact you caught them I will. Piggot sent them to Boston in the night. With the Lung and Oni Lee situation she can pass off the breach in protocol as needing our cells resecuring. Armstrong is dealing with them."
"Ok, thanks for the heads up. See you around."
I hang up. Unfortunately, it seems like I'm going to be on my own mostly from now on. While Assault covered a lot of the basics, he still didn't explain why the Gallery was protected over Chinatown to my satisfaction. Especially with the concentration of people and distance differences.
I'll challenge Piggot on that at a later date. And decide how my working relationship with the Protectorate and PRT will look from that point.
I initiate a call to Tattletale.
"Archon, what's up."
"You know anything about Protectorate cells and vanishing acts?"
She pauses for a second.
"Hmm, someone escaped from the PRT. Can't be Othala and Cricket, they never arrived at the PRT, so it had to be before that. Fuck. Lungs out?"
"Lung and Oni Lee aren't out, they're gone. Disappeared into thin air. Has Coil written all over it."
"Wasn't us, and Coil didn't mention it, but we barely talk since he cut us loose. We've mostly been hitting Empire and ABB stash houses."
"Did you hit anything before my fight with Lung?"
"No, we were hitting Empire, check with Faultline. They don't act in Brockton but they may know if any other independents are active in the area."
"Ok thanks."
Looks like this investigation is taking me to the Palanquin.
I'd been meaning to check it out anyway.
Arriving at the Palanquin in costume without announcing myself is probably a great wait to get stuck in a wild Euclidean dimension, so I ring ahead and ask to speak to Faultline. Gregor the Snail eventually answers.
"Gregor here, what's up?"
"This is Independent hero Archon, requesting a meeting under truce."
"Archon? Going to need some verification."
"Check your DM's on PHO."
He goes silent for 30 seconds or so.
"OK, Verified. Boss had wanted to talk to you anyway. Let me check hold on."
A few second pass before he comes back on the line.
"Yeah boss says come to the back door of the Palanquin around 8pm tomorrow night. Thinking you will prefer it under the radar and its New Year's Eve tonight. Club will be packed."
"That works, thanks."
I quickly send an update over to Sherrel.
"Hey, I'm heading up to the Palanquin tomorrow night, any info on Faultline?"
"Be careful, that bitch counters my vehicles and probably your armour. Can't affect living but she will fuck up anything not living without thinking about it. Be polite."
I snort.
"I'm always polite."
"You keep telling yourself that 😉"
My meeting with Faultline's crew booked, I put EFA on a new task.
"EFA, do you have the bandwidth to take on additional work?"
"Yes sir, my programming and security jobs are near automatic at this point, the Nine are still showing themselves intermittently, and no sign of Mouse Protector since you talked to her. I have more than enough room for a few jobs."
"OK, please look for reports of strange disappearances, from Boston, through to here. I'm looking for the Travellers, don't want to establish contact yet but with Coil changing his operation I'm not sure where they will end up. And I need to prep for Noelle."
"Got it Boss. No public appearances other than a possible partial on Sundancer in Boston a few months back. I will keep an eye on things."
"Got it, Thanks EFA."
The forge pings me with an upgrade.
100CP gained, 300cp are available.
Quality Safety… Success!
Precision Tools – MTG – New Phyrexia – 200CP
100CP remain,
Attempting Expansion.
Failed.
A very interesting perk. This one allows me to tweak anything I create so that it cannot be used against a certain group/groups of people. Or the opposite, make weapons that only affect certain targets. I can make it so nothing I create can ever be used against me or my allies. It also gives me a pretty nice boost in neuroscience knowledge in addition. Nothing massive on top of what Mercy already knew, but a decent chunk.
A big advantage of this perk is I can now make area of effect weapons, that will only affect particular targets. Of course, there is a limit. I couldn't make a nuke that only affect the nine for instance. But It's still a significantly big deal to be able to secure my gear from being used against myself. I already have protection against reverse engineering built into everything and now this takes my gear safety even further.
Time for some maintenance. I'm going to implement this perk into all my gear, right now while I have free time. I need to run maintenance routines anyway. There's a few dents and scratches in the armour, and I want to run a maintenance routine on the various power sources. Especially my internal ones after pushing myself so far.
There's something very zen about working on my forge. The simple act of hammering out metal has a rhythm I find soothing.
I make some clones and send them off to work on Alchemy and more material science research. There's some potential combinations between the two disciplines to make some novel coatings to help with heat resistance that I want them to collaborate on.
Reactor maintenance is a painstaking process, the two internal ones are checked and are running at a combined 96% efficiency which is a little better than I expected after how hard I have pushed myself recently. Some minor maintenance pushes them back up closer to maximum, and their lifespan is extended slightly.
The power sources in my armour are all in good shape. The outer heavy water ones need some preventative maintenance, some heat stress in the casings I didn't notice previously is cleaned up and repaired. I'll definitely need some heat treatment on these.
Finally, the fusion core for the mercy tech is checked over, no damage found and no maintenance needed currently. I honestly think I would struggle to purposefully damage this reactor so I am not entirely surprised.
The small limb reactors for charging my powered tech are in tip top shape, no issues and managed to avoid most of the heat stress. Good, I'd need to open myself up to maintain these.
Next up is the cybernetics bed while my artificial nerves and systems are checked over.
Muscular reinforcement is nominal, and actually a little better now that my own musculature is approaching peak human levels. I may need to seed in some new reinforcement to keep the ratios stable. Hip and spine are all fine, I already rebuilt the hip reinforcement once and I don't fancy doing it again. The network of artificial nerves however is patchy and frayed in places. The wiring harness itself that carries all the supplementaries is slightly damaged in places. Looks like I'll be going under the knife again later today. I hadn't even realised I had lost skin sensation in my upper left chest and shoulder.
These cybernetics are designed for battle, but more in a sport environment than outright combat. The high-end combat stuff is still well beyond my reach.
I start planning out my repair and reinforcement and use the matter manipulator to start fabricating some heat resistant compounds in small amounts. The majority of the damage to my systems was started in my fight with Lung, and I while I can't heatproof yet, I can definitely increase my resistance.
The upgraded nerve and wiring grid is completed, and I'm working on a nanobiotics upgrade for later that will allow me to make repairs and changes to the nerves without opening myself up. That's a future job though.
My final job will be using some of the resources that Sherrel bought back yesterday along with some platinum and iridium.
I'm making an artificial Kidney. I wont be replacing my regular kidneys for now. Instead, this will be implemented as a third kidney, sitting before my current kidneys in my bodies filtration systems, it will filter out truly dangerous compounds to be ejected from my body. The nanobiotics actually help a lot with purifying my muscular issues but this will make them a thing of the past. I figure if I'm opening myself up anyway, I may as well go all out.
The first iteration is non biologic, although I actually have the resources to grow a superior partially biological one, it will be a long project to grow the kidney (unless I abuse time control which I cant do while the clones are working in the workshop).
It doesn't take long to finish it off, the tech for the neck implant is super useful here, along with Mercy's inherent knowledge.
I call over my alchemy clone and dismiss and resummon. He knows what I need now.
He quickly puts me under and the work goes without incident. I wake up to my nanobiotics already sealing up my wounds and helping to integrate my new and upgraded systems.
Finally, I work on my weapons, getting some safeties on the Jabberwock and the Staff will be immensely useful. I also spend a bit of time updating my blueprints now that I have new crafting capabilities.
I really need to get a proper computer setup in here, the omni-tool does work, but getting a proper mainframe up and running will help massively with the blueprinting and research work. A thought for the future.
It's been quite a productive day, even though it feels like I made little in the way of vertical growth, I expanded the capabilities I already had decently. The biggest upgrade is that I can now safely push into the final 30% potential in the artificial muscle support, and therefore use overdrive mode to go even further beyond.
I receive a call from an unknown number as I'm leaving to prepare my lunch.
"Hello, Archon Speaking."
"Archon. It's Mouse Protector. Slaughterhouse hit my safehouse in Assumption. I would have been there at the time if not for your warning. Your precog was correct. Thanks for the heads up, I owe you one. I'm going off the grid for a bit, just wanted to let you know I was safe."
Thank God, that's at least one person saved!
"Don't mention it, always happy to help. Keep your head down, and let the Protectorate know that they'll likely go for Ravager next if they haven't already."
"I will, and thanks again. I owe you my life and Mouse Protector always pays her debts!"
She hangs up.
So, the Nine went for her on New Years Eve. Good to know. Jack Slash's penchant for the dramatic is not overblown by fanon.
After lunch, I head out on my motorbike in civvies. There's an outdoor NYE party at the town hall tonight, and I want to get in place to attend. I'm going to try to work on my civilian persona tonight and rubbing shoulders with people in the city seems like the best bet. First though I'm going to order some furniture to be delivered to my Apartment. I have the basics but no Bed and as I am staying in the Apartment for the next few weeks while I legitimise myself, I want to be comfortable there.
I pop a text off to Sherrel to meet me there in civvies later if she feels like partying. She texts back a short "Yes, see you there." And nothing else.
Odd, but she knows how to get hold of me if anything threatens her.
EFA is monitoring her phone constantly in case she gets in trouble. On that note.
"EFA, keep watch for sightings of Mouse Protector too please, after that phone call it would be a kick in the teeth for her to be taken down."
"On it."
After going home to receive the truck carrying my new furniture, I move it all in and assemble it. All these crafting perks and I still end up with a random unused piece after assembling flatpack furniture.
The universe has a few constants still.
After furnishing my Apartment, and doing some decoration. I decide to spend the next few hours relaxing on PHO.
My thread is wild.
300 pages of pure, unadulterated joy. Speculation, Nazi Bans, Vague threats.
Even the odd marriage proposal.
Good to know I have options I suppose.
My DMs are also wild. A strange combination of outright threats, subtle threats to join one team or another, offers to join corporate teams. An email from Haven referencing their joy at my Angel motif. Requests for healing. You name it, I've got it. I even have a few DMs from Void Cowboy referencing some conspiracy theory or another.
Apparently I'm the Simurghs son with Hero, here to help my mother take over the world. Interesting, wish my parents had told me mum was a fifteen foot precognitive, telekinetic, tinker. Just goes to show you don't always know everything about your parents.
Checking in on my thread, details on my Lung fight are sparse, there weren't many recording witnesses for this one so only snippets were caught. EFA edits me up a highlight video of the fight and a highlight of the Empire fight too. I post both into the thread with a simple "Enjoy 😉"
It takes 15 minutes to grow the thread another 50 pages. As usual I don't reply to any comments and log off PHO.
Looks like my local reputation is growing quite significantly. I'll need to work on upgrades to keep up with the increased threat that will be headed my way.
Evening falls as I start making my way down to the central plaza for the new years firework display. I park my motorbike in the garage as I get closer and walk the rest of the way.
The party is wild and in full swing, the PRT are here, along with a few capes from the Protectorate and New Wave. I even catch sight of Sere and Dovetail so this is a widespread event.
The mayor gives a nice speech and references the "Exemplary clean-up work by the Protectorate and local independent heroes."
"EFA did I get an invite to this on the Archon line?"
"Not that I can see Boss, but then again Assault is your only positive contact here and you weren't exactly on friendly terms. They may have thought you wouldn't want to appear."
"Seems convenient. Another thing to bring up with Piggot the next time we speak."
I spend the next few hours rubbing shoulders with various high up people in the area, I even get to talk shop with Panacea for a small while.
I meet up with Sherrel at the plaza statue and we have a great night in our Civilian ID's. mixing with various people in the city, making contacts and making merry. I realise the unfortunate fact that between the Nanobiotics and tertiary kidney, it's nearly impossible for me to get drunk anymore.
I do impress a few people with my ability to drink copious amounts of liquor, however.
Midnight falls and we see in the new year with a hug. Neither of us are particularly interested in anything more than a hug at this moment in time.
I make my new years resolution. No more underselling myself in fights and holding back.
We head back to my apartment and I let us back into the forge.
"Good night Sherrel."
She turns and smiles at me. Something is different about her today. She seems at peace.
"Good night Boss"
The forge fails another roll as I fall asleep.
200CP available.
Notes:
Perks Gained this chapter.
Precision Tools0 - 200 - 'MtG - New Phyrexia' - Quality Safety
The exarchs, elite of the Core Augurs creations, managed to create a thought field specifically attuned to the Mirran resistances minds, disabling their will. While you might not be as versed in the neuroscience involved (yet) , you have found a way to attune your creations to a certain group of targets' ' ensuring they will not damage your own allies. This also lets you make your own creations useless against you, ensuring they wont be used to fight you not for long, anyways.
+100 PRCP.
Rolling…
Success!
Workshop – Tailoring! – 100PRCP
Each purchase of this adds to your Personal Reality Workshop needed to perform specific type of craft, which is to be specified when purchase is made. It comes with a basic set of tools and supplies. Good for fixing or creating all sorts of things, although any complex parts or nonstandard supplies will have to be brought in from outside. Additional purchases can add different types of Workshops to your Personal Reality or expand existing ones. Anything built in one of those workshops is fiat backed to be restored to its original condition within 48 hours if damaged or destroyed. Repeatable
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