章 1269: 30
Volition 3.8
Power. That was what it all came down to.
I knew that Amelia and Taylor would be a fearsome combination, but it would take time to persuade them to unlock their full potential.
I guessed that she had probably used her power on my brain directly for a bit during my little episode, but she still had to be eased—pressured—into doing more.
While they were off training, I was off to power up myself as well.
The first order of business was some more experimentation with Agate.
At night, Agate went to observe Labyrinth.
I also sent Faultline a message, cancelling the job from Coil. She was suspicious about it, and obviously wouldn't stop investigating, but it would at least delay her a bit, in case Coil had set a trap for her. She would have to wary about why Coil gave her the info on Polychromic, then immediately cancelled the job, as if baiting her.
On Wednesday morning, I was in Earth M as well, training with Agate.
Modifying her levitation and flight spells to include me, as long as I was touching her, was a fairly simple affair. We just didn't do it earlier because there we needed an open yet private space to develop it, and because last week it had been enough to just be able to grab onto her and let her drag me away in an emergency.
Now though, I would have more fine control, and it would be much safer, so we could go higher in the air.
I couldn't fly by myself though. This spell was a massive prana drain, and it got a lot worse with extra mass. I supposed that this was why normal Fate magi didn't generally fly from what I remembered, or if they did, they didn't levitate directly but instead would use something else like artificial wings. Agate simply had vast quantities of prana, so I could only rely on her for this. My single artificial circuit couldn't channel enough prana even if Agate shared her prana with me, so she had to be the one to cast.
Next was practicing the use of various light effects and projecting holograms. Using her mana offensively was not at all practical without a spell template, but she was capable of glittering, glowing, etc.
I had already used such a capability to make the act of opening portals more showy, and this was an extension of that. I wasn't being vain—there were many uses to this, and even the small act of grabbing onto Agate and shooting a beam of light to open a portal had the purpose of making people think we needed the movement to open portals, which we actually didn't. It was the same reason I put two fingers to my forehead when using my "sense projection" ability in front of Amelia and Taylor, back during the fight against Oni Lee.
We also tried to Reinforce other objects, which went decently well, and the two other basic spells of Structural Grasp and Gradation Air.
Gradation Air was a complete bust, but we had some success with Structural Grasp. Agate's various sensor programs did something fairly similar to Structural Grasp, which allowed the caster to touch an object to perceive a visualization of its internal structure, so she eventually created a massively dumbed down version for me to use that was functionally similar to the Structural Grasp I knew of, and I started practicing that.
I didn't know if my bootleg Reinforcement and Structural Grasp was actually how Fate magi cast those spells, but they would certainly come in handy in the future. They also had great synergy. The better one could perceive the structural "gaps" that needed reinforcement, the better the Reinforcement could be without destroying whatever was being reinforced.
After that came the very dangerous matter of attempting to bring organic matter into agatespace.
Phasing into agatespace was actually much powerful than Wormvoid, if we could do it, since other capes couldn't reach us there. In Wormvoid, some capes like Scrub might have been able to affect us still.
However, it was a failure. I had thought it wouldn't be tough, seeing as we could travel through Kaleidospace safely, but Agate informed me that it didn't work like that.
The Pathways she made were called that because there was a trick to it. We didn't actually go through Kaleidospace like Planeswalkers do. Not even Zelretch managed to figure out how to survive in Primordial Chaos.
What we did instead was "borrow" a part of Creation Mystery to slingshot ourselves into other realities, tunneling through Kaleidospace, then allowing the chosen alternate reality cluster's Creation Mystery to "grab on" to us. The tunnel formed for only an infinitesimal amount of time, and within the tunnel there was no Primordial Chaos energy. This method used the Second Magic not only as a Magic, but also as a partial path to the Root, in order to access a piece of the Creation Mystery.
I wasn't sure that it made any sense to me, but the deeper mechanics were far too complicated for me to dwell on. But I understood, at least, that the Alternate Reality Manipulation Protocol: User Travel, as Agate called it, was not something that could be used willy-nilly, or repeatedly, requiring Agate to build up a major reserve of power that wasn't mana, but some kind of special energy needed to access the Creation Mystery. The reason that we were able to leave my Earth so quickly after she arrived with Zelretch was because they had stocked up beforehand.
And none of that was helpful for trying to phase into agatespace. Agate could only withstand it for limited periods of time herself, being technically non-living and soulless, yet sentient.
After wasting some time with that, we worked on developing some other spells that shared steps or commonalities with some of things Agate was already able to do.
There weren't many of those, and what we developed ended up being little more than small tricks, but anything was better than nothing.
Between the training I reviewed the priorities and plans I set for myself early on when I arrived on Earth Bet.
As I already had some strong allies and a decent amount of resources, I looked at the second priority, Tinkertech.
Coil's men already had laser attachments, but I had other things in mind.
Leet was easily hired, though it would take some time to figure out what he could make that was useful to me, and wouldn't fail. Regarding his shard's sabotage, I was very concerned with the possibility that his teleporter that he made with Chariot failed in a way that was deliberate and targeted. If I relied on something like that for a critical operation, I could turn out like canon Coil.
It was an open question whether the shard continued to have some influence over the Tinkertech after it was originally made—and that would be dangerous for me.
Chariot was already secretly in Coil's employ, so I could easily get some things from him. His Tinker specialty of movement could be very useful, depending on its limitations. He couldn't create teleportation or portal devices on his own, unfortunately. In the canon he needed to work with Leet to make the teleporter based off of Trickster's swapping ability, and even then it was susceptible to Leet's failures.
Truthfully though, despite their potential uses, I didn't think much of them.
Most Tinkers were limited in a fundamental way.
They couldn't go exponential by themselves, and they couldn't be easily used to acquire anything that would allow for exponential growth.
I wasn't like Coil, only trying to take over Brockton Bay slowly. He could be satisfied getting any cape on his payroll, because each one meant a bit more firepower he had access to.
What would a few extra capes mean to me? Even if I hired the Travelers, for example, unless I could take advantage of Noelle's cloning powers somehow, the rest of them were only good for fighting a few more capes at a time.
I turned my attention to Toybox next.
They were a private group of seven Tinkers who pool resources and sold their products to others. Their things didn't come cheap. I had a vague understanding of their capabilities from Coil's files.
Pyrotechnical, specialty in flames, special effects, and guns.
Bauble, glassworking tools and could turn inorganic matter to glass.
I couldn't think of anything in particular I wanted from these two.
Toy Soldier, massive power suit.
Glace, cryogenics and stasis.
These two were fairly situational. Toy Soldier wore a power suit the size of a building, but it was unclear how much money and resources it would take to commission another powersuit of that size. He mostly sold select powersuit components and enlarged weaponry that could be mounted on big vehicles, but those were incredibly expensive, with even the cheapest things having a price tag over a million.
Glace's cryogenics could be useful for preserving parahuman brains I didn't feel like keeping on life support, but might see a future use for. It could potentially also decrease the cost of sustenance upkeep for Amelia's future creations.
Dodge, makes devices that generate stable pocket dimensions.
Cranial, neurological tech. Sells memories and skills.
Big Rig, builds drones that builds other things, especially buildings.
These three…I had ideas for. Big Rig, especially. Unfortunately his was the most ridiculously expensive. If I bought anything from him, I'd be out of funds in short order, so I had to be very careful.
Dodge was one of the Tinkers I initially really wanted tech from, but now that I could access parallel earths that almost nobody else could, it wasn't such a big deal. The advantage of his pocket dimensions being possibly hidden from Cauldron didn't seem like it was enough of an incremental step up to be throwing money at right now. If he could make a mobile inventory for me, that would be worth it…but his pocket dimensions were attached to fixed points in space. His true value lay in letting Agate analyze and learn from how he manipulated dimensions, rather than the products' actual capability. I could buy a cheap and very small pocket dimension for that, and consider trying to buy his plans and schematics if he was willing to sell.
I eventually settled on Cranial. Recording thoughts, memories, skills; draining them; and letting other people have or experience them. That would be very useful, once I combined it with some other things. She only sold the memories and the service of draining memories, but never the devices themselves. I would find a way around that, if a higher price wouldn't persuade her. And that was only her known capabilities—I was certain she could do much more than merely transfer memories.
O O O
Once I contacted Cranial, it was a simple matter to arrange for the purchase of some skills and memories. She was currently in New York, but that was no obstacle for me. I simply had Agate fly over and find a secluded place to open a portal. With her being able to go at 500 miles an hour, New York was close enough to reach very quickly.
I also brought Amelia and Taylor with me.
We skulked over to the designated meeting point. It was a warehouse in an industrial area of the city, closer to the suburbs.
On our way there, Taylor was scouting the inside. "I see Cranial, Pyrotechnical and probably Toy Soldier out in the open. There's four men that look like bodyguards who don't seem to be capes. There's another three actively observing from different vantage points on the second floor railings, and four hidden in crates on the ground," she said.
"Looks like their security isn't too bad," I said.
From the outside, it looked completely normal, and even had a number of cars and trucks parked outside.
We came in civilian attire, disguised, all wearing hoodies and masked. I had contacted Cranial anonymously.
"You ready, A? I'll be counting on you to save me if I get brainwashed," I said suddenly as we were almost at the door.
Amelia took a deep breath and gave me a determined look. "Yeah, I'm ready."
We entered and were led by a guard at the door to an enclosed section of the warehouse. Toy Soldier was in a three metre tall power suit, seemingly shifting heavy items around, setting up might have platforms, mobile walls, and other equipment for an exhibition.
Pyrotechnical was lounging on a couch with her legs on a coffee table in front of her, playing with a flamethrower that shot out jets of flame in different formations. When she saw us, she got up and yelled, "They're here, Cranial!"
The guard left us, and Pyrotechnical beckoned us over to join her at the curtain which was the entrance to the enclosed area.
The curtain was pulled aside and out came our host. Cranial was a short woman that wore a lab coat for a costume. Considering that she wasn't actually a wet tinker that did brain surgeries, but rather made devices which affected brain waves, it was a rather odd choice. Her mask was a surgery mask plus a sleek visor, and a helmet that looked like an enlarged brain with metal tubes poking out. All in all, it looked very weird and disconcerting.
"UnskilledNoob?" She asked, looking at the three of us.
"Yup, that's me," I said.
"Which of one of you is getting the treatment?"
"Also me."
After that, she gestured for us to follow inside, and after I handed over $200k through an electronic transfer via the Number Man, told me to sit down on a leather chair in front of a table. The rest of the enclosed area was fairly sparse except for some other electronic equipment I didn't recognize and lots of wiring.
The chair had a number of straps and chains, which I supposed was required for those transactions involving the transfer of very bad memories.
She instructed me to put on a heavy device that covered my head, which was connected by numerous thick wires to a metre tall rectangular box-like metal piece of electronic equipment. She sat on the opposite end of the table with a notebook computer that was also connected to the same metal box.
I removed the glove on my right hand and Amelia held on to my hand while standing next to me.
"What are you doing?" Cranial asked her.
"Just a bit of assurance that nothing extra is being transmitted to my brain," I replied for Amelia.
"Fine. Just don't touch the equipment," said Cranial.
The process took about half an hour, and by the end of it, I had the skill of a master martial artist in mixed martials arts combining jiujitsu, Muay Thai, Wing Chun, and kickboxing.
When it was done, Amelia had a difficult expression on her face, and hesitantly nodded.
'I don't detect anything wrong either,' said Agate.
With those assurances, we left without any fuss.
O O O
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