That weekend, I gave Jenny her powers, and mom drove us out to the woods for her training. This time, she brought along a few tools, to help her get used to using her strength delicately, in addition to her other abilities.
I did set some limits on the Packaging to make sure she couldn't fly just yet and limit her speed and strength for a little while. But to begin with, I let her get used to the whole gamut of powers so that when she got them back it would be less effort for her to get used to them.
But she got the hang of her powers pretty quickly, she was already good enough by the end of Friday and we only decided to camp out here for one night, rather than two, and we packed up early the next morning to get back to Brockton.
"Never again!" Jenny called out as she dove into the back seat. "I can't believe that people do this for fun!"
I laughed, "It wasn't that bad. I even made sure we had some soft ground to sleep on."
"Our bed at home was way better!" She insisted, "We are never doing this again!"
Mom and I laughed as she sulked in the back seat, grumbling about how she was going to get Jan back for her lies.
But the extra time was good, there was some work to be done on the clinic, and today would be the first day that the apartment block would be going down, now that the old stuff was finally out of the way.
I took a moment to float over the lots that were being cleared out, as they dug out a pit for the foundations with explosives. Shaped charges launched the dirt into a large trough that quickly tipped back onto its wheels as the inertia pushed it over.
The trucks were hitched up, even as the cranes started to roll up, steel piles in hand. Almost like clockwork, the construction crews of Brockton Bay, trained by hundreds of gang wars and cape fights, famous throughout the US, rolled through. They took away dirt, even as cranes swung over, dropping the pillars that were quickly driven into the dirt. Cement came next, and before long, the cement pads that would lay the foundation for the pre-fabs that would come through in the next couple of days.
My heart swelled with a bit of hometown pride. Construction was what Brockton Bay was famous for nowadays, not the port. The biggest construction companies in the country would send their teams here to hone their edge against the only kind of constant cape violence that came close to what the Slaughterhouse or Endbringers left behind. People learned how to run after all, but buildings couldn't escape a raging dragon.
As the pits filled up, I floated back over the clinic. I saw my security guards chatting with a few construction workers, even as they managed the line of new applicants. I had enough income now that I was able to get Debra a few assistants, which meant that I could process even more. Amputees, old fractures, any number of things that were easy enough for me to do quickly, but couldn't really be treated by normal doctors.
At the counter, I now had a proper receptionist. Rebecca kept a tight reign over the crowd forcing people to stay in line on the benches as they slowly filtered into the clinic. I gave her a nod before heading up the stairs to my clinic.
I began processing, working to heal everyone I could. Scars from gunshots and stabbings disappeared at my command before each person made their way back down to payment.
The noise from the renovation of the office block next door was a little distracting, but we managed. A lane looked through my mark to keep an eye on the renovations. Everything had already been stripped with the asbestos, and with as little as I wanted to be done for my lab, it would be done by the start of MLK day. Which was good, since I'd need a day when no one was working to sweep the area for bugs, again.
I had spotted one quite by accident, after using my power to quickly sterilise the clinic before showing Amy around. I had basically burned everything I didn't know about, and since I knew where everything should be in my office, I was very surprised when my janitor handed me a small burned out camera when I came to set up the next day. Apparently, one of the gangs had put a camera in my clinic at some point.
If I found another one, I think I'll try and track it back to where it was broadcasting, I couldn't have someone spying on me. It's a good thing that I haven't done any bio tinkering in my clinic before having Amy there. So that secret is safe for now, but I'm laying a trap for whoever it is that was doing that.
As the day wound down, I heard the sound of some large engines. I walked over to the windows overlooking the street and saw two large trucks roll up, covered in E88 decals and graffiti. I taped into the walkie talkies my guards had, "Looks like we are going to have some trouble. Have everyone in the clinic evacuate through the employee entrance and get as far away as possible."
The windows eased open in front of me and I stepped out into the air, "As I have informed you, the gangs are not welcome here. This is a private clinic, and I can choose to deny service to those I choose, especially those with criminal affiliations. Now, leave."
"Fuck you race-traitor!" yelled one of the thugs as he climbed out of the car. "Your crimes against the empire will not be tolerated anymore!"
I sighed, bringing up an invisible barrier as they raised their weapons. "As stated for the record, you have threatened lethal force against me. I invoke New Hampshire's Stand your Ground Laws as basis for the following parahuman power use."
I'm fairly sure that if the mic wasn't so close to my face, my last words would have been lost to the clatter of gunfire.
But hey, I managed to stop them from damaging my clinic this time!
You know, a forcefield is a pretty good idea. I think Kid Win had some force fields in his designs that I could use. It would mean that I wouldn't have to worry so much about the gangs ruining my clinic.
I would have to wait a while before I could consider that, I wasn't sure if I wanted to reveal myself as a proper tinker yet. My powers were pretty strong, but I still haven't fought any capes. I was honestly expecting at least one cape in this fight actually, but I couldn't see any.
I pulled more Cord off of my wrist and pushed forward, the bullets continuing to pelt the force-field in waves.
I paused.
This might be my first time showing off my force-fields properly.
I took a moment to adjust my projections to add a little dramatic wind, making my lapels and jacket flutter around me as I descended around them.
Even as I blocked their triggers, I reached out, and let their eyes widen as I tapped each one in the middle of their forehead in sequence. I bound them in the wire and called the police.
Not that I would expect much from them. I had already caught this thug several times, and it's only been a little more than a week since I started going out to fight crime.
Still, there wasn't much I could do right now. Hopefully, the new police station I was arranging for in this district would be less corrupt, but I couldn't really guarantee that. Not without arranging for cops from out of the city. Hmm… I might be able to do that. The police chief is still a brocktonite, and I'm fairly sure he's Empire, but the Sherrif's office is safe, at least to my understanding, Brockton is a city, but it isn't even as big as Portsmouth, let alone Concord.
I might be able to arrange for local hiring for this police station. Even if I was technically in Empire Territory, by the time that station was done I will have enough people pre-vetted living in my new apartments that I should be able to shake off the majority of gang control.
Brockton bay taught me how corrupt people were from a long time ago. It was about time I got to benefit from that. I set a few lanes to study the Sherrif, to find out if I could get any leverage on him, even as others surveyed the area around me. Aerial views of my surroundings still failed to find the cape I was looking for.
Really? I'd take Alabaster at this point!
Eh, at least this way, Iwouldn't be late for my fight with the Merchants.
My Target out on the beach hadn't caught anything last night, but that was a bit of a long shot anyway, I probably wouldn't be able to catch Squealer leaving, but according to the tip I received, she had to unload it out onto the beach.
They did that at random places out near the edge of the Boat Graveyard, if I was lucky, I would be able to see or hear the Merchants heading out there to get the drugs.
It was fairly quiet last night, so I was going to try and use my Sensor and some filters to try and work some augmented hearing alongside the night-vision to try and listen out for them tonight. Still, it was possible that the Merchants had changed their drug-running schedules since then.
I shooed away the police and the thugs pointlessly before uploading the body-cam footage and the security camera videos to my site, alongside all the other 'combat incidents' that I had captured even as I called out for Virginia to let everyone know that everything was safe now.
Floating back up to my clinic, I closed the bulletproof glass windows behind me. Before long, I was curing a kid of the after-effects of some intestinal trauma after being operated on for a stab wound.
Never change, Brockton Bay. Actually, change damn you! I'm not doing all of this for nothing.
Still, once I was done - including signing an autograph for the kid. I pointed them towards the showers and called the next person up. I smiled as the old man who came up the stairs to have his hip fixed congratulated me on 'showing those Nazi bastards how real Americans did it!'.
He regaled me with stories of his time back in the second world war as I repaired things through his body, and I even took a moment to tune him up a little more - with his permission of course. Gidon was a nice enough guy, and I didn't want Brockton Bay to loose any more people like him.
Dad would have liked him, I think.
He eventually ambled down the stairs after giving me his walking stick as a present, as well as his address and an offer to come to visit sometime.
You know what? I might take him up on that.
I ended up floating out of my window at the end of the day. It was starting to get dark, which meant I only had so long before the Merchants were due.
I altered the dyes in my suit with a thought, adjusting it until my Target below could barely see me. I quickly grew a hood as I continued to float there silently.
I absently searched the internet again. I was trying to get a sense for Uber and Leet's plans. They hadn't done anything recently, which usually meant something big was coming, and Leet especially was very important to me. His speciality was weird, as far as anyone could tell. He could make anything, but every time he made something too similar to something he made before, it would have problems and break down.
But the thing was…
He could make anything.
Which meant that his Repository must be huge. If I was really lucky his repository would contain everything every Tinker had. I didn't want to get my hopes up though. Leet made some cool stuff, but his big selling point had always been the different kinds of things he could make, not the quality of those things.
How much of that was because of the weird restrictions of his own power, and how much of that was because his repository was shallower than tinkers with a specific specialty.
I also really wanted Uber's power. It would be so much easier to manage everything if I actually had the skills to do it, and I'm fairly sure that I could get around his one skill at a time limitation fairly cheaply. I might even already be able to do it since I can't forget anything anymore.
I floated there, considering how much longer I would need to wait when I finally caught sight of something.
My Sensor, collecting far more light and sound than I could easily picked out the small motor boat puttering out quietly among the Graveyard wrecks. I watched them as they moved out towards the large tanker at the entrance to the bay.
But eventually, it just came to a stop, ut in the middle of the bay.
They waited there for a while, and I just watched, floating closer, but remaining high overhead and keeping my distance, but staying close enough that I could swoop in if need be.
I didn't see it.
I could only tell something was there when a bag went sailing out into the speed boat.
Surprised, but not caught off-guard, I quickly targeted the point the bags appeared from and started directly studying it, even as I began to descend. The submarine was surprisingly large, though the strangeness didn't end there. It looked like it was made from several busses torn apart and welded together, with various scraps of metal patching over gaps.
One end was filled with machinery. Despite the thrown-together appearance, I could see how tight the tolerances were. I could feel the eddies in the various forces my Sensor returned to me as them flowed and folded into each other creating a strange overlapping front that did something I didn't quite understand just beyond the structure, making light flow in strange ways, and turning the craft basically invisible. I could also see several computers jury-rigged together with seemingly random strings of electronics to create a system that was projecting an image of an undisturbed ocean surface.
The front of the sub was full of even more computers, set up to control the whole thing I think. I made them into a Target, letting my technology control powers play over them. The rest were full of drugs.
And I mean utterly full of drugs. There must be at least a few hundred pounds of cocaine, even ignoring the heroin, Then there was the bales of marijuanna and the jars of meth that they had collected from their suppliers throughout the trip. I could already see another boat, out among the Graveyard beginning to head out into the waters, the boat I followed out here was fairly large for a speedboat, but probably still not large enough.
Still, I couldn't let this get too far. A quick scan on the submarine made me grimace, I could already see Skidmar, Squealer and another cape I didn't know about on the ship.
I grimaced. I was expecting two at most. I was sure that Squealer would be easy enough to deal with outside of her lab, especially with the conditions that a sub would limit her to. The weapons would be annoying, but I could see them now, and they were fairly easy to 'jam'.
Skidmark would have been hard to deal with, but I had studied him. He didn't have too much range, and while his barriers did well against projectiles my best-ranged weapons were lasers, and my new stun gun.
Even if calling it a gun was grossly exaggerating what it was. Just coils of wire I had made with my powers in a protective casing that looked vaguely like a gun with barrels on top of and below my hand. The rest was done with my powers, creating the laser beams that would make conductive channels that would carry the electricity that would be generated as I shifted the electromagnetic fields in the coil.
The only thing interesting about it was the materials it was made of and even that wasn't too special some modified organic conductors and insulators. I don't know why, but trying to make some of the better designs in my repository ran into problems. My Projector simply couldn't handle the kind of input that my Tinker Repository wanted, even with Tiny Tools.
I would have to think about it some more when I was somewhere safer.
I used my integrated phone to call the PRT - as much as I hated them, and let them know I was about to fight the merchants. The operator tried to get me to run away but I ignored him.
I wasn't going to give the Protectorate anything from my hard work.
I lined up the shot, my Tinker powers, oddly, providing me the information to send paired glowing lines into the boat without killing the merchant as he shuddered and fell to the bottom of the boat.
I fired off another shot, knocking out the last of the merchants on the boat even as I dove into the sub.
Thankfully, I was smart enough to keep a shield up, because despite being on a submarine made out of school busses, I was already immediately under fire.
Still, I kept calm. Small arms fire like this didn't dent my regeneration, let alone my actual reserves, which were still more or less untouched. It dipped a little as I tazed two more merchants in the sub, but was already filling up as I turned to Skidmark. Even as the electricity lanced out along the lasers, I saw the hazy light glow in between us.
Was he really going to blow up his sub over this?!
I let my forcefeild catch a blow from a spanner as Squealer rushed me, using my telekineisis to push her away as I lined up another shot.
I swore as another bullet bounced off the wall and then raced at me dislocating my shoulder. I forced it back into place, even as one of my lanes screamed in pain my biokinetic powers healing the damage in seconds. Another lane guided my stun gun to point at Squealer again as it fired off, guided by another.
I blocked another bullet as Squealer went down only to be knocked back by another shimmer of light.
I could see Skidmark pushing himself up off the ground even as I targetted him again with the stun gun. Bracing myself I floated off the ground. His power worked through surfaces, I could see it now, the portions of his power. That controlled targeting, the portions that projected force.
And I grinned. Only for my eyes to open wide as several bags ripped themselves off the ground, bounced off the walls and launched themselves at me. Lanes caught them with telekineisis as I shot him again with the taser, this time sweeping across the downed merchants to make sure that they all stayed down.
I panted, and then turned in shock as I saw the last cape jump out of the sub onto the boat and start gunning it for the graveyard.
I took a moment and stared, before, tossing out some Cord, and trying up the merchants even as I levitated them behind me outside the fov of the camera and tied them up. I put them on top of the sub, leaving them seemingly floating in mid air as I chased the boat.
But I had been delayed too long.
I got off the phone, telling the PRT where Skidmark and Squealer were, with GPS co-ordinates, and as I got close I saw him dive into the graveyard, a splash sounding out into the bay.
And then a rumbling. A scraping.
I couldn't make sense of his power - the strange changer state it allowed, but now I did. I knew, among those pieces of trash, the third merchant was there, transflormed into a mess of fleshy tendrils that were holding this goliath together with superhuman strength.
I braced as one of the arms of the trash monster came swinging down on me, but my barrier held.
I launched myself out of the way, taking flight in an attempt to get to some safe range, but the third merchant seemed to already have an idea of what to do. He swings an arm with blinding speed sending shards of trash at me as I brace myself.
I try to stun him but enough of the trash is conductive that is grounded out into the bay below. His body was transformed enough that I didn't have a clue on how to take him down with my biokineisis. As he started to grab one of the smaller boats beside him, I desperately tried to come up with an idea to get me out of the situation I got myself into.