Scale 5.13
Bryce Kiley
2010, December 23: Brockton Bay, NH, USA
I skated along the power lines on another impromptu patrol. It was said that during the first World War, even the Germans and Brits observed a ceasefire during Christmas, a moment of civility and humanity amidst the brutality of the First World War.
Unfortunately, Brockton Bay was where civility and humanity came to die. Today, I came across one robbery, one carjacking, and one racially motivated assault. Admittedly, that was on the slow side for Brockton, so maybe the city was feeling the holiday spirit.
Towards the tail end of my patrol, I found Kid Win and Aegis flying nearby. They were chasing Circus, who had on a bright, red leotard trimmed with white fur. Her usual, two-tipped jester hat had also been replaced for Santa's classic red and white. Honestly? She pulled it off well, in a "discount Harley Quinn" sorta way.
The agile clown was carrying a burlap sack with a big dollar sign printed on it. She cackled like a lunatic as she flipped through the air, dodging laser beams and slapping her own butt at the heroes tauntingly.
At first, I thought this was a distraction for another robbery elsewhere, but that seemed unlikely. With Coil dead, I doubted many others would hire her. She had a pocket space so she didn't even need to carry the dumb sack.
Sure enough, a quick survey of the internet and police comms told me there were no parahuman crimes occuring at the same time. Which meant she was just fucking with the Wards for fun. At a guess, I'd bet that whatever was in the sack wasn't even that valuable.
I stood corrected once again.
Brockton Bay did in fact feel the holiday spirit. We just celebrated by playing our city's official sport: cops and robbers. To be fair to Circus, that sounded like exactly the kind of shit I'd do myself had I not flipped sides.
"Do we go in, SAINT?" I asked. We'd skated high in the sky, easily sixty feet above the tallest nearby buildings. They hadn't even seen us yet.
"Gon? Porygon-gon," my beloved partner thrilled. His image appeared in the corner of my HUD. He was like Clippy from Microsoft Word, but cute and helpful.
Down below, Circus vaulted over a roof and turned to make her stand. Her sack of misbegotten goods vanished, replaced by a large, wooden mallet. Its head looked like a barrel and might have been hollow, with metal rims and the Grinch's face emblazoned on it. She blew the boys a cheeky kiss and made a come hither motion.
Kid Win leapt from his hoverboard and pressed a button on his wrist. His board split into nine independent modules that attached themselves to his armor, two per limb and one more over his back. The setup made him look much bulkier than he was.
At glance, five of those modules contained what had been the hoverboard's antigravity thrusters. They were spread out across his body to give him the additional maneuverability needed to move his bulked up armor. They probably also made him stronger or punch harder, I didn't know. The other four modules were also mysteries to me.
Whatever the case, I was happy to see him using his modularity specialization. It almost made me wish I hadn't gone hero so I could cut in and have an epic showdown with my fellow tinker. Alas, our hero-villain rivalry would remain the stuff of terrible cape-fics on PHO.
"Surrender, Circus," Kid Win said in his best "I'm a fully qualified law enforcement officer" voice. Sure, it cracked a bit, but that just made this more entertaining for me. "Don't make things worse for yourself."
"Why, I'm just doing a little last minute holiday shopping, officer" she mocked.
"Then go back and pay for it!"
"B-But! What if these are for starving orphans? Won't someone think of the orphans?"
"Starving orphans don't need jewelry."
"Says you. Do you have any idea how much a good fence will pay for this?" she asked with a dainty, pearl-clutching gasp.
The antigrav thruster on his back glowed a fluorescent blue as Kid Win lurched forward. He was a bit shaky and had to use the two mini-thrusters on his wrists to keep balanced, but he had a good bit of lateral momentum going.
Circus was far too agile however. She slipped by him like fading smoke before turning to whack him with her mallet. She swung for the fences, from the hips and with excellent follow-through.
I gave her an eight out of ten. SAINT gave her a seven, ever the critic.
Kid Win raised his arm just in time. The second module attached to his arm flared to life, generating a repulsive burst of blue energy that parried her mallet.
"That wasn't hardlight, was it, SAINT?"
"Gon."
"Rewind and slow for me."
"Pory."
I watched his hoverboard disassemble itself once more. On the board, that was one of two modules that kept Kid Win's boots stuck to the board mid-flight.
"Magnets. He's reversed the polarity of the magnetic footholds," I said with delight. The pulse had to be strong to catch the mallet's metal rims.
Blocking attacks like that probably took a lot of energy, which explained why he didn't have it on all the time. Rather than make a hardlight shield independent of his board, he'd simply repurposed the magnetic clamps in a new way. It was impressive to see him grow.
Kid Win took the chance to dip to the side. He brought his hand up and took aim with his shock pistol. He snapped off four bolts even as he strafed around Circus. The modules attached to his wrists must have had a stabilizing effect on his aim because I didn't think he was anywhere near this accurate while moving.
Still, Circus was known for her incredible agility. She ducked beneath the first two and slid between the next pair before retaliating with a fireball she pitched like a baseball. Kid Win's new magnetic field couldn't parry fire so he was forced to call off his attack until Aegis caught up.
Aegis dove from the sky without making a sound. He must have seen me because he glanced upwards for half a second and muttered something into his mic.
That half second cost him; he should have just rushed her. Circus was able to vault over him before slamming her foot into his back hard enough to send him skidding along the roof.
Seeing how I'd been spotted, I descended to alight on a nearby telephone pole. I gave the three of them a jaunty wave.
"Yo! How's the holiday hoopla going?" I asked cheerily.
"Aww, fuckbiscuits," Circus muttered under her breath. "I'm really not down for a foursome right now. Can I go if I give you the bag?"
"No, you're under arrest," Aegis said. That probably would have sounded better if he'd picked himself off the roof first. "Good to see you, Creed… I think…"
Circus didn't bother with any more chitchat. She briefly stood her mallet on its head before reaching into her pocket space and pulling out a canister of tear gas in each hand. One went to Kid Win, the other to me. Made sense, when in doubt, assume the brute could handle it. Meanwhile, disabling the tinkers was always good practice.
SAINT reacted before I could. My chinguard rose before the canister even left her hand, sealing with the rest of the helmet with a pneumatic hiss. The filters kicked in long before the first wisps reached me.
She didn't look back. She was already halfway across the roof and bolting like a rabbit chased by a hawk. With a deft front flip, she vaulted off the roof and into the street below.
I swept down to nab her while she was airborne. She twisted her body like a cat's. One foot caught the side of the building while the other stretched out in an impressive split to just barely snag the edge of my mist trail. Using both footholds, she kicked off, launching herself into a nearby streetlight and bouncing down to the ground below.
I paused for a second to admire that incredible show of gymnastics. Sure, I was faster. I had Psychic and Thunder Wave and half a dozen other tricks that could snap her up out of the air like a heron spearing fish.
But that wasn't the point. The point was, I'd never been shown up in a feat of raw dexterity before. No one had ever used my own mist trail to maneuver like that.
And it was damn impressive.
"SAINT?" I asked.
"Gon?"
"Make a note: If Circus ever becomes a hero, or does something incredible, remind me to reward her with ATs of her own."
"Pory? Porygon?"
"Yes, I'm sure. I don't care what Amy will say about it. I just really want to see what the bargain bin Harley Quinn can do with a Road of her own."
"Gon," my partner replied, dutifully adding a digital post-it to his records.
I cruised along above her, easily keeping her in sight. She'd reached a crowded part of the city now. We were a block or two from Hillside Mall and just four blocks away from the Boardwalk. I considered diving after her to continue our game of tag, but that would probably end with us bull-rushing through some poor civvie.
Aegis soon caught up to me. He eyed me with some mild suspicion, though with a lot less bitterness than I'd expected given what I did to him the last time we met.
"Creed," he said neutrally.
"Yo. How's Kid? Wanna buy healing?"
"He'll be fine, thanks," he replied stiffly. "We're backing off."
I tilted my head in surprise. "You are? Why?"
"Too many people can get hurt if we corner her. Our priority is always public safety, not merchandise."
"Fair enough, but I don't recall ever becoming a Ward."
"Showing your willingness to prioritize is–"
I cut him off. "We just need to neutralize her immediately without anyone else getting hurt, right? Easy."
"Not at the mall, Creed."
I grinned and reached into my expanded bag. I'd had some time this week between the freeze ray and cookie-bots. And as Amy knew, a bored Bryce was a dangerous Bryce.
My latest bout of "funtime tinkering" resulted in what resembled a musket with a gas canister attached to it. The muzzle had been altered to look like a shower head. It was, as best as I could describe it, a two-fingered salute to the Geneva Convention.
If Circus wanted to pull out gas weapons, I felt obligated to reply in kind. She'd be fine, mostly.
"Creed, what the hell is that?" Aegis asked, with genuine trepidation in his voice. Tear gas did not scare him, but he knew enough to fear anything I'd made. That realization gave me the warm and fuzzies inside.
"Don't worry, no one is going to get hurt," I promised him truthfully, for a given definition of "hurt."
"That doesn't look like a precision instrument."
"It's not," I agreed with a chortle.
I blurred forward, cutting Circus off. Felonius Gru's fart gun had a range of only a few meters, making it a bit like a shotgun in practice.
Besides, I wanted to see the fear and revulsion in her eyes.
She skipped to a stop before adjusting her course. "Oh, for fuck's sa–"
"For what it's worth, you pulled out the gas weapons first," I said unrepentantly, my chinguard and filters still securely in place.
I pressed the trigger.
X
That night, I put the finishing touches on Sabah's shield generator. I set it aside with a contented sigh. She'd be the third person to have one of these, and only the second person after Elle to be gifted one.
Her costume was also ready. The Germa fibers had been woven according to the measurements she'd sent over. As a fashion designer herself, she'd been astonishingly meticulous, so much that I highly doubted any further adjustments to her fit would be necessary. But just in case, she'd asked for a needle of seastone so she could personally make any changes and personalize her outfit when she came to my lab.
As in canon, she'd foregone the typical spandex look most capes preferred, but she'd also abandoned the Victorian-era dress I'd expected. The design she gave me was a business suit that looked like it could have been worn by one of Accord's Ambassadors.
She wanted a full set: slacks, belt, vest, shirt, jacket, boots, and even gloves and a Panama hat. Apparently, she felt that since she wouldn't be trying to do a big reveal of her ethnicity anymore, a stylized business suit would be more professional-looking than her initial concept. Because she wasn't quite sure how she wanted to use her powers, she'd opted for a generally flattering appearance rather than lean into a dollhouse theme.
I agreed. The shield generator was set to react automatically to incoming projectiles above a certain speed, something I got from Gru's genius, so the exact configuration of her outfit wasn't as important. She asked that I hide the shield and cloaking modules in the belt buckle, not unlike how my own was kept in my cape clasp.
"Remind me to upgrade Labyrinth's outfit, SAINT," I said. The next time I was there, I'd be sure to get Faultline's crew a few more shield generators as well. Now that I'd figured out inorganic alchemy, there was zero reason to be stingy, at least where friends were concerned. "For that matter, I need to start making things for other heroes, Amy especially."
"Porygon," SAINT agreed as he added a few more things to my pipeline. How was it that even though my production capability has never been greater, it seemed my to-do list only got longer?
The beauty of having SAINT and a small fleet of fabricators and drones was that I could leave the bulk of my tinkering to them. Slowly but surely, I was starting to industrialize.
I put that aside for the moment and picked up my guitar. I was halfway through "For Whom the Bell Tolls" when my phone rang.
"If that's Toy Soldier with a delivery, can you text him back and tell him I'll pick it up tonight?" I asked SAINT. The rogue tinker had seemed like the sort to be punctual like that.
To my surprise, SAINT instead lifted my pokenav so I could see the caller ID. It was Amy, which was a bit of an oddity. That girl was very much a product of the smartphone age; she'd much prefer to text one word answers and the idea of a phone call spiked her social anxiety something fierce.
Curious, I picked up the phone. "Yo, what's u–"
"I'm a barbie girl, in a barbie world~~"
I pulled the phone away from my ear. The trollface emoji popped up on my screen, the cheeky little shit. "Sorry, Ames, that was SAINT."
"And here I thought you like rock 'n' roll," she replied dryly. "Is everything I know about you all a lie?"
"Eh, pop is fine sometimes; I just prefer the sound of electric guitar and a stronger bass. Actually, ballads are decent too even if love songs are pretty hit or miss."
"Fair enough. So… I have a favor I want to ask…"
"Alright, what's the favor? You sound nervous, or like you have a cold."
"I don't get sick; it's part of my powers. It kinda sucks, actually. I never got to lie and stay home from school to play video games and stuff," she griped. "Like, my power won't even let me zap a zit away on my own face. Can't it just let me get the sniffles once in a while?"
"Wow. So tragic. Much sorry. Great despair," I replied, voice dryer than the Damascus winds.
"Hey, fuck you. I'm opening up about my innermost sorrows here."
"Maybe you should just be a better student."
"I'm a great student."
"Weren't you telling me how you got a B-plus on one of your AP biology tests? The great Panacea! B-plus! I bet you made a bunch of people feel damn good about themselves."
"Shut up! I was distracted!"
"I don't know, doesn't sound like a very good student to me. Right, SAINT?" SAINT's only response was to turn on an online chess game. I didn't know what his elo was; I felt like I'd have to report him if I ever asked. "He agrees with me."
"He's your AI. Of course he agrees with you," Amy deadpanned.
"So, not that I mind hearing from you, Ames, but…"
"Yeah… What are you doing the day after Christmas?"
"That's Sunday, right?" I quickly glanced at the calendar. "Yeah, Sunday. Church, probably."
"Are you religious? You never told me that."
"Eh, maybe? I'm agnostic. I acknowledge that there are things beyond my understanding. I'm not sure if those things necessitate the presence of divinity, let alone one that cares about insignificant souls like ourselves, but I'm not against the idea either."
"Oh, I just thought, with all those specializations you've got, you'd be a hardcore 'Everything can be explained by science!' types."
"The more I learn, the more I realize that, in the grand scheme of things, I don't know much at all," I replied. And it was true. I couldn't even begin to guess what Arceus did with his "Thousand Hands," how the devil fruits came to be, or how an entity like Truth developed sentience. "But you're right; I typically don't attend service on Sundays. It's Christmas, you know? Mom cares so Sisi and I figured we'd show our faces."
"That's sweet."
"Yup, that's me: heroic tinker, mastermind, and sweetest mama's boy in Brockton Bay."
"So you're free Sunday evening?"
"Nothing planned. Why do you ask?"
"Well… Mom's law firm is kinda ritzy. They do this super-bougie end-of-year banquet and I was wondering if you wanted to go with me, you know, as friends, like we did for homecoming."
"Aww, Amy," I cooed before flattening into a dull deadpan. "That sounds fucking miserable."
"Bryce, come on. Vicky's bringing Dean and I don't want to spend the night being their third wheel."
"So I should come be the fourth wheel?"
"Yes! You actually like Dean!"
"Hmm, let me think about it… no."
"Free food? Like, really good food. Filet mignon, scallops, crab cakes for appetizers, that sort of deal. You like steak. You love steak."
"I do, but no. That's not worth spending an evening with a bunch of stuffy fat-cats. Tell you what though. How about I make an alter ego cape persona and rob the place for steak? I get steak. Your night isn't boring. Everyone wins," I said, only half-joking. I could. I had more than enough tech and powers to simulate an entire cape team if I wanted. Hell, most of the world thought I was an entire secret cabal.
"No!" Amy gasped. Then, more quietly, "Wait… maybe…? You do have lots of powers…" I could practically hear her internal struggle. Until finally, her inner hero won out. "No, that's wrong, Bryce. Crashing my mom's law firm's Christmas banquet is wrong… even if it'd be really funny…"
"Amy, you're supposed to be The GOAT, the incorruptible bastion of moral virtue. You're not supposed to be tempted by this."
"I said no. Being tempted isn't a sin. Even Christ was tempted. I resisted temptation. That's all that matters."
"Keep telling yourself that."
"Please, Bryce? I'm begging you. On hands and knees, even."
"Phone call. Visuals lose their effectiveness."
"I'll text you a picture."
"Still no. The banquet sounds like old people giving stuffy, self-congratulatory speeches and jerking each other off about how rich and important they are."
"It is, and it'll be torture. You're a hero now. You're not supposed to tolerate torture. Save me."
"What do I get out of this?"
"Remember, you made me do this," Amy sighed. I heard her take a deep breath. Then, louder, "SAINT, if you get Bryce to come to the banquet with me, I'll buy you your body weight in almonds. No, I'll make you your favorite nuts. Any flavor."
SAINT turned from his chess game and floated over. "Gon?"
"Yup. Mathematically perfect nuts, just for you."
I snorted in amusement. My own pokemon partner was being bribed right in front of me. "Don't you already owe him a pack?"
"Make it double."
"You're a monster," I drawled. "Using SAINT against me? Really?"
"You love SAINT. If anyone can make you do something, it's SAINT."
"Bribery is illegal, hero."
"Feeding a duck isn't bribery."
"It is when that duck is intelligent."
"Cope and seethe. Are you coming or not?"
I eyed SAINT. He looked back at me, eyes alight with unspoken promises. "You're supposed to be my partner, you know."
"Gon," he replied shamelessly.
"Fine, what time?"
"Five-thirty reception. It'll probably be over by nine. You can come to my house by five," Amy said cheerfully. "Wear something dressy."
Then, I had an idea. "I have a biotinkering job for you actually, so I'll take that as payment."
"What kind of biotinkering? Like, funny snack nuts? Or actual biotinkering?"
"Actual biotinkering, the kind with potentially major consequences."
"Well… I did say you should bring those projects to me first…" she said hesitantly.
"Exactly. The project isn't lethal in itself. It's more in line with the serum I drank to give myself the funny eyes."
"That could be interesting. We'll have to make sure it's compatible with whatever you did to your body, not just the general human norm," she said, getting excited in spite of herself.
"That's a good idea. I'm not sure if I'll eat this one myself, but it's always good to prepare. Consulting services and almonds for a night of shared suffering. Deal?"
"You've got a deal, Bryce."
"Great, I'll see you Sunday, Ames." I was about to hang up but Amy stopped me.
"Wait, Bryce?"
"Was there anything else?"
"What's this I hear about a fart gun?"
Author's Note
For all the "But ackshully" people: Circus is male out of costume and female in costume. She's in costume here so she's addressed accordingly.
The fart gun is a nerve agent that knocks out the victim for an undetermined time.
I have no idea if Amy can get sick or not. She's not supposed to be able to affect herself, but she can smoke without consequences apparently so I'm not sure if there is some passive protection against colds, too.
Food Fact: Rocky mountain oysters are what American cowpokes call bull testicles. They're also sometimes called cowboy caviar, swinging beef, Montana tendergroin, and dusted nuts. They are served skinned, battered, and fried and are said to taste like calamari.
Remember, the number of people who voluntarily swallow bull testicles is greater than zero.
Thank you to everyone who paid for my groceries. I have a Patreon and Kofi with dozens of chapters written across my various stories. If you'd like to read ahead, receive more frequent updates, vote in monthly polls or even commission a chapter directly, check them out.