3.9 Jörð
18th of March, 2011
Yesterday had sucked and today was shaping itself to suck even more if it is even possible.
For one, I had pulled an all-nighter running around setting a convincing enough cover story for why I went out of my way to heal Louise's dad and had to use my second to last dose of Panacea to prevent anybody from catching onto the fact that I am dead on my feet. I don't exactly know how many kilometers my little legs have swallowed during an entire night spent throwing myself off buildings, but my body's answer to that question seems to be a categorical way too fraking many even after topping myself off.
For two, it took all my Callidus-inherited resourcefulness to weave a coherent tale. I had to first take a look at the Bay's medical scene, then take a guess as to what kind of patients each establishment would have. Following that, I had to break into four different archives in four different buildings to pinpoint a patient suitable for my needs, then feed each of them some manner of groxshit they'd swallow before extracting, rinse and repeat. And as if it wasn't enough? I had to start dodging the heroes on my way between Nazareen's Benevolence Hospice and Sherman Hospital, because of course the goody two-shoes had to make everything more complicated than it needed to be.
As a side-note, my cloaking module works like a charm. I went undetected by nursing staff, patients, people still up at ass o'clock in the morning and the heroes the whole time. So, yay me, I guess?
For three, my night still wasn't over once I dodged Armsmaster on my way out of Sherman, far from it. Since I knew for a fact by that point that I was nearly tapped out of Panacea, I had to hit a drug store on the way back home to replenish my chemical supplies. Only hic? I didn't have a bag to transport my bounty. So, I also had to hit an outdoor gear store.
Which is why I chose to cut corners and hit the Mall. Which turned out to be surprisingly easy, mostly on account of being able to laugh at any cameras since, you know, invisibility.
For four, because of course it didn't stop here, I had to find a new place where I could transfer my workshop, now that I just put the biggest possible target on my head by revealing that I had something worth fighting over my Tinker-sona for everyone and sundries. No way in hell do I keep everything at home bar the very strict minimum after that, because the PRT may be a little slow, but them starting to look all over the Bay for the Tinker with groxshit healing tech is a certainty and I need to look squeaky clean at home at the very least. I wager the confusion I sowed with my fight against Assault and Battery should shield me from the worst of it, but I'd rather not bank on people dismissing Emma's accusations as crazy talk. I still don't know why she's hellbent on me being a cape despite never catching me red-handed and doing it in the most attention-seeking manner, but it could rouse some suspicions.
For five, after finding said new place – a dusty warehouse roughly five clicks South-South-West from the Barnes as the bird flies, roughly at the edge of the richer part of town and the Bay's commercial district, and, more importantly, far away from the seafront – I had to transfer all my stuff. Which admittedly wasn't a lot, but still took me three. Entire. Trips. Back. And. Forth. And to add insult to injury, I'd have to take the same Throne-damned path everytime I want to Tinker from now on!
Let's just say that Project Hooky jumped at the top of my list for a pretty good reason and it isn't because I felt a real need for backup in the field, though it does sweeten the deal.
I only left two Synskin-Solvent spray cans combo at home in case of emergency, my Power Dagger, my Exo-Armor belt, the Millenium Spellbook since it looks like a curio and nobody in their right mind is going to think 'tinker creation' when taking a look at it, Dark-chan's portrait since it'd be pretty suspicious if it disappeared one day, my holotech 'I sleep' decoy and of course Dell, which was going to remain strapped to my left forearm for the foreseeable future under partial cloaking.
Because I had time to think and mostly fume while going through that entire evening's worth of frustration. And I just know who had to be responsible for the Empire's saber-rattling.
Coil. It has to be. There's only one man in this entire city who would benefit from stirring shit and make an already touchy situation just that worse. Which promptly catapulted him at the top of my personal shitlist, since his meddling hurt my friend.
Granted, he's been at the top of said list for a while now, considering both his spotty record with underage parahuman girls and how his actions prompted Leviathan to come to wreck the place. I just had been biding my time until I had a relatively foolproof way of dealing with him.
Which has been the case since YuGiOh, if I have to be perfectly honest. Manoeuvring him into a Shadow Game and Penalty-ing for cheating with his power wouldn't have been easy, but probably doable during a recruitment attempt, body-double be damned.
Only I hadn't been sparkling with joy about putting myself at his mercy during a throwaway timeline. I intellectual know that I should be more resilient against torture than other people due to my hypno-indoctrination, but I don't really want to bank on parallel-me not cracking.
Anyway, all of that is moot since I can now do a pretty convincing vanishing act with my cloaking module and his power relies on his five senses to warn him of an incoming danger.
All I have to do is catch him unaware in his civies to deal with him once and for all.
I am… not exactly thrilled… at the idea of having to kill the guy, but Thomas Calvert is simply too dangerous to be left alive, has hurt my friend with his second rate Bond villain's scheming and I'm not too far gone to the point of subjecting him to the brain-in-a-jar treatment. Banking on a Thinker power's utility is a losing bet anyway since everybody on Bet is playing 4D chess with the space pigeon and she keeps soundly trouncing everybody but Contessa.
The point is, the Bay objectively would be a better place to live without the slimy snake mucking things up, ergo he has to go.
Then I'll be freer to act, the fact that I just made the game infinitely more complicated for myself notwithstanding.
Not like I'm regretting helping Louise's dad, since it was the right thing to do no matter how Callidus-me is screeching in my mind about how stupid a move that was, but I can still bemoan the fact that I went from 'new tinker with skeevy morals' to 'new tinker with groxshit healing tech that needs to be secured yesterday' to the Bay's players and probably the rest of the USA once it gets known. It's honestly a crapshoot if I'm already in Cauldron's visor, but I can't do much if the lady of fancy hats starts looking my way anyway so why bother worrying about it.
So, in order, dealing with Coil, finishing Project Hooky, and only then start to look into the Nazis because they're currently very serious contenders for the second spot in my shitlist–
I blink, then hum in thought.
Now, that's an idea, I muse to myself while slowly chewing on my brocollis, it would make things a little more chaotic, but–
"–to Jacky, you with us?" Caroline's voice reaches me, prompting me to cut my woolgathering short.
"Apologies," I blink as I refocus on the now, or more accurately, Juniper's cafeteria, "I was lost in thought. You were saying?"
"I asked if you knew when Louise would come back to school," the blonde's expression is almost theatrically crestfallen, but I know this is her putting an emphasis on her emotions to make sure nobody gets mistaken, which speaks more of her insecurities than anything else, "We're all worried about her, you know?"
"I'm sorry, but she didn't say," I answer with a chagrined expression of my own.
"That sucks," Adelaide comments with a grumble, her head in her arms and her plate untouched, "School isn't the same when she's not around."
"It isn't," Missy comments while giving Louise's empty spot a complicated look.
"I'm sure we'll know more this weekend, Monday at the latest," I comment sagely after taking another bite.
Probably straight from the girl's mouth, I inwardly grin, since she's going to have one hell of a tale to blabber about.
***
There was something that kept poking at Lisa's brain as she looked deeper into her personal bane's latest antics at her shitty boss' behest.
And that thing was–
"Why not Medhall?" she wonders aloud while slumped into her comfy office chair, her eyes boring a hole into her whiteboard in the Undersiders' lair; said whiteboard currently having more in common with a conspiracy nuts' wet-dream than anything else.
The path Nightflyer had taken while cherry-picking for test-subjects all over the Bay had been circuitous, yet she went out of her way to skip Medhall's nursing division despite the corporation being known to do clinical trials on cutting-edge medicines.
"Surely they'd have one poor schmuck with an itchy brain stashed somewhere in the building or something," the Thinker comments to herself, "So why did she go all the way to Sherman and risked another encounter with the goody two-shoes by taking too much time?"
Lisa is only a couple of seconds away from lifting the lead she keeps on her power to dig deeper into it when her cellphone suddenly rings.
"You've reached 4Play Enterprises, USA's premier sexbot sellers; we build' em, you drill' em!" she answers with an obnoxiously chirpy voice, "And I'm currently mandated by the company to warn you that we will not empty' em. What can I do for you today, good sir?"
"Tattletale," her slimy snake of a boss' voice hisses from the other side of the line, prompting Lisa to wince a little.
Which is absolutely on her, but so what? She had been in a good mood after the Ruby Dream Casino heist, a walk in the park compared to her still-ongoing investigation into the Nightflyer's case – or, more accurately, her mysterious backer – and having to deal with the gremlin's nonsense once again had put her into a shitty mood and she is perfectly willing to spread the misery by this point.
"Childish antics aside, do you have an update for me, Sarah?" Coil asks, his tone dripping with the warning the use of her birth-name only reinforces.
"Nightflyer winged it," she answers back, her tone neutral, "And she moves around way faster than I would have thought."
A pause.
"Elaborate," her boss orders.
Lisa rolls her eyes, before plopping her feet on her desk.
"The times between each nursing staff calling the PRT have too much variance, one that cannot be explained by her travel time or by her patients giving her a headstart. The lady from St. June allegedly yelled bloody murder the very moment she woke up, but Nightflyer still took thirty minutes to reach the retirement home that is barely over a mile away as the crow flies? While we know she's a parkour-wonder?" she explains, a smug smile curling the edge of her lips, "Nah, she totally winged it. I bet you'd find some traces of her passage in every building if you knew where to look, probably around the archives since those generally aren't fully digitalized and you wouldn't need to hack into a file cabinet. Which means she didn't know which patients would suit her needs going in. Which either means her backer didn't know either or simply didn't care and figured the girl would pull it off."
"Your thoughts on that?" Coil asks.
"Bit of column A, bit of column B," she reasons, "Backer didn't know but trusted her to pull it off. Which fits with the fact that they've given a girl barely out of childhood access to their toys, which now includes a scary anti-Brute weapon and the means to patch herself in the field in case things go sideways. A girl that has clearly been sandbagging on all of us, I must insist."
"You think her Mover sub-rating is stronger than her previous showings would imply," her boss formulates.
"Yup," she answers, audibly popping the p for emphasis, "The Brockton Bay General guy gave her the longest headstart from all the others, probably on account of waking up less than two days after getting brained close to cerebral death and feeling like he owed her; but even with taking that into account and the time she must've spent digging through files at the hospice, she still averages a solid 30 miles an hour between the two places. Which is pretty fucking impressive, considering the likeliest path she took is riddled with high and low buildings in a completely random pattern. She must've been feeling all that jumping around in the calves once she was done, that's for sure."
"Alright, anything else?" her boss probes.
"Not at the moment, no," Lisa answers, "Though I was going to look into why she skipped Medhall despite it being on her path."
A pause.
A dark chuckle echoes from the other side of the line.
"If you really must look into that, then it means that you've been overestimating your intellect quite a bit, Tattletale," the voice smooths out, turning oily serious once again, "Keep digging into the case, I'll be in touch."
Then, the prick hangs up on her, because of course.
Feeling quite a bit peeved, Lisa ends up throwing her cellphone on the top of her bed in a fit of pique, before looking back at her whiteboard, fully intent on looking into the Medhall mystery.
***
"I AM," Lisa's voice reaches Alec as he lazes on the couch with his controller in hands and his headphones around his neck, just about ready to launch another game of Call of Honor after taking a piss, "A FUCKING IDIOT!"
The Master lets the words sink in, before angling himself – more accurately, his mouth – toward the blonde's door.
"COULD'VE TOLD YOU SO AGES AGO!" he yells in turn, a shit-eating grin blossoming on his face as soon as the words leave his lips.
"FUCK YOU, ALEC!" comes the screeched reply.
With a snicker, Alec props his headphones on his head and gets himself ready to insult an entire lobby's worth of noobs, happy with a job well done.