"Honey, we're home!" Lisa shouted as the three Undersiders who went out for a celebratory shopping trip returned to the base.
Cameron smiled and stood up to greet the trio. "Hey, glad you're back. What did you get Lisa?" She started small talk with Lisa as Alec went to his own quarters and Brian started looking around.
"Is Rachel not here?"
Cameron shook her head. "No, Bitch said she was going to be spending the night at her shelter. I said it was a bad idea for her go out while we have so much heat on us but she just told me to fuck off."
Lisa laughed at that. "Sounds like Rachel. Should we go out looking for her o fearless leader?"
Brian shook his head. "Nah, she told me she was going to be spending more time with her dogs these next few days and at the very least I trust that Rachel knows how to keep out of trouble."
Brian went off to his own room here, although Cameron doubted he was actually going to sleep here. Out of all the Undersiders he was the only one that seemed to actually have a 'secret identity'. Whereas the rest of the team just had offshore bank accounts and cash cards, apparently Brian's cash flow was being funneled through a fake job and a 401k. Lisa had an apartment separate from the base, but from how she described it she just kept it to stay at when the team got too annoying. Meanwhile Brian slept at his own place as often as he could and the room he kept here was just for when jobs went on into the dark hours of the night or a concussion he needed to sleep off.
Out of all the Undersiders he was the one Cameron was most fascinated by, the one who actually had a human life. She wanted to know more.
"You know you can just talk to Brian if you want?" Lisa said teasingly. "You don't have to pretend to be interested in what I have to say."
"W-what no, I mean!" Cameron stuttered but couldn't get an actual thought out. She really didn't want Lisa to think she was being rude.
"Don't worry about it. I have to put my new shit away anyways. Go see Brian, or better yet check your room first." And with a wink Lisa went away.
Confused, Cameron went to her room and let out a gasp. In the middle of her bed was a small bag and when the metal girl opened it, what was inside took her breath away. It was a small thumbsized hourglass attached to a hinge and a chain letting it spin to change directions, inside the hourglass however wasn't sand, but little metallic spheres. It was gorgeous.
She immediately put it on and then ran to Brian's room where he seemed to be organizing some things. "You got this for me?" Cameron asked, suddenly all the excitement she had bled into nervous energy and she just rocked on her heels and fidgeted with her new necklace.
"Y-yeah." He rubbed the back of his head. "Is that okay? It's just that what you said about my old hoodie being the only thing you've ever owned sort of stuck with me and…well I thought you deserved a welcome gift."
Cameron was just completely floored at how kind he was. She rushed forward and crushed him in a massive hug. "Thank you thank you thank you!"
Brian hugged back with a more reasonable amount of force. "No problem. We're teammates now, friends. Least I could do."
"Even so I hope you know I'm paying you back for this."
"I look forward to it."
Let's Play
Now that I knew for sure that the Undersiders weren't coming for Bitch I would be able to look for her without any outside risks. There were plenty of inside risks to worry about considering what I had found at the trainyard. The storage facility had become heavily guarded, sentries posted surreptitiously on rooftops and disguised to appear as if they were regular vagrants. All asian. The ABB had booby trapped this place and most likely captured Bitch. A more cautious second sweep using a clone to speed things up also found high tech motion sensors and alarms. No, not high tech Tinker Tech.
Examining them with my own Tinker abilities from behind their ranges I was able to make several deductions. First was that whoever made these was a fucking idiot. If I had just an hour to work on them I would be able to make them both more efficient and less obvious for an enemy to find. Second was that if it was an idiot Tinker in Brockton Bay that meant that the tech belonged to Leet, one half of an annoying video game crime duo. Third was that there was no way that the ABB would take orders from Uber and Leet of all people which meant they had been hired as muscle to protect the place.
With Lung gone then Oni Lee was probably next in line for the throne, but he, more than anything, was just a follower. I had heard whispers, though, that Lung was in the process of recruiting a new cape. If he had done so before he was defeated by the Undersiders then maybe said new cape was the one running things.
All things to find out later as Infiltrator put in work and pointed out to my brain the weaknesses of the temporary base's defenses. It was surprisingly tight, enough that if it was somebody who wasn't me and they came in not realizing the area was occupied they would be caught before they could notice anything. But I was me and so I silently slipped between guards and melded into shadows entering the maze of storage sheds. My mind had already memorized the exact position of Bitch relative to me so I was able to move directly to her. It was enclosed, one door in and one door out. I stood outside the door, wondering the best way to get in without tripping any defenses. My powers weren't almighty yet and single rooms with a singular door and no windows were honestly the end all be all of security to be honest. As I was contemplating though I heard something that forced my hand.
A cry of pain.
In an instant I kicked down the door and slowed my perception of time. Bitch was there, handing from her arms chained to the roof, her clothes torn in a way that was thankfully only from her being beaten mercilessly, as if that was somehow better than the alternative. The scream had been from having a cattleprod shoved into her ribs, a cattle prod held by an ABB member. That was one. The only other person in the room though was a second member who had been crouched over a cart of tools I couldn't even acknowledge without wanting to kill him. This was a torture room.
Surge!
I slammed my body into the cattle prod holding ABB member hard enough to knock him out with his contact with the opposite wall. The second didn't even have a moment to react before I hit him over the head to just barely knock him out. I almost lamented my insane level of body control that allowed me to do so without any risk of long term harm.
I then turned to what was important. "Rachel! Rachel, are you okay?" I leapt up and snapped the chain holding her and caught her before she could hit the ground.
"Grue? Tattletale?" She was groggy. Probably didn't even know where she was. Now that I was taking a closer look at her, what I saw horrified me. Her face was covered in heavy welts where she had been struck, small burns along her arms and torso where the cattle prod and other instruments were used to cause pain. My powers allowed me to see the fractures to her ribs and the damage to her kidney. They were probably also rotating out tools because her back was torn up like it was struck with a whip but there wasn't any whip on the cart that was in here.
"No Rachel, it's me; Shard." I pulled a healing potion from my Scrapyard dimension, one of the highest quality. "Drink this." I carefully fed her the potion and before my eyes her wounds closed up and her cracked ribs knit together. Perfect. Good. "I'm going to get you out of here."
"No," Rachel started to struggle but I kept her held down. Her body was experiencing hyper healing, moving too much during it could cause something to stitch incorrectly. "Have to save the dogs."
Brutus, Judas, and sweet Angelica. "We'll find them, don't worry. Just lay down and I'll figure out where they're being kept."
I laid Bitch down to let the potion finish up its work, even with it she would probably be out of it for a minute or two, and I approached the gang member that had been holding the cattle prod. I summoned two potions and forced his comatose body to drink them before slapping him awake.
For a second or two he seemed unaware of where he was, but the moment he saw my masked face he tried to scream. All that came out was a soft whimper.
"What did you do to me?" He whispered, and then tried to scream again in shock only to once again fail.
"I took away your ability to scream." I deepened my voice, added a tint of what I thought demons sounded like. "Just like I took away your ability to lie. So when I ask you a question you're going to answer, and you're going to tell me exactly what I need to know. A potion to lower his ability to raise his voice and one that removed inhibitions in a way much more effective than real world 'truth serums'.
"W-what do you want? She's a crook too, she deserves this."
"Nobody deserves this!" I barely kept my voice down enough to not risk being heard outside the room. I still had to be stealthy; I didn't know what else was here. "Now where are the dogs?"
"T-the dogs?"
"Bitch's dogs!"
The thug was trembling, he'd already soiled himself. "Ok ok! They're at the opposite end of the facility. Bakuda said to keep them separate just in case but not to kill them until she had a chance to study them."
"What!" That wasn't me, that was a recovered Bitch who grabbed the ABB thug right out of my hands and slammed him against the wall. "If you've hurt them!"
"Bitch! I've got this. Don't worry, I'm sure they're fine." She genuinely growled at me but let go of the man and let me take back over. "Now where were we? Oh yeah. Who the hell is Bakuda?"
"The new leader of the ABB. She's been stepping up since Lung got got. Arming us, talking about revenge and how we're going to take over the city, recruitment drives." And to think it had only been five days since Lung was captured. What a go-getter.
"What can she do? What's she going to do?"
"She builds shit, bombs and stuff. She's crazy good at it too. Saw her turn a bitch inside out with a push of a button." A bomb Tinker. Just great.
"And she's here?"
"Y-yeah. She turned the main office into some kind of lab. Told everybody to not go in no matter what and to call her on her radio if we need anything." A Tinker's base, even a temporary one, was dangerous. And if she was a bomb Tinker that went doubly true. Who knew what dastardly explosives she had up her sleeve.
"Who else is here? Oni Lee"
He shook his head. "No, he bailed on the ABB once we figured out Lung was gonzo." That was true. Lung had been taken to an ocean facility to be studied and contained. And if he ever unfreezes he'd be in the middle of nowhere and once he exhausted himself trying to go back to land he'd be neutralized and taken to the Birdcage. Of course all the general public that didn't have an in with Armsmaster knew was that he was gone. "We got ten ABB members and maybe three dozen conscripts."
"Conscripts."
The man was silent. "Tell me!" Whatever this was he was so scared of telling me that it was almost counteracting the truth serum. "You've already told me this much. You think Bakuda is going to let you go after this? Your only hope is that I take her down. Tonight!"
"They're civilians. Civilians that Bakuda recruited and…" He was still hesitating.
"Tell me or I'll give you back to her!" I gestured at Bitch who was literally pacing the room looking like a caged lion. "Tell me!"
"She put bombs in her head. If they go against her she detonates them and nobody knows how to stop it! I promise that's all I know!"
"I believe you." And with a swift blow I knocked him out again. "Fuck." Head bombs. Bakuda basically had three dozen hostages and who even knew what kind of shit she'd do with them if she was crazy enough to implant people's heads with bombs. And there was no way I was letting her go. If she was this crazy after five days in power I was not going to see what happened at the week mark. Against me was a bomb Tinker holed away in a makeshift lab, three dozen hostages with bombs implanted in their skulls, ten unpowered gang members, and Uber and Leet who were probably hired for security. Slowly a plan started to emerge.
"Bitch, let's go get your dogs." The girl in question stopped pacing.
"Finally." She cracked her knuckles. "They're going to pay once I find them."
"Whoa whoa whoa." I held up my hands. "We need to go stealth mode. We're in no shape to face almost fifty people with tinkertech bombs. We need to sneak out of here, carefully."
"These bastards tortured me!"
"And they won't get away with that, I promise. I called in a friend that's more suited to taking them all down. She can handle it, but we need to get you and the dogs out of here safely. I don't want to risk either of you getting caught in the crossfire."
Bitch was quiet, but eventually nodded. "Fine. I'll follow your lead."
"Okay. I'm going to make sure the hallway is clear. Give me a second." I crouched and slowly made my way out the broken door. I didn't actually need to do that, my senses told me there wasn't anybody nearby, but it did let me be alone for long enough to make a clone of myself. Now I had one clone here in the facility and one outside.
My clone went her own way to the approximate area I knew Bakuda was in and I popped my head back into the room. "It's clear, follow me." Bitch nodded and we made our way through the winding hallways of the storage facility. Between all my powers it wasn't difficult to avoid other people, but it was slow going.
Meanwhile in my clone body I found myself outside of the managers office of the facility. Bakuda was there, my enhanced hearing letting me pick up on the sounds of power tools and cursing from inside. Step one was complete. I positioned myself in a dark corner and activated my Stiff power. No movement, no breathing, and I even used Icy Hot to match my temperature to the surrounding area. There was no way anybody could notice me. I just had to wait here while my main body made its way over to the place they were keeping Bitch's dogs.
And as that was happening my body outside of the facility was getting into costume, Princess Powerful's costume. That was the power of having multiple bodies and multiple personas. I was able to field power without risking revealing my true nature. As Princess Powerful I silently moved away from the storage facility then made a relatively big show of flying into the Trainyard area, checking nothing on my forearm and flying in circles. Hopefully somebody would notice and now Princess Powerful would be seen searching rather than just instantly going to the location of the ABB.
Inside the storage facility people were moving, and I had to hold Bitch back to avoid running into a group of men turning a corner. Finally we made it to the area her dogs were being kept, another nondescript storage container with one door. "They're in there." I whispered to my temporary partner and then tightened my grip on her arm to keep her next to me. "Wait just a second." She glared at me but didn't do anything. "A distraction is coming. Just wait."
As I was speaking as Princess Powerful I moved right towards the entrance of the storage facility and landed. "Come on out you losers! I tracked your tech here Leet!" The ABB would have to mobilize but they'd be less willing to show themselves if the person coming was here for the hired help and not them.
"Bullshit!" A voice came from the roof of a storage locker. I saw the cape in question and his partner.
Leet was a Tinker able to make anything but only once. There were some minutia I didn't know but the long and short of it was his tech was varied but unreliable. His partner Uber could master any skill if he concentrated on it, but only one at a time.
Their costumes tended to be variable, changing to be whichever video game they were pretending to bring to real life that day. This time they were both wearing some sort of blue unitard over a white bodysuit topped off by pink gloves, boots, and a little pink dongle on the head of the bodysuit. Lett was skinny like a typical nerd pulled from a comic book while Uber's body looked like it was sculpted from marble.
"Bomberman? Really?" I had come across the game during my videogame filled winter break. It was so on the nose that they were working under a bomb Tinker and were doing Bomberman? Really?
"Hah! So you actually know what video games are? Impressive for a girl!" Leet said and I really wanted to punch him in the throat. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the snitch, a small spherical camera that they used to stream their crimes. I recalled that the last time they streamed it was Grand Theft Auto and they decided the best way to 'play' that game was actually find and beat up sex workers.
"Yeah I love video games. Tetris, Harvest Moon, Sims."
"Ugh!" Uber let out a groan. "Total chick stuff. This is why girls shouldn't pretend to like video games." They were stalling, buying time for the ABB to show up in case they were needed. That didn't mean they didn't believe the bullshit they were spitting but it was for the purpose of stalling for time.
"Well my big brother let me play one of his games once. It was a FSP? I had a gun and shot people, it was really scary." I put on an extra cutesy voice.
"Wait." Leet held up a hand. "Are you trolling us?"
The ABB were mobilizing enough that I had what I needed. No reason to delay.
"No shit." I said returning to my regular Princess Powerful voice, cute but mature like a young adult. "Princess Powerful loves FPS games, I love them almost as much as I hate gatekeeping fake gamer basement dwellers like you two."
At the main office Bakuda was exiting her temporary lab, probably to go deal with the intruding cape. I didn't give her a chance. From my hidden position I dropped down and injected her with a needle of Tinkertech sedatives I had made in my Scrapyard dimension. In just seconds she stopped moving and I started to drag her to the rooftops. I had to disarm her entire gear to prevent any chance of the hostages having the bombs in their heads activated.
In front of the storage unit the dogs were being kept, the door was opened and an ABB member was brought face to face with Bitch's right hook. I let her unleash her frustrations on that one while I quickly knocked out the other two in the room.
The dogs began to howl when they saw me and their master. They seemed physically fine, no obvious external injuries, but they had been muzzled and stuffed into cages far too small for them. "Bitch!" I yelled at her and she set down the person she was beating the shit out of. "The ABB are distracted, let's get back to your shelter."
And with that everything inside the storage facility was taken care of. And Uber and Leet were none the wiser that any backup they thought they had was negated.
"You don't troll Uber and Leet!" The Tinker said with a whiny voice. "Uber and Leet troll you!"
"Okay." And I summoned my pistol tier heart wand and swung it to shoot a blast of pink energy at Leet's head.
"Look out!" I underestimated Uber though because he pushed his partner out of the way and in the same motion leapt down towards me. Theoretically him hitting me with a fist while I was in power armor would break his arm, but considering the confidence he had leaping down I wasn't going to risk it.
I activated my thrusters and sent myself flying back a few feet from where Uber landed, floating a foot or so off the ground.
I noticed movement above and saw a bomb flying through the air, most definitely thrown by Leet. It was odd though, the shape of it was almost perfect, like a picture of a bomb somebody copy and pasted into 3D, and the way light was reflecting off of it was wrong. The bomb went off behind me and the explosion pushed me into Uber who began a barrage of punches.
There had to be some tech in his gloves, because each blow felt like being rocked by a sledgehammer. The armor handled the impacts like a champ, but the kinetic energy dampers weren't perfect and my head was bouncing around my helmet. I pressed a button on my wrist computer and my entire armor sent out a pulse of static energy that forced Uber back temporarily and gave me the chance to take to the air.
"A holographic bomb?" I asked. "I mean I can see how it could be useful, but it's totally busted. Aside from looking completely fake the physics on the explosion were totally whack. A real bomb would have exploded way differently in terms of air pressure and there was no actual heat to-"
"Shut up!" Leet shouted and reached behind him and pulled out two more of his fake bombs to throw at me. I responded by summoning two new wands, blue with bubbles on the end, and catching the bombs in a telekinetic bubble. "Oh fuck!"
I swung my wands and the bombs flew down towards Uber on the ground who couldn't get far enough away before the explosions sent him flying and knocked the wind out of him. One bubble wand was replaced by my pink heart and a quick shot caught Leet in the leg, throwing him off balance and causing him to fall off the roof. The other bubble wand was switched out with one of my heart shaped forcefield generators which I threw onto Uber, freezing him in place.
Leet seemed out of the fight after falling from the roof but better safe then sorry. I pulled out a second capture heart and threw it at him.
The fight was over just as soon as it began and I was just left disappointed. Leet barely showed off any tech and what he did was just a let down. Meanwhile Uber had some skill, but even if I had equalized our physical stats I would have won since his power only gave him individual skills and none of the fighting basics I had been drilling into my enhanced brain. They really were complete jokes.
"Okay the losers have been taken care of by Princess Powerful!" I shouted into the air. "And I'm sure you ABB folk are wondering where the hell Bakuda is to give you orders. Well…"
I had already finished stripping Bakuda of her tech so from the rooftops I threw her unconscious body down in front of Princess Powerful. I wanted to put a capture heart on her but I only had two functioning ones right now so I would just have to rely on my knockout toxin. "She's already been taken care of. Princess Powerful also wants to promise all of you that Bakuda forcibly conscripted and put a bomb into that she will work to reverse the process. I've already called the Protectorate and informed them, so help is on the way. Princess Powerful recommends that any actual gang members stay and submit themselves to arrest, but she also knows that she can't keep an eye on everybody and so if you leave Princess Powerful won't stop you."
I heard shuffling behind one of the storage facilities, one I had noted earlier had the back taken out to act as some sort of ambushing mechanism and then the door opened revealing about forty young asian people, all victimized by Bakuda.
"You…you'll really be able to help us?"
"Princess Powerful promises!"
Let's Play
As I, as Princess Powerful, organized the rescued civilians I had taken Rachel and her dogs back to her shelter. I switched back to my generic mask on the way there and went in before her to get the staff to leave. Rachel…Rachel didn't want anybody to see her like this.
"Leave." She said the minute we got inside. "I'm fine."
That didn't seem like the right thing to do. "Listen, you go shower, grab a change of clothes. I'll take care of the dogs and get them food and water. You're going to crash from that potion soon and you won't be able to give them the attention they need. I'll take care of them, don't worry."
Rachel looked like she wanted to object, but the events of tonight had taken a lot out of her, maybe even too much. So while she went to wash her own blood off of her I helped get the dogs settled in for sleep.
As I did I also looked over my spoils.
Defeated 3 CapesCalculating Rewards Based on ContributionGained:
4000 EXP
+3 Loose SP
3 Cape Power Roll
Normally I gave myself some time after the fight to cool down and figure out exactly how I wanted to roll my powers or just let my brain switch off of combat mode. Now though I had good reason to roll my Tinker powers. There were people with bombs implanted in their brains and I had to help get them out. Armsmaster was definitely going to show up to help and his specialty of miniaturization would definitely help but it wasn't enough. In that list of tier 1 Tinker powers there just had to be some sort of surgery power and I needed to find it.
I pulled up my first roll, from defeating Bakuda, and put in three SP for a full fifteen SP roll.
1d125=1=Jack of All Trades
Tinker: Jack of All TradesCost: 2 SPYou're not a real Tinker; instead, you know how to make anything that can be made in a mundane manner.
God dammit! It wasn't useless, in fact it was filling in gaps in knowledge that would assist in Tinkering, but it was just quality of life more than anything. Not something that would help those people.
True TinkerCost: Handyman+Jack of All TradesYou're a prodigy in the tinkering process. Your ability to design and visualize is far smoother, your innate talent immediately accounting for any flaws or holes that you may have otherwise overlooked. Ideas come far more readily and easily, and you've gained an innate understanding and talent that allows you to creatively apply and develop your knowledge base, particularly in the practice of invention of new technologies.
Your tinker cycle can also be shortened, allowing you to choose to create minor white-boxed tinker tools to rapidly speed up the process.
Holy crap. Actually holy crap. This was huge. I already relied on an accelerated Tinker Cycle in order to generate workable materials but this could accelerate things to hyperspeed.
Absolutely amazing.
But still not enough to actually help those people. I had in my head the potential to create a surgical table to take the bombs out; however, with my specializations not actually touching on medical devices, getting a working one that would have minimal risk to the patient would take too long than I was comfortable with taking for people with bombs in their heads.
I pulled up Leet's roll. Bakuda was a dangerous Tinker whose roll gave me the minimum possible result. Maybe Leet as a complete screwup would give me something powerful.
1d125=120=I Wanna Be the Very Best
Tinker: I Wanna Be the Very BestCost: 15 SPYou are a biotinker similar to Blasto, where you can make hybridized creatures; however, instead of being limited to plants, they can be a plethora of elements. From shadow humanoid tigers, crystal-organic reptilian birds, to even flame-breathing dragons.
Fifteen SP. That was a fifteen SP power. I started hyperventilating and the only thing that stopped me was Angelica putting her head on my lap. "Thanks Angelica. Thank you." I gave her a scratch behind the ear then got back to work getting the dogs into their pens while I thought about this power.
It was the strongest power I'd gotten so far. No doubt about that. In my mind's eye I could see potential builds and how at the top of my power I could probably make something capable of fighting an Endbringer. Not beating one, but enough to fight them off. That was, even with my laundry list of support powers, something far in the future but still that told me the jump in power between a twelve SP power like Flemming and this. Fleming changed the game for how I could operate. Very Best gave me a convincing reason to complete change how I was operating in the first place.
That aside though focusing on the path ahead this actually gave me what I needed. The direction the power took me in was hybrid creatures, but the methodology was biology. I would need to make tech in order to monitor creature health, perform biopsies and surgeries on them, and much more. It wasn't direct but even from the peripheries of this fifteen SP power I got what felt like a completely viable medical Tinker power.
My thoughts then turned to the power itself as I noticed something. 'You are a biotinker similar to Blasto'. I knew who Blasto was. I had come across info on him when looking into Boston capes. Biotinker, made stuff with plant matter, walked the thin line all Biotinkers did. Why would my power decide that Blasto was a good touchstone for me to hold against this power. Out of all my knowledge and information I've gathered here Blasto was immortalized in my power to assist in understanding the strongest power I'd gotten to date. I had to tell Victoria. This had to mean something. Especially alongside the discovery she had made about how my power categorizes powers according to PRT guidelines.
"Shard." A woozy voice pulled me from my thoughts. Rachel, hair wet and wearing cleanish clothes. "The dogs?" She was already starting to feel the afteraffects of my potion. The human body wasn't meant to recover that much that quickly. She was going to suffer a rebound like I had after my fight with Circus. Thankfully my formula was advanced enough that she would only suffer through the night and need to sleep but it wouldn't be pleasant.
"I calmed them down and got them into their pens. They're all sleeping soundly. Do you have a bed here?" She nodded and didn't fight back when I helped hold her up and let her guide me to her room here.
I laid her over the covers, Rachel didn't seem like the person who would appreciate being tucked in.
"Thank you." She mumbled as she was already drifting off to sleep.
Once I was sure she was out of it I whispered back, "Anytime."
Name: Taylor Anne HebertCreature Creator LVL 16SP Cap12Loose SP4Tier 1 Powers(30)Mover(1)Shaker(4)Brute(4)Breaker(2)Master(3)Tinker(5)Blaster(1)Thinker(1)Striker(2)Changer(3)Trump(3)Stranger(1)Tier 0 Powers(79)Synergy Powers(29)Power Upgrades(6)
A.N.
Sorry this is so late. I was going to have it out hours ago but then a work emergency happened.
Uber and Leet are pathetic. Honestly. Uber is sort of hyped up by the fandom sometimes(or at least was back in the day) but he's beaten off screen by just Grue in his introduction. Leet is also a mess up and is beaten handily by basically just Regent. Leet was literally just used as a dummy for Grue to teach Taylor how to choke a bitch out.
Bakuda on the other hand is way more dangerous. As long as you aren't a stealth master who she has no idea is coming for her. There was no way for the ABB to actually catch Taylor in the act and without knowing she's being targeted and having bodies to put between them Bakuda stood no chance. So yeah, the ABB bombing arc was averted. Told y'all now was the time when heavy butterflies would come into effect.
The rolls for Bakuda and leet also are so funny to me. I wish I could say I manipulated them but Bakuda genuinely rolled us a 1 and Leet a 15 SP power. Truly Leet is the person who will end up saving the world because of this. I Wanna Be the Very Best is also a very interesting power. It lets you make pokemon, but they don't inherently have special abilities due to the tier 1 upgrade specifically referencing that it allows you to give the creatures powers. I also have to figure out how to reconcile the Scrapyard dimension and biological matter that counts as Tinkertech. That's going to be fun.
I was going to do some talking with Armsmaster and rolling the Thinker power from Uber but decided against it. Ending with 'Anytime' felt right and I couldn't just start a new scene so I'll put that at the beginning of the next chapter.
Speaking of the next chapter, and a few after that, I think things are going to slow down heavily. I'm going to have Taylor touch bases with her friends a bit more, push forward the Emma storyline and basically tone down cape fighting. There's still going to be cape action in the form of patrolling, setting up with Biotinkering, and having to deal with the ABB conscripts but I do want to tap on the brakes since we just got through basically three big fights in a row.