A/N: And so begins Arc 2, with a short interlude from one of the poor souls that has to clean up Amy's most recent mess. Thanks to my betas, Thoth19 and Atlasofremembrance for their boundless patience while I hammered at the outline for this arc.
Monday, March 23 2011
Colin was conflicted.
While he would prefer to be back in his lab, a surprise call from a panicked sheriff had dragged him out to a far west suburb of Brockton Bay at nearly midnight. Middleburgh was far enough away from the city proper to have its own train station, which translated to roughly half an hour when driving. Colin had arrived in slightly less than fifteen on his motorcycle, but it was still dramatically further than his usual patrols extended.
The reason? Glowing tree monsters had come charging out of the forest and…
Well, not really done much of anything, it turned out. This was the source of his conflict.
On one hand, he wanted nothing more than to figure out where a certain migraine-inducing teenaged biokinetic had vanished following tonight's most recent disaster, and do his damnedest to make literally any consequence stick to her. Circe running around without supervision deeply offended his professional sensibilities, even before considering what the girl was capable of creating on a whim.
Colin had been legitimately shocked when he had finally been given permission to view Circe's Threat Report, as not only had the file changed dramatically since he last read it, basically all of it had been redacted once the special investigation started. Her reluctance to associate with any heroic organization made much more sense following an explanation of her history and powers, though Colin had expressed his displeasure in the strongest terms to Legend about the Protectorate's inability to accommodate Circe.
If he thought it would do any good, Colin might bring up the whole series of incidents from earlier today to whomever was heading the special investigation. But with Legend's unapologetic stonewalling and the Chief Director's repeated mantra of 'classified,' it had been made abundantly clear to Colin that there was something very suspicious about this whole situation.
Circe's partner was worse. Oeneus's file was completely redacted, and he had
not been granted permission to view the blanked out sections. A hunch and some digging into Hess's past had yielded a very good guess as to the Tinker's identity, but much like Miss Lavere, Miss Hebert enjoyed the enthusiastic protection of an highly unusual and secretive investigation that inexplicably excluded the local Protectorate leader.
Having to clean up their messes but not being able to even collaborate remotely with the two Tinkers was frustrating in the extreme.
And that brought Colin's thoughts back to the other side of his conflict: the incredible things Circe could create, even in a severely compromised mental state, with no visible effort on her part.
"Are you seeing this, Dragon?" he asked, ensuring that his compact field microscope was scanning the correct features.
"It bears a striking resemblance to muscle tissue," the Canadian replied, her Newfoundland accent barely registering after so long. "Except no muscle tissue I have ever studied has included cell walls in that fashion, nor has it had the extreme internal optimizations present in this sample."
Looking at the screen displaying the microscope's output, Colin's mind was filled with designs for cybernetics and biotechnology that could launch his career to new heights, and that was only by examining the various parts of the single glowing tree-mech that Circe had left behind. Even her now-signature bioluminescence spawned dozens of ideas for efficient biological power sources and miniaturized organometallic signalling arrays.
For not the first time, he considered quitting the Protectorate solely to collaborate with Circe.
His deliberations were not helped by the astounding set of upgrades that Circe had gifted to Flechette. The Ward had faced a great deal of scrutiny and paperwork over her unauthorized activities, but in the end her vastly improved biology had fallen under the ineffable jurisdiction of the special investigation.
Predictably, all of Piggot's complaints had vanished into that bureaucratic black hole, and Flechette simply went through power testing again. If not for the fact that any upgrades Colin would want for his own body would require corresponding changes in his Tinkertech — and thus involve the Review Board — he would have been knocking on the biokinetic's door as soon as he had seen the resolution of Flechette's situation. But while he had strong suspicions that the special investigation's reach went a lot further than the Review Board, Colin had not wanted to try his luck yet.
The construct under his microscope was putting a lot of stress on that conviction.
Dragon snapped his attention to the task at hand. "Colin, look — see the microstructures in the ligaments?"
"Yes, what am I… oh. There is no way for that to have evolved naturally."
"I wouldn't go quite that far, but I agree. Circe likely invented that herself. Let me run a few simulations here…"
While she worked, Colin searched around the tree-mech to find other interesting creations. He was part of the way through isolating what appeared to be a nerve when Dragon got back to him. "Fascinating. A human ligament with those modifications would account for more than 80% of the increased strength displayed by Flechette, which suggests that Circe is copying designs."
"Indeed," he murmured, using an electrical probe to investigate the nerve and marveling at its efficiency.
---
The glowing tree-mech was eventually loaded onto a Protectorate transport so that Colin and Dragon could continue to study it under better conditions. Removing the construct also allowed the PRT agents to finish cleaning up the scene — for all that she had made a mess, Circe had caused little actual lasting damage, for which the sheriff was very relieved.
Soon after, Colin found himself cruising back to base and chatting with Dragon about their discoveries.
"Colin, I want to talk about Oeneus for a moment," Dragon said suddenly. "I was curious about your unofficial visit to her workshop last week, and when I started digging, I found something… unusual."
"A Tinker made something unusual," he deadpanned, pulling the motorcycle to a stop in the parking lot of a closed restaurant. "You don't say."
Dragon's huff of amusement brought a smile to his lips. "I became suspicious after you relayed Battery and Dauntless's experiences with the 'potions,' and I started asking around to see if anyone else from Canberra could remember anything else of note."
That had been an interesting conversation. While Dauntless had been happy to describe his experiences, Battery had become noticeably cagey when asked about drinking the vials that granted some measure of regeneration and healing. Both had described the experience as 'intuitive,' giving them a vague sense of how healthy they were and how quickly repairs were proceeding.
"Logical. Understanding how Oeneus's Tinkertech enhances humans would go a long way towards replicating it ourselves. Do you have any more thoughts on her specialization?"
"I do," Dragon said slowly. "As it turns out, Narwhal took all three of Oeneus's 'potions' during the fight against the Simurgh, and she described the same sort of 'intuition' that Battery and Dauntless reported. However, the boosted reflexes also extended to her shields — she was able to reflexively shield herself against projectiles."
Colin said nothing as the implications started to churn in his brain.
"Several people reported similar behavior, developing much better reflexes with their power after drinking the potion. This was true across a variety of types of powers, not just those tied to their bodies. Taken together, this sounds like something else entirely," she continued.
"Power interactions," Colin breathed. "The most important part about parahuman powers —"
"— is that they are intuitive," Dragon finished. "Oeneus isn't a human enhancement Tinker, or a chemical Tinker. I believe that she's a
power Tinker."
The next piece fell in place for Colin rather quickly. "They're the Kleos. They never have the same powers twice because Oeneus is constantly testing new ideas." He replayed his last meeting with the two in his head and made another connection. "The future sight was Oeneus, too, not some new mystery Toybox Tinker."
Dragon laughed awkwardly. "Yes, they appear to have recreated melange. I suspect one of them is a fan of classic science fiction."
"We need to speak to Legend about this," Colin realized. "Because I think we have started to understand why there is a special investigation into those two girls."
"That seems sensible," Dragon agreed. "Do you mind taking a diversion back to Lord's Park? Now that we have a second sample of Circe's bioluminescence, I would like to reexamine those trees…"
Saint could hardly believe what he had discovered.
Following their bombshell discussion, the AI had followed Armsmaster back to the park where the rogue biotinker had transformed several trees, and under more normal circumstances Geoff would have been obsessively checking Dragon's every claim about the safety of the trees in question. Instead, his mind was awhirl with the possibility that there was another power-granting Trump out there, one whose tech persisted for hours at a time and seemed very general.
With his normal source of powers trapped in the Birdcage, this 'Oeneus' could be his ticket to finally unraveling Dragon's plots and freeing Teacher. Unfortunately, he found it unlikely that either Tinker would be willing to help willingly.
Well, there were plenty of ways around that. He knew that capturing the girls would be a tricky proposition, as Dragon had sold them some of its security hardware and software for their lab. They were actually rather secure for independent Tinkers, something that Geoff had appreciated before but now found frustrating. He had no doubts about his ability to break into the security system, of course, but hiding it from Dragon (and thus Armsmaster) would be tricky.
Then there was the issue of actually capturing the girls. Trumps were often maddening to deal with under favorable circumstances, and now he knew that Oeneus had a whole library of powers that Geoff couldn't anticipate. Circe was actually worse, for all that her powers were known to Dragon — the 'healer' was actually an S-class threat on her own.
Geoff smiled to himself. Taking them both down would be doing the world a favor, assuming he could figure out how.
His best option was probably to call in some favors among the Russians or Gesellschaft. They had power nullifiers and other specialists for exactly this sort of mission, but he would have to be very careful to not tip off those groups by asking for their services. Every team on the planet would want their hands on the two girls, if they knew what they were capable of doing. The PRT was actually helping here, keeping that information under such tight control.
"Hey Mags, Dobrynja!" he called, turning in his command chair. "We've got a new —"
However, instead of the other Dragonslayers, Geoff found a woman in a fedora.
He barely had time to register surprise before she shot him in the head.
