Dusa

Refusing Mr. Rodriguez invitation to a meal would have increased the amount of attention payed to me and I didn't really want to go back to endless hours of carving and worrying about not having a good idea for a villain persona decelerating all my plans to help my sister. So there I was, being forced to listen to Mr. Rodriguez talking about his 2 'most beautiful' and 'very intelligent' young daughters, who apparently needed help with middle school coursework despite both being in high school and how they were currently fighting to stay in Arcadia, the only safe non-private, read expensive, school in Brockton Bay.

I could tell Mr. Rodriguez really loved his daughters and while younger me would have been jealous over the amount of attention and care the received so naturally, I believed myself old and mature enough to take care of myself. I ignored the small voice in the back of my head, that told me that my current predicament wouldn't be half as bad if my parents had been real parents and still alive. Envisioning myself for just a moment to be a young and carefree girl going to high school who's only worries where bad grades, inspiration struck me like a sledgehammer.

Mr. Rodriguez must have notices something in my impression, or the fact that I had stopped eating, but I didn't particularly care, I had just found my villainous persona. If I could neither be an adult, nor a teenager I could pretend to be a girl. A preteen girl, with all the erratic behavior and the dressing habits of a preteen mind with the cuteness of kicked puppy. No one would take me to serious and older Protectorate members, especially the males would have to be extremely careful of not appearing to threatening on camera footage. This was perfect, Wards would practically have to be the ones send to deal with me and the more outgoing and girly I acted the more unlikely it would be for someone to connect myself with the crazy new villainess. It was simply genius, but I couldn't continue thinking about it right now, because Mr. Rodriguez had already tried to talk to me twice.

"Benjamin, should I call Ms. Johansen, I know Ms. Norberg isn't in the city right now but I am sure whatever is troubling you will be solved easily if you talk with Ms. Johansen," offered, Mr. Rodriguez in a very practiced way. Him having daughters of a similar age shown trough in the way his voice got this stern cadence used by adults to calm children. But I didn't need counseling right now, okay I did, but not in the way he probably thought. He was probably thinking I had an emotional breakdown because of something he said. I needed to reflect right now, Ms. Johansen was way to perceptive and I desperately needed to go back to tinkering right now.

My following stream of words, confused and unfocussed in the same way I was, because I kept returning to my villainous plans in my head, probably wasn't all that cogent, but I somehow managed to not blurt out anything about my real thought and plans while still managing to convince Mr. Rodriguez that I didn't need more adult supervision, at least for the moment. At least I hoped I managed that, halfway through trying I was interrupted by another officer. The officer was in a hurry and ordered Mr. Rodriguez to follow him to another case. I would have even managed to find out why the PRT troops were in such a hurry, but Mr. Rodriguez was aware enough to shush his colleague just fast enough for me to not get anything substantial. I only managed to overhear something about body armor before Mr. Rodriguez pulled the other from the room and signaled the rest of the troopers to follow.

Despite my elation of being saved, there remained a niggling doubt, that I might have underestimated the dangers of this place if even experienced troopers where in such a rush multiple times a week. I might need body armor, scratch that, I desperately needed body armor and because it wasn't an aggressive enchantment I could use light to make something really quickly. I was tempted to hit myself for not thinking about that earlier. Body armor wouldn't really work with my idea of a cute preteen villainess, but with enchantment I didn't need to limit myself the way normal humans did. A shield could be projected from anything which could house the necessary runes and thanks to the light, size didn't matter. Even better, I could make to shields and hide them in something really girly like a charm bracelet, better two bracelets, symmetry was important after all and adding a few bells would increase the amount of attention I could grab. Multiple bracelets would also allow for two more specialized and therefore more powerful and stable shields, one for magic, one for physical attacks.

Leaving the now empty of troopers cafeteria I continued thinking about what I would need to start my villainous career. A Name was a must, and know that I wasn't limited by my gender anymore a option I had excluded before became viable. Medusa might sound way to evil and high stakes, but if I shortened Medusa to Dusa, it wouldn't sound to threatening while still hinting at power and I could even make a pun of it. Me 'Dusa, dusa is carry or wear in Romanian, so 'me wear', I am wearing a fake skin, just like a snake. That would work perfectly for a female villain and might even serve as a disguise for my tinker creations. Tinkers were even rarer and even more endangered than normal parahumans without a team. Add being a young and presumably easily impressed female, I would need some more tools to protect myself and something to escape confinement.

Blink boots, I needed boots that could teleport me for a short distance and teleport scrolls for longer distances. If I wanted to be able to blink fast I couldn't make it far and the cooldown, the time aura needed to regenerate, would be rather long because nonliving beings could only absorb ownerless pieces of aura from the world around them, too long for repeated use if I teleported more than a few feet, trough me wearing them would allow them to feed of my own excess aura and magic. If I added stable footing and low level gravity control I could blink upwards and use the time in featherfall to activate a teleport scroll. I could even add a suction effect to the soles to allow me to scale buildings easily. Teleport scrolls would actually be the easiest of them all, because they could be made one use only. I had enough wood and plant fiber variants to find one with good aura retention to mass produce teleport scrolls. I could even simply add them to my future charm bracelets to ensure easy access.

When I arrived at my room I knew I wouldn't get everything done that day, because I still had to finish my guardian snakes, design my snake king and figure out what material to use for my bracelets, boots and charms. They were all non combat equipment, so I could use light to transform some of the more sturdy material like metal or even snake scales. Snake scales are probably best, in line with the theme and made from animal remains, which means more powerful aura and a possibility that people would think my tinkering and abilities to be limited to snakes. Finding sufficiently beautiful scales wouldn't be any trouble for someone like me who had material from different worlds to work with.

Now I had just have to decide who Dusa was going to be. She needed to be as different from me as possible, but not the total opposite, that would be to easy to figure out. I think going with a more advantageous and fun loving personality in combination with an outfit geared more towards cute appearance than actual combat capabilities, not that form had any impact on the capabilities of enchantments, would be to my advantage while still giving me a way to increase my notoriety by acting tactically. I didn't want to hold back on tricks on schemes which would mean I couldn't take a backseat to my snakes, otherwise I would slide to far into the evil mastermind zone and people would start questioning my motive. In the end I decided to make my costume something geared towards attracting attention while giving my king snake a more sneaky skill set. I would be center stage, while my snakes would achieve their objectives before joining me in playing games with the other forces in the city.

I wasn't sure I could pull it of perfectly, but if I added a few enchantments to my clothes which increased defense and damage reduction I was positive I would be able to stall for enough time for my snakes to at least distract my opponents. Enchantments against fire damage would also be included in any clothes, I wasn't stupid enough to risk being burned by the dragon who fought Leviathan. My mask would also be reinforced, but contrary to the rest of my gear, it would be enchanted to give my senses a boost and add night vision which where very specialized enchantments that would need a special kind of material. Two of those magic crystals I had gotten from the caches would serve as the perfect channeling tool, even through I wouldn't be able to cut them, so I would have to remove two of the crystals permanently from the tomb. There was hoping the caches would replenish as well, but there was no guarantee I would be that lucky.

When I went searching for new Materials I found something interesting in my Wardrobe. A machine, that according to the description was a fabricator which would produce quantum processing computer chips if given material to do so. There was enough material, so that wasn't a problem, but I didn't have the knowledge to install computer chips, I theoretically knew what they were, of course, but I didn't think any computers I could buy on the market would be compatible and I didn't have a way to buy computers to test it out anyway. The PRT and Youth Guard still hadn't given me access to my money, I was broke and while I could probably steal some as Desu it had the potential to lead back to me. Stealing a single, finished computer might be overlooked, but anything more would scream tinker to even the most stupid of investigators. No I was stuck making my own stuff and while light could do a lot, it wasn't able to produce things I didn't understand by myself. Enchantments would also capable to do the same, maybe produce even better computation unity than this fabricator, but without an in depth understanding of network protocols and internet protocols even the best would be useless to the current me. The only reason for me to get a computer would be to gain information and because none of my powers gave me an easy out I would have to do that the hard way. I didn't really mind all that much, on one hand I was already very fortunate compared to all other Tinkers and on the other hand it would fit Dusas modus operandi much better if she went in a little unprepared.

The rest of the day was spent finishing my guardian snakes, creating a pair of deep purple snake scale blink boots which could cling to walls and dampen gravity around the user and using the most rainbow snake scales I could find to create a pair of bracelets with one deep green and one light green shield as charms. The teleport scroll charms were added as well, four on each bracelet in the form of tiny scrolls with little wings. I created extras to hide on my body just in case, but those would be my primary method of moving between fixed points in the city and sneaking out of my apartment. Halfway through creating my boots I thought about adding enchantments to strengthen myself, but being a weak and fragile girl was part of the disguise so I added two staffs of regeneration, which would allow me to return to the perfect state, no matter how injured I became as long as I was still alive. To increase the effectiveness and hide some of my capabilities I chose to link the speed of the healing to the severity of the injury. Near death wounds would heal in seconds, but scratches would take hours. I had lived without certain limbs before and I never wanted to repeat that feeling again, so the loss of body parts, no matter how insignificant would be treated like a near death wound and restore itself in seconds, screw hiding, if someone was ready to cut of my limby I would go all out against them.

Forgetting to eat dinner and working myself into exhaustion was a familiar state of affairs by now, but I couldn't miss tomorrow's breakfast, otherwise Ms. Johansen would be on my case even more, so I sleep with a staff of regeneration hidden in my clenched fist while the rest of my gear was hidden in the hallway of my Wardrobe.

Waking the next morning was very refreshing, all the little kinks in my body had disappeared, but I spent the first five minutes looking for the tiny staff of regeneration charm I had lost sometime in my sleep. In hindsight I should have just enchanted my blanked to increase recovery in sleep, which was the first thing I did after finding my charm.

I arrived to breakfast exceptionally early that day, even before 7am and was greeted by bleary eyed troopers and officers alike. Luckily Mr. Rodriguez wasn't among them, I suspected he would spend the morning with his family if he could and was glad the be left alone for once. Not that I was left alone for long, a few troopers joined me at the table, but because their tries to get me involved into a conversation where pathetic and the admitted to only be there to pass on the message that neither Ms. Johansen nor Ms. Norberg would be able to make it today, I immediately forgot their names after they introduced themselves. They didn't seem important enough to warrant any attention, trough they did manage to annoy me enough with inconsequential questions to reduce my eating speed.

Which was why I was delayed in returning to my room, but despite the delay the work today passed much faster than before. No matter what I did, as long as I was working everything got done twice as fast. When I was done with everything but my king snake, by the time lunchtime rolled around I decided to spend some leisure time cooking, which happened at normal speeds again. Normally that wouldn't have surprised me, but after a morning churning out difficult projects at rapid speeds I got curious so I tested a few things. Eventually I figured it out, as long as I thought something to be work it got done twice as fast. An important discovery, I didn't even want to imagine what would have happened if I had inadvertently shown my speed during school hours. I threaded the return to school which was coming soon, but with the reduced working time requirement I was certain to get a lot of things done despite spending a lot of time in school and with other public obligations. My work life balance would be preserved, which made me sound like a middle aged office worker close to his midlife crisis. I decided to spend more time on things I actually enjoyed, like ... enchanting things. Yes, I would enchant things for fun, like my blanked, but not like my blanked, because that was to increase my working time. I would actually enchant something for no other reason than to make my life more enjoyable. I would start right tomorrow and with this resolution in mind I went back to work.

It was time to give birth to Amanda my king snake and closest to a sentient creature enchanting could create without a soul. Amanda's form would be made from the black, stretchy hide I had found yesterday so the only logical things was to increase her stretchiness with my enchantments. She would be able to shrink to the size of a marble and stretch to wind around the entire block. Making her into a moving bag of holding was only the next step, which meant she would be able to contain anything not alive ass long as needed while preserving it in the same state it entered her throat, which wouldn't be as disgusting as it sounded because she wouldn't produce anything like spittle, it would be just like an travel bag without a limit to its size. In order for the weight to not slow her down I added a few enchantments to negate gravity inside her body. As the king of the snakes she wouldn't need to attack, but she needed to be the strongest tank there was, so I used the stretchiness of her material to my advantage again. No blunt physical blow would ever hurt her, Behemoth could ram her into space and she would be right as rain, provided he didn't use his claws. To protect against penetration and any other kind of damage I added a forcefield, made of 10000 smaller force fields in the form of snake scales, of course. Those were actually real snake scales I had collected from the tomb and reinforced in massive quantities. Each of them could protect against a single blow and only break if that blow was stronger than a single gunshot. I could have made the protection much stronger, but the genius of the shield was, that once the forcefield broke it would dissipate the entire force of the attack, no matter how strong and then the rest of the forcefield would reorganize themselves to cover the gap with virtually no delay.

These scale shields would also regenerate outside combat as long as the original scales, which were hidden under the outer hide of Armanda as a last defense still existed. Producing so many scales in time would have been impossible without my new power, but with it and the light Armanda was ready for deployment by the time night arrived.

It was time for Benjamin to take a break and for Dusa to take the stage. My stomach reminded me that there would be time to villain after a short dinner.