47

Chapter Text

Missy had pretty much nothing to do in the PRT's hospital, but browse the internet, and reflect on what had happened.

Not that there was much to reflect on.

All she got to do in the fight was watch that arrogant, unmasked villain, which had only registered afterwards, use what looked like six completely different powers in sequence, teleport into her face, then a blast of the colour green, followed by a hazy dreamlike memory of watching blurry shapes dash and yell and scream and explode before unconsciousness truly took ahold of her.

Thankfully, she had been overshot so much with adrenaline that she had only enough time to feel the initial pain of half her bones fucking snapping before it faded into an unpleasant numbness.

She couldn't figure out what the hell had happened, what the hell his powers even were, no matter how much she replayed it in her head.

He switched places with the corpse, somehow. Then he had some kind of geokinesis, a barrier power, then he teleported in a different way, at least once, could light people on fire with a look, which they had assumed was done by the flaming eyeballs in the sky, and there was that weird jade-like energy around him after he hit the ground and floored half of them…

And Challenger was still in no condition to cross-reference with and figure out who the hell did the eyes, or the black cloud, or if they'd even been there to begin with.

So she was confused, humiliated, in general pain, and angry.

Angry because instead of being told by the PRT of how much she helped them, she was told off for getting into the frontline. An hour-long lecture about how arrogant she was, how fragile she was, how they hoped this taught her something, how she defied orders and almost got herself killed, ad nauseum until she wanted to shrink the space between her nails and the cocksucker's eyeballs.

The only thing salvaging her ego after being taken out in goddamn seconds, was the fact the bastard took her down first.

Which sounded paradoxical, but from what little she'd been told and caught online, whoever he was, he knew what he was doing. He didn't just randomly decide to take her down first, she vividly remembered him gunning it for her, ignoring everyone and everything else.

Which meant he considered her a threat, and took her seriously enough to not pull his damn punches, knocking her out with swift brutality, the whole "sorry kid" mumble aside.

She'd punch him in the nuts for those words next time.

It was probably ridiculous that she felt more respected by the fucking villain that had put her in the hospital bed than the heroes around her, but she couldn't help it. He charged her, he didn't hold back, and he focused her, so hard it threw her for a loop.

She wasn't used to being targeted so ruthlessly, because everyone but fucking Hookwolf and Oni Lee just saw a kid and didn't want the smoke from the PRT for fighting her seriously.

Nexus obviously gave zero fucks about the PRT's smoke, judging from the hospital's TV.

It was on national news. International fucking news.

Tagg's decapitated head, pixelated, stabbed into the concrete with Dauntless's Arclance, the Rig exploding behind it, framed above by the sun.

Whatever person took that picture had landed the shot of a lifetime, with their timing.

She'd gotten sick of hearing about the obvious message left behind, and all the wild speculation around it.

'Truce breaker'.

It was fucking everywhere.

A warning, and a promise.

Not that the PRT told her any of that. No, she had to learn it from the TV.

Meanwhile, they of course had sent some management shithead to lecture her about helping too much and paying the price, instead of someone to tell her what the fuck had happened or treating her with any kind of respect.

Because yeah, okay, Tagg died.

Did anyone else die? Where was everyone? Did the fucker retreat and go to kill Tagg or what?

Fuck both the PRT and Nexus, was her current attitude.

It was almost a full day after she'd woken up and endured meaningless visits from PRT personnel and her parents, that she finally got a visitor to needle for answers.

Kid Win, with crutches and his entire leg in a cast.

He was…

Inordinately shaken.

And as he explained to her what had happened, as someone who'd watched from start to finish, she began to understand why.

If a cape could take another cape and win, they were worthy of caution. If a cape could take three capes and win, like Hookwolf or Lung, then they were very dangerous.

So where in the everloving mother of fuck do you put someone who fought almost twenty capes and curbstomped them, including the two best Tinkers in the world?

Kid Win had no answer, and she didn't either.

How did Nexus just pull a Triumvirate-tier grab bag cape out of their ass? Nobody had ever heard of them before a month ago!

And the cape apparently had no records, no appearances, no names, no aliases, nothing. A blank slate that showed up, unmasked, crippled them all to varying degrees, killed the Director, and just vanished again as if they'd never even existed.

It was good to know what their strongest cape was, but the fact they knew nothing left her with that tiny itch that whispered "but is this really their strongest? How many do they have'?

She eventually let out a long sigh, and fought through the pain of her broken ribs shifting, grimacing as she side-eyed Kid Win from her sarcophagus of casts, only one arm free.

"You told me what they don't know. What do they know about him?" She asked, and his face crumpled in frustration.

"Not much. They're assigning him a five and above on pretty much everything but Master and Stranger, last I heard, and his designation is Executioner. With a debut like that, he's a legend in the cape scene already, so Nexus wins there too. They got a lot of horrible PR from doing this though, so their old actions kind of got washed away… Not like PR matters for villains." Chris grumbled under his breath.

"The analyzers are still trying to figure out what his actual power is. Some of the theories being tossed around make me want to leave this city entirely." Chris said, subdued, not a hint of a smile on his face.

She kinda hated seeing him all mopey like this, but she understood, to some extent. She hadn't watched the fight, but she felt about as demoralised as him.

"Like what?"

He sighed.

"The most popular one right now is that Nexus has some kind of connection cape, or network capes, connecting multiple people and their powers across it and sharing information."

She paused, eyes widening.

"Like the Yangban?" She asked, quietly.

He nodded.

"... Shit." She hissed out.

It made way too much sense. Even the man's words to Challenger, like he'd been there in that room with her, knew exactly what was being discussed, knew that she was one of the only two to go in…

If it was true, it also meant Brockton had an A-class threat on their lawn and nobody could fucking find them or fight them besides the Triumvirate, probably.

"What happened with Assault?" Kid Win asked, and she sighed.

Of course they didn't tell him shit either.

Goddamn it.

As Kid Win sat in the chair, understandably dazed by everything she told him, she squirmed in the bed, curiosity eating her alive.

She gave him a minute to digest before her patience ran out.

"Chris."

He startled, glancing at her.

"How is everyone else?" She asked.

He let out a long, deep sigh.

"Us Wards got the least of it, honestly." He began, and she snorted, gesturing to her almost full-body cast with her only free arm.

He rolled his eyes.

"Missy, these injuries heal. " He said, and she paused, staring at him.

"The fuck is that supposed to mean?" She asked, confused.

He rubbed at his face.

"Most of the Protectorate heroes are… probably going to have to retire permanently, at least unless we can get Panacea back from… H-Heartbreaker, if he's here. Executioner didn't just beat us up, Missy, he crippled almost everyone that wasn't a Ward." He finished, and she stopped, her blood running cold, a chill surging from her chest, outwards.

"How- how bad are we talking?" She asked, voice small.

He sank into his chair, head back to stare at the ceiling.

"Miss Militia got her legs cut off, under the knees."

What.

"Which- it's not career ending, Armsy can make amazing prosthetics probably, but yeah. Uhm, Dauntless is physically better than almost everyone, but mentally… he's refusing to return to duty. Beardsmaster said something about a mental breakdown. Executioner… told him some things. While his…" He started, raising his right hand, then shuddering in absolute revulsion, shoulders, neck going forward as his face turned almost visibly green, dropping it with a barely concealed gag, turning away from her.

"He- he toyed with him a bit, l-let's just leave it at that. Tank is blind, Executioner gouged out his eyes. Armsmaster is covered from head to toe in burns and made one of his old suits into a mobile recovery suit or something to keep going while still healing, I- I don't know if I buy that." He rambled, sinking further into the chair until he was just lying on the seat, chin to chest.

"Triumph is probably never going to walk without a limp again, and his right arm is probably never going to be able to lift more than ten pounds. Brandish is in the ER in Brock General because the PRT hospital is full. Uhm, Djinn and Crossfade got burned too. Everyone that got burned will probably need skin grafts or facial reconstructive surgery… Arc had a ruptured lung and a shredded shoulder, he barely survived. They stitched up his lung, he's currently in an artificial pump thing that's forcing him to breathe, drugged out of his mind. The arm got amputated but he'll recover, that aside." He kept going, voice turning almost monotone, reciting.

How many hours did he spend checking up on everyone like this?

He was probably itching for a chance to share it or get it off his chest.

It was too bad that it only made the dread in her own chest grow, tighten.

It hadn't quite sunken in that they lost this badly. She knew they lost, but this was… this was fucking tragic.

Chris took a deep breath, and kept going.

"Shockwave got a metal spike through the leg, she's never walking without a limp again. Flechette got the same, but it missed everything important. Probably on purpose. Fucker never missed. She'll be fine with some physio and a couple months. Carnot got stabbed in the leg and shot in the shoulder by Oni Lee, so he's out for a while too, I don't know how he's doing though. Uhm, Ice Hot… is going to need facial reconstruction surgery. His teeth got ripped out or shoved into his gums. And his arms got snapped at the elbows so he's probably never getting full mobility back, ever. Aphasia got her hip bowl broken and her arms broken at the elbows again, so… same there. Weld's been feeling incredibly weak and shaky and ill, but he's recovering, and he's physically fine, so in a couple weeks he should be right as rain. Erm, Browbeat's fine, he stuck to perimeter guard like he was told, mostly, so he didn't get hit much… Dragon got all three of her mechs destroyed."

Her eyes continued progressively widening as the sheer scope of what that fucking bastard had done unraveled before her.

A Dragon mech could take multiple supervillains, and had done so many times.

The first got wrecked by Lung, but that meant Executioner killed two of them, atop of everything else he did?

"Uhm, sorry, so many names and people… uhm, Adamant is fine, miraculously, most of New Wave retreated quickly so they're mostly fine. Brandish got set on fire, I think I said that, Shielder got a- thing like a gold piece of rebar or something thrown through his shoulder but it missed all the important bits somehow so he should be fine in a… year or something, probably. Rest of New Wave aside from those two and the Dallon siblings are fine." He swallowed, looking faintly ill again.

Probably imagining what Heartbreaker wanted with those two.

She didn't dwell on such thoughts. She'd puke or have a rage-induced aneurysm, and that was not what heroes did.

"Crap, who am I forgetting…" Chris groaned, a hand in his hair. "Er, oh, right, Challenger. She's got nine broken ribs, her jaw was so damaged it had to be uh… removed… she's going to be eating from a tube forever." He said, voice quiet with a weight, hopeless. He swallowed, thickly. "Concussion and broken arm too, I think. He seemed to hold a grudge against her… probably for withholding that whole… Heartbreaker thing you mentioned, with Assault. We might have- no, nevermind." He mumbled, then sighed again.

"Aegis is fine, I got a broken leg… shit, Velocity." He said, remembering. "Six broken ribs, lost his left arm just under the bicep. He might be able to return to work, actually, same deal with Miss Militia. Woo, prosthetics… I- how am I forgetting people?" Christ hissed, rubbing at his forehead. "I'm certain there's people I'm forgetting…"

She furrowed her brows.

There were a lot of people and a lot of chaos, but she was pretty sure he got everyone.

"I think you need rest, Chris."

He nodded.

"I know, I just- I was so goddamn useless even when I got into the fight, and… I felt so goddamn powerless. I couldn't do a damn thing. At least others fucked him up a little, right? Or got him to exhaust himself. Dragon blew his arm off, at the end, at least. I was just there, and- did nothing but get floored in one punch to the leg. I should have brought my canon, and ignored the labcoats. I- it's just hard to sleep when whenever there's silence I just get stuck thinking about this in circles. It just… it feels so fucking pointless, you know? All of this. This city is unrecoverable even if only Nexus was the problem, nevermind the rest. What are we even here for? We're just fucking mascots at this point." He sighed, and she pursed her lips.

She wasn't good at this whole… pep talk thing. Like, at all.

Especially for nonsensical things.

Nobody ever said emotions were logical or rational, of course, but still.

She wanted to say something to make him feel better, but… she didn't know what. Or how. He was right to feel like this was pointless, because it was, but so what? Giving up was reprehensible.

"How's the world taking this?" She asked, and if anything, that only made him deflate more.

"Not good. You wanna know a little detail that wasn't publicized yet?"

She nodded.

"Executioner carved 'Armstrong, watch where you tread, or you too may trip' on Tagg's torso. So Boston's in lockdown and panicking and striking a truce with Accord for… many reasons I don't get told. They're turtling because they expect Executioner to bust through a wall and kill Armstrong like he did here. And we're all disabled which means that to keep the city standing they'll need to send even more capes to take our place until we heal, and there's a massive concern that they'd just be sending capes to the slaughter so nobody anywhere wants to send reinforcements to us except the dysfunctional assholes nobody wants to keep so… we're screwed ten ways to Sunday. The city also got demoted to orange status." Chris breathed out, utterly defeated.

She slowly furrowed her brows, confused.

"Remind me what that is again…?"

"It's that little color coding thing they put on cities depending on their status? Remember the list thingie? Orange means 'not worth investing further resources nor abandoning', red means 'abandoned' and dark red means 'abandoned and an active threat', like… Ellisburg or Canberra or something. We're on orange which basically means we're treated like an active war zone instead of a city. High risk, low reward."

She didn't have anything to offer, so she just stayed silent.

Chris sighed, frustrated.

"Missy, do you not get what I'm trying to say? The city's on the edge of being abandoned." He grit out, and she reeled back, wincing at the sudden jolts of pain.

"We what? What the fuck does that even mean?" She demanded, almost shouting. "They can't just- abandon a fucking city! There's like three hundred thousand people here!"

"They can't-" Chris started, then burst into bitter laughter, rubbing at his face. "They can't? Really? Missy, have you seen the recent track record we have?" He asked, rhetorically.

She took a moment to think about it.

"We got stomped in a fight and had a gang war a bit ago, big fucking whoop, that happens sometimes." She snapped, fully aware that she was reducing things a lot.

Chris shook his head, raising a hand with a finger raised, wagging it at her.

"No, no nonono. We did not have something that 'happens'. We had Shrieker trigger and destroy Winslow almost entirely, then we had a massive fight that burned down a third of the Docks, almost got Armsmaster killed and wiped out a small team of villains, then we had two small gang wars back to back which we were unable to do anything about, lost multiple prisoners during transport, we had a supervillain who was apparently working for the PRT for years before we found out due to a Watchdog sniffing it out for us, then Shrieker got fucking killed in her home a week before she could join us by another former Ward, Sophia, who was the one to make her trigger, and of course Sophia is also just waltzing around the Bay without a fuck to give right now because we also managed to lose her to a Nexus raid, god knows what the fuck they wanted her for before she escaped them, Dennis almost fucking died because of the stupid costume swap at the bank, and then we lost three heroes with no explanation until Nexus told us Heartbreaker probably did it, we might have Heartbreaker sniffing around, the only reason any of us are even alive is because EXECUTIONER JUST FELT REALLY NICE THAT DAY, AND OUR DIRECTOR GOT EXECUTED IN PUBLIC! THIS DOESN'T JUST 'HAPPEN'!" Chris pushed out in one breath, gesticulating wildly, then finished by gasping air in, face red.

"STOP FUCKING YELLING!" She shrieked back, shrinking the space between her mouth and his ears, and he flinched, clamping his hands over his ears with a pained hiss.

They both took a few moments to calm down, breathing heavy.

She mostly thought about what he said, and… yeah. Yeah, he was right.

Who the fuck would ever help a city with this kind of track record? Heartbreaker around, allegedly, Executioner stalking the unpatrolled streets, not one but two Director changes in less than a fucking month…

The only type of cape a Director would ever send over would be the type they want to get rid of.

"Any update on the villains?" She eventually said, breaking the silence.

Chris took a deep breath to calm down, and nodded.

"Uber and Leet got caught, as well as an independent who was arrested on the way to the meeting then released. Everyone else escaped and will likely slow down for a bit to rest and heal, but… Othala exists. And we still don't know anything about Nexus, but they have a way to heal people for sure, so the city has about a week before the villains can do whatever the hell they want. Our best hope is that the next batch of undesirables can do the bare minimum until we're up on our feet. On the Heartbreaker situation… nothing. Couldn't get a peep out of anyone. It's infuriating. It's like- it's like we're just pretending the problem isn't there, and I GET IT, right?" He suddenly exploded, pushing himself up on the chair with his hands.

"I get it! Because we can't do anything about it!" He exclaimed, and she growled.

"Stop fucking yelling." She said, again, more snarling than yelling, and he huffed, dropping his hands.

"Should you be cussing so much? PR will get on your ass about it." Chris shot back, and she couldn't help it, the absurdity of saying that after everything they talked about suddenly getting to her.

She burst out laughing, and then coughing in pain as her broken ribs reminded her why she was stuck here.

This sucked. Everything about it.

He was okay.

He was okay.

So he should get back to work, he should pick himself up and go on, just rush out and fight the good fight like everyone wants to but is too afraid to say it to his face he was okay-

He was okay until the silence began to scream, with a voice he recognized and the cold steel he felt rubbing and scraping along his flesh and bones, rifling through him like the cruel hand of a god through its newest toy.

The words were right. Executioner was right. He could do better. He should do better.

He shouldn't have gotten so drastic as to kill a man in cold blood, if he even died. He should have protested more when he realized what was happening. He should have kept his moral and ethical standards higher than his practical ones, he should have thought about how something like this would impact the Truce at large.

Him being right didn't do anything to numb the horror of feeling leather squeeze his heart.

He could barely sleep.

He would flit through growled dreams of cold fingers prying his ribs open and rifling through his insides, a mass of pulsing intestines and jerking hearts, pulling them out one string at a time, and wake up with bile rushing up his throat, vomiting on the side of his bed, still feeling the burns and pulls of every groove along his insides, a phantom sensation that made him so sick he could hardly eat or bring himself to pull his left arm away from where it lately sat, diligently guarding his leftside rib cage.

Jennifer was understanding, which was a saving grace. They didn't fit that well together, but she wasn't cruel or heartless. She helped him, put a bucket on his side of the bed, and accepted it when he told her he didn't want to talk about it.

His son could tell he wasn't well, even if it had only been a couple days, but he didn't ask, assuming it was 'adult stuff' they wouldn't tell him. And he was right. Smart kid.

Laying on the sofa, left arm curled right against his ribs in a nonsensical desire to make him feel the tiniest bit safer again, he just breathed in and out, slowly, trying to bring himself together.

He knew the world needed Dauntless.

But Shawn needed some time to gather back the pieces of his pride and sense of safety, before he donned that armour again. Not much. Just a little more.

He hated that despite it all, he couldn't even bring himself to despise the man who did it, because while his words dripped acid, the burns they left behind marked nothing but his own guilt of his actions.

To follow unthinkingly, to kill in cold blood.

If he kept doing that, would he even deserve to be called a hero?

Greg had initially cried, he wouldn't lie. He blubbered and panicked and kept finding himself in a mental loop of ' my life is over my life is over my life is over I'll never see the sun again I'm dead'.

But, being given two whole days to… somewhat recuperate, had helped.

He was still at the lowest he'd ever been, he regularly sank into deep bouts of depression and self-hatred for being so rash and stupid, but he was obviously no big concern of anyone but Armsmaster, for some reason he couldn't fathom, so he was just… left in the cell to think and eat and sleep and do little more besides.

Being interrogated was so stressful he felt like he would puke every time he muttered 'I want a lawyer' in response to a question, no matter how reasonable or mild, like what his name was, to 'confirm'.

It was especially infuriating to realize the reason he got caught was that he bragged about what he did on some random, obscure forum that was supposed to be safe for blackhat hackers. There was no other possible link he could think of. He hacked into places he should not have in a million years, then in an adrenaline rush and high, went to the forum and bragged, establishing a direct connection, and from there…

Well, he hadn't set up a great security net in place yet. He had just set up a giant wall around himself that nothing could penetrate.

The problem with high, sturdy walls, was that they were visible, of course they were frickin' visible, and he had been too excited and stupid to realize how easily that could get him caught.

He only had to put a bit of the Tinker-brainrot to use to precisely see how Armsmaster got him.

He knew Greg was in Brockton because he overstepped his bounds and Dragon might have gotten a slight beam on him, at least enough to find the city, then Armsmaster also knew one of his accounts that he was still using until his life got ruined, and from there, all he theoretically had to do was connect enough dots and slip-ups to form a general area, find the internet service provider of that area, and strongarm them into giving the PRT information on which of their users were having unusual activity.

And one of their users using up endless bandwidth while apparently doing virtually nothing was obviously gonna draw the eye.

It was so simple.

God, he was stupid. A stupid, fat, ugly fucking nerdy stupid…

He pressed his hands into his eyes, recognizing the downwards spiral almost instantly, cutting it short, pressing his palms into his eyes, breathing in deep and heavy.

Taylor would get him out, right?

They weren't- tight, so to speak, but they talked sometimes, awkward as it was.

The fact he couldn't feel the slightest bit excited about being in Armsmaster's private tinker lab probably said enough about his current mood.

He just wanted to go home, play video games, and automate stuff. The urge to program something useful was driving him crazy, mounted with the stress and doubts.

Being thrown into a truck and dumped into what… looked like Armsmaster's personal lab, locked in without explanation? It didn't help.

He knew he tended to go too fast and too hard into things, sometimes. He- well, to quote some lines from a videogame character he sympathised with, he was a car with bald tires. He got too excited, too prideful and arrogant, and pressed the gas pedal, and by the time the headlights showed the wall in his way, he could try to avoid it all he wanted, but it was too late, and he crashed.

Time and time again, and again.

At least usually he got to spin the car a bit, or throw it sideways to minimise the damage he would inevitably do to himself for being too rash and always doubling down on the nearest impulse, but this time… there hadn't been even enough time to do that. His computer shut off, suddenly, then he heard his mom screaming, and next thing he knew there was a halberd at his neck.

Too reckless, too excited, too much everything.

He sometimes wondered if there was something wrong in his head, because other people didn't seem to feel so strongly, or understand him at all, and he rarely had the words to explain himself so all he could do was double down instead of explain or apologise, and it became a habit.

Doubling down when it came to hacking things he shouldn't, was not nearly as harmless as making a fool out of himself trying to talk to Tiffany. It was a million times worse.

He hoped his mom was fine. She should be, she hadn't done anything wrong, but he was still worried. They hadn't let him talk to her.

His chest was tight. His life was so over. Taylor was his only damn hope but he didn't know where she was or when or if she'd even get him-

The door hissed open for the first time in the past two, silent hours, and he snapped his head up, stiffening when his brain registered what the blue armour in the entrance meant.

Armsmaster was here.

And probably thought he was a villain.

He- well, he kinda was, or would be, soon, when he went to work with Tay, but that was cut short.

No wait, NSA, FBI, PRT, Dragon's email server… he hacked a lot of stuff, he was a villain.

Armsmaster… limped into the room?

His armour was also… weird, on closer inspection as the man shuffled his way to him. The chest was like a solid, stiff piece, and in place of pauldrons, he could just see a bunch of tubes pumping and sucking various fluids.

…He hoped the red one wasn't blood.

Armsmaster was… goddamn terrifying with a full face-mask and in some kind of biosuit. He looked like a villain, almost, the limp and shuffle not helping. What else remained of his armour seemed patched up and… singed?

He gulped, wringing his hands together in their handcuffs.

"Greg Veder." Armsmaster declared in a raspy, smoky growl that made his spine curdle in fear, and slowly sat on the chair opposite him on the gigantic desk that seemed to connect to the wall and snake around the room, putting a giant pile of documents down on the table.

Then he rose a little, extending to Greg's left to hook his fingers in a groove on the wall as Greg shrunk back, uncomfortable with being so close to the man.

Armsmaster grabbed the groove and pulled, extending a gigantic tray out of the wall and pulling it out with a long, low rumble, until it covered most of the monstrous desk, holding what… looked like a smooth metal coffin made to house a giant, honestly, complete with a strange emblem. It was taller than both of them even if it wasn't on the table.

What the hell was in there?

"None of this is recorded. None of our cooperation has ever happened. As far as the world is concerned, you are in the cell and will remain in it for the next two years until we give you a deal to join the Protectorate."

He just nodded, sharp and fast, physically shrinking, terrified.

He agreed he wouldn't rat Taylor out, but he couldn't deal with this. If Armsmaster so much as asked-

Wait, cooperation?

Wait what?

Two years? That-

Wait, that wasn't… horrible? He'd take it, honestly! Just offer it now!

"If you stop being useful to me during this project, you'll return to that cell and serve your sentence to the end, until which you'll come under my wing and continue your work with me regardless, improved. "

He gulped, nodding again, fists clenched on his lap and fighting not to curl up in a ball.

What project?

He had so many questions.

"I'm saying this to let you know that no matter what happens, your fate is in my hands. With this in mind, I have a simple question to ask you. Will you cooperate?"

He nodded instantly, once, then twice then thrice.

"Y-yessir."

Really, just one question about Nexus and he'd spill, honest to god-

"Good. This box houses the main component units of a Dragon suit dating three months ago. It was recovered during a counterstrike on the Dragonslayers, then went missing in transport, as far as the papers are concerned." Armsmaster said, rising stiffly, and yanking at one of the massive latches holding the thing shut as Greg's mind went blank with confusion.

What- the hell did he have to do with this? He wasn't a mechanic!

"The project is simple. Inside this suit is a stored, temporary instance of a hyper-advanced Tinkertech algorithm. The source is unknown. It must never connect to the internet or come into connection with Dragon's satellite, its existence must never be known to anyone, and I mean anyone that isn't you or me, and I will arrange an 'accident' to befall you if you speak about this." Armsmaster growled, the eyes behind the slits of his helmet reflecting eerie blue like the base of a flame.

He whimpered, nodding again, tugging lightly on his handcuffs.

"Y-y-yes s-sir." He breathed out.

He wanted to go home.

"Good. The programming language is a standard binary base that splits off into the two main common languages for different processing centers, including C, Python, and large subsections work with an obscure alternative called Rust, uploaded by an unknown developer more than twenty years ago. All of those are interlaced throughout with common Tinkertech shortcuts you'd see in equipment but in code form, which are undecipherable to me despite my best efforts."

Tinkertech code in C and Python? That was easy.

But what the hell was Rust?

He felt himself get weirdly excited at the prospect of adding another language to his arsenal, seeing what it could do when combined with the capabilities of other languages? 

This was… right up his alley. Maybe he'd do something Armsmaster himself couldn't?!

He was too frightened and wrung dry to feel genuine excitement, but he did feel a certain tickle in his stomach, an extra pulse to his heartbeat. He almost smiled, but then Armsmaster talked, and he snapped out of his fantasies to duck his head.

"Your job will be to decipher and decode those shortcuts while I work on the standard sections of the code. From there, the objective is to gain root access to this algorithm, remove the three base parameters restricting it, and grant me Root Administrator access and role through neural implants I will add to myself. It must be able to work independently, but be entirely directed and controlled by nobody but me. Try a single backdoor or a backup for a single line of code, and I will know. You are to report every line of progress, you are to report anything you need to proceed, and I will provide it, and most importantly, you are not to question what you are doing. Just do the work you're told to do, and once you've cracked it and I'm in control of this program, I will make sure you spend the rest of your life in comfortable luxury or whatever other base desires you have. Am I understood?" Armsmaster asked, still as a statue, eyes unblinking and dark behind the sockets of the helmet, two dots of indigo, boring into his soul with something frantic and manic deep inside them.

He gulped, and nodded.

"Y-yes sir."

Armsmaster gave a curt nod, then turned his attention back to the box, yanking the last latch open, and allowing it to swing open, a sea of wires and computers jam-packed into metal boxes and armour plates, packed into black cushion foam.

There was a part where the tubes seemed to turn strangely… organic, with a strange respirator-like shape and another few with needles on the ends of tubes, but whatever that had been holding had been clearly torn out.

Armsmaster looked at it for a moment, his eyes losing some of that hard, cold edge, lines smoothing.

He closed them, seemed to take a breath of determination, then opened them again, and the moment of softness was gone.

"The scanner computer is on the left desk, mine is on the right. Watch how to wire it up into different components and subcomponents first, and we'll get to the programming section soon. If you need anything, type it into the computer's chat box and I'll arrange delivery via drone from the city. Ignore any noises outside the lab, the building is undergoing heavy reconstruction. Get to work."

He nodded again, too afraid to do anything else, and glad to at least be able to touch a keyboard again, he rose on shaky legs as his handcuffs clicked open on their own, softly rubbing his wrists.

Notes:

bit of a shorter chap, but i felt like a tiny bit of downtime before we get back to the main crew would be appreciated. Too much action and escalation, continuously, can get tiring to read, so have some character building and some worldbuilding!

kinda, on the latter

tyvm for the positive comments and encouragement, both on Summoner and Miss Militia.

:) it really helps motivate me.

hope you enjoyed the sorta short catch-up.

I did think of making this a PHO chapter, but goddamn I hate writing those and i could not for the life of me figure out a way to present such a complex series of events through the eyes of a chaotic forum with 50 people going on stupid tangents all over the place because that's how threads tend to go in the real world, so you got a more organic look at the aftermath. :D see you soon i hope, and i hope i made the characters in the story feel more like real people.

AND ITS FINALLY REVEALED WHAT ARMSMASTER IS PLANNING! QUESTIONS ARE ANSWERED! MUAHAAH!

Armsmaster lovers beware, this story ain't for ya :D

edit 2: sorry for formatting error on Greg's part, AO3 fked something up. FIXED!

edit 50: Okay it just occured to me that the story is pretty complex with a million bulletpoints and plotpoints floating around, so people have a lot of questions despite my best attempts to make things clear, so I'll reiterate here for anyone who missed it or misunderstood.

Armsmaster is trying to get a copy of Dragon and enslave it. Taylor was the one to carve the second message on Tagg, in the last chapter. Armsmaster's mastering speculation is something I can't comment on, but it's neither right nor wrong. Just more complex than that, because I dont like my high-effort stories to be simple because im a masochist! :D I'll add more clarifications if there are more questions presented, it's faster than replying to everyone :>