3

Exploration 3

I knew I was being a bad daughter. I knew I promised Dad I wouldn't be doing things like this. But I needed the money, and the PRT was no longer an option. I was going to stay safe. I wasn't going to make this a regular thing. And I was hurting the gangs, and that was a good thing! All of it was just shallow self-justification, I knew. I was making excuses. But I was doing it anyway.

Needed? Some could say I didn't really need the money, but you could make that argument for just about everything except the barest nutrition and enough clothing not to freeze. I had powers, talents that needed to be used. Badly. I had so many ideas for more developments on my tinkertech, I just couldn't stop.

Was this classified as addiction? Oh, the irony. Here I was, about to steal from drug dealers to fuel my own addiction to Tinkering.

I had bots. Lots of bots. They may have been tiny, but I think i was nearing the one-billion range at this point. I had enough to easily cover my face to hide my identity, with plenty left over to do the actual work. The good thing about long-range control of my little legion was that I could stay pretty far from the action. I could sit still in a safe, hidden area, I was able to use my bots to comb through several square miles. My bots were tiny enough that they could slip into nearly any building that wasn't under biohazard protections. Nobody would be able to trace things to me.

I had taken to changing my jogging route towards the sketchier side of town in the past week. I'd been sprinkling my robots around town, searching the buildings for gang activity or cash as I passed by, checking up on them on my way back home. Within a few days, I'd managed to use them to trace a small part of the drug trade near the Docks to a safehouse. I was pretty sure it belonged to the Merchants.

The Merchants were a pretty good target, to be honest. First off, they were the weakest of the three primary gangs in town. What they lacked in manpower they made up for in ruthlessness, amorality, and being batshit crazy. They were also the most predatory of all of them. The Azn Bad Boyz ostensibly gave "protection" to the Asians in town, mostly from the Empire. Empire 88 was just your standard neo-nazi white supremacist group, so most gang wars occurred between those two. Both of them were interested in maintaining some kind of recruitment and reputation among the civilian populace. Merchants? Not so much. They were just interested in selling as many drugs as possible. That meant they were willing to go to any length to get others addicted – including kids. It was easy to justify attacking them.

I certainly didn't feel bad about taking from them. Nobody would.

So here I was, a week after I'd nearly picked the junkyard clean of raw materials, lying on a rooftop several blocks away from the Merchants I was about to rob. My bots would be at the very limit of the distance I could control them, and I was hiding in the direction of the "safe" neighbourhoods so I could make a quick getaway.

There were no guards in this direction, no drug dealers near me. The building I was targeting had a stash of drugs and cash that I had seen a dealer come by on occasion and hand over cash. It wasn't as if it was normal to have posted guards outside anyway, that would just signal to other criminals that it was a place worth robbing.

Naturally, there were gang members guarding the place; they were hidden inside. But since this was the Merchants we were talking about, the guards were often users themselves. Some of them were too tweaked out to be decent guards against anything. None of them were in good enough condition to notice my swarm enter the building, an abandoned office complex. The poor condition of the building left plenty of alternate entrances for my bots to use.

I knew what my robots looked like to the naked eye if they were clumped up too much. I had them spread out, move along the cracks. Thankfully, the ceiling was made of the standard cheap ceiling panels with lots of holes in them. I kept most of my bots in there, where they wouldn't be noticed against the texture of the panels. The thin layer of robots spread out across the ceiling gave me a clearer picture of what I would be facing.

Five heavily-armed members of the gang. Two of them were snorting crap off the desk, one was asleep, and only two were actually doing any guarding. I kept watching for an hour, to see if they had any kind of rotation or pattern, but as far as I could tell, they didn't. A dealer showed up at some point to make another exchange of drugs for money, so I knew exactly where the stash was.

I had a plan in place already. My bots had scouted out the layout quickly, and I had spent the past half-hour fine-tuning my plan and waiting for the right time to strike. Given that they didn't seem to have any kind of pattern at all, the right time seemed to be any time.

Using the bots I left outdoors, I watched for any witnesses. All quiet on the streets outside. No other dealers were approaching to restock.

Millions of my bots descended on the trap door. It was a simple keyed padlock. Small enough that dozens of my bots could climb into the keyhole itself, using their bodies to push against the pins inside the tumbler mechanism. The padlock clicked open, and the swarm quietly removed it.

I kept watch on the Merchant guards. They hadn't heard a thing.

Thousands more bots clambered over each others' bodies to brace against the trap door, keeping it open just a sliver. Inside was just a shallow storage space, with several stacks and rolls of cash.

I made one more check on the guards. They weren't watching. The biggest hitch in this plan was the fact that a stack of cash moving itself across the floor was bound to draw attention, regardless of whether anyone actually saw my robots or not. I sent the money away from the entrance, to an unused bathroom. The room had no windows or entrances, but my bots could climb up the wall and carry the cash out the ventilation system.

I laughed, recalling all the movies I had seen where the hero climbed through the ductwork to save the day. No human-sized hero would have been able to fit in the half-foot-by-one-foot duct. Not without powers, anyway.

After I had taken most of the cash, I had the rest of the bots slice through the drug packages, spread it across the ground, mixing it with dust and dirt. I didn't want to take the drugs, since I had no idea how to dispose of it properly, but at least I would taint their supply. As long as the Merchants actually cared about their product quality.

Out on the street, it was safer to get my millions of bots to work together and quickly move the money towards me. They crawled all over the cash, covering it up and making a blob-like mass as it moved down the alleys. The blob still had to hide behind trash cans and travel under dumpsters to avoid being seen by random passersby, but it was only minutes before I had the cash in hand.

Before the bots all crawled over me to go home, I realized a lot of them were filthy. Some of their sensors and tools were covered in dirt or slime or… other things they waded through to get to me. I had brought them here with them mostly in my pockets or coating my skin under baggy clothing. I hadn't thought far enough ahead about bringing them back.

"Eew. Guys, clean yourselves!" I said aloud. While they were busy scraping the grime off each other, I counted the cash. Two thousand bucks. Not bad for a night's haul. Not as much as I thought a drug house would have, but it was definitely one of the minor locations anyway.

I couldn't believe I had been so successful. I ran home with a renewed energy. Part of me was paranoid that they would suddenly realize and know exactly where I was. The other part of me was so happy that absolutely nothing had gone wrong at all, and I had gotten away with it and nobody was the wiser. I was a legitimate cape! I had powers, and I could really use them.

Could I do this again? I was certain I could. But I would build more bots, better bots... and I'd be even more successful. I could do this. I wasn't a nobody. Emma could talk all the shit she wanted, but she couldn't take the Merchants' money right out from under their noses. She would piss her panties just walking near this neighbourhood. I was better than her. I was better than them, and I had proven it. And I wouldn't stop here. I couldn't stop here. I had grown past Taylor Hebert, school loser. I could be more, I could be better. I would build more, build better. I was Taylor Hebert, Tinker Cape.

Gold leaf! Industrial diamond powder! Polytetrafluoroethylene! I was so happy I was able to buy more specialized materials in bulk. I could make them even smaller, with improved cutting ability, improved efficiency… things were so much better with that haul. Some of it I got through mail-order, but I only used that for limited amounts of material that could be explained by my savings. I couldn't let my dad get too suspicious of packages that arrived at our door. The other materials I paid for in cash at local hardware and electronics stores.

I'd used up the money I'd stolen almost immediately on improving my swarm. Which meant I needed more. This wouldn't become a habit, right? It didn't matter. I was inspired, and I just needed a little more to build what had popped into my head. I had made a promise to myself, and I wouldn't stop. I had grown past the old, helpless Taylor, and I would be a cape. A powerful cape.

The best thing, though, was a bit of silver and brass. The materials I needed to fix mom's flute.

My bots couldn't rebuild it completely right now. I would need to be able to do some kind of precision welding in order to get the mangled thing back into shape. But I could design bots that were more capable. Ideas for micro-plasma cutters, heat-resistant friction welding... ideas kept on coming.

All throughout the week at school, I couldn't stop designing and planning, sketching ideas down into the margins of my notebooks. What I needed and how to get it. Sure, the terrible trio was still around, but they didn't matter that much any more. Sure, I would still have to teach them a lesson, but the school administration would just punish me for it. They would take my bullies' word over mine. And if I did something to Sophia, it would bring the Protectorate down on me.

At least I had something else to concentrate on. I could focus on making better bots. I could fix Mom's flute with my power eventually.

My robots were mostly keeping me safe from my bullies anyway, and I wasn't stopping my campaign of "misfortune" on them, at least. Now that I knew that Sophia Hess was Shadow Stalker, it made so much more sense how my homework kept getting stolen. They hadn't figured out my locker combination. She just used her powers to reach straight through my locker door. I hadn't trusted my locker for months, but knowing exactly how she did it explained so much more.

Stupid Hess, she could barely manage a passing grade without taking my homework for herself.

Well, I could make things even worse for her. Knowing her power let me lay a trap for it.

I'd taken to making multiple copies of my homework. I kept my bots on them, some of them holding bits of pencil lead. A copy in my locker, one in my binder, one in my pocket. Whichever copy Sophia tried to steal, I'd just use my bots to alter my answers so they would be all wrong before she grabbed it. I'd just let Sophia take it, thinking she'd won. She wasn't dumb enough, or skilled enough, to try to steal the copy right in my pocket, so I usually ended up handing that copy in.

Yes, I knew it was a convoluted plan. But Winslow High was a school with stupid administration and stupid rules, one of which was that it was against the rules to take your backpack to class. Yes, I went to a school where backpacks were against the rules. I couldn't just keep my homework with me under my watchful eye all day. Something about hidden weapons and drugs and gang wars…

At least that played to my advantage right now.

I had an even better advantage in science class. We were allowed to use calculators for science tests. It only took a few tiny robots to cause some short-circuits and mess up Sophia, Emma, and Madison's calculators.

Revenge was pretty sweet. Still working on that whole "justice" thing, though.

Focusing on Tinkering and what would help me improve was what got me through the week, stopping me from doing something rash against the trio. School simply mattered less to me. It wasn't going to help me through life, my powers were. While my grades were improving incrementally, my bot designs were improving dramatically. The bots were slightly smaller, I could see through them better, they were more versatile, I could build them faster... if I could afford to buy the raw materials. I was short on cash again.

Another weekend meant another Merchant base. This one was somewhere on the border of the Docks and the Trainyard. It was much larger, but more sparsely guarded. I thought it would make it a better target. Not so much, as I discovered.

Like before, I was keeping a safe distance from my target. Slipping in was even easier, with fewer guards covering a larger area. The only issue was that it was such a wide-open space with very little cover or hiding places. Finding the stash took longer; apparently they did less business at this location. It wasn't an issue to me; I basically took a nap from a safe distance while I watched them. Getting at the actual money was no issue. With my newer, diamond-hard cutting tips, grinding through the locks was simple.

Getting the money back to me was the problem.

The warehouse was wide-open. The guards weren't completely high like at the office. It was really hard trying to get the money to move across the floor to the nearest exit without being seen. It was agonizingly slow. My robots, even if they covered the money, didn't blend into the ground. They tended to form a flat grey blob, which stood out against the darker brown-black floor of the warehouse.

I'd only managed to steal about $600 before one of the guards noticed the broken lock, and raised the alarm. Thankfully, I'd seen him walking towards the stash and dispersed my bots early, so they had no clue how the theft had happened. Spread apart, the bots looked like little more than dust. And in the dirty warehouse, they were completely invisible.

Still, it felt like a failure. Chalk that up as a lesson learned through experience. I'd be getting less sleep tonight, double the work for less than a third of the money. I needed to be better. I couldn't peak here. My problem was that my bots had been too visible; I needed to find a way to make them invisible. Or at least, harder to spot.

I ended up spending the cash on some paint. I chose the primary pigments – cyan, yellow, and magenta, as well as a bit of black and white. I ordered most of my bots dip parts of their bodies in paint. Nothing over the mechanical moving bits, of course. It took time to do it properly, but the good thing was that I could do a billion bots at a time.

It was a grey blob before, and after I was done, I still had a grey blob. But now, when I told the right ones to move to the outside of the blob, I could change its colour. Success! The paint wasn't exactly the highest quality, nor was the entire bot's body covered, since I didn't want paint to gum up their movement. So I couldn't recreate perfect pictures. But it definitely was better than a distinct grey blob.

I had a few newspapers and magazines to use for practice. Up close, it was obvious how the pictures were printed, and I had my bots copy the patterns until I was used to getting the colors right. Copying a pre-existing picture that used the exact same pigments as my bots was the easy part. Getting them to copy something in real life was harder.

I spent the next half-hour trying to get my main blob to copy the carpet pattern in the living room.

"Hey, Taylor! What are you working on now?"

I didn't even realize how much time I had spent practicing the camouflage. Dad had already gotten back from work. "Hi, dad! I was just working on ca-" Crap, I couldn't tell him that I was working on camouflage. That sounded suspiciously like cape business. "-camera possibilities? I mean, I think I have a distributed camera working already, and this way they can display the picture they took, like a digital camera!"

I never really explained to my dad that I could already see everything they saw in my own mind. Having some sort of display was completely pointless for me, and a total lie to my father. I felt guilty doing it, but I couldn't take that back. I continued with the lie by having my blob of robots flatten out into a square. I had them form a picture of dad from their perspective on the ground. The colours were slightly off and the image was kind of grainy, but even I was impressed with myself by the result.

"Neat. So you're planning on making a… display out of them? Can you do video?"

I hadn't tried. I turned on the TV and tried to copy what was happening on screen.

I failed miserably. I couldn't copy video fast enough. The bots would have to crawl over each other ridiculously fast to constantly change the colour of the blob as a whole, nowhere near fast enough to make for smooth video.

"Nope," I said. My Tinkering immediately started thinking of solutions to make it possible. If I could make smooth video, I could coat myself and walk around like a makeshift cloaking system. But it would still be flawed, only work from a single angle... For now, it would only hide me if I was sitting still for a long time.

Dad patted me on the shoulder. "It's a great effort, Taylor. I'm sure you'll be able to do anything you put your mind to, and I'll be behind you all the way. Come on, let's take a break. You need to go to bed soon; you've got school tomorrow."

"Hebert. You're not getting away this time."

Damn. Mr. Gladly had left the classroom right at the end of the class for some reason, which left the trio free to corner me. I knew this was coming eventually; all their attempts at bullying me had basically fizzled out for the past few weeks. I had never left them with a chance to catch me alone. I just didn't anticipate Mr. Gladly leaving the classroom today before the students did.

"What do you want, Sophia? Are you trying to steal my homework again? Can't you pass without me doing the work for you?" I said loudly. Twice I had seen Sophia's homework returned with a big fat F on them. Oh, that had been delicious. I savored that memory, especially the second time when Sophia had seen my homework returned with a perfect score. At least she learned quickly; her attempts at stealing my homework completely stopped after those two failures.

"Shut the fuck up, Hebert. We know you're behind it." Sophia shoved me against the wall. For a second, I was afraid she was going to kill or seriously injure me. I know Shadow Stalker had been an independent cape, one that had nearly killed a few people in her heroics. But that would be too stupid to do right now, even for her. I watched as other students kept their heads down and ignored us as they left class. Other girls who sucked up to the pretty and popular trio, snickered as they walked by.

"Behind what? You stealing my homework? I'm pretty sure that was all you."

"Keep pretending, Hebert. Your act isn't fooling anyone. All you've been doing is running away from us. You're weak, and we're going to remind you who your betters are."

The classroom was empty except for the four of us. Madison closed the door. While Sophia kept me pinned to the wall, Emma approached me with a pair of scissors.

"I know you've always loved your hair, Taylor. But it doesn't make up for how ugly the rest of your body is. Who are you trying to impress? It's not like you'll ever get a boyfriend. We're just helping you keep things realistic." I knew Emma was the one who came up with the idea of dumping cranberry juice or pencil shavings in my hair. But those washed out with enough shampoo. This was a line they shouldn't have crossed.

I screamed and kicked. Sophia was really strong. Made sense if she was on the track team and trained with the Wards. It wasn't enough, since she was expecting me to struggle and I'm sure she dealt with struggling victims before. I commanded the bots I had hidden on her to slice through her skin.

The sting made her flinch, probably more due to surprise than actual pain. But it was enough, I managed to shove her away. I shoulder-checked Madison and ran straight for the door. I didn't bother going to afternoon classes that day.

"Taylor Hebert. Do you know why you're here?" Principal Blackwell said to me.

It wasn't the first time I'd been here. "Does it matter? You never believe me anyway."

The principal frowned at me with an exasperated look. She looked like she was smelling a rodent and just wanted me gone. "You've been accused of violence against Sophia Hess and Madison Clements. They said you scratched, kicked, and shoved them."

"It was self-defense. They had me pinned to a wall and they were going to hurt me. Emma was coming at me with a pair of scissors."

"They told me nothing of the sort. Do you have any proof?"

I rolled my eyes. "So now you expect me to have a camera recording literally every minute of my life at Winslow?" Blackwell may as well be the fourth bully. She acted against me just as harshly, if not more, than the trio themselves. "If being tossed into a dumpster two months ago wasn't enough proof that I'm being bullied, I don't think anything will be."

"Miss Hebert, we cannot condone violence at Winslow-"

"So why are they getting away with shoving me and threatening me with scissors?" I interrupted.

"You should have called for a teacher for help."

I gawked at her. I wasn't sure if she took sick pleasure in this or if she was really just that stupid. "So you're telling me… that, while I was pinned to a wall, in an empty classroom, outnumbered three to one, I should have just… shouted out for a teacher and waited? While I let them to whatever they wanted to me?"

"Rather than resorting to violence..." Blackwell began.

"Did you miss the part where I WAS PINNED TO THE WALL?" I shouted, completely losing my temper.

"Miss Hebert, do NOT use that tone of voice against me! You're suspended for the rest of the week, and your father will be informed of this."

If there was any sign that there was nothing at this school for me, this was it. I could do more away from school than in it. If they wouldn't accept anything less than video evidence…

A thought struck me.

This suspension was the perfect alibi. If they would never do anything for me without solid proof, maybe they couldn't do anything against me when I had a solid alibi, sitting at home with my dad or whatnot. Even the library was within range of school; the librarian would be my witness while I sat there all day, reading and studying like a good girl.

Diamond coated micro-blades had no trouble cutting hair. How many bots did I have on each of my bullies? I could sense roughly a hundred or so. That was fine. They were smaller than ticks and lice; they could hide in the girls' hair and nobody would ever find them. It took four to five bots working together to cut each strand. Maybe slow and gradual was better. They wouldn't notice it until it was too late. I hate to admit it, but Sophia was right. Maybe I was just running away from them.

So maybe I'd do a whole lot more than just avoid them. It was clear that justice would never come; not with Blackwell in place, not while I was still stuck at that school. Perhaps some laser-guided karma was the closest thing to justice that I would get.

Dad was disappointed when he heard the news, but he was far more concerned with my well-being. Admitting to him that I was still being bullied, especially after the dumpster incident, was hard. But he could see that I was working diligently at home, learning things on my own from computer science and engineering textbooks, which made it easier to accept that I was flourishing much more at home than at school.

Still, he wanted me to get my high school diploma. Winslow was the only choice. Arcadia had a huge waiting list and was on the… richer side of town. So a much longer commute. Immaculata was a private school, far too expensive anyways. I looked for other options, but for now, I'd still be going to Winslow for the foreseeable future.

After my suspension was over, of course. I was taking advantage of the days off as much as I could. Yes, revenge was ongoing. The hair-cutting was going slowly. My bots would hide near the roots of the girls' heads, not enough to tickle the scalp, and in low enough numbers that they wouldn't notice. Deep enough that they wouldn't get washed out easily. They sliced through just enough that it wouldn't fall out during class, but maybe they'd lose a bunch when they showered and combed. Over the course of the next few days, though, they would definitely end up sporting very different hairdos. I made sure to have the bots leave them before they walked out of my range; I didn't want to leave any evidence.

I had hours and hours to work on my bots every day this week, instead of just a bit of time before and after dinner during school days. Even though I was short on raw materials, I could at least refine them, test cheaper alternative materials, until I managed to get more money. I might have to recycle some of my older bots to make the new ones, but at least I had a lot to work with. I had several billion now, enough to cover my entire body for protection and plenty left over for experimentation.

Each day of my suspension, I would start it off the same way. I'd go to the library when everyone else was going to school. I brought some bots and raw materials from home, so I could produce more bots while I was sitting there, and placed them hidden in the alleyway behind the library. I said hello to the librarian, making sure she saw me. I grabbed a book, usually something non-fiction like robotics or biology. Then I'd sit in one of the armchairs that was in clear view of the librarian's desk.

The bots that I had left at school would wait until my bullies arrived. Some of them lay in wait at their lockers, others in my locker, and so on. I had a small number spread throughout the school building anyway, hiding on ceiling tiles, to keep watch on the situation. And stealing supplies to create more bots.

At the beginning of the day, a few bots would work their way onto their bodies and work their way up to the scalp. Slowly but surely, they would cut away at a few hairs at a time until the end of the day, where they would retreat to their hiding places again.

Snip snip. So my revenge began, one hair at a time.

Author's Note: Happy extra hour of sleep day!