12

Examination 4

"I'm sorry, Taylor. I'll have to go through these things quickly because I don't have much time between school and hospital work. If possible, I want to get a better feel for how well you can do with your powers. I can talk to the doctors, and then we'll be doing more of the training at the hospital." Amy was sitting across from me, with huge stacks textbooks in the shelves behind her.

I nodded dumbly, since I really didn't know much about medicine other than basic first aid.

"I think your ability has a wide range of applications, but you don't have any inherent understanding of biology, right? Your powers don't cover that?"

I shook my head. "No, my power is entirely related to constructing and controlling my bots. If I knew what I needed to do, though, it shouldn't be too hard to control them even at the microscopic level."

"So you'll have to learn at basically the normal human rate. A lot of people would simply suggest med school, but with the technology you have, some people wouldn't have the patience to wait another ten to fifteen years," Amy said.

"Yeah, people like me," I said.

"Anyways, I figure if you present your power as some kind of specialty, I can help convince the doctors to take you in as sort of... assistant. You won't ever be fully qualified to heal anyone unsupervised, or officially make a diagnosis, not without actually going to med school. Now, the way I see it, you have two choices."

I tilted my head, wondering what Amy meant.

"If you want to try to do the same general-purpose healing that I do, I can oversee you directly. But... I'm pretty sure you can't heal the way I do. And I'm not sure how good a teacher I'll be," she said.

"And the other?"

"Is to do what I don't do, which is basically brains," she explained. "I think the hospital will see it as more of a benefit, since it won't slow down what I'm doing, and they'll be able to take care of all the patients I can't treat myself."

"I think that makes the most sense," I said. "I'm going to have to specialize because I honestly can't learn everything about the human body so quickly, so I might as well specialize in brain procedures."

Amy nodded. "Okay then, here's a few textbooks to get you started," she said, grabbing a bunch from the shelf behind her. Together, they hit the table with a hefty thunk.

"Uh... thanks? Why do you have all those texts anyway?" I asked. "I thought you understood all of that stuff instinctively?"

"Mostly gifts. Lame gifts," Amy said with a shrug. "Part of some awards package, some I'm a contributing author on, some... I forget. People just expect doctors to have lots of medical texts and stuff. You won't believe the number of medical models and posters I get, too..."

I looked the thirty or so pounds of textbooks in front of me and sighed. I guess this would take a while... I took the most comfortable-looking seat in the Dallons' living room and started reading.

Amazingly enough, I was able to help Amy and Victoria with some of their English homework while I studied. Neither of them were exactly the essay-writing type. Even though they were both a grade up from me, I guess I read more than either of them. It wasn't like Amy had much time in her life to read novels beyond what was assigned at school, between the school and hospital. Victoria simply wasn't the... settle-down-quietly-with-a-book type.

When my mind started to wander too much, or I found myself reading the same paragraph five times over, I wandered over to help Amy proofread her work. She had enough trouble trying to type with only one hand, and typos were abundant.

Around six, the New Wave parents left for patrol, leaving the three of us behind. Normally Amy would be doing her hospital rounds, but her mother had practically ordered her to catch up on her homework, which I was glad to help with. Victoria would have joined them as well, but she was still grounded for now. As soon as she was done the bare minimum required for her schoolwork, she flew up to her room, tapping away at her phone. Amy and I continued with our homework, but she was getting more sullen. It was easy to understand why Victoria felt grumpy, but Amy seemed tense and distracted, too.

"Something bothering you?" I asked.

"I just... ugh. I feel like this is such a waste of time," she said, sweeping her arm over her pile of notebooks, textbooks, and laptop. "Not that I don't appreciate your help, but... I can already do more than any doctor on Earth, and that's without wasting years of my life going through med school. Why am I wasting my time with this bullshit when I could be out there saving lives?"

"Maybe I'm not the best person to ask," I told her. "I'm planning on dropping out of high school as it is. Seriously considering the GED route now. I get what you mean, though."

"And the rest of my family doesn't let me patrol with them. I mean, I know I can do so much, but they always treat me like I'm so fragile, and I'm never allowed anywhere near the danger..."

I looked pointedly at the cast on her arm. Her eyes followed mine, and she let out an extra-long sigh. "Okay. I get it. I can't heal myself. This is so fucking annoying! It's not like I'm completely helpless! Everyone gets hurt sometimes! And this stupid cast, it's so damn itchy! Ahhhrg!"

"You, uh, want me to scratch your arm for you?" I asked.

Amy pawed at the outside of her cast. "What? How?"

"Bots," I replied simply.

Amy stared at me for a second, as her jaw slowly dropped as she thought about it. "Could you?"

I let a small swarm of bots crawl into the tiny gap between her arm and the cast. It was downright cavernous for my bots. I started giving her light scratches inside the cast, and did a bit of cleaning while I was at it.

"Ohhhh that feels so good," Amy said. "I love you already, Taylor."

"Don't mention it," I said. "If it comes down to it, I could make you some basic body armour too. If you don't mind my bots crawling all over your body. It's saved my life more than once already."

"I don't think I'll be able to take you up on your offer any time soon," she sighed, looking at her arm. "I think Carol would escort me in an armored car and keep me on lockdown if she could."

"Yeah. Just a thought. I know I can do a lot more than just heal, but I'm going to have to restrict myself for safety. It just makes me more restless," I said.

Amy just let out another sigh and went back to her homework. I picked up the anatomy textbook and got to reading again. Another hour passed by before a thought occurred to me.

"Hey, Amy... I don't know about you, but I get antsy if I can't Tinker at least a little every day. Do you want to use your power on me for, uh, educational purposes?"

"I'm not growing you bigger boobs," she said.

"Not that," I said, rolling my eyes.

"Okay, I'm curious. What is it?" she asked.

"I'm reading a lot about the body from the textbook, but I just want to, uh, see the body. From the inside. With my bots. I have a small number of, well, high-quality bots with me right now. Not enough to really do much, but I was thinking I could just let them float around in my bloodstream so I get used to navigating the human body?"

Amy's eyes widened. Hey, at least it was something new to her. I didn't want to know how often she got asked for boob jobs.

"So, I just want you to make sure I don't, uh, accidentally do something stupid and kill myself," I continued.

Amy looked at me funny for a few seconds before answering. "Sure. The worst that could happen is, like, just a heart attack," she said. "Maybe an anaphylactic reaction. Nothing I can't handle. Might be interesting."

"Awesome!" I said. Let's do this."

Exploring my own body was weird. I didn't do anything complex, just had my bots dive into a shallow vein in my hand and then let them get pumped through the body in the bloodstream. The main problem was that it was dark. It had taken a lot of practice to interpret my bots' "vision" into a coherent image, now vision was useless.

I was mostly navigating my own body through, well, texture would be the best word for it. Different types of cells felt different from each other. Their surfaces had different proteins, they had different shapes, and they, well, moved or wiggled differently.

It was something that was absolutely not explained in any textbook, that was for sure. It made me even more certain that I could really only learn well with hands-on experience, and that formal education would be only a guide at best in this field.

Thankfully, I didn't actually need Amy to rescue me. I didn't accidentally block my own arteries or clog up something important. But there was a lot to navigate, thousands of miles worth of blood vessels in the human body. Sure, I didn't need to actually map out every single capillary, but I did need to know the major "intersections" and where to divert my bots if I wanted to go somewhere specific.

The process was so long, we were interrupted when Brandish and Flashbang got home.

"Hey mom! How was it?" Victoria shouted down from her room.

"Busy," Brandish answered. "I heard the ABB got a new Tinker, and apparently so did the Empire. They were trying to attack her, or get at her workshop before she could get established, so a lot of fighting everywhere. It's going to be a busy week. On the other hand, we helped capture Cricket and Victor."

"What? Awww man, I'm missing so much action!" Victoria whined.

"Vicky, your one-track mind is what got you your grounding. You need to learn some restraint and planning. Don't just think about 'getting some action' or being a glory hound," her mother chastised her. "And Amy. Is your homework done?"

"Fine," she said. "Taylor helped. She's pretty smart."

"Hmph." Mrs. Dallon gave me a look that was hard for me to figure out, but it wasn't exactly disapproval. Not approval. But... slightly less disapproval than before? Whatever it was, it seemed better than Mr. Dallon, who just walked past us and barely acknowledged us before flopping down in an armchair in front of the TV.

"Thanks for allowing me to practice here, Dr. Simmons," I said as best I could, trying not to get creeped out. Seeing dead people on TV was one thing, seeing dead people with their organs cut placed on separate trays right in front of me was something different entirely.

"Panacea said you might be of great help to the hospital with some training, so I'm glad to help. I'm done with this one and we're about to cremate the body, but if your power can make better use of it before we do, be my guest. Just remember it's all considered biohazardous waste. Clean your Tinkertech before you leave the room." He walked over to the other end of the morgue and began typing up his report.

I stared at the body, controlling my breathing and trying not to get squeamish. The odour of formaldehyde was bad enough; but most of the time these people had not died healthy. The autopsy had revealed multiple diseased organs, one of which was septic. Ugh. I had my textbook with me as I sent bots into the cadaver's brain.

Being able to see things from the inside while referring to the textbook definitely helped a lot. It made learning a whole lot easier. Unlike exploring the inside of my own body with my bots, I could take bigger risks. Especially when my bots were allowed to basically crawl through the brain, breaking through the blood-brain barrier and meninges. I wasn't going to risk giving myself a brain hemorrhage that Panacea couldn't fix, but I could do it on this corpse.

The good thing was that this former patient had many diseases as well, so I could get a better understanding of what those diseases looked like from a bot's-eye-view, as it were. Dr. Simmons was kind enough to explain exactly what was wrong with the patient. Like liver cirrhosis, from his drinking problem. Kidney failure, from long-term high blood pressure. Atherosclerosis, from diet issues. And luckily enough (for me, not him), Alzheimer's. It helped me understand these disease much better, at a level my bots could sense. But it wasn't good enough to cure the diseases, I knew.

Definitely something I needed to redesign my bots for before I began to work on real, live brains. Again, I was getting more Tinkering ideas, getting specifics of how to make them better at their specialty. I needed to optimize my bots before my actual debut. The primary solution was to make them smaller. If I could get them small enough, I could have them squeeze through in between cells with minimal damage, and seal up the damage afterwards. It wouldn't do to fix one type of disease only to have the patient die later of a brain infection.

Nobody would trust me with working with a live brain for a while though, and cadavers simply didn't work the same way as normal brains. Blood flow, for one thing. No doctor would authorize it, and it was one hell of a favour to ask of anyone. Amy wouldn't be able to correct my mistakes because of her limitations.

Really, there was only one person who would be willing to volunteer for this kind of thing, and that was myself. I would need to send bots out to investigate my own brain. My brain was relatively healthy – probably – and I needed a good baseline anyway. It would be hard to learn what a brain should be like studying mostly old, dead people.

Of course I would need to be extremely cautious about it, making absolutely sure I didn't do anything to give myself irreversible brain damage. While my bots could easily fit into even the capillaries, I would need to go through several more revisions to make them more ideal for the work I needed to do in the brain. Obviously my brain was mostly healthy, while the cadavers were... not. I could only guess at what kind of work would be needed at all the cases in between, as described by the textbooks.

Having an actual goal and focus made it extremely obvious to me how much work I needed to do to improve my own power. That realization also gave me a lot of inspiration for more tinkering and design. Despite being so busy, with so much to do... I hadn't felt this good in years. Not since before I started high school at Winslow, at least. I had a purpose. I had a mission. And it wasn't just "get through the day without being shoved by Sophia."

I wanted to be working alongside Amy as soon as possible, but I hadn't completely given up the idea of being a crime-fighting hero, either. I was wondering if I could use Lisa's suggestion of simply remote-controlling bots in order to stop crime somehow, but I didn't really know the exact requirements. I did know what was required for medical bots – I guess if I wanted to fight crime, I could always just wait until I had so many bots I could just bury a criminal in them.

It didn't take long for me to settle into a routine. It was fairly simple: a morning run for exercise, bot-construction and studying for several hours, then meet Amy after school. Some days we would practice at her house, but more often we were at the hospital. I was starting to get to know a few doctors, and the hands-on experience they exposed me to was helping a lot. Of course, I would never have gotten that far without a personal introduction from Amy.

Back at home, and whenever I wasn't within range of my "workshop," I continued making non-medical bots from garbage and scraps. During my early morning run, I "dropped off" some of my lower quality bots around the city. The bots themselves didn't move much – I just let them sit there and activate or deactivate when I came in or out of range. Mainly, I just used them to watch my back. Everyone's warnings about independent capes and forced recruitment – whether it be Lisa's boss or Empire 88 – left me a little paranoid. Not unjustified, either - Brandish's warnings of increasing gang activity were true, even if they mostly stayed away from my workshop's area. And there were always muggers to watch out for, in a town like this. I had to keep this up until I formally debuted with New Wave, but Mrs. Dallon wanted me to prove my worth and that I was actually being responsible first.

I took a different jogging route each day, but always ended up at my workshop between the Boardwalk and Lord's market. The proximity to two different shopping areas meant I could buy materials from a large selection of different stores, dropping it off by the ventilation-entrance to the workshop. I came at it from different directions each time, using my bots to make sure nobody was watching when I approached. I didn't stay long, and the areas also meant I had a selection of different places to hang out afterwards – several cafes, part of a shopping mall, and a library were all within range. That way, I could Tinker for a few hours each day without actually looking like I was Tinkering.

For my latest and greatest bots, the ones that were actually suitable in medicine, I actually spent money on decent materials. Being primarily carbon-based now, nearly every source of carbon was useful. Scrap paper, food, and even plants had plenty of carbon; the problem was merely "cleaning" it off and making sure no contaminants got in during the synthesis process. So I had to buy more purified, clean materials to speed up the process, like charcoal, flour, or sugar.

It was still hard for me to make diamond, so production was very slow and cautious, even working with a fairly carbon-rich source like charcoal. For now, every single bot I produced went back into producing more bots.

Most of the time, I studied medical texts for a few hours each day – often at the library, since they had the most comfortable seats and it wasn't unusual to hang out there for hours. I kept a small number of bots on my body at all times – not just as armoured protection, but to practice a bit of medicine on myself. As I sat reading, I practiced having them crawl all over myself, until I was able to tell the difference between human cells and bacteria. I had them clear out the bacteria on my skin once I was confident that I could differentiate the two. I was getting fairly good at it, and while I knew I was probably cleaner than I had ever been, it still didn't beat the feeling of a good shower.

And, of course, studying my own brain. After the first attempt had gone well, the following ones were much less scary. I didn't try anything unusual, I just concentrated on seeing what I could sense with my bots while they were in my head. It was very strange actually consciously sensing my brain concentrating on sensing my brain. The tiny shifts in blood flow, oxygen movement, and electrical patterns were obvious to my microscopic machines.

As my bot numbers grew, so did my purchases. The first bag of charcoal, about ten pounds, lasted two days of construction. Then I had to buy nearly forty pounds of material over the next two days after that. At least hauling charcoal gave my arms a little bit of a workout. I was definitely getting far more exercise each day than I had ever imagined I would be. I had to buy even more charcoal, flour, sugar, and such each day, since my bots were consuming more and more. This was becoming a problem sooner than I expected. I never imagined that my construction speed would be limited by how much stuff I could carry, much less it happening within a week.

Because I had so many bots that I was tiring myself out just hauling materials from the stores, I could afford to slow down a little bit. Not every bot had to be dedicated to making things. With the spares, I had my robots clean the entire workshop out; they were able to chase down almost every scrap of dust, and sealed up leaks, ensuring the place was a true clean-room that could have passed the most rigorous industry standards. All hidden in a back room of some random shop.

Cleaning was a little boring too, though, and after I had cleaned everything there wasn't much left to do and a lot of spare bots. I had some climb up walls, make small butterflies so they could fly (not very well) or worms that could inch along on the ground (not very fast). Eventually, I had enough excess robots to create a doll-sized humanoid body with them. That was when I started to practice remote control, getting them to mimic a human.

Exponential growth was an amazing thing. Pretty soon I would need to figure out how to discreetly order charcoal by the pallet or manufacture high-quality bots in a dirty environment.

With the number of high-quality bots on hand for now, I had more than enough for my debut soon. I'd need to finalize my costume. And my cape name. I'd been so concentrating on building bots and studying biology that I hadn't actually given it much thought.

The costume would almost certainly be made of bots. Anything skintight was immediately out. I could base mine around Panacea, though I didn't want to copy her exactly. She was mostly white, like a white lab coat with a hood over a white dress, with red accents and large, visible red crosses to indicate she was a medic.

I had no sense of fashion or style; I needed some cape advice. And because of New Wave's insistence that I only act as a healer, I never let them know about the maybe-possibly-alternative uses of my bots – or how many I had been making. I may as well design the crime-fighting version cape identity while I was at it, and some advice on buying bulk materials in secret. Only one other person about all of that, and probably could give me that advice. So I guess I would contact my friendly neighbourhood villain, Lisa.

When she arrived at the library, she tossed another phone at me. It was smaller, simpler, and looked extremely cheap. "Burner," she said. "Forgot to get you one last day. If you're going to hide the fact that you're hanging out with me or doing non-healer stuff, you can't leave too much evidence on your regular phone."

"Ugh. My dad hates cell phones, and now I have two. He doesn't even know about the first one yet. Thanks, but you don't need to keep buying me so much stuff," I said. My mom had died being distracted with a phone call while driving; he'd practically sworn off of them since then. Sure, it may have been somewhat irrational, but emotions weren't known to be logical.

"Consider the first phone an investment. This one? It's cheap. Prepaid and loaded with just enough for a few calls. Cost less than a taxi ride. Don't be afraid to toss it in the trash if you have to get rid of it in a hurry." She waved her hand dismissively.

I nodded and put it in my pocket. I'd play around with it later. It was only a short walk to get to my workshop.

Lisa looked at the wall, then back to me. "Uh... is there a way in?" she asked.

I guess I hadn't thought this out well enough. "Give me a minute." The ventilation hole wasn't big enough for a person, but it didn't take much to carve a slightly larger hole, enough to us to crawl through. The damage I did to the wall could be quickly be filled in with my excess bots. I kept the bricks for camouflage; my bots could easily move them back into place later.

Lisa gave me a withering glare. "Really?"

"I'll make a bigger door later. Get in, it's clean," I said. I even had a bunch of bots spread out over the ground, shifting their colour so that she had a red carpet.

"Ha ha. Very funny, Taylor." After she crawled inside, she looked around at the relatively bare, but extremely clean room. I sealed the entrance behind us. "Wow. I like what you've done to the place. I mean, I haven't exactly been invited to many Tinker workshops, but this is way cleaner than any Tinker's workshop has any right to be."

"Uh, thanks?"

"You have no idea. Most tinkers guard their secrets jealously. I'm talking crazy defenses and everything. Some of them even hide their bases inside alternate or pocket dimensions, if their tech can do it. I think that might be why the Empire still hasn't managed to flush out Bakuda yet, despite all the fighting."

"Well, you guys brought me to your lair, and now you've seen mine..."

"I think I still prefer mine. The couch is nice." I fashioned an armchair out of bots for her immediately. "So what do you need? I don't suppose you called just so we could hang out."

"I need fashion advice," I said.

She eyed me up and down. "Yeah, that definitely needs work," she said with a grin. Okay, while I had technically been asking for it, it still hurt a little bit. The Trio had often made fun of my clothing, especially since Emma had been an aspiring model. While Lisa dressed in a much more… provocative style than Emma, she was still clearly wearing more expensive and fashionable clothes than me.

Lisa saw my expression and pulled me into a hug. "Aww, I didn't mean it like that. I was just joking. And I know you didn't ask me for normal fashion advice."

I nodded. "Cape fashion advice," I said. I pulled in about thirty pounds worth of bots which covered my body. Right now they just covered all my clothes in a shapeless blob. I got them to reshape themselves into a cloak similar to Panacea's. "Ok, so I'm joining New Wave and working with Panacea. I'm thinking of going with the name Eunoia, since we decided that I'd mostly be focusing on brain procedures."

Tattletale sat down and nodded. "Good pick with the name. It shows a relation to Panacea but clearly a different power set if anyone bothers to research the meaning behind the name. Nobody will think you're trying to take her place, nor should they expect you to do the same thing she does."

"So, you need something friendly and personable if you're going to be your friendly neighbourhood healer. And since you'll be part of New Wave, there's not much point in covering your face… hm… but I would suggest opaque glasses. Cover one or both eyes. Make it look something scientific and technical."

"Why?" I asked.

"You have a Master power to control your robots, right? Most people will know you're a Tinker, especially if you're in New Wave. People fear Masters. This basically helps you pretend you're controlling your robots through some kind of technology, not through Mastering them."

I nodded. I used my bots to create a thin, simple visor that fitted all the way to my skin. It still left most of my face uncovered, so it wasn't entirely against New Wave's aesthetic. I made it look like a compact version of virtual reality goggles, something stereotypically Tinker.

"As far as the rest of the costume goes… keep going with the sci-fi theme. Play up the tinker-healer aspect. Make it at least something feminine," she said.

"Really?" I asked. I knew my body wasn't that attractive. The trio and their posse had let me know every day. Even though I didn't talk to them any more, a year and a half of constant insults was hard to shake off.

"Just do it. It'll look great," Lisa assured me.

I tightened up the robes a bit, but that was all. I really wasn't confident about showing off my body.

"Still too too much of a fantasy-white-mage vibe. Can you make the front look like one solid piece? Something that looks like injection-molded plastic. Make some fake techno-doohickeys on the side if you have to. Just make it look futuristic."

The bots in front interlocked a little bit tighter and aligned their bodies more uniformly, making the front smooth and continuous, like a technical vest over the robes.

"Better. But bigger boobs."

"What?" I thought I imagined what she said. "I'm not giving myself fake boobs."

"Fine, just make the vest part thicker," she repeated. "You can store the extra robots you need in there anyway. You can just pretend there's tons of electronic gadgets inside. But the important part is to accentuate the womanly hourglass figure."

"Why?" I asked. I wasn't looking to be a model, nor the face of New Wave. Victoria had that covered.

"You're still planning on fighting crime with another alternate identity, right? We need to keep the identities separate. Your healer identity has one theme, your crimefighter will be someone completely different. I already have something in mind, so come on. More vest!"

She had a good point, but it felt weird giving myself a padded bra made of bots. I inflated the chest area a little bit, putting an extra four pounds of robots to fill the space. I decided to bulge the back out as well a little like a small backpack, adding another few pounds of bots back there. Now that I had so much extra weight around my chest, I added more bots to reinforce my backside to help me handle the weight.

She was right, though. I could carry quite a lot of my bots there. Having more was always more useful.

"Now about the arms… Again, fake Tinker Tech if you have to. Something solid, technical, make it look like there's some tools and sensors and controls in there, but smooth and futuristic. How are you actually planning on using your tech, by the way?"

"Either injecting the bots or applying them topically to fix things. How about this?" I made them fit the same design as my visor. The bots on the outside linked to each other rigidly, forming a stiff shell, but inside it was just a soft, nearly-liquid mass that surrounded my arms. At the very edge of it, I made an injector-like protrusion, where I would actually be getting bots into people.

"Eh, no needle. It'll trigger a lot of phobias for some people. Or at least, hide it. Extend the doohickeys to your fingertips, maybe."

I had the bots extend outwards, softened the protrusions to look more like a tube than a needle. At first I considered half-gloves, but then I decided to cover my hands completely – didn't want to pick up my patient's germs.

"Excellent. The dress or robe thing kind of works, if you want to look a little bit like Panacea. But I'd suggest something on the hips. A utility belt. Something to create more of an hourglass figure, like I said before."

I did as she was told. I kept the fairly loose robes covering my legs, and added a "belt" made of bots clumped into a string of pods. They covered my non-existent butt and hips, and helped me carry another five extra pounds of bots. With all the robots making up my costume, I was already at about twenty pounds of robots. I could easily add more or less to them as I needed, and use a few to boost my strength as well if it ever got tiring.

"Awesome. Now we need some red crosses. Backpack, chest, and the bracers on your arm should do it." I shifted my bots' positioning slightly. It was something I had discovered accidentally; I didn't need paint to change their colour any more. Changing the spacing and angle of the diamond-tooled bots caused light to refract and interfere in a certain way. Adjusting it would cause it to change colour – at least, from certain angles. It wasn't enough to form perfect camouflage, but it was versatile enough for aesthetics.

"Perfect. Love the texture, by the way. Very shiny and glimmer-y. Really adds to the futuristic look. What is it?"

"Diamond," I said. "I've been manufacturing diamond tools," I said.

Lisa paused. I could see her brain go into overdrive. "We need to discuss this later. As for the shoes..."

"I'm not doing heels," I told her flatly, making sure there would be no negotiation there. Padded vest, maybe. Ass-enhancing belt? Arguable. Heels? No. I needed my ankles for my morning runs.

"Fine. Wear whatever shoes you like. Can you remember all of this?" she asked.

It was surprisingly easy to remember the arrangement of all the bots on my body, despite having somewhere in the range of trillions, maybe almost a quadrillion bots to manage. I had them shift into regular clothing shapes, then shifted them in seconds back into the costume we just designed. "How's it look?"

"Perfect. And you've got one of the easiest costumes to put on aside from Changers," she said. "Sooo jealous."

"Okay, as for crime-fighting, what are you thinking?" I asked.

"Your crime-fighting cape identity will be male. Very male. I'm talking four hundred pounds of pure muscle, or more. Maybe around seven feet tall. Huge. Nobody in their right mind would ever associate the two of you. Hell, even crazy conspiracy theorists on PHO will have a hard time making the connection."

She did have a point. "I don't have four hundred pounds of robots right now," I said. "I might need help getting that material though." To make that much, I would need to buy nearly a thousand pounds of charcoal. That would be enough to warrant delivery service from the hardware store. The conversion from charcoal to robots wasn't that efficient, maybe about one-third of what I bought ended up becoming actual robot.

"I can help you figure that out later. Do you have enough to make a hollow shell?" Lisa asked. "Just enough to figure out the looks."

"Probably." I collected every bot in the workshop that wasn't busy building more diamonds (that process couldn't be interrupted), including the ones currently making up my Eunoia costume. And the ones Lisa was sitting on. I didn't get to see her fall on her ass though, because she had predicted what I was going to do. Oh well.

I made them climb all over each other until they formed a featureless, grey, seven-foot-tall human statue.

Lisa walked around him. "Broader shoulders. Thicker biceps. Thicker thighs. Thicker everything, really," she said wagging her eyebrows at me.

I sputtered.

Lisa laughed. "Oh, Taylor, you're so much fun. Come on, think bodybuilder, not basketball player."

I got back to work, shaking my head at her. I tried to make the robots look like Arnold Schwarzenegger back in his youthful bodybuilding prime, except bigger in every dimension.

"Awesome. You've got quite a hunk, there. Now let's add armor plating. Your robots don't shoot laser beams or any kind of ranged attack do they?"

I shrugged. "Very short range high-voltage discharge. It's how I make the diamonds. I could also turn them into a bow and arrow to launch them somewhere quickly, I guess, but they'd be out of my control range right afterwards."

"So basically no. Your bots can't quite manage the amperage for a real taser weapon. That's fine. We should go with a medieval theme. Yeah, that's good," she nodded. "Sci-fi healer lady for one, massive medieval knight for the other."

I started shifting the bots to form armour plates, similar to the ones that Gallant and Aegis used. They were pretty basic, I didn't know what else to add. I kept him shiny, like a knight in shining armour.

Lisa shook her head. "No, no, this isn't going to work. The colour scheme is too close to Eunoia's. Go with black. He needs to be intimidating. A dark knight."

"Lisa, I'm not making a villain," I said.

"There are plenty of heroes who use intimidation as a tactic. You don't have to be a villain. But every time you scare people into submission, that's a fight you win without resorting to violence. You'll get a reputation for heroism through your actions. And I said intimidating, not evil."

I started to change the colour, and as I was doing it, Lisa started adding more suggestions. "More ridges and shaper angles here. Oh, and make separate plates here and here. Yeah, give the armour abs. Make them accent the muscles. It ups the intimidation factor, and it's not like there's a real body underneath that you actually have to protect."

It took us half an hour to get the body right. My knight looked borderline evil. As hyper-masculine as the starting point was, the armoured version made it even more so. The shoulders were so broad, he was literally as wide as me and Lisa, standing side-by-side. The pects were huge, and the armour plates exaggerated it. Eight separate plates over the abdomen, because each of his glorious ab muscles deserved its own plate. The gauntlets and boots were thick and heavily reinforced, the looked like they had built-in spiked knuckles. The only reason we hadn't made him bigger was that his head was scraping the ceiling. He was a tank – or he would be, once I had enough bots to actually fill him in. Right now he was just a badass-looking eggshell.

"We need to do something about the face. Just needs a little touch-up. Full face coverage. Raise the neck protection. The neck armour can go up to his cheekbones. As for the helmet, make it long and sharp. I'm thinking backward-sweeping spikes, but a pointy 'snout.' Think of a dragon or a lizard. Powerful, animalistic. Inspires fear at the instinctive level. You don't actually need to see out of it, so go nuts with impractical design. The only thing he needs to be able to do is nod or shake his head to communicate."

"Does he really have to be so… spiky?" I asked.

Lisa stood back and pulled me away from my creation as well. "Okay, picture this. You're a drug dealer, a gangster, hell, even if you're Skidmark or Victor. You see this walking down the street towards you at night. Do you want to fight, or run?" she asked, making a grand gesture with both her hands. I shrugged, conceding her point.

"And the heroes?"

"If they're dumb enough to attack something like that, they'll probably die to Hookwolf by next week. You'll have enough time to make a reputation as a rogue hero before most of them are willing to engage. I can help a bit with the PHO wiki entry, if you want."

I guess she had a point. I was the one in control. I didn't have to fight back against the heroes. I could be better than them. I was better than them.

"So, can big boy talk?"

"Kind of?" I said. I knew that I theoretically could use my bots to make sound. Just have them form a membrane and vibrate at the right frequencies to make sound. I knew how my bots moved when I heard sound, so I just had to do the reverse, right? I tried making it say hello.

"mmmmmmmmmhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhHEEELLLLLLLLLO." The voice was extremely bassy, and it took me a few seconds to coordinate the bots to make something resembling human speech. It was deeper than any man's voice, probably a full octave lower than should be possible with normal human vocal cords. I also didn't make actual vocal cords with my bots, I just had all the exterior bots vibrate, so it came out louder than I expected. I couldn't make them vibrate at the higher frequencies for normal sound; they were actually rather slow, so they could only make the lower pitches. The sound rumbled through the room and I could feel my bones buzz to the sound.

"Holy crap, Taylor. What was that?" Lisa asked.

"Him talking? I'll need practice to get it better..."

"Better? No, that's awesome. Jeez, he talks like he's made of subwoofers. The voice makes him sound like he just finished crawling straight out of the pits of hell. That's freaky. Make him say 'put down your weapons.'" She looked almost giddy.

I had to think for a little bit to remember how my bots vibrated when I was listening with my bots in order to make them to the exact opposite.

"tttssssssscccccccccsPUUUUUTT DOOOOOWWWWWWNNNNN YYYYOOOOUUUURRRR WEAAAAPOOOOONNNSSSSS." Ugh, that was going to take practice. I still had way too much static and random noise at the beginning.

Lisa jumped up with glee. "Now imagine how much criminals will shit their pants when they hear that, then look up and see that." A little more quietly, she muttered, "I bet a few of Coil's mercs will freak out."

"Ah." Of course she wanted my dark knight to be so imposing. I had promised her that I'd help get her away from Coil, the villain almost nobody had any information on. But people seemed to agree that he hired professional mercenaries - ex-special forces or ex-PRT types, those who didn't bat an eye even when facing down parahumans.

"Sorry if it looks like I'm using you. Full disclosure, I sort of am. But you have to admit it's good advice. Anything that can scare a professional merc would be enough to convince all but the heaviest hitters in Brockton Bay to turn and run."

"Fenja, Menja, Hookwolf... they might be willing to stand and fight, but I see your point," I said. Fenja and Menja were Kaiser's personal guards, two beautiful women armoured like Valkyries. They could grow to several stories tall with proportionate strength, so a seven-foot bodybuilder was of no difficulty for them. Hookwolf was just plain crazy, a tough strong brawler who loved fighting. Lung didn't even need mentioning.

"Sure, but you don't have to beat everybody. And unlike real armour, if anything actually snags on the spikes, you can just let it dissolve and reform, right? None of the impractical disadvantages here."

"Also true," I agreed. I could just... do what I could. As long as I made a difference.

"So we might as well go for all the style points we can manage."

"Fine," I said.

"Now he needs equipment. Knights aren't supposed to be boxers," Lisa said. "What he needs is... a gigantic, hundred-pound broadsword almost as tall as he is."

"My bots can't really act as -" I started to say.

"Style points!" Lisa interrupted. "It doesn't matter if they can actually cut like a steel blade. No, wait… make TWO of them! It'll imply that he's got some kind of Brute rating that lets him wield those crazy things one-handed."

I created two (hollow) swords on his back, at one-tenth the planned weight. I was seriously running out of bots at this point.

"Are we done yet?"

"Make the ridges here, here, and here smoother and shinier. Increases the contrast and draws attention to the right places. He's still missing something though..." Lisa muttered, tapping her cheek while her chin rested on her palm. She bolted up straight with a snap of her fingers. "Cape! He needs a cape. Not many Capes these days actually wear capes – man, the early nineties were a real clusterfuck of 'wardrobe malfunctions.' But you can do it without the downsides. It'll make him look even more distinctive."

I had to start dissolving parts of his armour to make it. For now, I made the cape as thin as possible so that I wouldn't have to take away too much from the other parts of his body. I accidentally made it too thin and tore some holes in it when they snagged on the swords. And I still didn't have enough to stretch all the way to the ground.

"Wait, keep it that way," Lisa said. "Makes the cape look battle-worn and old. Adds character. Can I see what a thick cape looks like? Can't have light shining through."

I had to dissolve a significant part of his arm to reinforce the cape, since they weren't really doing anything. I let the bots drift straight backwards via air currents.

"Whoa! Do that again," she said.

"Do what again?" I asked.

"Dissolve a part of him."

I decided to get rid of more of his arms.

Lisa was deep in thought again. "This is his power. His identity. It's perfect. It's a Breaker form, not Tinkertech. He can dissolve like smoke, he can appear from anywhere, disappear any time. Can you keep a cloud of random robots just floating around him? Make people who are looking at him seem like he's… hazy, darker, harder to see? Like a negative aura."

"Sure," I said. My bots couldn't really fly, at least, not individually. I could make them link together to make really thin sheets and flap like microscopic butterflies, which could easily catch on air currents and keep them afloat. I let a bunch of these sheets from the gaps between the hard armour plating. It looked like his body was on fire and smoke was leaking out from underneath.

"It's perfect," Lisa said. "As soon as he gets into a fight, everyone will figure out he's got some kind of dissolving and re-forming ability. So that should be his primary power. Probably counts as Breaker 3 or 4. Brute is secondary, depending on how strong your robots are, and maybe a low Stranger as a third. Don't let anyone think he's a Tinker. He's a Breaker."

"Got it." I would have to spend a few days to make enough robots to complete his form. Four hundred pounds of robots just for the main body, and adding in the armour, broadswords, cape, and aura… I was probably looking at eight hundred to a thousand pounds of bots in total. I was just imagining how it would move.

The "aura" was a bit of an issue. The body would need to constantly "leak" bots to produce the aura, which could be good or bad. Spreading bots around the battlefield was something I had intended to do anyway, but it also meant if he was doing it for too long he would end up an empty shell.

"So, we need a name for Mr. Tall, Dark, and Handsome. Do you have anything in mind yet? I suggest you keep it simple, since he can't talk much anyway."

I thought about it for a while. Names like Demonlord or Shadow Knight and things like that were the first things to run through my head. While they seemed fitting for the evil-looking armour, I really didn't want a name that sounded too evil, too long, or too cheesy. I suppose something edgy couldn't be avoided for an all-black cape with a hundred feet of sharp edges all over his body. Picking names was hard. I had enough trouble coming up with Eunoia.

"What do you think of when you look at him?" Lisa asked after watching me struggle.

"How many parts of him there are to control," I answered dryly.

"Come on. Be serious."

The dark body, the helmet that completely hid his face, the cloud of shadow surrounding him… well, it certainly made people dread his presence. But things like Dread Lord felt cheesy. His lack of face and the dark helmet made any attempts at trying to identifying him feel like staring into an abyss.

"A...byss…?" I tried.

Lisa crossed her arms. "Yeah. It works pretty well. Goes with the colour scheme, the smoky aura, the way he can just disappear like a ghost. You know what, I'd recommend Abyssal. I think Abyss is already taken somewhere by a villain in Nevada, and another one in Australia."

Eunoia and Abyssal. My two new identities. I had lot of long days of construction ahead of me. Shorter if I could get the materials. "Lisa, any ideas on how I could move large amounts of raw material here without drawing attention? The more I have, the faster I can have him ready." And the faster I can help you with Coil, she could obviously figure out I meant.

"Sewer. Use your bots, break up your purchases, ferry them through the sewers like ants. There's a manhole cover just a few feet out that way," she said. "Move them at night, if you can. Also, I'd suggest you clean out a small section of the sewers near the hospital, since you'll be spending so much time there anyway. You want to set up a few drop off points? I'm willing to buy some supplies for you."

I smacked my head. Of course. Why hadn't I thought of that? Sure, I was only visiting the hospital once every other day for now, but once I was approved to work, I'd be there every day. The low-quality bots I spread on the street weren't good enough to build, but they were good enough for cleaning, ferrying materials, and preparing miniature fabrication rooms in the sewers.

People might object to being injected with bots I manufactured in the sewers. But... I'd clean them thoroughly before I used them! What they didn't know wouldn't hurt them.

I'd still keep this little storehouse though, maybe as a backup workshop or storage. At least, until it got found out. It was the only one big enough to crawl inside if I needed to hide, and I was NOT climbing into the sewers myself. No matter how well my bots could clean the area. Yuck.

"Thanks for the help, Lisa. You're not still doing any major crimes, right? You know I'd have to stop you if I'm doing the hero thing..."

"The boss is having us do little jobs, mostly against the Merchants and ABB. The bank job was... different. I promise, all the plans I make will be with zero casualties if things go right, so don't hurt us too badly? Partial truce?" she asked hopefully.

"As long as you behave, I guess. Nobody gets hurt," I told her.

Lisa's eyes flickered over to Abyssal's looming figure and she nodded eagerly. "So, when's your official debut, anyway?"

"Sunday. Lady Photon talked about some kind of big formal party at the art gallery or something. She's arranging everything, I just have to show up."

Lisa lost her voice for a second as she blinked at me a few times. "Um. Well, then. Best of luck Sunday. I gotta go, promise I'll keep my end of the truce!" she said quickly while waving goodbye. I could only guess what was going through her head when she said that.