5.2

5.2

You weren't sure which, if any, of the papers had the important information on it. You couldn't tell what was well researched from your internet sleuthing and what was utter madness, and you weren't even sure how to start figuring it out without just destroying your phone. So you made the reasonable choice; picking up one of the sheets of paper on the top, you resolved to take it to Armsmaster the next day and find out what he thought. Maybe he could point you in the right direction, if you were extremely polite; the man was famous not only for his tinkering, but for his actual knowledge of the sciences too, something most tinkers never bothered with.

The rest of the sheets of paper were stacked up and placed to the side, waiting for you to go through them and find out whether they were all complete nonsense or whether there was anything to them; maybe if these ones seemed at least semi-legitimate, you could take another look at the rest of the options you had. For now, the sheet labelled 'screenless think-link' was going to be the priority, as absurd as the phrase sounded.

You had no real clue how getting your phone to pass you relevant information through thought was supposed to work, much less how to get your own thoughts to it, but you knew some sort of similar thing must have been possible, since it was how your helmet's LEDs worked. Figuring out some kind of reversal must have been possible, somehow.

Setting it aside as a job for the next day, you looked out of the window again. It was getting time for dinner, so you were going to eat with Dad, but it was probably too early for sleep – especially when you had spent the morning vegetating so thoroughly.

Instead, your thoughts cast over the rest of your day. Aegis had already passed on combat ideas, so you'd take a look at on Monday too, at least the start of it, and until you had the opportunity to speak with someone from the PRT about Endbringers you weren't going to investigate that any further.

Amy was the obvious factor.

Chances she's gone home yet?

0%

Chances that she'll get in trouble if she doesn't get back soon?

81%

You'd figured as much. Amy was a grumpy individual at the best of times, with an attitude that could be best described as exuding the same welcoming warmth as a wasp's sting, but whatever the specifics of Gallant's discoveries were you knew that her temper would have been supercharged. If she'd thrown things at him and Vicky, well, you wouldn't have been surprised.

With the sun declining in the sky, however, you weren't sure how wise it was for her to stay out alone. Healing was important, vital in fact, but it wasn't really much for self-defence and you would have hated to find out that Amy had been mugged or something while her anger and sorrow had her distracted; even worse if that same anger had caused her to lash out and make the criminal get violent.

She may have been a pain in the rear end, but you weren't eager for her to get hurt.

The plan was simple then. She'd had a few hours to cool off; you were going to find her, perhaps with a coffee if you passed by anywhere relevant, and give her the chance to talk things through long enough for her to cool off and go home. If she needed someone to punch, you could take it.

Taking off into the sky, costume donned once again – you had promised yourself you wouldn't that day, but it was rapidly becoming that night and wasn't that a fruitful loophole? - you thought on how best to track her down.

Simply scanning was a bad idea. It would take far too long and be so mind-numbing that, even if you did spot her from above in the dark somehow, you might miss her anyway.

The obvious solution was to narrow down by location using your thinker power, but that had its own set of risks. Asking too broadly might help, but it would require a number of questions to hone in and you might end up getting too close to your limit before the search had become granular enough. By comparison, starting too granular was almost certain to fail instantly; you could name a hundred discrete locations in Brockton Bay that someone might go and your thinker power would be burned through before you got through a dozen of them.

Instead, you chose the altogether less exciting but perhaps more practical method, beloved by any number of film detectives: you asked yourself, if you were a moody teenager trying to get some air, where would you go?

It was using that logic that you found yourself flying towards the Boardwalk, the rougher end closest to the Docks that teenagers used regularly to escape parents, deal small quantities of relatively mundane drugs, drink, and generally act like the nuisances that teenagers were. In your hand was a small cardboard drinks holder with a pair of steaming cups lodged inside.

And there she was; leaning up against a railing, overseeing the waterfront, with hair that looked as though it had not seen any sort of controlling influence in days and the kind of waxy texture on her skin that spoke of worry and anxiety, combined with the aftershocks of rage and frustration.

You landed by her side, but with almost twenty feet of distance between the two of you.

Handling angry or upset teenagers wasn't a field in which you had a vast quantity of experience; the only real example of it you had was dealing with yourself – who, you recognised, had not always gone about things in the most effective of ways – and Rachel who, you recognised even more deeply, was not exactly the same sort of person as Amy was. Not exactly the same sort of person anyone else was at all, to be accurate.

So, you abdicated responsibility. She would take when she talked. You walked up to her at a slow pace, making your presence known through intentionally audible footsteps and a generally open demeanour.

Bedraggled, she looked in your direction and then looked away again; the sea gleamed, steel waters under gold as the sun bled into the horizon.

When you stood next to her, you held out the coffee. She looked at you from the corner of her eye, before wordlessly grabbing one of them and popping the plastic lid from the cardboard cup and taking an inhale of the steam. Her order, black coffee with vanilla, was still the kind of thing you found personally rather strange but if there was ever a time not to comment on it, that was then. And so you kept your mouth shut, and allowed her to take a quiet sip of the stuff and then continue her ocean-sight in silence.

The moment stretched on for a time you felt no need to identify. The breeze was cool, but warming as April got underway and spring air started to filter into the atmosphere, and the ocean was relatively calm. Clouds marauded across the painted sky and you were content to watch them, ignoring Amy's ongoing sulk and taking the time to think through the events of the day for yourself. If she wanted to wait you out until you spoke, Amy was going to be waiting a long time.

And if that made her dislike you – or even if she disliked you already, for all you knew, Gallant had told her that you had suggested the meetup – that was no issue either. You got along well enough with Amy, but you weren't best friends. She didn't have to like you. She just had to stop being mad at Vicky.

After a little while, the atmosphere faded from one of restrained animosity to one of solemn resignation, and you got the feeling that she was close to speaking. You weren't wrong.

'Did Vicky send you?'

'No. She told me you left, and I wanted to make sure you were safe.'

Things went quiet again for a moment, and you could tell that she was trying to figure out what to say next. She had a kind of tense expression on her face, what little of it you could see from the angle you were stood at, and there was no sense of resolution to her posture.

'You think that'll make her grateful or something? Newsflash, she doesn't care about me that much. Obviously.'

'Don't be an idiot.'

Her glare was intense, but you'd seen worse; every day at Winslow and half of the days in the mirror.

'She cares about you a lot, or she wouldn't have bothered talking to you about stuff in the first place. The entire reason she wanted to talk to you was to help you out, with whatever's going on.'

'You don't know what you're talking about.'

'Nope. I don't have to, though.' You turned your body so that you were facing her, and leaned up against the railing that overlooked the sea. Still taller than her, you slumped a little so that you were closer to eye level. 'Look, I don't presume to talk to you about siblings. I don't have any, I have no idea how that whole thing works. But I do have family.'

Shoulders set, you were prepared to have her dismiss you, but she didn't. You ploughed on, determined to have your say.

'My Mom died over a year ago. Not going to talk about that too much, it's not that important, but it happened. What matters is that it messed my Dad up a lot and we barely spoke until a few months ago. He was checked out. Walking around like a zombie, and I wasn't much better for a bunch of reasons. We lost a year of our relationship just because we wouldn't talk things through, and we were determined to keep our own feelings to ourselves. We could have helped each other, but we didn't because he didn't know how to deal with his emotions and I had too much pride to try and talk to him about my problems. Things are better now, but that's a year we're not getting back, and it only got fixed because I triggered.'

Her eyes had widened, and you weren't sure why you were telling her all of it. Vicky knew, of course, so it wasn't as if you'd never spoken of these things in the past, but Amy was hardly a close confidant.

'Point is, you talk when you care and you want to fix things. She's worried about you, Gallant too, and they're worried about you. So they decided to talk. If they didn't care they'd have just kept quiet and let you drive yourself nuts. You don't get to decide that they don't care, that's up to them.'

She didn't speak immediately, instead averting her gaze and looking at her coffee. A thin line of it had trailed down the side of the cup, staining it, from where she had taken her first sips and you wondered how she wasn't burning her hands. There was still steam coming off it, and no cardboard protector.

'I'm sorry about your Mom.'

It was your turn to look surprised.

'It's okay. It's not like it was your fault.'

'No I mean, I'm sorry about your Mom but this isn't that kind of problem. We can't talk it out. There's some stuff you can't share.'

'Have you tried?'

'No, but it's complicated.'

'Vicky's a smart girl. Look, I'm not saying you need to go to her and spill your guts. She probably didn't even ask you to tell her everything, did she?'

Amy shook her head, a small, fragile movement.

'She just said I should talk to someone.'

Somehow, you doubted that was all that was said, nor did you think Vicky would have addressed it quite so bluntly, but you could imagine that it was the spirit of the entire conversation and so you didn't try to push back on it.

'So why don't you?'

'Because, nobody would understand. It's nobody else's business anyway. I'm allowed secrets, and problems.'

You weren't sure who she was trying to convince.

'You can't say that nobody else would understand if you haven't tried. Besides, you're proof that what people say can't be done, can. We both are. We're parahumans. Impossible is what we do. There's a guy there, Gallant, whose entire thing is understanding emotions and feelings; why not talk to him? I know he wouldn't mind. And if you can't talk to him, why not try and speak to a professional? Maybe no ordinary person would understand, maybe I wouldn't, or Vicky, but they might. They're trained for it.'

'It's different.'

'Don't be an idiot.'

'Stop calling me an idiot.'

'I'm not, I'm warning you to stop going in that direction. Talk to someone. Try it. Gallant, a psychologist, hell, just talk to yourself in the mirror at first. Being honest with yourself, plain and simple. Whatever is upsetting you, getting you in a state like this, isn't good for anyone. You have to help yourself.'

She took a halting breath, but despite your fears, she didn't start crying. You felt as though most of the fight she must have had in her earlier on, when she had stormed out of the Dallon household, must have faded in time and you had been fortunate enough to catch her once the depression had set in; you knew the feeling. Anger always came first and burned hot as thermite, but it never lasted long, and you got empty shortly after.

'Now,' you started again after a moment. 'Do you need a lift home, or would you prefer to walk?'

'I'll walk. It's not that far.'

'You'll be needing this, then,' you said, holding out the second cup. There was no doubt that it would be cool, and perhaps that much caffeine wasn't for the best at such a time of the night, but you doubted that she particularly cared at that point in time and if she didn't, you couldn't bring yourself to either. A long night was the least of anyone's worries.

Sunday, 3rd April

After finishing talking to Amy and messaging Vicky that she was on her way back – tentatively locking in your future paired patrol date for Tuesday – you had gone back home and promptly passed out in bed. While you hadn't been up to much physically, the confluence of an emotional talk with your Dad about Mom and then an emotional talk with Amy about Vicky meant that your capacity to have emotional talks with anyone about anything was drained for perhaps the rest of your life.

Consequently, when you headed into the PRT you were eager to speak to Armsmaster. While he wasn't as cold as he had originally appeared when you met him, or as he had acted over the course of the Coil saga, the reality was that the man truly didn't see any need to make things personal most of the time and that was valuable to you.

Heading straight to his office, you knocked on the door and were pleased to see a rapid entry. He was at this desk, typing away at frankly ludicrous speeds, and took a few moments before turning to address you.

'Penumbra, good news,' he opened, voice implying that it was actually entirely normal news. 'Dragon has opened up some time in her schedule and should be calling you within the next day or two; she's open to conversation about the Birdcage, as well as anything else that might be on your mind.'

'That's fantastic, sir. I'm happy that she managed to find space so quickly, she must be extremely busy.'

'Perhaps the busiest person you will ever meet. How she manages as much as she does, I'll never know. Anyway, you wanted to see me?'

'Yes sir,' you said, placing a small bundle of papers on to his desk, adjacent his keyboard. 'I was thinking about trying some electronics work, kind of efficiency based, I suppose, and I thought that you might be the person to ask for some advice. I'm not really that well versed in this kind of thing, and since you're qualified you might know where to start.'

Cajoling the loose papers into a neat, tightly edged stack, he scooped them up and began taking a look at the first page. Then, in silence, he peeled it back and looked at the second; the third followed, and then – strangely – the fifth, before he returned to the fourth.

'Interesting. When did you come up with these?'

'Yesterday.'

'And when you came up with them, how did you go about it?'

You explained yourself; having started working on an idea purely for convenience, you had hit the internet in search of some kind of advice or source of information that you could start building your work on. You weren't sure exactly how long you were doing it, but when you finished you'd been covered in papers and from the looks of the sky it had been at least a couple of hours.

Once you finished the explanation, he spent another minute looking over the papers before placing them down and raising a hand to his beard.

'Well, unfortunately, there's very little I can do to help you.'

'It's that bad? I know I'm not a scientist but I thought you might be able to point me in the right direction.'

'Not that. Well, actually yes that, it's perfect nonsense, but it's a particular kind of nonsense that I'm very familiar with. You see, Penumbra, are you aware that almost nothing you've written makes actual scientific sense?'

Frankly, you weren't. You had assumed that much, just because you had so little faith in your own numerical abilities and scientific backdrop, but you assumed that the problems would be mostly in the numeracy rather than in pure conceptual failure. You shook your head to indicate as much.

'I see. It doesn't, just to be clear. Almost complete gibberish from start to finish. However, it's precisely the sort of gibberish which, combined with your own predilection for power acquirement and the nature of your first experience writing it that draws me to a simple conclusion; I can't really help you because this is tinkertech, Penumbra.'

His tone was neutral, neither thrilled nor seemingly upset. It was as though he was telling you that you had a stain on your shirt, or that he liked your shoes.

You weren't sure how to take it. It was possible, or at least, you thought it was – you had gained a number of powers over the last few months after all, what was one more? Tinkering had seemed like something beyond your reach, however; it was a different sort of power that worked in a different way from all of the other powers you had gained. Gradual rather than immediate, cumulative rather than concrete, it didn't really seem to fit in the same box as everything else.

But if you trusted Armsmaster on anything, it was on recognising tinkering. The man was one of the greatest tinkers to have ever lived, and if it weren't for Dragon's frankly unfair reputation, would have been the greatest tinker in the world as far as you were aware.

If he said it was tinkering, you were going to take him at his word.

'I didn't know, sir.'

'I know,' he sighed. 'In any case, the only thing you can do as a tinker is try it. I would recommend using a spare phone for the experiment, and rather than attempting to install it into your helmet as you mention on page three, built it into a wire-frame first in order to test it. Should you rip your helmet apart and then find you've broken something, that would be a waste of materials.'

He spoke with the weight of experience, and you scribbled it down in your mind.

'Thank you. I'll make sure to keep you updated. Would it be alright if I asked you for some advice in the future? There's nobody who knows tinkering better.'

Straightening in his chair, he looked contemplative – or at least, as contemplative as someone could appear with his eyes hidden behind smoky glass.

'That shouldn't be a problem. I support Kid Win as best as I can, though our areas of expertise are quite different; should you need something and I can give it, just ask.'

'Thank you again.'

Almost ready to dismiss yourself, you remembered one final thing you had meant to bring up, and you supposed that while the air was already wrought with tension, you might as well allow another thing to float through it rather than ruining a more peaceful time later.

'Before I go, sir, I have another thing to tell you. I was asking myself some questions yesterday, since it was my day off, and I got to thinking about,' you lowered your tone, as though about to curse, 'the Endbringers. I was asking myself if anything I could do would be helpful, and apparently there's a small chance, maybe one in three, that I could be helpful in driving them away.'

He wasn't happy, and you knew why. He'd fought in Endbringer battles before, almost certainly had lost friends or colleagues, and nobody liked being reminded of the things. You couldn't blame him, and you didn't, but it didn't make the thunderous look on his face any less intimidating.

'And you can just ask questions about Endbringers?'

That was not the question you were expecting.

'I think so? I didn't ask many, but I got answers.'

'You realise this is atypical?'

'I do not realise that, no. Not until now.'

'In general, thinkers are unable to model the behaviour or actions of Endbringers.'

'I didn't try and model behaviour, just whether or not I could be helpful in driving them off. That's more like a result than a behaviour, right?'

'Maybe. May I ask a few questions to see if we can see where your limits lie?'

You consented, and were given a small list of questions that seemed to compound on each other. Yes, you could tell him with a high degree of certainty that the next attack was probably going to be in the Americas, but not precisely where. You could tell him that it was unlikely the next target had already been picked. You couldn't say whether it would be Behemoth or Leviathan striking next, or give details on their intentions, or on whether or not they could be killed.

In essence, Armsmaster determined, you could ask the sort of questions that you would find out anyway, by physical encounters. You'd know eventually which area of the world the attack would be in because you would be likely to hear about it. You could know if you could drive them away because you would find out. You couldn't know where, because it potentially had yet to be decided by whichever mechanism the things used to make their choice, and you couldn't give information that you would have no special means to ever learn; there was a barrier in your thinking that you had yet to encounter prior, and it was unsettling to consider.

Armsmaster had filled out a form as you spoke, before placing it in his outbound tray to be sent off for report; while your thinking was not fully effective on the Endbringers, the fact that it did anything at all was somewhat unique, and it was important – at least according to the tinker himself – that everyone be made aware of it.

Monday, 4th April

After speaking to Armsmaster, you had returned home to think. You understood that it may have been useful, but you weren't entirely sure how much you liked being one of the few people whose thinker powers were of any use against the Endbringers. It was yet another form of responsibility you felt; another thing you had to do in order to do the right thing, and the number of those obligations was growing fast enough to outpace even your own prodigious power acquisition process.

Taking the afternoon off had helped, but it hadn't fully erased every ounce of concern you had. Until they called on you for more questions, though, there wasn't much for it – as soon as you'd confessed to the ability, you had to presume they were going to make use of it at some point. It would be negligent not to, whether you liked it or not.

The next morning, then you were surprised to find no messages on your phone and no summons when you entered the PRT building. You had spoken to the secretary about the combat instructionals that Aegis had mentioned, after reading through the documentation he sent and concluding it to be some combination of judo, extremely basic jiu-jitsu, and lethwei inspired striking – apparently a form of Burmese traditional martial arts that looked a little like muay thai but with the addition of headbutts.

Pleasant.

The next class was scheduled to be held on the sixth, and thus you had a handful of days left before that – and the fifth was already scheduled for patrol with Vicky. With the plan to visit Mom on the ninth and your first aid training set for the eight, your remaining time in Brockton Bay was quickly becoming booked solid.

Not that you were complaining; after the chaos of ending the Empire, at least in the form it had been taking, you had gotten used to action and even just two days of relative inactivity over the weekend had left you itching to get back on your feet and out on the street.

As you made your way up towards the Wards' room, rotating those thoughts within your head, you jumped. Phone ringing in your belt, you quickly pulled it out and looked at the screen in surprise; an unknown number.

Sceptical, you answered.

'Hello?'

'Hello Penumbra, this is Dragon. I'm told you have some questions for me?'

You weren't sure how you managed to avoid having a heart attack, but you did; perhaps your Brute power had something to do with it.

Speaking to Dragon as part of a convoy leading Hookwolf to the Birdcage had been bad enough. You'd been nervous, awe-inspired by the experience; having her call you on your personal number, even if you had expected it, was another issue entirely. Your tongue had gone dry.

What could you say that didn't make you sound like an idiot?

Actions Remaining:

- Do First Aid training with the PRT on April 8th

- Go Visit Mom on April 9th

- Look up sign language online

- Check in with Gallant about Amy

- Look into learning how to properly throw projectiles

- Attend combat training on the 6th

- Patrol ABB territory with Vicky on the 5th

- After everything has settled, check on Theo and Aster

- Speak to Theo and find out what he wants

Continued bashing through some actions here; lots still to come, and you can see that out schedule is starting to become packed. Still lots to get through, so while suggesting more actions is perfectly good - and we do have room for a few more before the actions list gets impossible to manage (remember, it's not as bad as it looks because several of these things are Scheduled and therefore not rushed into the time in each update) - I would also like to ask what questions you think we should ask Dragon? We have her time: how do we use it?