Spark

Mom and I had talked a lot, but in the end, it mostly came down to sending a list off to Debra, who began plugging away at clearing away some possible new hires. We also put out some feelers, reaching out to some people at the BBVA to look for some people who may be interested in working for us.

Despite everything, the fact that I had managed to deal with those thugs so easily had reassured mom a little bit, so things eventually calmed down.

Once dinner rolled around, I looked around the table, "So… I've built up enough charges to work on some powers for you guys.

They looked at me, and mom spoke up, "What kind of powers?"

"Brute powers, or at least something so that if you get attacked by one of the gangs, then you won't be hurt." I considered, "I could make all sorts of powers, but after yesterday, I'm worried that people are going to start going after you guys."

Jenny pouted, "Didn't you do like all kinds of things so that no-one could tell who Halcyon was?"

I shrugged, "Yeah, but the gangs are everywhere. And I probably pissed off the Empire yesterday. If they find out who I am somehow, then they might go after you. I don't want either of you to get hurt because of something I did."

She shook her head, "I mean, you told us about your bio-tinker powers. Couldn't you use that to give us brute powers and give us better powers instead?"

I sighed, "Would you let me do that?"

"I say you do both." Mom jumped in, "Jenny, for now, at least, let's just make sure you won't get hurt."

I let the thought spin in my head a little, "Doing both might be better. There's only so much I can do while keeping the changes under the radar. Tougher skin, stronger bones, maybe some better healing. Stuff like that. I can't change things too much or people will know that you are enhanced."

She looked at me, "What could you do?"

"Umm…" I consulted my mental database, filtering between different options, "Well, I can make it so that it's really hard for anyone to cut you or stab you or anything like that, and so that gunshots won't break your skin. I could make you a bit stronger and faster, um.. I can make you resistant to a lot of drugs, or at least the ones I can find online, so that might be good. Umm.. not much more outside of that. Not without changing how you look too much."

"What if you changed how we looked a bit?" Jenny asked, "I wouldn't mind being more buff."

I shrugged, "I could make you stronger and faster, maybe disguise some of the side effects of tougher armour on a tan or something, maybe make it so that you don't need glasses anymore. I'll have to work out all the changes first. I was planning some of these for my Halcyon body, but I haven't tried it out yet."

Mom nodded, "That sounds good. We can discuss what changes would be okay later, but what sort of power were you looking at?"

"So, I was mainly looking at New Wave's powers. I managed to get the other half of New Wave earlier today when they went on a patrol, so I got to see Laserdream, Shielder, Lady Photon and Manpower. Their powers gave me a lot of ideas for how to make some better powers. If you let me modify your bodies, I think I can modify Manpower's brute ability to work way better with the amour-skin. Plus, Glory Girl has the best forcefield out of New Wave, and he recharge time isn't as bad as I thought it might be. I don't think I have enough charge to make all the powers just yet - I've got almost thirty five right now, I'm reserving eight for an emergency and I need two to make the power that would let me give you the powers."

"So that leaves twenty five - how much is it for one full power set?"

"Uuuhhh, I need to make a power source, and a reserve, I can probably skimp on the source a bit since I doubt you guys are going to get into fights all that often. A level two reserve on its own should let you handle most cases, but I also don't want to make a level one reserve because it's going to be pretty limited in the long term. Especially if I'm going to recycle these and give them to others when I can make better ones for you. The Brute part of Manpower's powerset is not too bad, it's a level three power if I'm building on some biotinkering, so that's four. Glory Girl's shield is where it gets a little more expensive. It's an active power, so I'll need to spend a charge on a sensor, and then it's a level three power since I'm already making the reserve separately. Then I'd need… a charge probably? To link the powers together and make it easy for you to control. That's fourteen charges. For a level two generator."

"You would need, what? Another two charges to make sure we had enough then?" Jenny mentioned, "And does that mean we get super strength?"

I considered it. Technically, there wasn't anything stopping me from tweaking Manpower or Glory Girl's defensive powers so that they were closer to the original set, so that they allowed some degree of super-strength along with the protection, and some degree of super strength would mean that they could get out of some dangerous situations.

"It depends? It'll probably make it so that your brute defences or your shield is weaker, or maybe off when you use your super-strength, but it should be possible."

"What about flying?"

"Pretty much the same deal. Glory Girl's super-strength and flying operate on roughly the same principle, at least the way I understand it, so I can do both."

Jenny looked pleadingly at mom, "Come on! It's flying! Don't you want to fly too?"

"And where exactly would I be flying? I work from home, I can drive to the supermarket, and flying around for fun is just going to make it easier for someone to find and attack you."

"But it's flying!"

"Umm… we could go for a trip somewhere and go flying together. If all of us were there, we probably wouldn't be in that much danger."

"Yes, but is Jenny going to wait until then to use that part of her power?"

"That's true…"

"Mom come on! I'm going to be able to fly, I'll have two brute powers and I'll be super-strong! I'll be fine!"

"I know you Jenny, you're going to get in trouble as soon as you can. Probably run out and start punching criminals or something."

"Mooom!"

"Don't mom me young lady, James is doing this so that you won't get hurt, not so that you can just go out and get hurt anyways."

"But James is doing it!"

"Hey don't bring me into this!"

"James and I had a talk about that, and he's been doing what he's doing as safely as is reasonable. Plus he's getting guards at his clinic where people can find him. And, he's keeping emergency charges on stand-by. You don't have that."

I very carefully kept my mouth shut as mom and Jenny argue with each other. I spent the time thinking of a solution.

"Well, since I'm going to need to make a power to make sure you can control your powers, I'm fairly certain that I can set limiters in it that I can change later. I'll setup your powers so that you can fly or have super strength, but we can lock tat for later. Plus, I think you're probably going to need some time to get used to the strength and other buffs from the biotinkering first, and I can't really turn those on and off like I can for the powers."

Mom paused, "How long would it take?"

"Anywhere from a couple of hours to a couple of days? I'll try and smooth things over, make sure you are getting the right sensory feedback, but I don't want to mess with your brain and I don't know how good of a job I can do with it, especially since this is going to be my first time. The big thing will be trying to get you fully used to your new speed. With how strong you will be, you are going to be able to run really fast. Probably not highway speeds, but you could probably keep up with cars otherwise, and you are going to be able to jump really well too."

"Really? And that isn't even the powers? Why haven't you done this to yourself yet?"

"I'm a bit more worried about changing myself like that than I am changing other people. If I have any issues with the mods, it might interfere with me healing myself, but I shouldn't have any issues reverting the changes in other people."

Mom considered that, "So, if you give it to me first, we should be able to tell if there are any issues, then we can give it to Jenny over the weekend so that we can give her time to get used to it.

"We should probably get the powers in at the same time. Adapting to both is already going to be faster than adapting to one after the other."

Jenny looked at mom irritated, "The weekend! Really?"

"It's just two more days, Jenny. I want to make sure this is safe, plus, since you are going to need to go to school anyways, you can't be powered up until the weekend anyways."

"I guess"

I nodded, "So, if we are doing this, I need to know what sorts of changes would be okay with you. I can get you about double strength if we go with visible musculature, similar improvements to your armour-skin if I limit it to making it look like you have a tan… What else?"

"You said something about our eyes and contacts?"

"Yeah, if we say you got contacts, then I can fix your eyes so that you don't need to worry about loosing your glasses, or maybe we can get you some plain lenses so that it still seems like you need glasses. I think I might be able to Tinker the changes myself if we need to."

Jenny looked up, "how are we going to explain us getting a tan?"

We paused.

"That's a good point. How do we explain getting a tan?"

Jenny smiled, "Well Mom, you can get deals on flights right? Like we do for our summer vacations? Can't we take a trip down to Florida so that we can escape the cold and so that we can say that we took a trip out of town to explain the tan? It would be awesome wouldn't it?"

"I'm going to have to veto that. I have healing sessions booked out this weekend. I could drop patrols and maybe the walk-ins, but I've got previous commitments."

"On Monday too?"

"No, I forgot about MLK day, actually, so I don't have any sessions then."

"Then we can go Sunday night and come back on Monday, right?" She asked.

Mom sighed, "It's on really short notice, and can't you just say you went to the tanning salon on 5th and Sanchez? Or got a spray tan?"

"But that would be so lame."

"Lame or not, arranging those trips takes time, even if I do have platinum status on American. A trip with five days' notice would be hard to set up. We can go to Florida during the President's day weekend."

"Fine."

"Going to the tanning salon might be a good idea anyways. I have some idea of what a natural tan looks like from the internet and that kind of thing, but I don't know what a natural tan will look like on you. I can disguise the armouring process as better-than expected tanning results if I see how your tans develop from the salon. Some of the color is going to be from the armour, but I'm also going to be including the other pigments to get the color right, and I need to know what to color match it to. You might even want to go to a few different salons, I'll check over your tans to make sure you aren't burning or anything."

Mom and Jenny nodded, "That makes sense…"

"We could even use the trip to Florida next month as an excuse. Say that you weren't expecting your tan to get quite this dark so quickly, but you decided to get it done so that you coud get everything ready."

"Fine."

"Okay, so we have a tan and your eyes to explain, musculature would just need you to wear some more covering clothing, but your winter wear should hide most of it for the month or so that it's going to take to explain the muscle tone. Anything else that's okay?"

Jenny blushed, "Well, um.. Could you make it so that my… my boobs are bigger?"

I stared at her as all of my lanes hit a wall… "I mean, I could. I don't see a practical reason to do that, but I could make it so that your breasts are bigger."

"Not like that. Just. You know. Like... If I'm already going to be changing my body, I want to make it so that I look good too."

Mom raised an eyebrow, "No, I can't really fault you for that. Honestly, I'm kind of tempted to look a little younger too."

You know I never thought of that, "I can do that I guess… it's not going tobe any harder than the changes to your body will be." I'll probably just make her actually younger. No reason to leave her old. I'm not going to talk about that out loud though.

"You could be doing plastic surgery like this can't you?"

I shook my head, "I don't know. I mean, It's not an Unique Service, so I can't include it in the stuff my clinic does."

"I mean, you are healing stuff like obeisity?"

I shoo my head, "No, I'm doing more than that, tuning up people's metabolisms, adjusting their insulin, and clearing out dangerous fat deposits. A lo of that isn't possible wiht modern science."

"Yeah, but it's not like you are doing the normal plastic surgery stuff. You're going to make it so that their bodies are actually the way they want them to be."

I nod, "I'll have to have Layton check the legality of that. If I'm lucky, it will fall under my current medical services and we cna fgure out better pricing for everything as we go."

"What about the other stuff?"

"I'm probably not going to sell that - its technically tinker-tech. I'll give it to my teammates, and maybe I'll give it to my security guards, whoever I'm paying to make sure I'm not dealing with anyone trying to kill me. There's actually a suprising amount of wiggle-room for 'charitable' modifications, so if I offer it to them and they accept, and no money is involved, then I can get away with a lot."

We took a little longer to work out what the changes would be. Mom wanted to look a bit younger, to undo some of the damage done to her by stress over the last few years and to have straighter hair. Jenny wanted bigger boobs, the straighter hair, and whe wanted to make sure she never got any pimples.

By the time we had hashed everything out, I actually had enough charges to put mom's powers together while still having enough left over for Jenny. We talked a little more about the power-granting power as well.

So, the next day, after mom had gotten done with a few tanning sessions, I got to work.

The first two parts of her power were fairly straight-forward. I made a level two generator and a level two reserve, to set up the foundations of her power. As it was, she would actually go from empty to full in under a minute, which means that she could probably get away with using her powers at peak capacity more often, which was probably for the better. The reserve itself was also pretty decent, almost on part with Glory Girl's reserve. Perhaps a little smaller, but not by enough to significantly impact how powerful her shield should be. Her power is actually really good about that.

The next was Manpower's ability. I had only just begun to implement mom's armour skin, but enough was there for me to make sure that the electromagnetic reinforcement he had meshed well with the complex network of carbon nano-structures that now filled the lower parts of her skin. The armour was designed not to show up on basic security scanners like the ones on airports, but it was still made of proteins and carbohydrates, with all their electrochemical activity.

I considered how I would alter the power to make use of the armour specifically, using it as a much more effective means of interacting with sources of damage, countering even the heat caused by laser weapons, using the armour to reactively refrigerate the surroundings. As it was, despite being technically weaker than manpower's ability, being only a level two charge, it woud probably blow his durability out of the water.

Actually, with the way I was using the armour as a force-vector, I could probably get away with much more effective force transmission, heling with movement and leverage. I could make it so that she could even fly like this. Not super well, but as my other lanes started to get her muscles replaced with the new super-human strength, I took another moment to re-tweak the power, causing it to work with the specific new musculature. Her flight didn't need ot be fast, it just needed to let her maneuver when launching herself into the air with her super-strength and hyper-fast muscles.I broke up the power into few level one powers, looking to optimise things, and tried a few combinations, eventually settling on four charges spread across a few different powers to make sure she would be able to move as effectively as possible.

Glory Girl's shield was a doozy. It was a fairly complicated thing, with it's own reserve, to make sure it didn't shut down the other defenses while it activated, a Sensor, an Effector - a level two charge that Glory Girl's power used to work that I didn't really understand, but given that her version of it was different from the rest of her family and her shield was better made me think that was important somehow, so I had to just kind of copy that part of her power - and a targeting power.

I was tempted to skimp a bit and give mom my old Reserve now that I wasn't using it, but I wanted to keep it, it was one of my first powers after all. That, and I figured that a level two reserve was a better option. It actually meant that this version of Sheild… no that isn't the riht word had more power to throw at a problem than Glory Girl's did. Well, sort of. Glory Girl's larger reserve was bigger than mom's general reserve, but the reserve that directly fed into their powers - mom's was bigger.

Plus mom's reserve recharged faster than Glory Girl's.

The sensor would be pulling multiple duty, feeding into the electromagnetic Reinforcement power to make sure that worked effectively as well. I actually managed to bump up the strength of the protection system.

Actually, on second thought, I'll revise that reserve setup to a nice round level three instead of having two level twos. I can set up limited flow rates in 'software'

Then came the last major part of the power, the 'wrapper'. The wrapper worked to effectively package all the other powers into a usable whole, to work together naturally without needing my ability to directly manipulate the powers, merging the feedback of the different abilities into a coherent whole and adapting to mom's use of the power to let her develop it past the first steps.

I checked everything, and then got to work spending the fifteen charges it would take. Just shy of a full fifth level charge, but far more powerful than any normal fifth level charge would permit.

Then I got to work on my power granter.