Ignition

I launched my self out of the way of the boat as it flew through the air, careening towards me, My Reserve was large enough to take the hit, but it probably wouldn't take many to wear me down.

I was letting Scanner play over him as I tried to get a sense of what to do. I matched it up with what I knew of his power. He had a core in there somewhere, from where branching tendrils reached out to lift the scrap and detritus around him.

His overall strength relied on his surface area, but I could tell that his changer state only allowed so many tentacles I just didn't know how to take him down without doing too much bodily harm.

I grunted as I was forced to let something smaller hit my armour to conserve energy as i threw myself out of the way of another smaller boat.

I wasn't even sure if his changer form needed to breathe, or if it was earthlike enough to be effected by the sort of paralytics or toxins it had. I threw the idea at my Tinker power, looking for a solution, even as I batted away other projectiles.

One thread was yelling for me to ignore that and just blast the guy until he was down, but my other threads held that part of me back. I had a reputation, and it wouldn't do to act out like that.

Suddenly as he flung something at me, it flickered. I heard it plop out into the water as if never thrown.

Caught by surprise, I barely brought up a shield in time to deflect the other projectiles. My reserves were stating to take a hit. The fight was going to quickly and I was forced to go past my regeneration too often. It still wasn't much, but it was starting to go down. Between my flight and my barriers I was on a limit.

I tried to figure out if damage would carry over between his changer form and his base one. I could blast some tendrils off and see if I could detect anything in his power.

Mind made up, I aimed the coil again, as a prop - no use letting people know about the full range of my powers just yet - and fired off a burst of laser light. Several tendrils burned off, dropping the trash they were holding, but I could also see the changer state regenerating.

Did he have a limit on the number of tendrils he had or something? Or more likely an overall volume. I grimaced, as I let my mind play out over the mesh of flesh within the other cape. At least I had more information now. Plus, Mush was the first regenerator I had ever seen. I could see how his powers had a reserve of flesh that fed his regeneration, flowing in quickly to replace the cells he had lost, basically printing new organs in a rough mimicry of healing as they took shape.

I could probably implement something similar, though I don't know to what extent.

But as we fought, we were joined in combat by other capes. A strange creature flew in, clawing at the merchant, flying off with trash even as I saw trash that was part of his limbs teleport short distances and fall off of him.

Light bloomed over the graveyard, and I saw a girl, dressed in a crude costume holding up a miniature sun. Fire flowed out of her coalscing into the sphere as it grew.

I mentally grimaced and prepared to save the Merchant's life if I needed to, but thankfully she wasn't as new to this as I thought she might be. Even as the merchant turned towards her, she kept the sphere close, moving it only to vaporise the trash thrown at her as her sun grew.

Soon, even at my distance, I could feel the heat, and the merchant was in worse straits, at his size he was strong but slow, and was forced to ditch more of the trash as he tried to get away from the heat. Even as the metal making up his form began to heat, I saw the cape pull away her sun, shrinking it, but keeping it large enough to ward away any damage as the Merchant tried to scramble away, a smaller pile of trash throwing itself onto one of the wrecks and returning to human form.

I lined up and stunned him, making use with my powers that he stayed down.

In the distance I heard a helicopter flying out, even as I called the PRT to know that the last Merchant had been taken down. I floated over to the cape, and bowed my head, "Thank you for that, I didn't think I'd be able to take him down safely. Halcyon, nice to mee you."

She smiled, "I'm err… I'm Sundancer!" she introduced herself, "I'm a member of the travellers. We wanted to meet you Halcyon."

She pointed off in the distance to the shore, where I could see a few people gathering together, "The rest of my team is over there, do you ming giving me a ride?"

I nodded, taking a moment to fly over to the Merchant and grab him, before picking up Sundancer and carrying her to the beach.

I touched down, taking a moment to inform the PRT of the updated pickup location, through my integrated phone as I touched down. I ended the call as I let Sundancer down.

She looked up at her friends, "Check it out! It's Halcyon!"

"Really?" The man in the top hat and ill-fitting suit, "Damn, I didn't think we would meet you this soon. I'm L… Trickster. I'm the leader of the Travellers. This is Perdition, Ballistic and Genesis."

I nodded, though I noted that Perdition didn't seem too happy, "Nice to meet all of you. Sundancer mentioned that you wanted to meet me?"

They looked at each other and nodded, "Yes. We wanted to find out if you could help us with something. One of our teammates. Her power is.. Her power doesn't work right?"

I looked at Genesis. "Is it yours?"

The creature shook it's head, "No, not mine. Her power it changed her permanently."

I nodded, "Like a Case 53 or something?"

"Maybe? We think so. She can't control her power at all, and it's transformed her a lot. We've managed to keep her from hurting anyone for now, but she keeps getting bigger. We're worried about what's going to happen."

"Can I see her? I need to know what I'm dealing with." I asked.

They looked at each other, "Yeah, we can meet tomorrow?"

I frowned, It was MLK day so I should be free… "What time?"

"Maybe in the evening? We should probably clean up." Trickster commented. "We were planning to come to your clinic so we could send somone? Moving Noelle isn't going to be easy."

"The clinic is reservations only tomorrow, because of MLK day, so I should be done with my work by about three pm. Any time after that should work, but I can't promise anything. I've never healed anyone for power problems before. I've seen some stuff about Case 53s, and Even Panacea wasn't able to heal them.

They looked at each other, "We don't think it's the same thing."

"You know something."

They shuffled as I stared at them. Eventually, I sighed, "Look, I'm going to have to know everything I can about this situation to get the best chance of healing you."

They looked at each other, until eventually Trickster spoke up, "Wer'e going to need to talk to everyone about this."

"I'll be in my clinic until about four, since I have some paperwork from this weekend to catch up on, but once that is done… I can't stay out for too long. Once news breaks about my merchants capture, and since my body cam recordings are going up tonight, it's not going to be a secret for too long, I'm going to have some serious trouble with the gangs."

The merchants are done. I've Targeted all three of them at this point and I haven't heard of any other Merchant capes. Though, to be fair, I haven't really heard of that third guy so maybe I need to do more research on the Merchants. Plus, I wouldn't be surprised if these guys escaped PRT lockup.

We eventually parted ways and I headed home.

Mom was fretting as we reviewed the body-cam footage, but I was lost in thought as I recalled the fight I had with the third merchant.

I could remember how one of my lanes kept reacting to the pain, but the rest didn't. I was able to think clearly despite the pain, and I think I know why.

My other lanes… they were in my power. I was using my power to think there. My other lanes didn't feel pain because they didn't get the automatic feedback, they got the information they asked for from the rest of the brain through my other power.

It must have been a quirk of how I visualised the power, but I can see it now, I didn't want my power to affect my brain, so they didn't instead, I could see my mind running in my power.

Nothing seems to going wrong so far, and it really helped me in that fight. I don't think I could have done as well as I did without it, and I still needed to be saved. I still needed the combat practice.

Being able to react without panicking was good, I probably wouldn't have done nearly as well as I did in that fight without it.

It was also clear that I needed a proper weapon. My blaster, as Jenny called it was decent enough, but I had enough of a tinker repository to realistically create what I emulated. Rather than putting even more load on my powers to pull off things like this.

Though that brought to my mind the challenges I was having before. I couldn't make most of what I really wanted to make.

I had realised last night that Projector and Tiny Tools weren't good enough to let me make Tinker tech, that there was a part of the process that I had failed at when I had originally designed the power, a portion of the power that I misunderstood as I studied Armsmaster and Kid Win.

It was something that I was going to have to fix at some point. I didn't want to make the mistake again, so I wanted a clearer idea of what was going on. I'd think it over again once I had the chance to see Armsmaster in action.

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My suspicions were correct. The sub had been recovered by the PRT, and as the Tinker working for the PRT, Armsmaster was working on it.

Unfortunately, that wasn't as helpful as it might have been.

Armsmaster wasn't actually making anything right now, indeed, he was just picking at Squealer's work trying to figure out how it worked, and how to get it back to the Rig for proper study.

I mean, I could do that. I had already done that. My Target, still anchored within the computer systems could let me take control of the sub in no time, making it do whatever I wanted it to do. As I drained Squealer's database, I was quickly gaining all the information I needed to get this thing moving at will.

But I needed to see Armsmaster actually make something in order to figure out what I had screwed up when I made my Tinker power previously. I had obviously made some assumptions based on what I saw Panacea doing, and those had turned out to be mistaken. I had definitely screwed up at some point.

I had experimented a little bit, and I was starting to have suspicions, but I think that there's a little more to do on this front. I took a moment to spin the complex rod of carbon nano-tubes between my finger. Just this little bit had taken a lot out of me, but it was important.

This little rod, simple though it might be, was the single most complex piece of Tinkertech I had ever made. Indeed, unlike my sham of a blaster, this was actually worth the name. Even if what it did was simple enough.

I spun the little pencil sized rod between my fingers and headed to bed.

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I was wrapping up the last of my appointments when I heard the wingbeats of Genesis touch down outside my building I guided them over to the showers along with the change of clothes they packed as I floated down the stairs, "So, what's the news?"

"The other travellers have agreed, I'm to lead you to where we have kept Noelle." The creature informed me.

I nodded, "I will have to see off my latest patient, but once that is complete, I will be able to follow you."

It took a little while longer until my patient had finished their shower and changed into a new set of clothes, but I soon followed after Genesis, floating along at speed as she flew towards the docks, eventually touching down near one of the warehouses that lay abandoned.

I looked around for a moment. With the Merchants gone, this area of the docks was more or less gang free. Or, at least, cape gang free. I wasn't sure if the PRT would manage to contain the three Merchant capes, but to my knowledge, the Merchants wouldn't have powered help from the outside, so they should be able to manage that much.

This area of the docks would make for some good expansion. This far outside of Empire and ABB territory would let me build up much more safely, to establish a proper Tinker workshop, at least. Plus, land here was cheap, especially for someone like me who could arrange for the environmental restoration for a lot less than other companies could. Plus, the Boat Graveyard would make for plenty of perfectly usable materials for Tinker Tech, at least, once I figured out what was wrong with my current power.

I touched down just outside wone of the warehouses, one of the larger ones. There, Genesis touched down next to the other Travellers. There was Trickster, Perdition, Ballistic and Sundancer there, as well as another that I couldn't put a finger on.

"Hello."

They greeted me in turn, With Trickster eventually walking up to me, "We need to talk."

I nodded, "You promised me details about the person you want to heal." I motioned to the new Traveller, "Is this him?"

"No… but he's related." They braced, "We've talked about this, and we decided that some things… we just can't share. But I think what we can share will still be interesting to you."

I nodded and motioned for him to go forward.

"We didn't get our powers like normal capes." He began, "We found these vials, in a briefcase. They had labels with different things on them. The person you are here to heal, Noelle, was badly injured and the vials had some information with them, they healed people when they got their powers. I convinced her to have half of one."

He fidgeted, "at first things were okay, she didn't have any real side effects. But then, after we all used the vials to get powers, hers started to go out of control. It started smaller, with her gaining weight strangely, and these growths on her body. But then we had an incident."

"Her power lets her make clones of things. At first, we thought that was the end of it. But it started mutating her. It was almost a month later that we got the first signs, Noelle was putting on weight strangely. Over time, these growths began to form on her body. But it kept getting worse. A few months later, she had formed this mass of strength tendrils in her lower body. We had to move her around in vans while we tried to find some way of curing her. But then we found fo the worst parts."

He paused and gathered himself. "Her power was to make clones of anything that she could absorb, but she couldn't absorb anything that was too big. Turns out that the bigger she got, the bigger things she could absorb. She's big enough now that she can copy capes. Perdition got caught, on the way here, actually. His clones had his power."

"Please? If there's anything at all you can do for her." He pleaded with me, "I'll do anything."

I shook my head, "I'll need to see her first. And you said she only got part of a power, right?"

Trickster nodded as he led me to a little fire-escape on the side of the warehouse, as I continued to ask him, "So, who has the rest of her power?"

"Oliver, the other guy back down there." He said, pointing back at the group.

I nodded, absently preparing myself for what I was about to see.

We came up to the windows on the second floor and came out onto a series of catwalks that hung over the main area.

I was struck, with just how human she still looked, at least above the waist, she looked almost normal, if a little on the chubbier side and a bit dirty.

Below the waist, she looked completely different. A trusted mass of flesh, with tendrils, limbs and heads stickign out at all angles. The heads on her lower body snapped out randomly, reaching in various directions.

She was huge, large enough that I could see why the Travellers had a large moving truck parked in one corner of the warehouse that they used to move her around. Her head, upright on her body nearly came up to the catwalks that we were standing on.

I took a moment to look over her, "Could you bring the guy outside here? I'm want to see if I can figure out what's going on. Actually, get all of you here, I want to see if I can tell what those things did to you to give you powers."

As Trickster climbed out of the window again, I looked down and made Noelle a Target.