Ignition

Amy and I worked late that night, refinining the armour we were creating. We examined the damage that Laser Dreamhad done to our test plate and got to optimising. We knew that we needed to make sure that what we made was going to be able to handle far more than Laserdream's blasts, in case purity showed up somehow, but Laserdream's blasts were better than most Tinkertech weapons, at least the man-portable ones.

Purity's blasts however, were dangerous. They were significantly more powerful than Laserdream's and tended to flow over the target, acting more like a stream of plasma as opposed to the laserbeams that the hero put out.

Still, based on what we were able to establish from my lasers, laserdream's effects and experimentation with a plasma-torch, we were able to get something going. It definitely wouldn't last long against purity, maybe just a fraction of a second, bu honestly, without a better idea of how her power worked, I don't think we would be able to do all that much better.

Still, the plates of armour, the armoured body-glove and 'leather' long-hauberk that we put together for Amy, now mounted under and within her new costume, probably made her better protected than anyone but Armsmaster and maybe kid win. I don't know what the younger Ward's success with forcefields is at the moment.

We had even managed a bit of a eureka moment in terms of encouraging shear-thickening properties of the leather it should let her move around freely while still handling the sudden shock of impacts and better distributing the force.

Plus, my Fashion pseudo-tinker ability has been getting a work-out. As we experimented with the costume layout I was able to make sure that, despite being infinitely better at protecting her than the cotton she was wearing before, her outfit also looked damn good, plus, with the new materials, washing it was just a matter of soaking it in some soapy water and then in some plain water.

She stared at her newly fitted consume and then stared at me, "Okay, how the fuck did you also make it lighter than my old costume?"

I laughed, "Your old costume was heavy cotton, layered several times. I gues whomever made your old costume wanted it to be at least a little protective even if you didn't have any obvious armour, so they just made it so that it would handle minor things. I'm guessing that they didn't really know what they were doing, or maybe they didn't have access to better materials? I don't know. But the stuff we made is pretty light for how protective it is and my pattern is a tighter fit and uses less material."

She stares at it, "I mean really, this looks damn good. Even if this wasn't tinkertech armour people woud be spending thousands of dollars on it."

I sighed as she grinned at me, "Look, it's not my fault that I didn't know how much his sort of thing goes for. I thought those prices were for like forcefields and stuff."

"James, your armour is better than most of the forcefields you can buy. Only the really good ones, the ones that tinkers need to maintain like every week can handle that kind of damage without breaking."

"Cut me some slack," I groused as she laughed, "you guys are literally the first capes I've spoken to like this. You can't even buy tinker tech without knowing the right people, how was I supposed to know the going rate for armour."

I absently spun the baton as I considered the armour. I'd be using a different composite to upgrade my costume than the one I had formulated for Amy, more tuned towards pure-energy attacks. We had some proof that Purity's 'lasers' wre more plasma blasts than anything else from our research, and I was already considering several new powers, especially with how many charges I was stockpiling at this point.

But something, some subconscious sense brought on by my altered mind told me to wait. That there was something important on the horizon.

"So we send off the emails now?" Amy asked.

I shook my head to clear out the thoughts pooling there, "Yeah, we can do that. You know what measurements they need, right?"

"How would I know. You just did all the costume-y things. You didn't even measure me."

I bit my lip, "Well, I kind of cheated. I can see your body when I touch you so…"

We stared at each other and burst out laughing. She stared at her new gloves for a moment, the undersides of her fingers open to allow her use of her power while still providing maximum protection. "Neither of us know what we are doing do we?"

I collapse back into my chair, "Yep."

I sighed, mentally searching for options. "Come on, let's google this."

We spent a little while on google, figuring out what measurements were normally used in patterning clothes, and trying to figure out what measurements would be useful in making patterns for the costumes everyone else had.

I stared at my little mockup of Gregor's 'costume'... "Yeah, we might want to ask some of these people if they want a new costume, because I can't even begin to imagine how I would turn this into something effective." I considered the travellers, who had shown up to the meeting in streetwear, their faces covered by simple domino masks. Admittedly, unlike Gregor, I don't think the Travellers ever had the opportunity to get proper costumes.

Though, from what I was able to see of Gregor's skin, his was generally tougher than anything easily available.

I took a moment ot throw together a few quick outfits for those who didn't have a costume or at least didn't have one suited for armour, adding those to the relevant messages and then sending them off.

"So, do you want to try it on?"

She looked up from where the costume was laid out on the table and smirked, "Why? So you watch me change perv?"

"Wh-wahat!? No!" I blurted out my arm widely pointing at the bathroom, "There's a bathroom right there!"

She laughed at my blushing face, "I'm just kidding." She twirled her hair around a finger as she deliberately leaned over to scoop over her costume off of the table.

But her words didn't leave my ears, and my eyes didn'tleave her ass as she deliberately sashayed over to the bathroom. And my Eye didn't leave her even as she entered it.

"What came over you!" she whispered to herself as she slammed the door shut, locked it and collapsed to the ground. "Watch me change really?"

"Still," She remarked to herself, "He looked cute all embarrassed like that."

She shook her head and pulled her phone out of her pocket, quickly dialling a contact before I could really catch who it was. The phone rang for a few minutes even asI quickly tapped into it to listen in on the conversation.

"Amy?"

"Vicky! I flirted with him! What do I do?"

"Ohh! Spill!"

"Well, we got that costume he promised us, and it's really nice, and he asked if I wanted to try it on, and i might have said it was because he waned to see me change?"

"Only you! Only you could have flirted with someone like that."

"Vicky!"

"Come on… what did he do?"

She was on her somach by this point, playing with her hair as she held the phone up her ear, "You should have seen his face! He was bright red with how hard he was blushing! He could barely get a word out!"

"You go girl!" She cheered, "He definitely likes you!"

"What do I do?"

"Well, you could ask him out…"

She buried her head in her arms, "Really?"

"Come on! You're a world famous cape! You could do it."

"What if he doesn't like me?"

"Amy. He literally blushed at the thought of seeing you in your underwear."

"Counterpoint, he's a teenage boy."

"He's a smoking hot teenage boy. Plus porn exists, he has to have seen naked people before, he's got the hots for you."

"Come on, I'm not that good looking."

I took a moment to be offended on her behalf.

"What are you talking about Amy? I've seen you naked, you look great."

"Next to you I'm plain and you know it."

Glory Girl laughed over the phone, "You clearnely havent seen him looking at me, he doesn't like me at all."

"Really?"

"Have you seen him? When I came to the meeting he basically dragged me into the meeting room and told me to wait for everyone else in there. It's like mom every time I get busted for breaking stuff."

Amy froze and then started to giggle, "Really?"

"Oh don't you start on that."

"Did you know he calls you Barbie."

"Fucking REALLY!?"

Amy burst out laughing.

Eventually, the two girls calmed down, and Amy picked up the conversation again, "So how do I get him to ask me out?"

"How does your new costume look?"

"It looks so good!"

"Then, get changed, get out there and let him know you are hungry, with any luck he'll ask you out at the first chance."

"Yeah, but we've gotten dinner together a bunch of times."

"Okay then, when he offers, tell him it's a date."

"That's it?"

"Come on let's see if he asks you out."

I stared at the wall in frustration, if she liked me she could just ask. Now I needed to figure out if I actually liked Amy like that.

A/N: Short chapter, again, due to the aforementioned personal emergency taking up way too much time.