Ignition

I turned around to see Carol Dallon staring down at me from the open doorway.

Mentally bracing myself, I crossed my arms and walked back onto the porch so I could stare her back down. "Yes I am. And I assume that I'm speaking to Mrs. Dallon."

She rankled at my tone. But visibly held herself back as I stared her in the eyes. "Yes." she ground out.

I let my mouth twist into a thin smirk, "I hope I haven't been any trouble for Amy."

The fact that I didn't care for her feelings went unsaid but not unheard.

She frowned at me, "Rude, aren't you?"

"I'd say… irreverent. Anyways, I need to get back home soon. What do you want."

She stared at me, "You know I don't like your attitude young man."

"And I was raised to take care of myself, even with people like you around." I took a moment to look her up and down, my eyes linkering on her ruffled clothes and half-undone bun.

She barely held herself back from snarling as I dusted off a few specks of dirt from my costume.

"I don't know what you're up to." She said staring me down, "But I don't like what you're doing here."

I chuckled darkly, "I'm trying to make your daughter happy. Though, with the way you act, I'm not sure I should be surprised."

She tried to get in my face, but I stood my ground, staring her in the eye even as I fas forced to look further down at the short, angry blond. The scene reminded me of Jenny sometimes when she was younger.

I chuckled.

"What!?"

"I was just thinking of how my little sister has better manners than you." I said dryly, "Speaking of her, I need to get back home. Now, unless you actually have business with me, I need to go. And frankly, I'm not sure you could actually afford my time."

She stood there, stunned, as I turned and floated away. I looked at Amy and Glory Girl who were watching from a window, stunned, and gave them a smile before rocketing off to the nearest storm drain.

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With measurements sent in, I was able to produce the costumes quickly - though the Travellers were surprisingly picky when it came to their official costumes.

Faultline's Crew, I reflected, were actually quite simple in comparison. While they didn't have formal costumes, they all wore armour from time to time, which accepted standard ballistic plates. Those, and a few riot shields were far simpler to construct than full costumes. So, floating behind me as I made my way along the streets was a carefully packaged box marked with a new logo Amy and I had come up with. I had already sent it to Leyton for registration, but the two of us were planning on working together more along these lines to produce more tinker tech, especially once I fixed my small-scale telekinesis. Still needed to come up with a name for it.

I touched down outside the club and was ushered in by the security, "The boss is waiting for you in the back."

I continued through, carefully posing myself as I floated through the room to make sure I kept up my image. In my head, I watched as people stared at me, parting before me as I disappeared into the back room.

"Faultline." I greeted as I brought the package alongside me, "Where do you want this?"

"On my table will be fine." She answered, "These were done quite quickly."

I shrugged, "From what I understand, it is not difficult for them to make the material. They already have the tinkertech needed to make this stuff, so making parts is simple. Feel free to check it, They don't have too much experience working with inserts like this, but they followed the dimensions you provided."

She nodded, "You wanted to meet us."

"I've received some interest from Case 53s about what I can do for their condition. I've held off for the moment as I'm unsure as to the full extent of my abilities in this field, but I was hoping to examine Newter and Gregor, in order to get a better sense of the changes their powers have caused."

I mentally thanked mom for the script as Faultine considered it. She eventually shook her head, "It's not up to me, I'll have to talk to them. Wait here."

I nodded, taking a moment to lift myself off the ground as I began browsing the internet again. I was there for a while, long enough that my Mental Computer reminded me to check in on Victor to see if there was any news on the chemical delivery. Eventually, though, The two of them came into the room.

"So, you wanted to study us?" Newter commented.

I nodded, "with your permission of course."

Gregor looked at me and frowned, "What's in it for us."

I nodded, "As this is a study, please be aware that Halcyon LPEC has policies surrounding studies and testing, to this end, I had previously authorised payment regarding your efforts in this area. My initial offer to you will be one thousand three hundred dollars each for one hour in which to study your altered states. However, as a formal participant in a study, I need to request that you sign an NDA with regard to any initial findings I might share with you as any further offerings that may result from this study are still subject to further analysis before any further consideration can be made."

Gregor frowned, "Thirteen hundred bucks each for an hour each, and we don't talk about it because you aren't sure you can do anything about it in the first place."

"That, and I can't promise you that I'll know anything once we're done either since I'll probably have to go home and study everything I get out of this." I mentioned - and I'd have to both of their powers were very strange when I studied them, and it was still rather unclear why they changed Newter and Gregor, or even Noelle like this.

Still, I knew I could fix them, what I'd really need was some more knowledge on how their powers worked so that I could figure out more of how these vial makers granted powers and how I could protect myself from them.

Newter and Gregor were older Case 53s, so hopefully, between them, the Travellers and the members I had found in the Protectorate, I was hoping to be able to figure out some sort of progression, to figure out how the power granting had changed over time. With these people, I might be able to figure out how the powers were spread around.

I produced the contracts and the bound stacks of hundred dollar bills placing them on the table for Gregor and Newter to examine, Faultine walked over and studied the contracts along with them.

When I found out that there was someone else who could give other people powers, I had become a little nervous. I knew just how much powers meant to people. Just watching as Mom and Jenny got used to their powers had told me a lot. Jenny had changed the most, but even Mom was more confident and relaxed.

People who wanted powers? Jenny had already become way more outgoing. She was bringing friends home and staying over almost daily now. She was dressing nicer, not afraid to wear whatever she wanted. She had even started dating, though she hadn't gone past a first date with anyone.

I can't imagine how much they were selling powers for, but I can't imagine what people who wanted them that much would do for powers. And there were people like that. I know people like that.

Hell, I could get people to do a hell of a lot just for a chance of getting powers.

I nodded as the two of them signed the contracts, and we were ushered into a back room.

As I had noted with Battery and Gallant, a complete Vial power was a lot harder to analyse than Noelle or Oliver's powers. The same gaps in the powers that allowed me a view into the inner workings simply weren't there.

Instead, I wielded my powers with a precision I didn't know they had. I imagine it was like chainsaw carving. That skill and experience could make up for suboptimal tools.

I definitely hadn't mastered the skill, but between my lanes, I've spent days studying powers non-stop. Even with my power's ability to expand based on my knowledge of powers as a whole, my own skills at targeting it, at feeling my way across powers to get a sense of how the pieces fit together.

It was, oddly enough, Shadow Stalker and Browbeat that gave me the greatest insight into the Case 53 condition.

By studying how their powers altered them, I was able to start pieceing together the mechanisms powers used to change bodies.

I had learned quickly, in my time studying powers, that powers tended to work along similar paths. As though they all were made by the same people. As far as I could tell, other than the powers I made myself, the other powers were made by a fairly small group, probably working together most of the time too, since they tended to do things the same way.

It was actually the most obvious the powers that changed the way people looked.

It was even the same for Genesis, oddly enough, now that I had gotten a chance to meet the cape behind the projection.

But I was eventually able to find the thing that had changed them.

From what I could tell, Newter's powers were to emit a series of extremely powerful toxins from various parts of his body… parts that humans didn't have. So rather than finding equivalents, his power changed him to have those parts. And the parts those parts needed.

It got better after a while, there's only so many ways biology can efficiently move things around, so he didn't end up entirely as some sort of centauroid lovechild of a gecko and a dilophosaurus.

Gregor got off a little easier. The sea-creature his powers wanted to turn him into made use of a very similar nutrient transport system to humans, close enough that even when his epidermis was entirely converted, it was more a matter or altering the immune response flags than large scale modification.

It did technically mean that neither of them were actually preforming at full capacity, since their bodies had several nutrient requirments that they weren't fulfilling, but they were doing decently enough.

It might even be possible to remove their powers by taking away those parts… No, Amy told me that when she tried something like that their powers caused the changes to reappear after a few days.

Ideally, I'd want to try and remove their powers and observe them returning, but that would be out of the bounds of this examination. What wasn't however, was when I finally made a breakthrough. I was, for the first time, able to observe an inactive part of a power. I had finally learned enough to take the information I had gathered about powers in general to basically map out the part of the power that would change people… I think.

If nothing else, it was connected to the part that I would need to change, so it was starting to look more and more like it would be worth something to invest in that power configuration power. Or… at least something along those lines. I was starting to have suspicions on how powers other than mine worked, and I was starting to think that if I was right, I had to be careful in how I designed that kind of power.

But still, it was interesting to figure things out. If nothing else, I had a solid line on how to properly restore a Case 53 without them losing their powers, and I knew that I had a means of achieving it.

I just needed a little more inspiration.

I immediately began looking online and through Armsmaster's database for Trumps that might give me a better idea as to how powers worked on each other.

There were a few that interested me, but getting to them would have to wait until after I dealt with the E88 now.

Eventually, I my time was coming to a close. I released both of them, and carefully disposed of the glove contaminated with Newter's toxin, placing it in a a sealed pouch I put away to study a little further.

As I did, my lane keeping an eye on Victor reported a new success.

Victor, it seemed, was married to Othallla. The trump had returned from healing the people I had turned away. Apparently, between the ongoing gang war with the ABB, and my healing of the Boardwalk enforcers and the BBPD making those two groups much more aggressive in dealing with the thugs. The Empire was loosing a lot of people to injuries or just straight up prison.

Between my efforts and the chaos the end of the Merchants had forced onto them, the Empire was in perhaps the worst position they had been in for a long time. Based on what we had discussed at the meeting, I was starting to suspect that the Empire was going to be forced to act soon, and the only thing stopping them was that the riot gas they were intending to use against me hadn't arrived.

Which wasn't the best thing for me. The plans Victor was putting together were intended to be deployed as soon as the weapons came in or were even set up to be adapted to a number of chemical weapons that they could get a hold of more easily.

And while our current defences against poisoning were decent, I didn't want to deal with chlorine gas, chloroform, or any number of other more toxic things that Victor was setting up as alternatives to the CS gas that was being shipped to them.

Dealing with that wasn't going to be easy, and I didn't want to display the full extent of my self-biokinesis.

Flexing my mental toolkit for a moment, I started work on tracking the shipment that the Empire was using to get the gas. I knew from Victor that they were sourcing it from one of the other white supremacist groups, one in Kansas to be specific.

They were getting regular updates on the deliveries, texts from the person doing them. They were 'in code' if "I'm stuck in Terre Haute, the car broke down." counts as code. I suppose it counted as plausible deniability.

Still it did give me a number to work on.

Hacking into the the telephone network in order to track that number wasn't the easiest, but the overall structure was publicly available, which meant that I could put together a reasonable estimate as to how it worked.

With that, I was able to get a good idea of when the attack would be.

In two days time.

As I left, I took a moment to fake a phone call before turning back to Faultline. "I have news."