Ember

Since spending some of my charges, I decided to spend a little more time leveraging my powers.

Or, actually, making one more charge.

Infiltrating systems was tricky, in large part because of how the internet worked. When you sent something to someone else, the actual message you send is pretty much destroyed and a copy is what gets to the other side, which means that while it was technically possible to mark a message, it didn't really do much.

Instead, I decided that an extra charge spent, especially with all the spending I did recently was worth it.

A single charge and I would have a power that would let me trace any message I applied the mark to, allowing me to follow a communication no matter where it went. It even let me keep track of dozens of copies of that information, even if they were encrypted.

The new technique had let me break into banks and numerous other terminals, analysing information as I tried to work on my plans for the future.

With Gibtown growing, and with my real estate ventures more or less going as planned, barring the arguments with the local government about certifying a school that uses the nordic model of education. But I had other things to keep me busy.

My purchases in the docks had started to bear fruit, I managed to get a hold of the salvage contracts for the boat graveyard. Normally, it would be way too expensive to harvest all of that safely, but - as surprising as it was - tinkertech was a lot less regulated than parahumans.

Which lead me to my latest project. A tinkertech tool that would let me levitate the wrecks out of the boat graveyard and clean them up.

I looked at Amy, "This is a secret, all right?"

"Why are you so worried about this?" She asked quizzically.

I sighed, "It's just… come in ."

We entered the part of this mall that had been renovated so far, floating down through an access shaft to the third basement level that was being converted into my private work area.

The place was still pretty barebones, mainly just a wide open space with pillars acting as supports for the upper floors, but I had already begun some work. A small medical area had already been cordoned off, with a large sealed room more or less just standing there in the middle of the lab.

But the other area was the rather more important space. My tinker lab. For now, it was just a set of tables with various tools arranged on top of them, but as I continued to work, there was going to be a lot more as I got up to speed with my tinkertech.

Amy looked around as we made our way through the lab. "This place is looking better already."

I nodded, "Well, Amy, can I tell you a secret?"

She looked at me, "Sure."

I took a pair of contracts out of my pocket, "No, I'm serious, you can't tell anyone."

She looked at her copy, "You're not kidding."

"I mean, it's really only until this gets out some other way. But I really want to be able to keep this a secret as long as I can."

She sat down at one of the tables and started to read the contract, only pausing to ask me to clarify a few points.

She did have a few things she wanted me to change, clearing up some language on the contract that would free her from it if the secrets I was sharing with her today were ever going to become common knowledge, which she defined as being openly discussed on social media platforms, being reported on by various news agencies or having my PRT Parahuman Public Report update to reflect these secrets.

I made the appropriate corrections and signed the contract, at which point, I felt the marker slide into place.

I looked up at her, "Well, you know how I can biotinker like you, right?" Amy nodded and motioned to me, "Well, that's because I can copy tinker powers." I explain.

She looked at me stunned, and I continued, "It takes me a while, but I don't need much time to start the process. I've already managed to copy Kid Win, Armsmaster, Squealer, Uppercrust and you. It's just I didn't fully understand the other powers properly until now, so I couldn't make normal tinkertech.

I let her digest what I said for a while, "What do you mean that you didn't fully understand their powers?"

"Well, it turns out that a part of making tinkertech is this minor shaker power that lets you purify or even just make trace amounts of various materials. I didn't know that was a thing, and I had to figure out how to use my telekinesis to do that so that I could actually use their powers. "

She collapsed into the chair, "Fuck. I get why you want to keep this a secret."

I nodded, "I've got a few ideas, and I'm thinking of expanding Lighthouse into a proper Tinkertech brand, keeping with the whole secret Tinker thing going. Basically, I'm going to say that I was approached by a couple of tinkers who were injured by some of their inventions, and I healed them in exchange for them working for me. They want to remain secret to make sure they don't get targeted by any criminal groups, but they are selling their tinker tech through me."

She nodded, "What do you have?"

"I've managed to seriously improve my armour, as well as integrate a shield generator, a cloaking field and better comms and HUD system," I explain, motioning towards my costume.

She stared at me, "Already? Damn!"

"Some of it I can't sell, not easily at least." I grouse. "There's a bunch of this stuff that I can't automate the production of. If I'm using this material, I'm doing it by hand. I've got a worse material that I can make a production line for, so I'm going to use that for any armour we sell, but at least it means that I won't be tied down making this shit on top of my healing. Honestly, I'm planning on putting together some basic healing kit to weed out the less interesting cases."

She laughed, "I keep forgetting how new you are at this."

"What do you mean?"

"You keep saying these things as if they are downsides. James, no tinker can mass produce their tinker tech."

I blinked, "What?"

"No, I'm serious. Everything tinkers make is handmade. It's like half the reason why biotinkers are so scary to the PRT. We can make things that can reproduce, technically, and that doesn't need maintenance. A biotinker can scale up in ways that a normal thinker just can't."

"No, that can't be right." I frowned, "I've studied their powers. I mean, sure Squealer doesn't have some of the stuff she needs for some of the more complicated bits of her tech. Still, I know Armsmaster has the technology he needs to reach the right levels of purity to manufacture his technology manually, and hell, Kid Win's tech is even better for that sort of thing. I'm trying to figure out how to poach him, actually."

She laughed, "He'd be happy to hear that. But no, I don't know of any tinker other than Murasama who can mass produce their technology.

"What about Containment Foam?"

"That's Dragon. Dragon doesn't count."

I furrowed my brow, "What?"

"Tinkers are bullshit, but Dragon's beyond that. As far as I can tell, her tech is beyond anything that other tinkers can do. No one really knows why her tech is that good. The best bet right now is that she was a genius engineer before she got her powers and she can actually understand some of what she's doing when she is tinkering."

I blinked, "You mean that Tinkers don't know what they are doing?"

"Yeah, tinkers tend to black out all the time while they are working and make huge leaps in progress as they do. I mean, they understand part of it, and it's generally said that it's the mark of a great tinker when you are actually able to guide that process beyond just loose ideas and guiding your powers to fill in the blanks."

"Amy… you know what you said about me being new?" I get out.

She stared at me, "You don't mean."

"Yeah, I don't black out. I mean, I don't have all the words, and I'm not exactly sure how to get to the same place without my powers, but I understand what I'm doing at least."

The silence that followed was broken by a pair of empathetic "Fuck."s

"This can't get out." She exclaimed staring at me, "Not unless we have way more people on our sides. If anyone even suspects that you can do that, you're going to be in some deep shit."

"Okay, so I'm going to have to be careful about this. My old plan is pretty shot, but I might as well explain it to you and you can tell me what's too dangerous to deal with."

I sat with her for half an hour explaining things and we sat back.

"Okay, some of that is salvageable. Setting up Lighthouse as a brand will be fine, as long you focus on the materials rather than finished projects. We can make people think it's something like containment foam, where the real tinkertech is in making it."

"And selling tinkertech?"

"First, we need to figure out how much you are going to price your services. Anything you are going to do will have to be a custom commission, rather than anything generic. Maybe auction off a couple of pieces to see what people are willing to buy them for." Amy frowned, "We haven't really looked into tinkertech much in New Wave, most of us have powers that mean we don't really need it, and most people don't want me having something personal against them."

"Any recommendations for the auctions?"

"I know shield generators and that sort of thing that sells well and some sort of transport. Umm… a teleporter maybe?"

I frowned, "A teleporter would be annoying to transport. I think I could make one but I'd probably have to make it on-site. There's a lot of calibration that goes into that sort of thing. Plus the sensors that would be necessary for that sort of thing would be pretty dangerous, The targeting systems alone would let you spy on a pretty large area without significant modification."

"James… what were you thinking of when I said teleporter?"

"Well, I've been thinking of things I want to build for Nightwatch and everything, and Squealer could technically build teleporters. It would have been pretty difficult for her, but with some of the stuff from the others, I've patched over some of the gaps, and I think I can create a portal device that we could use to send backup quickly."

She sighed, "James, that sort of thing is incredibly rare. Usually, teleporters need something on the other side, like a beacon."

"Hey, that would work!" I grinned, "Less privacy issues too!"

"Of course, that's what you get out of it." Amy groused, "James, how much maintenance would this take?"

"Oh not too much? Assuming that the people kept it clean and it didn't experience any damage, it should only need me to look at it once a week and do a proper deep dive once a month, but I'm pretty sure I could get someone else to do those checks. Outside of anything breaking, the most delicate parts will wear out in like a year? And I can make spares that people can drop in."

"Yeah, most tinker tech needs proper maintenance once a couple of months."

I furrowed my brow, mentally scanning Armsmaster's Halberd from my Target on him. I guess that made sense, his tech still had a bunch of impurities that would make it wear out a lot quicker.

"I mean, why would that matter?"

"James, maintenance is hell. Do you know how much my family spends keeping their costumes looking good? Tinker tech is way more expensive. Any corporate hero team would put down millions of dollars for that kind of response time, and any major gang would be willing to kidnap you just to get a hold of that sort of tech."

I paused for a moment, "I'm not sure that's as big of a threat as you make it out to be."

"James, you're strong, I get it, but this is the sort of thing that gets the Ambassadors, or the Elite or the other big names involved, not something to play around with."

"Fine. Anything else I could auction?"

She thought about it for a bit, "Can you make energy weapons."

I rolled my eyes, "Of course, I can." I pulled out my now completed taser laser. "Who do you think built this? But I don't think I just want to auction one off."

"Umm… Comms maybe? I know Ch-Kid Win was talking about making something like that for his team."

That was what he was working on? Really? "Yeah, I can make that. I'm guessing something more along the lines of tinker-tech walkie-talkies than smartphones, right?"

"No, I don't think a smartphone would be a bad idea." She remarked, "I mean, I bet you could have it running android whenever it wasn't calling anyone else on the team."

I shrugged, freezing halfway through, "I'll probably want to hold off on the shield, I might do a little cloaking field? Or maybe like a privacy barrier, I nice little widget that makes it so no sound gets on or out of a specific radius?"

Amy nodded. "Hiding the maintenance requirement would be tricky. Depending on what you do with the phone that might be something we can ignore, but the sound barrier…"

"Nice name," I mention, "I think we can probably hike up the price a bit and spin some sort of line about using higher purity materials in construction, which means lower maintenance times. It's the sort of thing people suspect I can do anyways, and it might be a reason why the Tinkers are working for me now." I pointedly failed to mention that it was probably why some of the tinkertech was failing too quickly. Armsmaster's at least.

"What do we do if people want to join us?"

Amy paused, "Eh, it will take a while to do this. We can about it again when we have everything ready for the auctions."

I smiled leading her over to the labs, "Well, in that case, why don't I give you a tour? That's Clean Room One, It's technically a storage space. When it's done, it's going to have hermetic seals and a double-pressure airlock system, to prevent contamination and leaks. I need it to meet the requirements to handle certain diseases that are generally considered too dangerous to treat, possible bioweapons and that sort of thing."

"This is going to be Clean Room Two, but for now it's just an open-air workshop. Some of the stuff I'm building needs incredible purity, and while I can technically do that with my powers, having a clean space in the first place lets me not worry about that kind of thing. But the builders are going to bring everything in over the next couple of days."

I paused to look at her, "I was actually thinking that this could be our permanent workshop."

She looked at me stunned before blushing, "Really?"

"Yeah, It would be nice to have a few projects running for longer than our lab dates, or experiment with some of the stuff that would be too dangerous to do in my lab."

She smiled as she walked over to me, "Speaking of dates, are we still on for shopping at the Boardwalk?"

I pulled her into my arms and ran my hand through her hair, "Yeah, after we get done with the rest of our tour."

"So? Let's get to it!" She grabbed a hold of my shirt, and pulled herself onto her tip-toes, "I hear Jane's has a new sheer collection."

My pants tightened, but I was used to her games now, my hand falling to her ass and pulling her up to my face so that I could french her as I pushed her into a dip.

As we came up for air, I leaned into her ear, "You know what, we can stop by there after going to Cozy Ghost. It would be a nice way to… get ready."

She shivered in my arms as my voice rumbled through her, cuddling into my side as I picked her up, my hand continuing to grope her firm ass through her costume.