Ember

I looked out over the work being done outside the mall. The remains of several large buildings were torn down, leaving a large open area where the foundation once laid. Still, the excavation wasn't done.

I turned to the young native-american man, "Madam Odina recommended you to me when I discussed the park with her. Something about better landscaping options?"

Quinn nodded, "Well, The first thing is ground cover, a lot of European grasses do pretty badly in the environment here."

I frowned, "We are going to need something people can run around on. This is intended to be the sort of place families can bring their children."

"No worries, there are a lot of native plants that work. A sedge would be nice, perhaps some Dwarf crested Iris and some creeping thyme. He looked out over the field, "Some bluegrass if you need traditional turf."

I shook my head, "No, I really just want to make sure that it's comfortable enough to run around and fall on. I'd like it to look nice, but honestly, Brockton Bay doesn't have enough parks for it to really matter. I do want it to be in decent condition year around, and enough tree cover that it's not an issue in the summer and it can keep some of the wind out in the winter."

I looked around, "And some edible things. The apartment blocks do have community plots, but I think I'd like some fruit trees and other things you can eat in the parks. I don't want this to be like Hill Gardens."

"We can definitely do some dogwood too then," He mused, "but I'll have to do a little more research to figure out the best choices for everything."

I nodded, looking out into the distance, "The park is going to be pretty big, and there's a couple of water features planned. I'm currently looking at doing two ponds and an interconnecting stream, with underground channels from and to the Honnick Canal to provide the water."

"And the terrain?"

"Some rolling hills, though I do want enough flat spaces for people to run around in." I commented, "I've made promises for event spaces too, so at least three pavilions spread out across the park, and I think I can get away with areas for food stalls."

He nodded, peering down into the deep pit, "How deep are you going to be putting the shelter?"

"The law states that we need it to be at least ten feet underground, not including the ten foot outer reinforced concrete shell, but I'm aiming at a solid fifty feet." I frowned, "It's going to take a while though. If I'm lucky, I'll be able to get a tinkertech authorization and pay for some equipment to get it going. I don't want to wait years to see this done."

Quinn frowned, "The plants are going to take a while to grow, you know that right?"

"Yeah, but it's only going to be a few months after you plant them before people can visit, right? I know it won't look great, but there will be enough ground cover for people to run around and we can put fencing around the trees and stuff so that they stay safe while they mature."

He considered it, "It would be a little more expensive, but we can make sure things are at that state within a couple of months."

"Do your research and get back to me on soil composition. I want this park ready to open by independence day."

He nodded, and after a little more back and forth, we split up.

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​I appeared in my room, my costume peeling off of me and disappearing into the closet as I headed down the stairs. "Hey mom."

"James! How was your day?"

I collapsed into one of the chairs, "Tiring. I think I'm going to have to either do a GED or start 'homeschooling' soon. Trying to fit in all the work of managing Halcyon Industries around school hours is really annoying."

"I know, I can't imagine how you've kept it up this long." Mom mused as she pulled some ziti out of the oven, "I've already been looking into it for you. If you want, we can arrange the GED at the end of next month? I know that with your powers that would be a simple enough thing to do."

"And homeschooling?"

"Debra is actually a registered teacher, she used to teach at Greenwall High before it closed down, and she knows a few people at Arcadia. If you want, you can pull out and start homeschooling by the end of the week."

I sighed, "I will think about it, but right now, homeschooling seems like the better option. I was worried about the negative connotations of a GED before this, and while doing it this way might mean a few more tests, but it's still the kind of thing I can finish quickly."

"I still think you don't need to worry about that."

"Until it's safe for me to come out as Halcyon, I need to manage things. I'm planning on giving myself a job as an administrative assistant in Halcyon Industries to explain some of the money, but to do that I need to keep up appearances. IF only because obvious nepotism would put you at risk…"

As I continued my conversation, I also considered the most recent development. I just hit eighty two charges.

I could make that post-cog power now.

The lane considering this considered it for a while, before locking the information from the brain-lane.

It was something that I had pieced together since gaining access to the PRT systems, and in particular, Think Tank reports on me. A lot of the powers were… subtly wrong. In particular, was their assessment of my powers. While they had managed to piece together my telekinetic effect and even had serious suspicions of some sort of biotinker, or more general tinker ability, they hadn't picked up on any of my thinker powers.

One of their plans for fighting me was to attempt to use Gallant to distract me with emotion manipulation powers to distract me for long enough to get Vista to pin me down.

It wouldn't work, and it seemed some powers could detect that to some degree, but the idea that none of these powers could sense that I was effectively immune to Gallant's power was interesting.

And I had checked. Gallant's power worked by the manipulation of neuro-transmitters and certain hormones to create 'emotions'. It was kind of similar to Glory Girl's power, but more flexible, at the cost of control. Where hers applied two emotional states at varying intensities based on how she saw the target, his allowed him to cause anyone he hit with a bolt to experience an intensified version of his emotions when he launched it.

It was the kind of thing my lanes were immune to. But their powers couldn't see that. Watchdog was convinced that Gallant's powers would work on me. Something about my lanes was hidden from them.

And given the sweeps of strange energy, I think I can see why.

Powers had a certain range, and other powers, it seemed, were outside of this range. The powers did communicate with each other, in order to address this limitation. Or at least, most of them did. I know mine doesn't and I suspect other people immune to thinker powers were much the same.

It would be a little longer, I just needed to study enough thinker powers to ensure that the energy systems I was detecting was what I thought it was.

As soon as I was done with that, I pondered looking out the window, I could spend those charges.

These thoughts were safe, as were the myriad other thoughts hidden away from my organic mind, far from the range of Thinker powers.

I suppose I could entirely move my mind here, to have my bodies be puppets but that lane was still the only one with hormones, or any other primal emotion. I'd lose too much.

The mind my powers created in the lanes was different, somehow operating on different mechanisms from the web of neurons in my brain. My current span of tinker powers didn't give me enough information to give my other lanes emotions. I have plans to reach out to Cranial of Toybox, a Tinker that apparently sells memories. Her power should be the missing link.

But it seemed that Toybox was a little hard to get in contact with, even with my rising star.

It was why I was working to make sure that my tinkertech auction would be as impressive as I could make it. Nine items, hinting at three different specialisations working together to varying degrees.

A barrier that blocked outgoing sound. A telekinetic device that made use of acoustic levitation. A long range sonic 'laser' that can project sound for just over a mile. A set of bounding tools that could be used to create a decent size space that would block people looking or listening in.

A set of perfect noise cancelling headphones, complete with exquisite wireless connectivity beyond the capacity of modern technology. A set of armoured composite plates, similar to those I made for Faultline's Crew. A small computer that would withstand anything short of sustained gigawatt laser fire.

What I was calling a complex-phase acoustic backscatter sensor and the big ticket item, six small chips that I would put into any phone the winner wanted, which would allow subtle, encrypted communications not dependent on the phone network.

Teasing out those fake specialisations out of the technology I had was tricky, but Kid Win's repository helped a lot. His technology was modular, which meant they connected to each other in a way that I could understand, though even that took a lot of puzzling out.

Eventually, I was able to start to mesh together bits in a way that didn't look like their tech.

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As I progressed, my lab started to look more and more like a proper Tinker lab. Strange devices littered workbenches covered the walls. But at the centre of it was my most recent creation, Something particularly important.

I still didn't understand the stuff I could make, but as Amy had pointed out, I had an insight into it that most Tinkers lacked. I had her insight into what I made, but with the technological database of most Tinkers.

It meant that while I still didn't know how it worked, I could generally get an idea of what it did.

And this device was proof of that.

Using my Sensor, I could experiment with various pieces of technology and see how they interacted with the world. I could tweak things, And perhaps most importantly, scale them up.

This device was interesting, in that it detected parahumans. It took a lot of effort, and I don't think I did it quite right, but the pillar here was able to detect the energies that radiated from the connection in the Corona Pollentia and the Gemma.

And surprisingly, I didn't trigger it.

I thought, at first, that the reason I couldn't detect such emanations was because my powers filtered out their own emissions in order to work more effectively as sensors, this device didn't have any such programming.

It had enough range that I could detect the Travellers when they were in the mall above me. But I couldn't be detected. I even detected the Wards when Amy decided to bring them around.

But it couldn't detect my powers.

I knew my powers were strange, but if they didn't even make use of the same mechanism to connect to me, then I was starting to suspect that there was more to them than I had ever realised.

Maybe this was why the Watchdog and other thinker analyses of me were so skewed. With my biological mind barred from this information, thinker powers would need to communicate with my powers to get that information.

And if mine didn't even use the same way of connecting to people, then what was to say it could even communicate with other powers.

And powers did communicate. The energy signatures I detected from groups of parahumans versus those same parahumans when alone were markedly different. I could tell that it encoded information somehow, but my computer analysis power didn't seem to be working on it, or if it was, it was doing so so slowly that I couldn't tell.

If nothing else, it solidified my plans, in order to allow me to protect my mind. I just needed enough information to make that final step.

I could even do it now. It would cost me a seventh level charge to manufacture the Tinker knowledge from thin air, but I would gain enough knowledge over how minds and brains work to completely overhaul my Lanes and make them capable of entirely protecting me.

It was simply too much of an investment for now. If I could get a hold of Cranial's power, I suspected I could, at the very least, massively reduce the cost, if not eliminate it entirely.

For now, I put things away, and headed out. I had another date with Amy tonight.