Ember

With my recent purchases in the Docks, I was able to pick up quite a few permits, mainly by buying out various companies teetering on the edge of insolvency in order to take over their property rights and claims, especially over various docks and ports. It was a bit more expensive to do it that way, but on the plus side, I also managed to pick up a licence that's a lot harder to get nowadays, a perpetual Tinkertech Deployment Licence.

More importantly, since the company that I bought out to get it was a multinational, working in both the US and Canada, it was one of the licences that permitted the Guild to approve tinkertech use, and the Canadian group was a lot better about it than the PRT.

But I also got rights to docking area, as well as a boating licence, which meant that I could pay someone to clean out the little decommissioned coast-guard cutter I was planning to use for my experiments and take us out on a little cruise.

Amy and I looked out over at Brockton Bay.

"You know, it actually looks kind of nice from this far out."

I smiled at Amy, "It does. Though, I think the lack of Nazis might have something to do with that."

"Eh," she shrugged, "the ABB is still running around, but you've really spooked them. The wards tell me the biggest issues they have been having has been with the Undersiders and a few independents that are starting to pop up now that the E88 have gone down."

I nodded, before hugging her and resting my chin on her head. An Eye meant that I could see her pout as I grinned, "I'm not too worried about that. I mean, yeah, Lung is scary, but I've been doing research into him and Oni Lee. I think that if they decide to make themselves a problem, I'll be able to deal with them."

She stomped on my foot. "OUCH!" - "Don't get too cocky, this is still the same Lung that took on the entire Protectorate team a few years ago."

"Yeah, but the protectorate took him on when he was already ramped up after fighting off a bunch of the other gang members." I shrugged, "I'm fairly sure I could throw him into the bay without too much of an issue, even at the size he was at the start of that fight. As long as I can get him far enough away, I should be able to fuck off and wait for him to calm down."

"I mean, that's pretty much the operating procedure every team with some sort of mobility has for Lung, sure" She agreed, "But he's learned to deal with that."

I nod, "I'm not hunting him out anyways. Everything I was able to find about the ABB makes me think that we are going to have an initial set of attacks by Oni Lee. I think I'll wait for that. I'll keep looking into doing what I can to stop him if he does start causing problems, but the issue with Lung is that taking him out without giving him at least a little while to ramp up is extremely difficult without breaking those unwritten rules of yours."

Amy considered my words, "I mean, you know why that's important."

I sighed, "I do. Anyways, enough about work, anythign new at home?"

"Well, Carol seems to have calmed down a bit. Or at least, she's given up on stopping me from meeting you. Apparently a papparazi caught you coming to pick me up a few nights ago and Sarah came down on Carol after it blew up on a few fan sites."

"That worked then?"

She blinked, "You did that on purpose!?"

"Well, more that I didn't stop it when I could have. I saw him hiding out near your street, and well, I might have antagonised Carol a little more than normal so that they got a good video, but it wasn't anything out of character. It was the night when I carried you away princess style after you climber out of your window, if you want to know."

She gave me a deadpan glare, "Is that why Chris gave me a tiara yesterday?"

I shrugged, "Maybe. Though," I say, pinning her to the railings with a smoky gaze, "what is this I'm hearing about accepting gifts from other men?"

She blushed for a minute, apologies tripping oer her lips until I laughed, and pulled her close, "It's okay, I know my princeess belongs to me."

I pulled her closer as her blush rose to epic proportions.

She leaned into me as we began to swing back in to the shallower outer docks, the little cutter carefully navigating the narrow channels in the sandbars as well as various rocks some of which peeked out of the water as waves washed over them.

We eventually made our way into my newest property, a small collection of piers leading to a couple of moors, a few cabins and a few larger buildings, including the decaying remains of an old restaurant of some sort. More of the land around it was still being haggled over, especially as the land owners were becoming more aware of my redevelopment plans.

Cleaning this place was going to be difficult, but the real benefit was the fact that the property technically included a lot of the 'land rights' to the beach around here. As my purchases along the northern shore grew with the funding I accumulated, I would be able to develop the beachfront here. Expanding the areas where I could use my parahuman powers in business would allow me to significantly improve this part of the docks. It was already unfit for industry, the bars and reefs here making it nigh-impassable for larger ships, but with some work, it would be good for some more entertainment focused work, especially if I managed to buy out more of the Docks closer to the boardwalk to extend my holdings.

As we neared the shore, the cutter dropped anchor as the rocky shallows became too dangerous even for the coast-guard craft. The crew began to pile into the rubber dinghy as I floated myself and Amy over to the shore.

We eventually touched down a little further from the derelict restaurant near one the little beach-huts. The place was still in pretty bad shape, having been abandoned decades ago by its former owners.

Amy looked at it, "Why are you bringing me here?"

"Well," I smiled, "I've been thinking about getting you a present, and well… I wanted to piss of Carol some more."

"James! Don't tell me…?"

I nodded, "I bought you this land! The house will need to be replaced, but there are some nice deals on some standard villas if you want to go that route, or you can sit down and discuss things."

"This must have been so expensive!"

I shrug, "Surprisingly? Not that much. No one has lived here for fifty years and it basically fell into the hands of the city. Under fifty K once you consider the actual area out of the larger parcel I bought. The house that's going to go on it's going to cost a lot more, but I don't think you're going to have a problem with that."

She slowly turned towards me, "You don't mean?"

"I mean, it hasn't gotten past testing, but I did manage to get our latest TB cure design into the Guild's Tinkertech clearance pipeline. If this works out, we will have our names on this and we can start selling it. Getting the clearance extended to the US will be tricky, but even just selling it in Canada should mean that we can still get a lot of money coming in."

Amy stared at the ramshackle building in front of us, slumped against me, "Yeah, that's… that's going to change a lot."

"It's going to go in a trust to go to you on your eighteenth birthday, to take care of the legal side of things. Until then, the people nominally in charge of the estate will listen to you and warn you against anything they think is going to hurt the property while it's in their care, but I think building up the house and maybe renting it out until you decide what you want to do with it would probably be in their wheelhouse."

"James… I can't… I can't even think of what to say, it's too much!"

I roll my eyes, "Amy this place is cheaper than a car, and it doesn't have that much land around it. None of the actual beach at least, since I've got plans for that, but honestly, this is mostly to piss off your mom. It's going to take a lot of work to get it up to spec. Though, if you don't want to do that, I could rent the land from you and develop it with the rest of the area."

"JAMES!" She pouted and I paused for a minute to boop her on the nose.

I let her stomp around for a few moments to clear out her anger until her shoulders sagged, "James I can't accept this. It's too much."

I rolled my eyes, "Amy, take it. This isn't all that much in the grand scheme of things for me, but I know how much having your own place is going to mean for you. And well, I'm already annoyed I can't just give my mom one of these houses, especially since it would be pretty good for her to take a break from work for a while."

She stared at me before relaxing into a tired smile, "James, I love it, but it's still too much. Especially this soon."

I paused, "Huh…" I scratch my head, "you know, I hadn't really thought about that. I've never really had this kind of money before."

Amy shook her head, "Maybe once we've been dating a little longer. I mean, I love it, but it's too much right now, you know?"

I nodded, a little embarrassed as I scratched my head, "Sorry about that, I just kind of got excited."

She smiled, "It was still a nice gesture. Just maybe, once we've been together a little longer? I mean, just having a lab with you has been great, but I'm not used to it yet."

"I'll save this for later, but I do need to make this up to you, is there anything you want?"

Amy stopped to ponder things for a moment, "Well, there is one thing."

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I was carrying a large bag of of groceries as I followed Amy as she lead me to a small store tucked away in the back alleys between North Bay and Downtown, eventually leading me to a small tucked away store.

The dusty shop was practically abandoned, but Amy unlocked it and quickly lead me into the back and up some stairs to the apartment, which looked in somewhat better shape. An old woman looked up at us as Amy pushed the door open. "Amy dear, is that you?"

I blinked, looking at the little old lady, turning to Amy I whispered, "Who is this?"

"Hello Ms. Grissom" She replied before turning to me, "I don't actually know, but I think she might know who my actual parents are. She recognized me when I was looking for another store near here, but… well…"

I let her work through it for a while.

"She has Alzhimers." she forced out quietly as she lead me over to the small kitchenette, "But she remembers me. She used to make me this lasagna and I knew I had eaten it before. It's just…"

I nodded solemnly, my powers already at work studying Ms. Grissom's brain as I fell into step behind Amy as she started making something. I was quickly dicing a couple of eggplants as Amy worked her way through a small pile of vegetables chatting with the old woman.

As I moved on to the garlic, crushing and peeling the cloves, she started heating up the oil.

I took a moment to speed up the salting of the eggplant, telekinetically drawing water out of the fruit as I began to pat them dry.

Amy begins to fry the pieces with a practised ease, even as I was directed to toast some flatbreads.

Eventually, I'm left to pack a few tupperwares full of ready meals into the old woman's fridge as Amy sits down to talk to her for a while, the strains of some classical music I don't recognise filling the sitting area.

The peaceful scene is broken when an alert blares from Amy's phone.

Amy stiffens, quickly pulling the device from her pocket and paling as she reads the notification. She quickly hugs the woman and pulls me out of the apartment, "Endbringer alert. Apparently the Simurgh is descending towards Australia somewhere the PRT is asking for volunteers."

My heart stopped, "You're going?"

"I'll be in the medical area far away from the fight," She answered, "But my family is going to be there, I can't just leave them like that."

The world slowed to a crawl as my mind accelerated to full throttle. Each one of my lanes considering options. Points of discussion being pulled from the future as debates raged in the blink of an eye.

My Biological lane was informed of the fact that we had already foreseen the possibility of a Simurgh attack, and the reason why I had spend to much time stockpiling charges.

The time had come, it seemed, to make a gamble.

I was strong, and I had enough charges banked up that if I sacrificed them, I might be able to make a specialised power strong enough to make an impact on an endbringer fight. It was a shame I didn't have enough time to build up another thirty charges, so I could make and eighth level power.

Still not enough to kill an Endbringer, but it might be enough to let me hurt one.

Driving off an Endbringer. It would make me near untouchable. The PRT wouldn't be able to strong arm me and any gang short of Lung wouldn't risk pissing me off. My family would be safe even if my identity got out.

I would have the popular support I needed in order to expand into other countries.

But at the same time. I could sit this out, I could wait to build up my power. I could go up against something other than the Hopekiller.

My eyes still hadn't closed, so I could just make out Amy as I carried her towards the Boardwalk.

I couldn't leave her to take care of herself. With my powers, I would be able to easily escape if the situation went bad. I could just pass myself off as support for now.

And even a look at an Endbringer… It would teach me a lot about powers. The Simurgh was the closest thing those monsters had to a Tinker. I could learn so much just copying from what it knew.

I steeled myself. All I would need to do is figure out how to tell mom that I was about to do something incredibly dangerous without her blowing up on me.

That was probably going to be the hardest thing to do, even if the plan was to get out of dodge as soon as I was in the first sign of danger. Or… well, the first sign of immediate danger.

I could already recall hundreds of ways the conversation might have went. But eventually, as I began to clear the roofs of the neighbourhood, I reached out with my powers, and called mom.

"Mom, you might want to sit down for this. But… I'm about to do something pretty stupid."