Ember

I started by first burning the charges for Postcognition. A generic form that would allow my sensory powers to detect that area up to a little more than sixty years into the past. Using equations derived from my Tinker powers and my study of Clockblocker, Alexandria and even the Simurgh, I had managed to squeeze out quite a bit from the fourth level charge.

Reaching into the past I traced the paths of the capes around me, scanning around them for any other capes. Visions of thousands of capes and their powers entered my mind like an overwhelming torrent.

The world around me was a standstill at this point. My pain unable to reach my face.

But the information I was getting was enough to fill in the final blanks. Two charges poured into a new power, and I felt my mind reshape. Unlike my lanes Polymind fully extended my intellectual and emotional capabilities as sixteen complete emulations slotted in under my lanes. Where I was once eleven simultaneous thoughts, I was now sixteen complete minds. Each entirely insulated from the outside world, each thinking eleven thoughts of their own.

I could feel the mischievous anticipation of my new hive-mind as I began to take apart the incoming stream of information assimilating enormous libraries of Tinkertech.

A mental laugh echoed in my head as two more charges were sacrificed to my preparations. A wide suite of Thinker powers to help me manage inhuman body plans, especially in the form of multiple bodies. I laugh as I realise that one of the key pieces was sitting in my own backyard.

I feel the shift take place almost immediately, as I suddenly feel at home in my altered form, in a way that I had never realised I wasn't before. My eyes slid, even at this acceleration over the others in the tent as my vision turned back to the Simurgh.

At this mental acceleration, the abomination was almost frozen in time, but I could see it moving, slowly and slightly.

I frowned as the Trivumerate disappeared beyond my reach, as they stepped into strange portals. Interdimensional portals, I realised, now that I had access to Haywire's Repository.

So I crafted a power, shaped two more charges to create four True Targets. The ability to focus my powers unbound by limitations of distance or dimensionality. I had previously thought it was overkill, but it seemed that I had underestimated the challenges that I would face. One reached into the past to tag Alexandria, revealing unto me a whole new world.

Searching the new compound with my new marks took moments but I was able to find dozens of capes. One, with a power that I couldn't justify ignoring for a second longer.

Four charges focused into a point, a concerted effort towards a single purpose, finding anything I so wish. Clairvoyant Targeting, after the cape I had studied would let me find any location or person I wanted to find as long as they weren't being hidden by specific powers. Alone it would already be immensely powerful but paired with my precognition and postcognition?

I was already piecing together far more than I could have ever imagined.

The Power dealers not only held a vast array of capes under their thumb, but even the Trivumerate themselves. Hundreds of monster capes were trapped in their extra-dimensional base, while their computers held records of hundreds more bound by an intricate web of debt and favours. Dozens more pinned in with blackmail.

And not the least to say their mundane resources.

But in one fell swoopI had changed everything. With Alexandria, Shamrock, the Dealer and dozens of other PRT known anti-thinkers to pattern off of, I knew my defences would hold up even against their ace in the hole - Contessa.

Back in the present, my thoughts came to a stand-still as I saw the Simurgh finish moving, her blind eyes looking off into the distance - looking in the direction of the medical area.

My mind raced until the obvious answer came to me. I was truly hidden from Thinkers now, not just a portion of my thoughts. I could even see it within the abominations thoughts, A strange shifting in the futures that it saw. A variable in its equations suddenly hidden in a way that it could no longer truly account for.

More charges began to flow from my reserves. My first fifth-rank power takes shape, a simple projector, much like one of my earliest powers, but writ large, an area several miles in radius that I could project my other powers onto. A single charge went into an array of extra senses, each operating on principles derived from a wide array of Tinkertech devices, theoretical machines adding to my senses in a way that would have driven me insane before my new Thinker powers.

I began to consider plans as the Simurgh began to accelerate in my direction. I could see energy flowing through its powers as force began to take shape around it. But as it was, my construction speed was too slow.

A new power spun up, with principles derived from Doormaker and Dr Haywire. A third level charge took form, allowing me to transport materials across dimensional boundaries.

Four more charges formed two more powers as my sensors expanded into other dimensions searching for what I needed even as my insight began to see beyond the mess of timelines and into the hyper-quantum infinities.

But to face the Simurgh Tinkertech wouldn't be enough. I would just be giving it the tools of my own destruction if I didn't take careful notice.

Even as it accelerated towards me, deflecting or dodging attacks sent by the fastest responding capes on site, I examined the flows of energy around it. I knew it only had one method of moving anything, a method similar to the way that Alexandria's body was kept in stasis, and the way that Clockblocker froze things in time.

I could already see how the energy flowed, and with as many examples of how the power worked, my Quantum State Limiters began to form. Sixteen charges poured into the most intricate form I had made thus far, a sense of fragility belying the power this charge had as it took form.

I could already feel myself feeding power into the universe around me in strange and esoteric ways, calculated with certainty to make my outcome the fated outcome.

I suppose it was only because of my new senses, but the world seemed to solidify under me as a sense of determinism began to take hold. Around us, material began to make its way into this timeline, pouring into carefully constructed mechanisms even as, in the distance, the Simurgh sped up.

Through my Eye I could see the other capes realise the danger and begin to give chase, but they are too slow. With the force the Simurgh can bring to bear, the acceleration it could reach was immense, and even at the speed my minds were moving at, I could see it bear down on us inexhaustibly. All but the very fastest capes would be left behind.

I could hear the radios in the tent begin to flare to life in a desperate attempt to evacuate the healers.

Even accelerated as I was, I caught Amy's eye as the fear began to take over her, raised my hand and snapped my fingers.

In a flicker of power-induced dimensional manipulation, everyone around me was enrobed in an energy field and shunted into another dimension, just for a moment before being shunted back several miles away.

I floated out of the tent spotting the panicked forms of the suddenly translocated capes and doctors organising themselves in the distance.