Build 6.5

  Bryce Kiley

  2011, January 9: Brockton Bay, NH, USA

  Two hours passed in the blink of an eye, crossing over to Saturday morning. It was time for our meeting with Strider.

  Faultline led us to her office, which was about half the size of the family lounge. This being the third floor of her club, space was at a premium, but a combination of large mirrors and proportionately scaled-down furniture made the office look more spacious than it was.

  A minute before our agreed-upon time, there was a crack and a dull whump of displaced air out in the parking lot that was audible through the club music downstairs. Strider had arrived and he was quickly led upstairs to us.

  I stood to offer him a handshake. Sabah took cues from me and did the same. “Hello, Strider. Thanks for delivering all those soda engines for me.”

  “It was my pleasure. Post-endbringer cleanup is about as guilt-free a job as I can find. And, I even got paid this time,” the magic mailman replied with an easygoing laugh. He set his expanded suitcase at his feet and took a seat. “So, what can I do for you, Creed? If this is another delivery, you could have given me a call.”

  “I could have, but I felt this deserved a face-to-face conversation,” I said. I placed a hand on Sabah’s shoulder. “Strider, please allow me to introduce Maven, the newest member of my team.”

  “Hello,” Sabah greeted with a polite nod.

  “Hey there,” he replied. “So, I take it that whatever this is has to do with her? Is she another tinker ready to use my delivery services?”

  “No, well, kind of. Actually, I’m a trump. I am a power copier who can copy weakened versions of the original, up to three powers at a time. Creed allowed me to copy his power.”

  “Ah, I think I get it. You want a good mover power on top of the tinker power,” he said neutrally, surreptitiously taking a step back. He was more guarded now, with one hand on his luggage so he could teleport out of here. “I see why you wanted to meet face-to-face. But why the hell would I let someone else copy my power? Even if it does nothing to me, it’s bad for business.”

  “Hear us out, Strider. Maven copies, not steals, and can’t do it without permission,” I began. I held out my gloves for him to see. “She makes three articles of clothing and copies the powers of whoever wears them. I didn’t call you here so she can copy your power without permission; that’s not even possible. I called you here because I didn’t want to send that kind of info about a powerful new trump over email.”

  “That’s… better… You don’t lose any of your own power?”

  “No, my power’s still mine. She just gets a watered down version.”

  “Your power’s really versatile from what I’ve gathered. I’d imagine even a weaker version still makes her a competent tinker.”

  “Exactly. Same can be said of yours, I’d imagine. A Strider-lite would still be a top-tier mover, though probably more limited in scope.”

  “That still doesn’t tell me why I should give her a free powerup. If you haven’t noticed, my livelihood and reputation relies on being the best mass teleporter in the world. I’m not about to create a rival for myself.”

  “You’re right. That’d be stupid. It’s another reason we’re meeting in Faultline’s office.” I pulled out a manilla folder from my expanded bag. I’d already considered his reluctance, of course. “We made a list of things you might want in exchange. Look it over and make a wishlist. I can’t promise everything, but Maven and I are willing to be very generous. If you have any specific needs that aren’t in the catalog, we can discuss those as well.”

  Strider took the file. His eyes widened with surprise. Which was good, as Sabah and I had been rather extensive when we came up with this list. There were things that weren’t on the table yet, like devil fruits, but we were two of the most versatile tinkers in the world.

  Sabah was right. Having a teleporter on my team was far more valuable than an extra force field from Shielder. To that end, we agreed that presenting a cornucopia of options to tempt him was worth it.

  “Jetpacks… ATs… Those are your roller blades, right?” he mumbled.

  “They are. I’d be willing to give you the variant that lets me run on roads of water vapor if you think that’s better than a conventional jetpack.”

  “Flying does sound pretty awesome, but why roller blades? That’s just asking for an accident.”

  “They are very dangerous,” I agreed, especially since, as per Amy’s wishes, I wasn’t about to give out the gravity child serum. “The protections built into your costume would keep you safe from accidents, but you still wouldn’t be able to move at the speeds I do, not unless you are far more athletic than I give you credit for.”

  “Nope, definitely not those then. A jetpack is fine. And… An invisibility module? My power sounds like thunder whenever I use it, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be useful to have… Can you project an illusion to disguise where I go? Or somehow muffle my power’s noise?”

  “Absolutely. Holograms are easy, as are noise dampeners.” The former fell comfortably within the Despicable Me specialization and the latter was exactly what Air Gear was great at.

  “Hmm… Listening devices…hacking suites… hidden weapons… information collected on any organization or individual via tinker and thinker support… the right to refer someone to you… Wow, you really want me to wear that bracelet, huh?”

  “IWe do. Like I said, this is a major need for Maven, so we’re willing to meet you in the middle.”

  He slid the file over with an apologetic wince. “Yeah, about that… Look, this is all incredible and all, but before anything else, I’m going to want a guarantee.”

  “Name it.”

  “I want a signed contract stating that neither you nor your organization will use Maven here to undercut my courier business. Not in the country, not even in the state. If she accepts money from anyone, she stays local, maybe as far as Boston, but that’s it.”

  “Done,” Sabah said. And, in hindsight, I should have expected that he’d want to protect his business. “I have no interest in your job. I just want the power for personal use, or if we need to move things around. Being a high-level mover is the kind of safety I want for myself and those important to me.”

  “I can understand that. And I’ll remain your primary courier. There are other movers. They’re not as versatile as me, but you can’t threaten to change the rates or hire someone else. If I wear that bracelet, we’re in it for the long haul.”

  “Yes, I understand.”

  “Wait, hold on,” I cut in. “What if you’re otherwise occupied? I understand that you want to protect your business, but you’re a busy man, Strider.”

  “You don’t ship out of the city every day, anyway,” he pointed out.

  “That is starting to change, as you well know. Are you saying you’d like to be our exclusive courier? Because while we won’t keep you as busy as you undoubtedly are now, we definitely can afford to keep you on permanent retainer.”

  “That’s tempting, but no. I already have some outstanding contracts. I can’t just walk away from those without making a lot of enemies. Besides, even if you could afford me on a full-time basis, I’d still decline. The connections I make and the boost to my reputation are all perks of being unaffiliated.”

  We were at an impasse until Faultline spoke up. “Might I suggest something?”

  “Of course, Faultline.”

  “It seems to me that you both want to keep this business relationship. Strider requires a guarantee to protect his business. In other words, a non-compete. Creed is unwilling to promise all future deliveries to Strider.”

  “That’s about the gist of it,” I nodded.

  “In that case, I suggest we sign a contract which grants Strider the right of first refusal. Any deliveries Creed or his organization makes are to be offered to Strider first. Within twenty-four hours, he must accept the job, or Creed is permitted to outsource the job to someone else, be it Maven or another mover.”

  “That would be acceptable,” Strider said with a thoughtful nod. “Alright, that’s my biggest concern with a power copier. If you can give me the right of first refusal, and Faultline’s willing to be our guarantor, I’m willing to talk about lending my power.”

  I smiled. He was very careful with his phrasing. No doubt he’d want an exit clause as well. “I understand. I have The GOAT’s permission to speak on their behalf, of course. So, let’s talk about what we can do to sweeten the pot.”

  “Well, for starters, free healthcare…”

  X

  2011, January 9: Brockton Bay, NH, USA

  I’d allowed Sabah to handle most of the details in the negotiations. Seeing how she’d be the one to benefit from his power, she was also the one who’d be doing most of the building and maintenance.

  By the end, I was quite sure that Strider would soon become the most well-armed mailman in the world. That was fine by me. Strider’s safety was Sabah’s safety, and that was worth investing in.

  Canonically, he died in Brockton Bay when Leviathan attacked. He’d been attempting to move injured capes and Leviathan caught him unaware. That couldn’t happen anymore now that he was almost as well-armed as I was. It felt a little like going back in time to give Abraham Lincoln a kevlar vest.

  We met up bright and early the next morning to test out Sabah’s mover power. Strider gave us a breakdown of his version, but that was only a benchmark. We fully expected Sabah’s version to be much weaker.

  For starters, Strider described his power as a “stride,” hence his name. In other words, he thought of it as playing an elaborate game of hopscotch, except the entire globe was the lines of chalk. Just as it was harder to hop to a square that was further away, he could wind himself if he tried to jump too far, too quickly.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  That admittedly didn’t mean much. For him, “too far” was roughly the distance from New York to Los Angeles. He could do it, but he typically preferred to make several shorter “strides.”

  He also described his power as a force that radiated out from his person. Anything caught within could be moved along with him to his destination. The primary downsides were that this kind of mass transport was more taxing, and that his power radiated out slowly, almost like a thick oil spill.

  The power Sabah copied was comparatively greatly diminished. Her “transport bubble” was only three feet in radius, no matter how much she strained to push that space outward. She also took several seconds to teleport, even when she was transporting only herself. And, after triangulating her maximum distance, we figured that it was about four hundred miles. That was roughly the distance from Boston to Washington, DC.

  “So, how’s the capitol?” I asked teasingly. I could see her face through her mask. Her brows were curled in pain, staving off the migraine Strider warned us about. “Do you feel patriotic looking out over the mouth of the Potomac?”

  “Bryce? Please shut up,” she growled. She’d appeared on Theodore Roosevelt Island, a small islet on the Potomac River that had been turned into a national park and memorial dedicated to the biggest badass to ever hold the office. “Why can’t I heal myself? This is so unfair.”

  “Sorry, that’s not how my power works,” Amy shrugged unapologetically. She was seated next to me, watching the feed from Sabah’s mask and snacking on creme brulee-flavored macadamia nuts. “The Manton limit’s a bitch, ain’t it?”

  “You two are awful. You have no empathy at all, do you?”

  “Just take shorter hops back.”

  “I will, but that doesn’t help my headache now.”

  “Well, you’re already there. You may as well enjoy yourself. Have you been to DC before?”

  “Once, back in middle school. There was a three nights, four days trip. I saw Mount Vernon, toured the capitol building, and visited the Smithsonian Museum of American History.”

  “Nice. You should do something you didn’t get to do back then,” I pointed out. “Going with a group is very different from being able to explore on your own.”

  “That’s true… Are you sure? I was supposed to help you finish our car,” she said hesitantly. “And I should get started on Strider’s requests.”

  “The car’s basically done anyway,” I waved her off. “We have all the parts so assembling it won’t take much time. Consider this your day off, Sabs.”

  “Yeah, if you feel bad, just bring us back souvenirs,” Amy chimed in.

  Sabah still looked unsure, but nodded. “O-Okay, thanks, you two. I’ll bring back something cool.”

  She dipped behind a bush before allowing her suit to collapse into her belt. Rather than incorporate my texture module from the Pokemon specialization, she’d made her own from Despicable Me. The super-spy setting wasn’t exactly lacking disguise options. She now looked like any other jogger, out to enjoy the brisk, morning air.

  That settled, I turned to my own work. Already, it’d been three weeks since my specialization changed. That was… It felt as though no time at all had passed, but I’d receive a new specialization this coming Saturday.

  And Sabah… Would she keep the knowledge of things she’d built? If I got another magic-heavy specialization, our link would be useless unless she got to retain this knowledge. She hadn’t received any knowledge of One Piece, Air Gear, or Pokemon back when I had Fullmetal Alchemist, but that could just be because her Shard hadn’t had access to that record.

  Now that she had Despicable Me, perhaps she’d be allowed to build on her repertoire rather than starting anew. After all, retaining large volumes of data was exactly what Shards were great at.

  I wished I’d had Sabah build a mockup of automail, even just a clunky, oversized one. We should have tested her Shard’s data retention when there wasn’t much to lose. As things stood, there was a chance she could lose all of this as soon as our connection was severed.

  I shook my head. There was no use worrying about past regrets, not when there was so much to do.

  The Mimic Network was coming along. No matter what else was in my pipeline, I made sure to set aside at least one fabricator to make more mimic-bots. They were stationed only on my ship for now, but soon, I'd have enough to deploy them elsewhere without compromising my security.

  I set a few more fabricators to make additional mimic-bots. These were larger, about the size and shape of a pint carton of milk rather than a chocolate chip cookie.

  That was because they were armed with a triple loadout: my goop gun, freeze, and shrink rays. They also had a storage compartment and a cloaking module. If I had my way, they would have also had jetpacks for quick getaways, but there was a limit to how much I could cram into a milk carton.

  They were, in a word, kidnapping mimics. They were designed to be deployed in a location of my choosing, before shrinking, gooping, and freezing the target for easy transport. Then, they'd scuttle their way to a collection point while cloaked, ready for pickup.

  “Bryce? You can understand why that makes me nervous, can't you?” Amy asked. She held a mockup in her hand and was fiddling with its cardboard shell like she wanted to open it.

  “They're for safely neutralizing a target, even through hardened fortifications. Or evacuating a hostage before anyone figures out what I'm doing,” I explained. “Villains will be so busy looking at Creed that my mimics will have free rein.”

  “Yeah, I get that, but why milk cartons?”

  “Because they were originally cookie-bots. You know, cookies and milk? Don’t they remind you of the milk cartons you used to have as a kid? They’re cute.”

  “They do, and that’s the problem. You realize this makes it look like you're going to kidnap girl scouts, right?”

  “I… Yeah, okay, fair enough. Let’s not make them into milk cartons. We can change the exterior as necessary.”

  “See? This is why you need me,” she said smugly.

  “Yes, Amy, you are my five year old.”

  “That makes you the evil overlord.”

  “Of course. I shall take over the world with the power of milk and cookies,” I replied, chest puffed out.

  “Dork.”

  That settled, I spent the afternoon assembling my car. It looked like a budget-luxury Ford and had the armaments to fight a war on its lonesome. Sabah might have been the one in DC, but I'd never felt more American.

  I wanted to take it for a drive. It wasn’t about speed, I could skate faster than this thing if I really wanted to. There was something alluring about a car that could tank a nuke and dive to the bottom of the ocean. Perhaps one day, I’d get to challenge Armsmaster to a race.

  Alas, that day was not today. Sabah, Amy, and I determined that Saturday evening would be the best time to give Trainwreck the devil fruit. That way, if anything went wrong, we had Sunday to figure it out before we had to start cutting class and raising questions about where we were.

  X

  Sabah met us at the abandoned warehouse we’d selected. My mimic-bots had taken over the land for about a hundred feet in all directions. Trash can lids, used tires, soda cans, and more were all my eyes and ears, reporting everything to SAINT.

  “How was DC?” Amy asked as we waited for Trainwreck. She kicked at a dusty tennis ball gingerly, almost as if she expected it to grow legs and crawl up her calf. Just because she understood the need for security didn’t mean she appreciated having to second guess herself around random objects.

  Saba, dressed in her Maven outfit again, handed us a takeout box. “Pretty great, actually. I saw a show at the Kennedy Center and visited the Museum of American History.”

  “I didn’t know you were a history buff.”

  “I’m not. But I am a fashion buff. They’ve got a section dedicated to historical fashions and trends that I appreciated. Oh, by the way,” she said, digging around her bag. She withdrew three plastic takeout containers. “Here, got us dinner. I bet you two ate nothing except your weird, mutant snack nuts.”

  “They’re not mutant. They’re just… engineered…”

  “That sounded so weak.”

  “Yeah, okay, but they’re healthy.”

  “I didn’t ask if they’re healthy. I said you probably didn’t have dinner. Do they count as dinner?” Sabah asked pointedly, in that way only a big sister could.

  “No… Fine, what’s in the boxes?”

  “I found a really nice Lebanese hole in the wall. One box is falafel and mekanek, which is a lamb sausage with lemon and pine nuts. The second is pita bread and hummus. Oh, and when the chef heard I was from out of town, he gave me a serving of moussaka, which is roasted eggplant, tomato, and garlic so that’s in the third box.”

  “That… Okay, yeah, that sounds delicious. I recognized none of it, but I’m down.”

  “Trust me, it’s all great.”

  “I thought you were Iraqi,” I noted as we started to dig in. “Is Lebanese and Iraqi food similar?”

  “Fairly close, though Lebanon has some similarities with Greek food because they’re both on the Mediterranean."

  We ate and chatted until Trainwreck arrived. Sabah and I noticed first, thanks to the ping we got from SAINT and the Mimic Network. We quickly polished off the last of our meal and waited for him.

  Trainwreck was not a subtle cape. He was a lumbering, steampunk giant who probably weighed close to a ton in his power armor. His movements were surprisingly fluid for such a big chassis, but there was only so much he could do to mask his presence.

  I wondered if he’d ever considered a smaller, more mobile exosuit. Then again, with his rugged specialization, there was a good chance that wasn’t even possible for his Shard.

  “Yo, Trainwreck,” I greeted as the warehouse door seemed to slide open of its own will.

  “How do you turn this thing off?” he grunted. “Shit’s only got one button.”

  I snapped my finger. SAINT locked in on the invisibility module I gave Trainwreck and shut it off before frying the code from inside. The Case-53 tinker crackled into view. “Like that. Like I said, that was a one-time gift to get you here.”

  “Wouldn’t want it anyway. Shit’s weird, not seeing yourself.”

  That was because he didn’t have the associated user interface, but that was neither here nor there. “Well, you’re here. Shall we jump right to business?”

  He looked around. His eyes glossed over Sabah and locked on Amy’s signature, white robes. “Shit, you really did get Panacea on board.”

  “We promised. Our word is our law. You could even say it’s our Creed.”

  “Fuck you and your PR shit.”

  “Heh, fair enough. New girl’s Maven. She’s got minor diagnostic abilities that can help Panacea in a pinch.”

  “This is that experimental, huh?” he muttered. “Not exactly giving me good vibes, Creed.”

  “Insurance, nothing more. You’d rather she be here than not, trust me on that. Now, Panacea?” I sank into a flourishing bow, ceding the floor to her.

  Amy nodded and took a deep breath. Reaching into her bag, she pulled out the devil fruit in question. Her hands were trembling slightly with nerves. I didn’t blame her.

  We talked about this. Though I could have taken point on this, we both felt that it should be her. Trainwreck would feel more assured if she was the one to present it. And, privately, I wanted her to take ownership of this project as a way to finally free herself of the mentality she’d had at the start of the school year.

  After a moment to collect herself, she began, “Right, this is a devil fruit. Let me explain how this works before you eat it.”

  Author’s Note

  I’ve decided that there are two limitations regarding Sabah’s knockoff Tinker of Fiction.

  First, Sabah cannot touch metaphysical concepts. E.g. If Bryce rolls Jackie Chan Adventures, she’s shit out of luck because those zodiac talismans aren’t based around conventional science.

  Second, Sabah’s Shard retains information, but only so long as their link persists. If she severs that link for a more immediately relevant power, her Shard will interpret that as “Host no longer requires this archive,” and toss it all. I can’t stress this enough: Shards are idiot-savants.

  She doesn’t know the above though, which means she might one day pick up Flechette’s Sting or something, only to realize she has no idea how to maintain her own costume anymore. I feel like that’s a very Worm-like compromise.

  Animal Fact: Spitting cobras can spit their venom with incredible accuracy, using their venom as a projectile attack to blind predators. That said, they’re not the only animals to do this.

  Turkey vultures will projectile vomit as a means of self-defense. Though the vulture is not venomous, the vomit contains incredibly strong stomach acid that can irritate predators, or possibly even blind them. It’s also thought that they do this to “lighten the load,” as it were.

  Both the turkey vulture and spitting cobra have a maximum range of about ten feet.

  Thank you for reading. To reach a wider audience, and because I enjoy a more forum-like setup to facilitate discussion, I like to crosspost to a wide variety of websites. If you’re also like me, you can find my works on

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