Inspired Inventor 2: The Golden Spatula

Yasmine de la Rosa

2001, April 1: Phoenix, AZ, USA

We were all seated around the coffee table in the Wards' common room. Stingray, Ranchero, and Wildshot of Team Three had all moved on into the Protectorate. Stingray was still with us, she worked under Oathkeeper now, but Ranchero and Wildshot had been transferred out in some director-level draft pick that was way above my paygrade, Ranchero to Albuquerque and Wildshot to San Antonio.

With the eldest members gone, Wards Team Three had ceased to exist and were simply folded into Team One and Team Two. That left us with a whopping three new members, including our leader, Carnival Flux. He was a year older than me and never let me forget it.

Said cape looked around at the five of us, the LED lights and tesla coils in his costume sparking with annoyance. "Where's Rubedo?" he demanded.

Bandit and I glanced at each other before shrugging simultaneously. "Fuck if I know. I'm not his boss," I drawled in the lazy way that Ranchero always used to. Flux thought he was hot shit because he was older and had a flashy power. He was the sort of guy that never figured out when people were laughing at him instead of with him.

"You're his teammate."

"And now, so are you, boss."

"He's probably in his lab," Bandit said. Ever since Ranchero left, she tried to play peacekeeper. The slip of a girl lacked the build to pull it off and her childish costume didn't help any. Flux liked to boss her around, not knowing that ever since her second trigger, she was the deadliest fucker in the room, our absentee tinker excluded.

"Che, fucking nerd," Flux grumbled.

"You're just jealous because he's a bigger deal than you," Poundtown said with a smirk. He was another new face from the merge, probably the chilliest guy around. For a giant dressed like a Viking, he was surprisingly mellow. "Bigger deal than all of us put together."

No matter what Flux thought, Poundtown was right. Last year, Rubedo made The Fork. It was what really put the Phoenix PRT on the map. DC had Hero, New York had Legend, Houston had Eidolon, and Los Angeles had Alexandria. Phoenix? We had Rubedo, the greatest tinker of his generation, Hero's heir.

The Phoenix Suns gifted him a lifetime pass. Restaurants named "Fork You" and a dozen other shitty puns around cutlery sprouted up overnight. His tinker budget became effectively infinite. If Director Lyons couldn't find the money, she'd take it fresh from the US Mint. Hell, trading card sets of Wards Team One weren't considered complete unless you had his even though he'd only been here for a year and virtually never showed up in public. Every PR event we showed up at without the reclusive midget, the first question was always "Where's Rubedo?"

Videos of the Leviathan being turned into a cherry by Alexandria were still making their rounds, a timeless classic that defined our generation. Behemoth had fared no better. The Simurgh, the "Angel of Lausanne," had thus far kept the hell out of the poking range of Alexandria's new trident by virtue of being a hypersonic flier. It seemed even she was on borrowed time.

Everyone was saying how he'd define his own era of superheroes, much as the Founders had. There was no way to overstate his importance to the public: Rubedo was a fucking legend.

As for the tinker himself, he was as much of an obnoxious brat as always, sarcasm like barbed wire and a never-ending river of blind jokes.

I snorted. 'At least he's not letting his adoring fans go to his head,' I thought. If anything, he seemed to work harder than ever.

Flux got into another bitchfest with his own teammate. Some people hated living under someone else's shadow. Bandit and I came to terms with it, helped that Rubedo was a chill kid, but Flux had a chip on his shoulder the size of Behemoth.

Then we heard it. The laughter. Hell, it was practically trademarked at this point.

"AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

"Umm… Is he going to be okay?" Shimmerwing, another new face, asked gingerly, almost as if talking about him would bring bad luck.

"Ehh, leave him be, chica," I snorted and twirled a finger by my head. "Tinkers all be loco, know what I'm sayin'?"

"MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I. AM. A. GOD!"

"Not that I disagree, Trick, but that's… not Rubedo's normal laugh," Masked Bandit said as she pulled her hood tighter.

We shared a single look. Old friends could say a lot with a glance. Ours said, "We've heard this laugh before," and "Shitshitshitshit," without giving away a damn thing.

There was a profound feeling of déjà vu.

"Maybe someone should check on him," Poundtown said.

Deja. Vu.

"Not it," we two veterans of Rubedo's bullshitry chorused as one.

"What?" Flux looked confused. So business as usual with him.

"Ey, you want to be the boss? You go check on him, yeah?" I waved him away. "Lead by example and all that."

He swore under his breath but rose. "Fine, I swear if that midget's just goofing off I'm gonna kick his ass."

"Try. You're going to try. And fail. Badly."

Flux grumbled but didn't correct me as he stomped off. Seriously, half the shit Andy built these days was "in case of endbringer" and the other half effectively boiled down to how much humiliation you wanted with your can of whoopass.

"Odds that he comes back a changed man?" Bandit asked.

I barked out a laugh. "Ha. Sucker's bet."

Shimmerwing looked at the two of us. "Okay, you two know something."

"We do," I admitted easily. "That laugh is exactly the same laugh as when he made The Fork. Stingray was never the same again. We have trauma. And long memories."

X

Martin Sullivan

2001, April 1: Phoenix, AZ, USA

"Fucking bitch," I grumbled. Hat Trick had been giving me shit ever since I took over for Stingray. I wasn't Stingray. I got the memo the first dozen times. Hell, it wasn't just Hat Trick either. Not one of them had unmasked to me even though I was team lead. "You need to win their trust," the director said, but what was the fucking point when even the two midgets looked down on me?

I slammed the door open with more force than strictly necessary. "Rubedo, you blind midget! You're late for the team meeting!"

I looked around at the utter chaos. The place was a fucking pigsty. A few knickknacks out of place were expected, he was a tinker, but the lab looked like a hurricane blew through it. His desk lamp was on its side missing a bulb. His swivel chair was missing its wheels and jammed between the fridge and the kiln. Empty takeout boxes littered the floor, though oddly enough without a single crumb in sight.

The little freakshow was huddled over the metal lathe, protective glasses nowhere to be found. 'He'd probably gouge out his own eyes if he still had them.'

I stepped by a hotplate and pulled him away from the lathe. "Oi, brat! What the fuck are you mak-"

I didn't see it coming. I was Carnival Flux, fastest mover in the state, the same mover who could charge himself with lightning and pick bullets out of the air. Somehow, the little shit caught me off guard.

I saw a flash of gold, heard a soul-shattering slap, then nothing.

X

I woke up to ice cold water splashing my face. I rose with a sputter. Some of it got in my mouth. No, it was not water. My eyes burned like a colony of ants had decided to wage war on my eyeballs.

"Aaah! Fuck! What the hell is that?"

"Vinegar," the demon in child form said, far too happily. "I keep a few gallons of the stuff around. Cleaning. Alchemy. Dead useful."

I did my best to not get any more into my eyes. "I'll show you dead, you little shit," I growled.

I felt something else splash my face. "And that was a pH balancer," Rubedo said. "Doesn't burn anymore, does it?"

It didn't, but I sure as hell wasn't going to give him that. Fucker was smug enough as it was. "What the hell are you doing?"

"Tinkering."

"I meant throwing vinegar at people!"

I loomed over him. I wasn't very tall, but kid was what? Nine? Ten?

"Well you shouldn't sneak up on people," the smug little shit said. "Besides, I'm pretty sure I'm to be left alone to finish all projects or reach a stopping place on my own. Did you think that rule was for show? The last egghead to interrupt me almost died, you know."

"Just because you made a magic fucking fo-"

"The Fork," he stressed. "And no. That rule's been there ever since I joined the Wards. It's standard procedure for any tinkers in fugue because fucking with us tends to get idiots like you killed," he snapped.

I made to grab at him, but something else caught my eye. It was gold. It was bright and shiny. It was… the single most magnificent thing I'd ever seen. "Is… Is that a spatula?"

"The Golden Spatula. The name's important. Even a schmuck like you knows to respect The Golden Spatula."

I nodded absently, barely paying attention. "What does it do?"

"It slaps idiots who interrupt my tinkering."

My face was reflected on the stainless steel countertop. I could see a red imprint of the spatula's head on my cheek. All around the lathe, there were bits of gold shavings worn away by the lathe and I briefly wondered how much that would amount to.

Then my mind snapped back into focus. The Golden Spatula. That was the important thing here. "It must do something-"

"Declined, it does EVERYTHING!" he shouted. He snapped The Golden Spatula into the air. The air, no, existence rippled. Thunder boomed across the sky. The earth shook. A corona of divine flames surrounded him. For a moment, a breath within a breath, the secrets of the multiverse were laid bare before me.

I believed him. Hat Trick. Masked Bandit. I'd always wondered just why they were so respectful, nay, reverent, towards some punk kid. I understood now.

The Golden Spatula had spoken and flipped my world like an over-easy egg.

X

Rebecca Costa-Brown

2001, April 5, Ellisburg, NY, USA

Rinke had triggered earlier this year, turning the entire town into a parody of some fantasy kingdom. The "goblin king" even had the audacity to make demands of the PRT through a "loyal subject," the "royal ambassador to his majesty, the Goblin King Nilbog."

I snorted. "What a joke."

"Did you say something, Lexi?" Hero asked. He looked resplendent in his gold and blue armor, as usual.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

He and Legend were my and Eidolon's opposites, in personality if not in power. Eidolon and I were stern and focused, always looking ahead to the next battle. Hero and Legend would sneak video games and movies to the Wards, the sorts to stop and smell the flowers. I felt no shame in admitting that the two of them were far more righteous than I. Without them, I didn't doubt that I'd sink deep into the sort of absolute pragmatism that considers lives to be little more than numbers.

"Nothing," I replied, "just happy to get rid of this eyesore."

"Yeah. It's a pity that Contessa can't predict triggers. If we'd known…"

"Don't start, Hero. If you start wondering about 'what if's, you'll never stop."

"You're right. Remember, once you go in…"

"I know. Can't forget," I reminded him gently.

"I know… Nerves."

"You're not the one jumping in there."

"You're my friend. I'm going to worry about you, invincible or not."

"And I appreciate it." I did, truly. As durable as I was, I knew I wasn't truly invincible, no matter what PR said. I stopped myself from reaching for my eye. One was gold now, a replacement provided by Hero after the Siberian gouged it out. How he got it to bypass my power's selective stasis, I'll never understand.

I turned my eyes back to Elisburg.

Nilbog had threatened countless plagues and horrors upon his death. Once I went in, there would be no coming out. Hero had built a barrier that isolated an area in a separate dimension. Only a single scanner was designed to penetrate the barrier. Other than that, it was quite literally a separate reality.

Once I stepped inside, the scanner would pass information through to the barrier's generator. The generator was designed to deactivate when only one life sign could be found: mine. Either I would wipe out Nilbog's little kingdom in full, or I'd be stuck there for eternity, and with my power, it may literally be an eternity.

"I could go with you," he tried. "You could use the backup."

"No," I denied. "You know why. You've always had the highest success rate. You're irreplaceable." That I wasn't went unsaid but the sentiment echoed loud and clear.

"Lexi, no one's replaceable."

"How I wish I could believe that."

Contessa had never been able to predict Scion, nor the endbringers. Even so, she'd been able to make rough approximations, cardboard cutouts to simulate the real thing. They were undoubtedly woefully inaccurate, but they were the best we had. And with them, she had estimated each of the four Founders' odds of killing Scion. Eidolon came up highest in the short term, but given enough time, Hero's ratings inevitably overtook his. It would be years, but the golden tinker was our best shot.

I glanced down at The Fork in a custom-made holster at my waist. 'Yes,' I thought, 'there are more heroes to pick up my fight.'

Even with The Fork, I couldn't win against Scion. Contessa's simulations taught us something valuable: Scion's body was fake, much like the Siberian wasn't Manton. Poking the Siberian had dispelled the projection, leaving a delicious cherry behind. According to Contessa, Scion was the same. Unless I could get to Scion's true body, I would waste an eternity playing tag with his avatar as it respawned again and again.

Then I looked at the second masterwork Rubedo made.

It sat innocuously on the planning room table. Rubedo had made quite a few things, some even impressing Hero, but the young Ward had only seen fit to name two of his inventions true masterworks. "Divine artifacts," he'd called them. I didn't much care about his naming sense so long as they worked, but I wondered not for the first time just what god he worshipped that he thought kitchen utensils were appropriate weapons.

Something about a ram…?

Not important. If it helped us kill Scion, he could have the whole San Diego Zoo as his personal pantheon. I'd build him a pulpit myself if necessary.

We hadn't bothered to steal The Golden Spatula. Instead, Contessa had simply knocked on his apartment door. He'd greeted her with a cheery handshake and invited her to a dinner of Korean barbeque during which some sort of deal was struck.

"All according to the Path," she'd said. I didn't know which thought made me more nervous, that he'd somehow known about the strongest thinker alive, or that she'd known that he'd known and seen fit to treat him as an equal rather than a pawn to be manipulated or an obstacle to be eliminated. When any of us approached her, she simply pointed to the Path and would say no more on the matter.

I took it to mean that Rubedo interacting with anyone but her would end in disaster. Or she was messing with us again. "Fuck thinkers," I grunted.

Yes, I was in fact aware of the irony.

Regardless, we had a second miracle-weapon now, questionable appearance aside. It was a running joke in the community that Rubedo was actually a food-tinker, not an alchemist. There were memes floating around of Rubedo in a too-tall confectioner's hat decorating a giant wedding cake, each fruit the face of an S-class villain.

'I'm pretty sure Hero was the one who started that gag. Although… Given what happened with the Crips, I suppose it's pretty obvious that he's much more than an alchemist.'

Ridiculous pictures aside, Ellisburg would be the perfect situation to test out The Golden Spatula. If it didn't live up to his promises for any reason, I still had The Fork and the dimensional bubble would contain any of Nilbog's nasty surprises.

"Ready?"

"Ready," I said. I reached out and picked up The Golden Spatula. I knew then that my world would never be the same.

I groaned as power filled me, power like I'd never known. The image of a god sprang to mind. Urf the Manatee, who was sacrificed so that I may one day, this day, wield the mighty Golden Spatula, smiled down at me with his large, soulful eyes. His wrinkly gray skin and rolls of blubber made up the most magnificent visage I'd ever laid eyes on. He held out a torch, a flame of radiant gold burning at its center, and touched my soul, igniting it with the splendor of a sacred, purifying flame. Could humans become aware of souls? Because I now knew for a fact that they existed.

I didn't know I had one of those anymore…

The cherries were delicious, divine even. I could readily believe that they were the favorite snack food of a god. This? This was a brand new type of religious experience, a baptism in fire and cutlery.

I had cancer. Still did, technically. It was no secret among my closest friends. I had cancer and my power was keeping my body in a form of stasis. It meant that the malignant tumors would never kill me, but it also meant I was stuck in that permanent state of agony, a persistent ache I'd long since come to accept as a part of life.

The Golden Spatula changed everything. For the first time in more than a decade, I felt my body start to heal. I grunted as something pooled in my eye socket. Hero's mechanical eye popped out of my socket and fell to the floor.

Golden flames poured out from my soul and made me whole, warming me from head to toe and wrapping me in a comforting embrace I'd not had since my mother worked herself to death trying to pay for my chemotherapy. I felt a single tear roll down my cheek as I remembered her face, the first time in over a decade I thought of her.

The healing was nice, but that wasn't all that The Golden Spatula did. I felt stronger and faster than I'd ever been before. I knew not where my body's limitations ended and where my power began. If my power could make a frail, cancer-ridden girl the strongest brute in the world, what could it do to a woman who was herself a super-soldier?

"Lexi?" Hero called tentatively. He was fiddling with the vambrace of his armor, no doubt embedded with a dozen scanners that scanned for a hundred different flavors of exotic energy scientists couldn't even pronounce. "You okay in there?"

I glanced down at the shroud of golden flames wrapped around my concrete-gray costume. It was the physical manifestation of a spiritual reality, a literal passing of the torch from Urf the Manatee to Rebecca Costa-Brown.

"Never been better," I said, blinking away tears and smiling perhaps my first genuine smile in years.

I snapped my new favorite weapon against the air and the heavens answered, thunder booming in a cloudless sky. There was a soul-deep awareness that the mighty Urf had blessed this weapon. There was boundless power here, a promise to lend his strength against all bioengineered monstrosities in this world, starting with Nilbog. I wasn't just Alexandria any longer. I was a Champion. His Champion.

X

I heard the barrier close behind me. There was no going back. I grinned.

"Arrogant!" one of the goblins screamed out. It was a lanky thing, one of those bone-launchers Nilbog used as scouts and guards. The local PRT simply called them "Tall Ones." "Invader!"

"As they say, 'I'm not trapped here with you; you're trapped here with me.'" I chuckled. I'd always wanted to say that line. So what if I liked corny movie one-liners? Cancer was a bitch and I had very little to do while wasting away on a hospital bed.

Sheer, uncontrolled euphoria filled me as I laughed for what felt like the first time in a decade. I laughed and cheered and felt like a little girl again as I charged, The Golden Spatula's blazing halo leaving massive heat trails behind me. The same heat trails ignored the laws of physics, igniting in the vacuum of my sonic boom despite the lack of oxygen. A city block was blown to smithereens by my passing as I indulged in Urf's righteous fury.

The battle was not glorious. Or more specifically, there was no battle. I had The Fork. I had The Golden Spatula. I'd taken up spearmanship last year, but I was no expert and certainly not good enough to dual-wield with any elegance. I knew I couldn't do such magnificent weapons justice.

It didn't matter.

Amateur I may be, but the weapons in my hand were literally divine. I swung like the invincible juggernaut I was. The Golden Spatula lashed out, slapping a massive three-headed hound out of the air. Despite the broad head, it carved through Nilbog's creature like a hot knife through butter, leaving behind naught but immolated ashes in the breeze.

I then tucked The Fork under my right armpit as it extended at speed to skewer its way through an entire block's worth of lesser goblins. I charged like a jousting knight and nothing could hope to stop me. A hail of crimson cherries fell to the earth as goblins threw themselves in my path in some delusional hope of slowing me down.

They retaliated with spears of bone and suicidal goblins bloated with acid. Noxious green mist filled the air, no doubt containing a cocktail of pathogens that would be deadly for absolutely anyone else.

I wasn't anyone else. Such half-assed measures would have been ineffective even before my new anointing. Now? Now the very mist burned away to nothing with but a swing of my golden weapon. With divinely enhanced speed, I jabbed and met every bone spear with The Fork. The air resounded with a staccato of sonic booms at the sheer acceleration of my arm.

The shockwaves rippling through the air were enough to keep lesser creatures from approaching me at all, but so massive was the difference between us that I couldn't help but liken the noise to popcorn.

I turned and swung The Fork like a bat as it extended like the mythical Compliant Staff. It reduced another city block to rubble, leaving a trail of cherries behind the point of its teeth.

"Traitor! This wasn't the deal!" a mutated girl with a giant head shrieked out. "You invite war!"

"Defend the king!"

"Kill the invader!"

Similar proclamations of war echoed around the town as goblins emerged from underground in droves. It mattered not. Fire filled the land as my cape ignited. It was gruesome work. The smell of charred pork and roasted cherries filled the town.

Finally having had enough, I soared up into the sky, as high as Hero's barriers would allow, then tucked The Fork into its holster. I pressed my feet against the barrier and stood upside down before launching myself down towards the earth, The Golden Spatula clenched in both hands. A joyous battle cry left my lips as Urf's sacred flames surrounded me, covering me like a meteor. Behind me, the sound barrier shattered like fine china and I briefly hoped Hero's remained stable.

The world seemed to slow as my own speed transcended physical laws. I spun, whirling like a sniper round as I descended with all the earth-shattering force of an extinction-level event, The Golden Spatula leading the way.

"Grand Skyfall!" I shouted. I didn't know why, but the name felt appropriate.

The impact was impossible to capture into words. An explosion rocked Elisburg like the hammer of an angry god I'd become, leaving behind a crater more than a mile deep at its center. Golden flames spread out from the epicenter, purifying every last one of Nilbog's monstrosities.

I studied where the goblins emerged from. The entrance to Nilbog's underground throne room was all but rubble now, but it had not collapsed entirely due to being far from my impact point. Seconds later, I approximated where the throne room would be and dropped down, weapons first, and crashed straight through the roof to Nilbog's last sanctuary.

All around me, I saw pods begin to hatch, creating more and more of these goblins. They looked for all the world like alien eggs from some cheap sci-fi thriller. Some exploded. Some threw bone spears. One even lashed out with some form of bioelectric whips. Not one made a difference. Soon, it was just me, Nilbog, and a single, bluish goblin.

"Polka..." Nilbog watched, a broken man.

"Your highness," that creature stood between me and its king, wielding a piece of broken rubble as a club. As insignificant as it was, the raw, unfiltered hatred and desperation in its eyes made me pause. "Stay away from him!"

"You'll pay for this," the goblin king snarled. "There are failsafes. Even if you win, I'll make sure you lose."

"Mighty Urf's fire cleanses all. Your plagues mean nothing. No goblin can adapt to the flames of The Golden Spatula," I proclaimed dramatically. In hindsight, Urf might have been influencing me more than I expected. I'd have to have a word with Rubedo about souls.

"Shut up! Die!" The one called Polka lunged towards me.

"Polka, no!" Nilbog tried to stop it, but it was too late.

Perhaps it was a moment of pity, or respect for its courage, however futile, but in that infinite moment between two seconds, I decided to spare Nilbog the sight of his favorite minion's charred corpse. Instead of The Golden Spatula, The Fork met it head on. An instant later, a single crimson cherry dropped to the ground.

"No… No… Why...?"

"You turned an entire town into a kingdom of monsters and you're asking me why?" I asked incredulously. "You turned this town into a horror movie, hunting down its residents like dogs to make more of your monstrosities!"

"They were family! They were my children!" he roared impotently.

"And what of the families you destroyed to make them? What of the lives you ruined to feed your own delusional dream? You killed more than three thousand people, then made these creatures who were forced to love you. I did them a mercy."

"My children…" he sobbed.

"Goodbye, Nilbog." I brought The Golden Spatula down on his head.

Cleansing fire consumed him. As his body burned, I could make out a single plea for the wellbeing of children long dead. I shrugged off the pang of conscience. Jamie Rinke was a monster. He may have loved his "children." He may have even been a halfway decent "king." But in the end, he'd murdered every last person in Ellisburg then threatened the world with countless plagues to get his own kingdom. I'd shed no tears for him.

I flew around, methodically burning every last inch of the town to ashes. The barrier fell and Hero greeted me.

"Test successful. The Golden Spatula is a game-changer."

Author's Note

A continuation of Inspired Inventor: The Fork.

"It must do something… Declined, it does EVERYTHING!" is the flavortext for The Golden Spatula in Nexus Blitz. And… it does. It gives massive buffs to every stat and permanently sets your Champion on fire, burning enemies. The only downside to The Golden Spatula is that the wielder receives decreased healing and shields, irrelevant for Alexandria for obvious reasons.

The Golden Spatula shows up in the Nexus Blitz game mode, but actually first became a bit of a meme when Urf the Manatee held it in the Ultra-Rapid Fire game mode logo. Urf the Manatee was, way back before Riot retconned everything, a Champion-to-be who was murdered by Warwick, who skinned and wore him like a coat, which is my dig at bioengineered monsters. It was a big deal in the Journals of Justice, Riot's original attempt at lore. That's where the Warwick skin comes from, by the way.

In this setting, The Golden Spatula makes the wielder a powerful pyrokinetic shaker, heals all wounds and illnesses, and greatly buffs whatever power they'd already had. Alexandria just got faster and stronger, but someone like Legend would find himself firing beams like Lux on crack, effectively free cooldowns.

This omake came out a bit darker than the previous one. It wasn't really my intent, but Rinke isn't really a comic character anyway. If you look past the "monster kingdom" thing, his story is actually really tragic.

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. You can find me on FFnet, Royal Road, Space Battles, Sufficient Velocity, and Questionable Questing.