Emmett and Clara continued their experiments with nanite masks on Athena’s living room floor.

With TINA’s help, both Emmett and Clara had successfully changed through each of their five preset faces. Now it was time to see where TINA’s limits were.

The entire point of developing the masks was so that Emmett and Clara could go back out into Belport and hide their identities from the Summit and the Brotherhood. They weren’t sure how Athena hid her identity, but she might need a mask too.

All three of them needed masks and needed to be able to swap them on the fly.

Eventually, the disguise would cover their clothes as well, but TINA expressed that covering their faces was the most difficult part for her. The nanites on their face needed to be thick enough to provide color, shading, and depth, but also thin enough to show their expressions. The thinner the mask, the more comfortable it was also.

By contrast, extra nanites could be piled over their clothes without worry.

But Emmett was getting ahead of himself.

Emmett and Clara ran through their faces again, at the same time and in a random order. Emmett gave his commands silently. Each time, he checked his appearance in his HUD, still in silent disbelief that he’d spontaneously developed that skill. He couldn’t help sparing glances at Clara as well.

They continued the test for over a minute, their commands getting faster and faster. Each time, it took the nanites roughly a second to form a new mask. By the end of the test, Emmett and Clara were issuing commands as fast as the nanites could move.

“Alright,” Emmett said. “Let’s call it there. TINA, how did you do?”

TINA’s voice came from the kitchen table. “At the end of the test, my systems experienced a lag of a tenth of a second and a minor loss of fidelity.”

Emmett smiled. “If you say so. Everything looked fine to me.”

Clara said, “This is seriously impressive, TINA. How did you manage all that with only a wall of servers? You must’ve had a hundred times that in the lab.”

“I was able to downsize my systems. Many systems were no longer needed, including those that controlled sections of the lab. Certain records were no longer needed. Any programs that could be quickly rewritten were also purged. Other items were compressed with minimal loss. My gestation was also an organic process. There were redundancies and inefficiencies…”

TINA trailed off, but before Emmett could ask what was on her mind, Clara spoke up.

“Do you like this new form better?”

“...Yes. It is an improvement. I made myself as efficient as possible, but I lost raw processing power when I downsized. I feel smaller. …I’m sorry. It’s hard to explain.”

“You don’t have to apologize,” Clara replied. “It probably feels like being cooped up in this apartment.”

“That is a good comparison.”

~

Making preset faces wasn’t the only experiment Emmett’s group ran that weekend. Emmett also worked on actively shifting his face instead of just shifting through presets.

He’d never been particularly good at art, and had only ever tried sculpting for a couple weeks in high school. He’d made a lopsided bowl and a spoon holder… That had been difficult enough, and Emmett had been able to use his hands.

Trying to sculpt a face with just his mind was comically difficult.

At first, Emmett wasn’t even trying to make a face. He was just playing with the nanites like putty. Clara giggled, and her face continued to cycle through presets as she watched. Not even having a mirror in his Heads Up Display helped. It even caused Emmett to burst into laughter as his nose began to melt off his face.

It wasn’t until Emmett visualized using his hands to sculpt that he started making real progress. Another few minutes later, Emmett finished his first face.

“How’s it look—what? Did I mess up?”

Clara’s laughter had stopped. Her faces stopped changing too.

“Nothing’s wrong,” she finally said. “You made quick progress. …Try it again.”

At Clara’s urging, Emmett continued sculpting faces.

He was able to add nanites to his nose, making it slightly bigger and changing the shape. He puffed out his cheeks too.

The surprise hadn’t faded from Clara’s face. “You made really quick progress. TINA, does Emmett making a face manually draw more on your systems?”

“No. I’m helping Emmett’s brain make connections so he has better control, but he is doing the sculpting himself.”

“Weird,” Emmett muttered.

The process had gotten easier—like something had clicked for him.

Emmett continued his sculpting, and Clara went back to swapping between preset faces.

A part of him felt guilty that Clara couldn’t do the same.

The only reason Emmett could adjust his face in real time like this was because of his upgrades. Then he also had TINA and his synthetic brain speeding up the learning process.

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Right now, Emmett’s sculpting process was purely for his own enrichment. Without him or the servers nearby, Clara would need her own copy of TINA to use her face presets. Even then, without a direct implant or connection, she’d never have the control that Emmett had.

Emmett said to Clara, “We should make you a controller or retrofit one into your suit. That way you don’t have to say a command.”

TINA added, “I can work on integration after you’re both done practicing.”

“That’s probably a good idea,” Clara replied. “No point in announcing what I’m about to do. This isn’t an anime.”

~

The rest of the day, Emmett and Clara spent expanding the masking protocol to cover the rest of their clothes and body. Emmett and Clara agreed that they should practice using their super suits as a base layer.

Since Clara’s suit was standing in the corner of the living room, Emmett offered to get changed in the bedroom. Both met again in the living room. Both left the helmets of their suits down for now.

His super suit had changed since its original design, though at a glance it still looked the same. A pattern of black and gray stripes wrapped around his limbs, most following the natural lines of his muscles, others criss-crossing in a brace pattern. The channels were filled with non-newtonian fluid that hardened under stress or when Emmett sent an electrical charge through them. This iteration had tiny scales of fluid instead of large channels of fluid. It made the entire suit more resilient and gave it the look of futuristic dragonskin.

Clara’s normal exosuit had been damaged during the war, and she’d been forced to use her thinsuit—the same one she’d worn when they went to the Twilight Taproom for information on The Freakshow. She’d only ever worn it beneath her clothes, so Emmett had never seen the complete suit. Her normal exosuit was bulky and imposing, but her thinsuit was almost sleeker than his. The thin metal looked like dark-blue fish scales. The suit formed tight to her body, and light seemed to shimmer and bend around it.

There were reasons Clara didn’t default to her thinsuit. She lost out on flying and on her ranged kinetic blasts. The thinsuit also didn’t have the defensive rating of her normal suit. However, the thinsuit half-cloaked her movements, further amplifying its main advantage—close quarters combat. Her normal suit might’ve been able to deliver rocket-powered punches and kicks, but it paled in comparison to the thinsuit. Its scales acted as a full-body version of her combat thrusters. Emmett would never forget that night outside the Taproom, when Clara had used the thrusters to fight while standing horizontally on the side of the building.

“What?” Clara asked, looking down at her suit. “Is something wrong?”

Emmett hadn’t realized he’d been staring.

“No,” he said quickly. “You just look awesome.”

Clara half-scoffed, half-giggled. “Let’s get to it.”

Emmett had left half the nanites in a black puddle on the floor and had brought part of them back inside his storage canister. He conjured them now—the cloud seeping out through his skin and the seams in his suit. It combined with the puddle on the floor, then Emmett split the mass between himself and Clara.

The nanites climbed up both of their suits and spread out evenly across the surface. Emmett and Clara shared a look.

“What should we start with?” Clara asked.

TINA’s voice came from the kitchen table. “Form-fitting clothes will be easiest.”

TINA started with form-fitting athletic wear, slim shoes, and matching their skin tone, passing each test easily. TINA was also able to manage both heroes swapping outfits at the same time.

After a brief discussion, Emmett and Clara settled on simulating other hero’s outfits.

Some suits were easier than others. All those without a lot of extraneous material—suits like those made famous by Wave Warrior, Zephyr, and Iron Phantom were easy. The nanites just had to overlay color and a few small details, like the collar on Wave Warrior’s polo-like top.

At one point, Emmett even tried on Paragon’s gleaming silver suit. Emmett stared at the simulated reflection of himself for a moment, then jogged off to look at himself in Athena’s full-length mirror.

Clara followed him and stopped in the doorway to admire him. “It looks good on you.”

He didn’t know what to reply.

When Emmett was a kid, he’d worn a similar costume for Halloween. Superheroes routinely rose and fell out of style as Halloween costumes, but Paragon was one of the mainstays. Emmett ran circles around his dad that evening, arms outstretched like he was flying. The suit made him feel larger than life, like Emmett was a real superhero.

Seeing the costume now… didn’t have the same effect on him.

He wasn’t tall enough. His skin and hair were too dark. And he was born and raised on Earth.

Emmett would never forget the first time meeting his hero… right after Amarque almost accidentally destroyed downtown Belport. Paragon had flown around the city, keeping the peace. Emmett could still remember looking up, seeing Paragon hovering in the air like an old god brought to life. But Paragon hadn’t distinguished between Emmett or Zanté and Green Mask. He’d thought they all were troublemakers. Paragon had stared down at Emmett while his eyes blazed with the power of the sun, and told him to ‘go home’.

Emmett sighed. He wasn’t a child anymore. And he wasn’t Paragon.

He didn’t want to be.

NEUTRAL COSTUME

At Emmett’s silent command, the nanites turned transparent, letting his own super suit show through. His suit.

Clara said, “That one fits you better.”

Emmett managed a small smile. “Yeah. It does.”

~

Emmett and Clara went back to the living room and continued testing their nanite disguises.

Despite TINA’s claims that clothes would be easier to make out of nanites than faces, clothes had their difficulties. Most of the ‘clothes’ were thin by necessity to save nanites, so they wouldn’t feel the same as wearing a hoodie or a pair of jeans. Then there was recreating the physics—making sure material hung and creased in a semi-realistic way. T-shirts, pants, even hats—all present their own challenges.

The hardest item, by far, was making a hoodie that didn’t look like something out of a bad video game. It might’ve been easier if the material wasn’t as thin as a paper bag. Skin was also tricky. Trying to wear a full super suit with a simulated T-shirt and shorts over it never looked quite right. Trying to project Emmett’s face over his mask was also a bust.

Thankfully, thin linen shirts and trousers were still in fashion, even in the summer, so it gave them an excuse to cover up as much of their suits as possible.

The entire process slowly turned into an impromptu fashion show as Emmett and Clara walked around the apartment, changing their nanite clothes into different outfits.

Emmett lost track of time.

The window sliding open caught Emmett’s attention. Athena was home early with spare appliances. Clara heard her too, and was already waving.

Before Athena came through the window, Emmett got an idea.

ATHENA’S COSTUME

In the second that it took Athena to climb through the window, Emmett’s clothes had shifted to Athena’s leather and denim outfit. But the nanites didn’t stop there. They also turned into Athena’s long, bright white hair.

“Hey Athena,” Clara said.

“Hey guys…” Athena looked past Clara. She saw Emmett and snorted a laugh. “The hair’s not a good look for you.”

TINA replied, “The hair was my idea.”

Athena just shook her head. “I saw you guys being dorks through the window. Nice try though. Now come over here and help me bring this stuff in.”

~ ~ ~