Wave 2.5

2010, October 4: Brockton Bay, NH, USA

By midnight, I was back at the Palanquin for Labyrinth's final fitting. I couldn't quite suppress the hammering in my chest, the thrill of showing someone my work and knowing she'd be appropriately wowed by it. I couldn't recall ever feeling this kind of excitement in either of my lives before, not even the day I graduated with my master's in clinical health. I didn't know if this was my power trying to manipulate my actions or if "Bryce Kiley" felt emotions more acutely than I had in my past life, but this was one feeling I wasn't averse to having.

It was almost customary how Faultline's Crew arranged themselves. Gregor and Faultline were pictures of professionalism while Newter lounged next to Gregor, his tail flicking back and forth lazily. Labyrinth sat in just a domino mask, a white t-shirt, and a plain pair of jeans, her usual facemask and costume nowhere to be found.

"Good evening, Creed," Faultline started. "Are you trying a new look?"

"Yeah, digging the cape, dude. Very… Eidolon," Newter added. "Were you inspired by Labyrinth's?"

I grinned and flickered in and out of sight. "Yes and no. The plan was always to augment my costume. Labyrinth's shawl just helped me test out a few things beforehand." The invisibility and shield functions were tied to the cape, but the suit itself provided plenty in the way of physical augmentation. With a flourish, I pulled out her helmet and shawl from my backpack and presented it to the Crew. "Tada, like it?"

Looking at it now, I could see that the shawl was a lighter green compared to Labyrinth's costume. Though the pigmentation was matte, the structure of the Germa fibers caught the light for an interesting ripple effect that gave off the illusion of patterns that weren't there.

"Don't ask us," Gregor said. "Labyrinth will be the one wearing it."

"True, true. What do you think?" I directed to the waifish blonde. She stood, first time I saw her do so on her own, and leaned into the cape as though examining a work of art.

She batted it back and forth like a kitten playing with string and wondered at the ripple effect before she finally remembered to nod. "I like it; it's swishy. Thank you," she smiled.

"Good, now put on this helmet, here," I gestured to the modified biker helmet. It looked a bit like my own, but with a full-face visor instead of a chin guard. Once she wore it, I ran her through the functions a few more times until she could activate both the shield and cloaking effect at a moment's notice. I then presented her with another quick-change canister tuned to her outfit and showed her how to operate that as well.

"Excellent, thank you again, Creed," Faultline said. "I realize that the costume isn't cheap and I promise the lab in the basement will be ready by the eighth."

"That's good to hear. I've been meaning to ask, have you looked into the volcanic ash?"

"I have. It's readily available in gardening supplies and from quarries, but you said the ash must come from an oceanic volcano. Unfortunately, New England is geologically stable and there are no active volcanoes along our coast. The closest would be the Fagradalsfjall volcano in Iceland. I've also reached out to quarries near the Kilauea volcano in Hawaii. You may need to wait another week if you want the aid of a cape who can transport volcanic ash in large quantities. I should have two hundred pounds of the stuff by the end of the week, far from the full ton you wanted."

"That's as expected then. I appreciate you trying to get it anyway," I said. "Any questions about the shawl?"

"I have one," Gregor said. "What is your technology powered by?"

"Would you believe me if I said cola and a SUPER can-do attitude?" I received nothing but flat stares in response. "Yeesh, figures. Labyrinth's outfit can be charged by keeping it in canister form then plugging it into a normal outlet. It should be good for several days of continued operation, so long as she's not stealthed the whole time."

"And what if she is stealthed?"

"Twenty-four hours, it's a very energy-efficient system."

"So I see."

"Dude, any chance you can hook me up with that?" Newter tried.

"It's coming out of your pay," Faultline warned. "Labyrinth has already agreed to something similar. There is only so much I can subsidize and tinkertech is a bit out of the budget range. I do admit I'd be interested in your costume as well."

I wagged a gloved finger. "The shield module and canister were free this time, mostly because Labyrinth is the most vulnerable member of your team and I wanted to take the chance to advertise. If you want the full set for yourselves, you're going to have to pay the appropriate price. If you want me to make you an outfit, you're going to need to get comfortable with a cape. The helmet tells the cape what to do and the clasp processes that order into tangible effects, but those effects are anchored to the cape. No cape, no extra powers."

"Hey wait," Newter said, "didn't you say you needed full coverage to use the invisibility function? Labs didn't get a full suit, just a shawl."

"Same but different," I said. With the snap of my fingers, I turned into a shorter version of Faultline. "The disguise function, what I call texturing, is unique to my costume and requires full coverage to adjust for my body's motions. The invisibility and the shield are tied to the cape. I know they sound similar, but I promise the underlying science is a bit different."

"How much were you considering for a completely remodeled costume?" Faultline asked.

I'd done some preliminary research with the expectation that such a question would get asked. I hummed. "A good costume costs a few hundred if it's made with tough fabrics and custom fitted. The best Kevlar vests will cost you upwards of seven or eight hundred dollars. Anything the Protectorate wears probably costs something in the ballpark of twelve hundred to sixteen hundred. Is that about fair?" Faultline nodded reluctantly. "Add in the quick-change, shield, and cloaking functions and well, there isn't an easy way to gauge its price. Even if I average it as five grand per extra function, you're still looking at a costume that costs fifteen thousand dollars at minimum."

"Woah, don't we get the friends and family discount?"

"That is the friends and family discount," Faultline said reluctantly. "Defensive items tend to cost much more than a laser rifle because a bullet will kill just as surely as a high-powered laser, but something that can create a force field is far more tactically valuable."

I gestured to Labyrinth. "Feel free to test that all you want," I said. "I'm confident that she'll be able to tank anything you can throw at her, including large caliber bullets. While the shield is active, she should be more or less immune to kinetic impacts and thermal energies unless you can match Behemoth's output. If you break it, I'll fix it- and you'll understand its limits better."

"We will. That said, a full outfit for us will likely be out of our price range for several months. Setting up the Palanquin and Harvey's was not cheap. I may approach you again once we've taken more jobs."

We sat around in silence for a bit until something Faultline said gave me an idea. "Speaking of tinkertech for sale, is there any way you can put me in contact with Toybox?"

Faultline sucked in a breath. It was Gregor that spoke. "We do not have an amiable relationship," he said. "One of our jobs involved breaking into a black market consortium and we encountered Pyrotechnical's security. While we cannot tell you everything that occurred due to client confidentiality, we have given Toybox ample reason to dislike us."

"Shit. That's a pity. I wanted to expand my market a bit."

"That isn't to say we have no contact with then. Toybox is a collective, but they have no unifying leader. Some are capable of drawing a line between business and pleasure."

"I see. In that case, I wouldn't mind paying you commission to do some business development on my behalf."

Faultline scratched her chin beneath the welder's mask. "That's an interesting idea. You would have to provide a catalog. Are you willing to allow me to act as your intermediary?"

I nodded happily. It was the joy of creation that interested me. Money was nice, but more or less just a way to acquire more resources. "Yes, I did say I'd want to use the Palanquin as neutral ground for negotiations. Find me clients, take care of security, and deliver the products as they're made. If you do that, I wouldn't mind you taking a fair cut."

"Very well, I do have some connections with various groups. Are there any restrictions on who you'd be willing to sell to?"

"Yes, several. Ideally, I'd like to sell to heroes, rogues, or those who are villains by technicality like yourselves. I refuse to sell to any villain with a body count or any who have broken the unwritten rules before. At the moment, Uppercrust is my model of the kind of tinker I want to be."

"That is acceptable," she smiled. As someone with her own code of ethics, I'd figured she'd appreciate an answer like that, even if it decreased her list of potential commissions. "Get me a catalog of tinkertech items you would be interested in building and I can send it out to some of my contacts. If you'll accept my advice, I recommend creating some items for recreational purposes. That way, you can open up your potential clientele to include wealthy civilians."

X

Mr. Maury nodded to me with a pleased smile. He must have received the notice from Arcadia's tutoring program that I'd arranged for my first student.

Matt Brown was a sixth grader whose parents signed him up for the program. From what Mr. Brown told me, he wanted me to tutor his son until his grades went up. Because he was my first client, we agreed on Monday and Wednesday, three to five, for twenty dollars an hour. The money wasn't great, but that was fine. The point was that now, I could claim to have a tutoring gig lined up for the rest of the week and no one could tell otherwise. I had an excuse to be away from home until dinner, away in my lab tinkering.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Lunch with the Dallon girls was… interesting. I knew all the capes around us. Amy knew all the capes around us. Vicky, Carlos, Dennis, and Dean had no clue I was a cape. I wasn't supposed to know they were Wards. Stephanie and Chelsea were clueless about everything.

It made for a dynamic that could be best described as… interesting. Amy had that gleam in her eyes that screamed she knew something. The fog of amusement wafting off her as the Wards and I danced around our identities was practically visible. Dean shifted in his seat, trying to figure out just what had our resident grump in such a mood.

"So what's got you in such a good mood, Amy?" her sister prodded her side, making her let out a bark of unwilling laughter.

"Nothing, just not as tired today," she waved.

"Had a nice weekend?" Victoria wriggled her eyebrows like a lecherous old man five times her age. "Maybe with a certain someone?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Uh-huh," she nodded sagely. "I must be confusing you with that other sister I have."

I could see the blush crawling up Amy's cheeks at the insinuation and decided to intervene before she decided keeping my power secret wasn't worth her continued embarrassment. "We hung out on Saturday and grabbed some donuts."

"Did she get a cream filling?" Dennis grinned.

"Carlos."

"On it." He dutifully punched the redhead in the arm.

"Ow! Why?"

"You're disgusting, that's why."

"Really, guys. We had donuts, hung out at the mall, then had some coffee. Sorry Dennis, I'll have to contribute to your spank bank some other time."

Stephanie scrunched her nose in disgust. "Ugh, boys. Can we not talk about this?"

"Agreed. New topic that isn't speculation about my love life: Hypothetically, if you could get Kid Win to build you something, what would it be?" I asked, both to change the topic and to get some ideas for the catalog I wanted to present to Faultline.

"Oddly specific, why Kid Win? Bryce, is there something you're not telling us?" Chelsea grinned.

"There are plenty of things I'm not telling you. Like how your left nostril is a little bigger than your right."

She gasped and covered her nose. "It's not, right?"

"Big enough to drive a train through. Nah, I'm just fucking with ya. I picked Kid Win because he's a tinker our age."

"I'd ask him to build me a hoverboard, duh," Dennis said with a cheery grin.

"Do you know how to skateboard? Or snowboard? Or any 'board that's less likely to break your neck?" Chelsea asked with a dubiously.

"Nope, that's the fun part."

'Noted, didn't the Germa raid suits come with hover shoes? Can I make those?' I wondered. Before my power could provide me with a dozen different designs, I shoved that idea to the corner of my mind. "Wouldn't Kid Win have some kind of control system in his helmet though? I can't imagine having a board like that without a way to pilot it."

"Good point, I don't know if he can build it, but maybe a drone? I used to have an RC helicopter that dad and I flew at the park," he said wistfully. "It broke after I crashed it into a tree, but those were fun times."

"Nostalgia's hitting hard, huh?" said Carlos.

"Yeah, did you have something like that as a kid?"

He shrugged. "I used to bike a lot, even went dirt biking a few times with the family. It's nothing Kid Win made, but I'd love to take a ride on the Armscycle."

"Does he really call it that?" I asked with a quirked brow.

"Maybe. It's what PHO's calling it and he's never corrected anyone. I know I'd probably crash it, but I think something slower would be cool."

They continued talking about tinkertech inventions but my mind was elsewhere. One Piece did have a bike and I was ashamed to have forgotten about it. Franky's Black Rhino FR-U IV was a lightweight, hyper-durable motorcycle powered, like all creations of the SUPER cyborg, by cola. It was sturdy enough that Franky used it as a battering ram, even running over Big Mom's face. It was also one half of Franky's personal Megazord, the Pirate General Franky.

I could build it, I realized. I could build it easily with just what I had on hand and three tire irons. The rubber could be reinforced with Germa fibers. The metal body could be made with wapometal, a special shape-memory alloy that could stand up to some major pressure from even New World pirates. I'd need the forge Faultline was preparing for me to synthesize the alloy, but everything else was easy.

'Hell, if I'm going to put it out to market for recreational purposes, it doesn't even need to be that durable. Sure as hell shouldn't transform into a mecha. I don't need wapometal… I guess I'm taking apart my old bike.' I faded out of the conversation for the rest of lunch, but Amy must have noticed because she kept shooting me knowing looks.

X

I walked into Lafayette Middle School at two-forty in the afternoon. Arcadia's sister school was only a ten minute walk away. The blocky building was covered with a cheery mural of the Protectorate members, each posing appropriately heroically. Instead of Triumph, there was Challenger, dating the mural a bit. The school secretary was a genial grandmother with blanched white hair that fell in short curls.

"Hello, sweetie, how can I help you?" she said with a friendly smile.

I glanced at the nametag before presenting my own. "Hello, Mrs. Young. My name is Bryce Kiley and I'm a tutor from Arcadia. I was told to pick up someone named Mike Brown today."

"That's fine, dear. Let me get you set in our system and call Matthew out." She motioned for me to take a seat in one of those colorful plastic chairs.

Soon enough, Matt showed up. He was a pudgy black boy with a shaved head and big, expressive eyes. He wore a shirt embossed with Dauntless' golden helmet, jeans with Battery's circuit designs, Velocity brand shoes, and a backpack imprinted with Triumph's lion head.

'What? Halbeard and Minutegal not cool enough?' I scoffed internally. Still, I got up and greeted him with a friendly smile. "Hey, Matt, right? I'm Bryce, your tutor."

"I believe Mr. Brown specified that you two use the school library," the secretary said.

"That's reasonable. Come on, Matt. Let's go knock out that homework."

The middle school library was nowhere near as extensive as the public library near city hall, but it got the job done. It was a squat, brick building with a handful of rooms set aside for group study. We were lucky enough to find one unused, but I made a note to reserve one in the future.

I was hired to help Matt because his father, one Marshall Brown, saw his math grades slipping when he entered middle school. I was to help raise his math scores for twenty dollars an hour, hopefully teach the kid some better study habits.

Working with the boy was… challenging. He wasn't stupid, far from it, but he was completely and utterly uninterested in math. In half an hour, I managed to get him to try four questions. At the very least, he did get most of them right when he actually bothered to answer them.

"Come on, Matt, we're going to have to do this anyway. Two hours aren't going to pass any faster because you ignore your homework."

"Math's boring though," he whined. He slumped in his seat in the universal teen language for "I'm done with this shit." "It's not like I'm ever going to use it."

I'd heard that before. Hell, I'd said those exact words before. I hadn't realized how annoying it was to hear that from the other side. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. Thinking about it made me feel like a crotchety old man whining about how things were "back in the day."

I swallowed down the strange feeling of dysphoria and said, "Alright, what do you want to do? Because I guarantee you, whatever you want to do with your life, you're going to need math."

"A superhero," he said sarcastically, but there was an undercurrent of need. This was a kid who worshiped the Protectorate capes. I wouldn't be surprised if his room was practically a shrine of memorabilia.

"Not going to happen," I shot him down bluntly.

"How do you know?"

"Parahuman studies is a hobby of mine." 'I need it for my immediate survival,' I didn't say. For the first time since we began, his eyes gauged me with more than boredom. "Do you know what that is?"

"It's the study of powers."

"Yes, and powers don't just magically pop up out of nowhere. Do you know what a trigger event is?"

"It gives you powers," he said sullenly, but I could see the light of interest start to shine.

"That's the simple answer, but it's more complicated than that. A trigger event is the worst day in your life. You have to get shot and bleed out. You have to watch your parents get murdered in front of you. You have to lose everything you hold dear," I said solemnly. Earth-Bet wasn't the only setting in which heroes went through great struggle for power, but it was the only one I could think of where psychological trauma and need for conflict was mandated by the very nature of set powers. Earth-Bet sucked. "I pray that never happens to you, Matt. Everyone wants powers, but people don't realize just what kind of price you need to pay to get them."

"For real?"

I wasn't sure how wise it was to tell a kid about triggers, but it wasn't exactly a secret, just a bit of reality that went unmentioned in polite company. "For real," I confirmed. I pointed to the picture of Dauntless' helmet on his shirt. "Those heroes? Dauntless? They're not heroes because they have powers. Look at Skidmark. They're heroes because they experienced something terrible enough to give them powers; then they decided to be heroes anyway. Instead of hurting people or doing whatever benefited them, they chose to protect. That's what makes them heroes."

"Well, I could still get powers."

"I wish you never have to find out. Not everyone who goes through tragedy gets powers," I pointed out gently. "If you want to work with parahumans, the best bet would be to join the PRT. Become an analyst, someone who studies powers."

"Like PHO?" he asked. "They're always trying to decide which hero is stronger."

I nodded. His clear interest in the subject gave me an idea. "Yes, like PHO, but a bit more involved." I pulled up my laptop and opened the website. "Have you checked the battleboards? It's where people go to talk about what you're talking about."

"Yeah, those are cool."

I pulled up a thread marked "Legend v. Strider" and started reading. "Pretend Legend and Strider are playing tag in New York. Can Legend catch Strider in under five minutes?" I looked at Matt. "Can he?"

"Well, duh, he's Legend," he replied with the certainty of a child. "He can go as fast as light!"

I smiled. "I wonder about that. You asked me if you'll ever use math in the future. If you want to study powers and work with heroes, you will. Let me show you." I pulled out a sheet of paper. "Legend can move as fast as light in theory, but not in practice. Think about it. If he could move as fast as light, he'd shoot himself off into space in under a second and we know that parahuman powers fail after they leave past the moon's orbit."

"Really?"

"Yeah, it's one of those rules about powers: no space travel. Now, we need to calculate how fast he moves when he's fighting a cape. Thankfully, he's one of the most filmed heroes and there are plenty of videos of him fighting capes. Let's make sure that the cape is a strong one with great mobility like Strider." I searched for videos of Legend and sure enough, I found one in which he dueled the Butcher.

"Here. The Butcher is the leader of the Teeth, a gang active in New York and a teleporter, just like Strider. By seeing how long he's taking to move from place to place, we can get an idea of his speed. Because he's a hero, he's not going to create sonic booms that break all the windows in New York or hurt people, right?

"Now, Strider isn't dumb. The best way to get away from Legend is obviously to start from one end of the city and teleport to the other end, repeating as often as possible to make him travel the most distance, right?" He nodded, completely absorbed in my explanation. "Okay, so given Legend's speed, which remember needs to be below the speed of sound, and that he's limited to safe levels of power, how long does it take for Legend to travel from one end of New York to the other?"

Our lesson continued like that, with me providing formulas and constants from the internet and Matt solving for the variables. Finally, Matt grinned as he held out a completed set of equations. "Hah! I told you Legend can tag Strider!"

I nodded. "In a simulation, sure, he can do it in under five minutes because Strider needs a few seconds to catch his breath. In a more realistic scenario, Strider might decide to throw Legend off by teleporting somewhere else or hiding in someone's attic or something. Then, Legend would have to play hide and seek, not just tag."

"He's still faster," he said mulishly.

"He is," I conceded, but the bigger battle was mine. I tapped the worksheet in front of him with a smug grin. "Now that I've proven that you will in fact use math outside of school, homework."

"Damnit," he grumbled but started his worksheet.

Author's Note

Faultline's Crew, sometime before canon, did oppose Toybox. It is unclear what the details were or when exactly it occurred, so I'm just slotting it in as it conveniences me.

I wanted to include another scene with Labyrinth, but I wasn't sure how. She'll probably feature much more later on because her power is amazing and I want to explore that more.

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 them all on my Link Tree: https://linktr.ee/fabled.webs.