Wave 2.6

2010, October 5: Brockton Bay, NH, USA

I waited for Amy at a deli near school. It was run by an old Jewish man who moved here in the fifties and never left. He was the stubborn sort whose sheer bitterness and grit made even the Empire flunkies look for better things to do. That, or maybe it was the hatchet he kept under the counter. He made one hell of a Reuben but at two in the afternoon, the deli was largely empty. I bought a gingersnap cookie to be polite and nibbled on it while waiting for my minder. Ten minutes past the hour, the frizzy-haired healer motioned for me to join her outside.

I was already in my new suit, cape and all, though I was disguised as a civilian.

"Sorry, had to give Vicky an excuse or she would have followed me here," she apologized. We started walking out of the Boardwalk and downtown areas.

I nodded. Today was a Tuesday and I knew what it meant for her to skip out on a hospital tour for me. "No problem. I'd definitely rather wait than give Vicky the grand tour of my lab. No offense, but that girl does not keep secrets well."

"She does. You'd be surprised what she keeps quiet."

"Like Jonah kissing Heather beneath the bleachers?"

"You don't even know who they are."

"I don't," I admitted freely. It'd be a cold day in hell when I gave a damn about Arcadia's drama. "But that wasn't my point and you know it."

"Vicky can keep secretes when it counts. Like cape identities. She has a 'gossipy teenage girl' mode and a 'Glory Girl' mode," my grouchy friend defended. She looked me over. "I don't see a teleporter. Did you disguise it somehow?"

We started walking. The moment we were out of sight, I snapped my fingers. With a shit-eating grin, I turned into an exact copy of Vicky. The only thing different about us was the height, but it'd be hard to tell at a distance. Then, in a perfect copy of Victoria's voice, I said, "Who says I teleported?"

"Holy shit."

"Yeah, come on, sis."

Taking her hand, I started to drag her to the Boat Graveyard.

"Hey! Seriously? The Graveyard? You know your base is going to be found out in like two weeks, tops, right?"

"It's not, just trust me."

"Ugh, fine." She continued to grumble under her breath but allowed me to lead her by the hand.

I spied an abandoned alley and ushered us inside. There, I had SAINT disable all electronics in a hundred meters before unfastening my cape.

I'd thought long and hard about how I wanted to take Amy to my lab. It'd have been a cinch if I could teleport, but I'd not had the chance to build a Team Rocket warp plate before my specialization changed. So my solution was a quick and dirty one.

I had two methods of concealment. The Expansion Suit could scan humanoid profiles and copy them perfectly. The Sanji's version of the Germa raid suit could turn people invisible. The texturing was tied to my clothes while the cloaking effect was tied to my cape.

Amy looked at me strangely until the cape left my costume's area of effect, rippling into the visible spectrum.

"What the-"

"Just put it on."

I slung the garment over her, then picked her up in a bridal carry. Amy wasn't a heavy girl and with the suit's bolstered strength, I barely even felt her. I worked her around until she was curled up like a roly-poly, scrunched up enough for the cape to completely cover her.

"Hey!"

"Relax and wrap the cape around you. It'll make you invisible."

"What the hell?"

Shutting off my external mic, I signaled for SAINT to take control of the cape. It must have been a disorienting experience for her. She lacked the helmet's systems to pierce the invisibility, so she literally disappeared from her own sight.

"Woah."

"Yeah, I'm pretty awesome. And I still look like your sister so I can just fly over."

"You can fly?"

"I can hover. Slowly. Hopefully it'll just look like Vicky's taking a leisurely stroll."

"You're so dead if she catches you."

"If."

"I still reserve the right to turn you in," she grumbled.

"Sounds good. Remember, I just need to prove that I'm strong enough to handle myself."

"Yeah, yeah. You also need to convince me that your tech isn't going to start the apocalypse or something," she huffed. "If there's anything dangerous, I'm knocking you out then immediately calling the cops."

"Oh ye of little faith." I sincerely doubted she could actually stop me before I could knock her out, but I let her hang onto that illusion. She needed to feel like she had some control, even if it was purely fictional.

And with that, we were off. I made sure to ascend as high as I could to not draw attention. I thanked God for the wiring incorporated into the cape. Otherwise, I wasn't sure if Magnet Rise would have been enough to lift both me and another person.

We soon crossed the bay and headed out to sea.

"Bryce? Think we missed a turn."

"We didn't. And call me Creed in costume."

"What, you have an undersea lair? What are you? A Bond villain?"

"Not yet," I teased.

The Gullrest loomed ahead, even the mid-sized cargo ship a yawning behemoth to our diminutive statures.

"Seriously? You set up all the way out here?"

"Yup. I told you, the odds of anyone actually invading my lab are pretty small."

"Well it looks like a dump."

"Because it is. I haven't gotten around to fixing up anything but my actual lab. Besides, it's good camouflage."

"Sure," she snarked. I could, but I didn't need to see through my own cape to know she was rolling her eyes. "That's what sloths say about the moss growing on their backs: camouflage."

"I can drop you," I warned. I loosened my grip for an instant but immediately caught her before she could dip more than an inch.

"Fuck you," she hissed even as she clung tightly to me. Girl was surprisingly strong.

"Aren't you gay? 'Cause you tick my gaydar like nothing else."

"I'll feed you your own dick."

"Ouch, let's not threaten my manhood. My masculinity is fragile enough as it is," I joked. "'Sides, we're here."

Hovering into my lab, I dropped her onto one of the rattan chairs I'd stolen.

"Land!" she cried dramatically, hugging the cushion to her chest.

Rolling my eyes, I walked over to my soda engine and picked out a bottle of coke. "Here, have a coke."

"Thanks." After a minute, she was back on her feet and looking around the empty expanse of the ship's cargo hold. "This some kind of warehouse?"

"Yup. The Gullrest used to be an oil tanker converted into a cargo ship. It used to run routes up and down the east coast until some idiots grounded it in protest. We're in one of the main cargo holds. Now, thoughts? Praise? Adoration?"

She scoffed. "Your lab is mostly empty space, shelves with nothing in them, tables, some kind of model boat, and what looks like a demented kitchen." She eyed me warily. "You're not tinkering up magic cocaine, are you?"

"No. If you look closely, you'll find that the big thing over there is a sewing machine."

"That thing built… that?" She waved generally in my direction.

I laughed and took back my cape with a flourish before placing my hands on my hips, chest thrust out in a classic superhero pose. "Yeah, like it?"

"Looks great, if you don't mind the Sentai Elite cosplay."

No matter what Amy would claim later, I did not pout. "It's not cosplay," I told her. Even through the voice modulator in the helmet, it came out as a whine. "It's a Germa Expansion Suit, the GES for short."

"Fine, so what were you going for? Because you're a bit short to pull off a cape."

"The cape is a vital part of the look. I was going for cross between biker and admiral with the cape thrown in. Does it look that weird?"

She circled me steadily to look over the costume. Reaching out, she ran a finger along the burnt orange lining of the cape then the burnished gold buttons that held my top closed. "It's not bad," she admitted. "It looks professionally made. It just looks like it should be worn by someone with a lot more… stature… than you have."

"You're mad because your costume is basically just a white curtain. Mine has character."

"Right, Admiral Biker Man," she said with a shit-eating grin.

"It's Creed."

"You say Creed, I say Admiral Biker Man. Po-tay-to, po-tah-to. Why Creed though? It sounds alright, but I thought you'd pick a music theme for sure."

"Yeah, I've had it for about a month now. I chose it because I planned to be a mercenary. You know, someone who isn't always on the side of the law, but also has his own code to follow."

She hummed in thought. "Still not letting you be a villain, at least no major crimes, but it's a good name. Short, sweet, and with a sense of purpose. I noticed it also tells me nothing about your power."

I waved and, with a flourish, I was dressed back in my civilian outfit. "Purely a coincidence, I assure you."

"Right. Well? Weren't you going to show me how powerful you were so I don't have to worry?"

I grinned and motioned for her to join me in one end of the lab. This was a section I'd set aside for practicing with my powers. SAINT and I regularly played zap-tag here. I'd nailed some boards along one end of the wall for target practice, each board a piece of aluminum I'd scavenged from the other areas of the ship. "Right, see that metal board?" I pointed to one with a considerable hole at its center. "I did that."

"You have a laser gun?" she asked incredulously. "Bryce, that's not really a good thing. If you carry a gun, people will use it as an excuse to use lethal force against you too. It doesn't matter that powers are usually much more lethal than guns; it's the image that matters."

"One, that would be true if we lived anywhere except Brockton. We live in Brockton so people are going to try to shoot me anyway. Two, I didn't do it with a gun. Now stand back," I warned. From about sixty feet away, I channeled my aura into my hand. My aura responded like an eager puppy, gathering and generating sparks of electricity. I made a thrusting motion with my fist, launching a bolt of electricity towards the wall. "Thunder Wave."

The result was an arc of electricity that struck the board dead center and rippled across the metal.

"See, that's Thunder Wave. I made it so I could paralyze people form a distance. If I really cut loose, I can punch holes into the metal," I lied. The hole wasn't my doing, it was SAINT's. I'd pick up Thunderbolt someday, but I didn't feel like I could use it at the moment.

"Yes, I got that. How the hell does lightning coming out of your hand count as a tinker power?"

"Because it's tinkertech," I said, explaining nothing. The last thing I needed was for her to worry that I was a power-granter. Those were even more sought after than tinkers.

"Fine, I'll admit that's pretty cool. And appropriately nonlethal. You did check that it can't kill anyone?"

"Of course."

"Good. Anything else you can do?"

I nodded. Two metal screws raised themselves from a nearby table. "I can also control electromagnetic fields to a degree. It's not strong, but it's good enough to hover with, or carry someone if they're wrapped in something that has metal, like my cape." She started to mutter something about lucky bastards who grabbed the whole fucking bag but I continued before she could get too far into her rant. "Ames, I can restrain people with Thunder Wave, fly away, and if worse comes to worst, get absolutely lethal. I'm not helpless. You don't need to try to protect me."

"I get that, but you're still really squishy. It just takes one mistake, Bryce."

"And that's what the costume is for. It's made of a modified Kevlar that I call Germa fibers. The fibers are strong enough to withstand extreme heat close to the temperature of the sun, if only in short bursts. It's also completely bulletproof and would require special rounds to pierce. Short of an anti-material rifle, I'm not worried. The suit also comes with an augmentation suite that makes me much stronger and faster."

"You can't be that strong."

I rolled my eyes. I walked up to a chair I stole and picked it up with one, outstretched hand. Then, one by one, I released my fingers until I was holding it with just my thumb and index finger. I was no Sanji, but the suit made the forty pound chair feel like a teddy bear. I tossed it into the air like a baseball. "This chair is what? Forty? Fifty pounds? Ames, I can lift it with my fingers, center of gravity be damned. I doubt I'm stronger than Vicky, but I'm more than strong enough to give everyone else a hard time."

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

"Okay, fine. You're probably safe," she admitted reluctantly. I had the feeling she had been looking forward to convincing me to join the Wards.

"And?" I coaxed.

"And your technology doesn't seem very dangerous."

"And?"

"You can be an independent. Happy?"

"And?"

"What more do you want from me?" she cried as she flung her hands in the air.

I laughed and gave her a hug. "Nothing, I just wanted to see what you'd keep agreeing to," I said as I spun her around.

"Let me down, you ass!" I let her flail in the air for a bit before setting her on the ground. She took a moment to compose herself. "You know, with all the different powers you have, it almost feels like you're not a tinker. I mean, you have the super durable suit, but when I think of a tinker, I think bullshit technology, you know?"

"Not a fancy suit?"

"Not unless it's power armor. Yours looks like a uniform more than something mechanical."

I took her by the hand and dragged her to the soda engine. It was the most archetypally tinkertech thing I'd made thus far. Besides SAINT, but I had no intention of showing her I could make sentient AIs yet, if ever. "Coke?"

"No thanks. You already gave me one."

"Right. Point is, you know what's in here. What if I told you it's not a fridge?"

"I swear, Bryce, if it's also your fleshlight, I'm going to have to kill you."

"Joke all you want, but you're looking at an engine powered purely with cola."

"No. That's impossible. I don't care how bullshit tinkers can be, you can't power an engine with fizzy sugar-water."

I twisted open a hidden latch to reveal the machine's internals. Sure enough, a row of coke bottles were fizzing away, with tubes that led directly to a transformer that converted all that fizzy goodness into pure electricity. "You dare underestimate my power?"

Amy stared dumbfounded as she tried to reconcile the fact that yes, she had indeed been drinking engine fuel.

"Fuck it," she said finally. "Fuck your power and fuck you too. I want to go home now. I've had enough of your bullshit for the day."

I grinned triumphantly. "So, does this mean I win?"

She growled. "Yes, whatever. You can be an independent. Just remember that if you do anything too stupid, I'm dragging your moronic, drooling ass straight to the Wards. Got it?"

I held my palms out in mock surrender. At the end of the day, for all her vitriol, she cared enough to make these threats in the first place. "Respect the unwritten rules. No grand larceny. No endangering civilians. I know. Most of this was stuff I'd have done anyway. Creed implies some standards, right?"

"Right." She held out a tired hand. "Take me home, Bryce."

Thirty minutes later, we were in another alley three blocks away from the Boardwalk. "You're north of the Boardwalk and you should reach the touristy parts of town if you head that way. I think you should shop around a bit while I make myself scarce."

"Smart. Bryce, thanks for letting me check out your lab," she said sincerely. "I know tinkers are really cagey about that. I do feel better about you being an independent."

"You're welcome, Ames. Besides, it feels good knowing I have Panacea in my corner."

She punched my arm. "Idiot. If you need me as a cape, I'm going to heal you just so I can kick your ass again."

I winced in mock pain. "Alright, take care, Ames." Before she could reply, I kicked off a nearby wall and onto the opposite rooftop. There, I cloaked and allowed myself to fade into invisibility before watching to make sure Amy reached the Boardwalk without incident.

X

Minutes later, I emerged from behind the dumpster of yet another isolated alley near Hillside. There was a parking lot surrounded by a series of shops across the street from the mall complex. Next to the supermarket that took up the lion's share of retail space was a sporting goods store, my destination.

The store itself was nothing special, one of several chains in the New England area specializing in sporting gear. They sold everything from hunting rifles to dumbbells. I'd stolen a fiberglass bow and a set of arrows the last time I was here, but didn't expect to need the roller skates. Sometime during my heist, I'd forgotten that the raid suits came with hover boots, something Dennis reminded me of on Monday with his hoverboard comment.

I bought a pair of good quality skates for a hundred and twenty dollars. They were the type designed with high, padded ankles for support.

After my impromptu shopping, I dashed back to my lab to start on my hover boots. Without Amy to burden me, it only took ten minutes of hard sprinting across the rooftops.

The sad part was, I still wouldn't be able to build them to completion, not until Faultline delivered on the ash. The ash was a vital component in the boots' hover function. My power told me I could extract and synthesize a mineral called pyrobloin from volcanic ash, the same mineral used to forge seastone. It would allow me to condense the air around my feet into temporary clouds to run on, much like the island clouds of Skypeia.

Even if I had no pyrobloin to form the hover modules themselves, I could at least start on shaping the skates to my design. I first began by removing the wheels, brakes, and axles, leaving just the bare plate. Then, I molded the plates using a torch to contain the unfinished hover modules. Lastly, I prepared myself another vat of carbon polymer to coat the boots in. It wouldn't do for my feet to be less protected than the rest of my outfit. By the end of the three hours, I had the structural components of the hover boots drying on a rack under a heat lamp.

X

I walked into the house with a satisfying tiredness in my step. It felt good to tinker in my lab during the day; I could get a consistent night of sleep without feeling guilty about missing out on the One Piece tech tree. I tossed the key into a bowl set aside for the purpose and greeted my sister.

"Hey, Sierra, what's up?"

She sat in our armchair, typing something on her laptop. "Hey, Bryce. How was tutoring?"

"Not too bad, but I have a newfound appreciation for teachers," I lied. "Mom not back yet?"

"Yeah, she's got a late reservation at the clinic she didn't want to turn down, called five minutes before you came in actually. You want to make dinner or should we order?"

"You know, normally, big sisters are supposed to offer to make food."

"If you want burnt toast then sure," she said dryly.

"Fair enough. I could do without the food poisoning. Pizza?"

"Yeah, that sounds good. You still getting pineapple?"

"Ehh, I'm okay without torturing you tonight. Get what you want."

"So you do get pineapple just to mess with me!"

"Not just to mess with you," I said with a smile. "I think the tart sweetness goes well with the savory pizza."

"Blegh, whatever. My brother is the worst kind of food snob."

I opted to spend my evening with Sierra. I plopped down on the couch closest to her and pulled out my own laptop. "You know, the kid I tutor isn't stupid, but damn if he is unmotivated. I'm having some trouble getting him interested in studying."

"Yeah, it's this crippling disease called 'being a teenager.' Heard of it?" she replied with a cheeky smirk.

"Hah. Funny. I basically introduced him to PHO battleboarding as an example of real world applications for math and physics."

"Huh, that's not a bad idea. Is he one of those cape geeks?"

"You say that like you aren't one."

"I think I mostly grew out of it."

"Sure you did, that's why Lady Photon's poster is glued to your ceiling so it's the first thing you see when you wake up in the morning."

"We all have our heroes, Bryce."

"True." I leaned in to look over her shoulder. "What're you doing?"

"I was checking the cape news on PHO ironically. Did you know the Merchants tried to hit the Palanquin on Sunday?"

I raised an eyebrow at that. 'Faultline didn't mention that. I must have missed the damages because I came in through the back. I should be more attentive...'

"Oh? What happened?"

She turned the laptop so I could see better.

On it was a somewhat shaky video of the Palanquin and surrounding hill, with what had to have been one of Squealer's cars. It looked like someone attached monster truck tires to a dump truck then welded the shovel of a bulldozer to the front. I could see two turrets welded to the top too. The dump-dozer was leading a small caravan of three more pickup trucks, all unmodified, up the hill. Each pickup held four to six Merchants and I could see Skidmark waving like a lunatic from the top of the dump-dozer.

I whistled. "Damn, is it weird that I kind of like Squealer's truck?"

"Seriously?"

"What? It's a monster truck with guns," I defended. "If there's a zombie apocalypse, I want her on my side."

"Boys," she said, eyes rolling.

Faultline must have had a warning system in place somehow because the Crew emerged when the trucks were about halfway up the hill. This being Brockton, people cleared out in a hurry, though I didn't doubt that there were more videos of this fight from half a dozen different angles.

Skidmark shouted something and Faultline obviously responded in the negative because the turrets started aiming towards her. They had a bit of back and forth before the entire hill started to tremble. The cameraman did his best to stay on the action, but he almost dropped the camera a few times.

"She was buying time," I said.

"Hmm?"

"Labyrinth." Sure enough, pillars and walls of granite arose out of seemingly nothing, each decorated with sculptures of lions, griffons, and other mighty animals. The dump-dozer tried to drive over it, but the engines clearly weren't up to breaking through three feet of solid granite. Random gunfire filled the air in response to the abrupt change in terrain. "She's one of Faultline's and the strongest shaker in America, very likely the world. She can generate any piece of architecture in a large area around her, basically making a labyrinth for people."

"Now who's the cape geek?"

I sniffed. "I never denied my geekiness. Unlike some, I embrace it wholeheartedly."

I looked at the snarling beasts that decorated Elle's handiwork and felt a moment of almost pity for Skidmark's idiot brigade. 'If I remember right, her "pocket worlds" change depending on her emotional state. She sees the Palanquin as home and the Merchants just attacked a shaker-twelve's home base.'

The Merchants brought around twenty people, all armed with guns, but four trucks had little chance of turning halfway up the hill, and that chance evaporated once Labyrinth started playing with the world like silly-putty. While they were trying to figure out a way to maneuver the dump-dozer to get a clear line of sight on Faultline, she dashed forward.

Faultline had completely ignored the granite column in her way, phasing through it like it didn't exist to dash directly in front of the lead truck. She then drew a dainty finger purposefully across one side of the dump-dozer as she ran by. The entire truck slid into two halves like something straight out of an anime.

I could hear the cameraman swear in shock.

"Holy shit, did you know she could do that?" Sierra asked.

"Yeah. Dracule himself couldn't have made a cleaner cut," I said. "I didn't know she could phase through solid objects though. It's more likely that it's another aspect of Labyrinth's power."

"Who?"

I waved her off. "Don't worry about it."

Whatever she was going to say, she got distracted when Faultline hopped in place and jumped through the asphalt, only to emerge from a different column behind a different truck.

This time, she was joined by Newter, who lunged with the kind of speed more commonly seen in pouncing leopards. He landed on the lip of the truck bed, tail extended for balance, and tapped two people on their cheeks before they could react. They slumped forward with nary a sound as Faultline cut out the rear tires.

I could see the dump truck part of Squealer's abomination start to bubble, the trash rising like a boiling kettle until Mush emerged in his garbage-golem form. He was primarily dealt with by Gregor, whose adhesive spray glued the trash-man's tendrils together. Before he'd even finished stepping out of the back of the truck, Gregor had forced him to abandon half his mass or risk entangling himself.

This did however give the Merchants in the other cars time to collect themselves. Skidmark shouted something then started to layer fields over the gun turrets as the swiveled around to face the back. Had they fired, bullets enhanced by his power would likely have done terrific damage, but they didn't get the chance before they were splashed with a narrow stream of acid that melted straight through them.

The Merchants finally started using the six brain cells shared between them and abandoned their vehicles in favor of more mobility. That would have been the correct move had not the entire area belonged to a rather upset shaker. The first one who jumped from the car fell into a pitfall, the ground closing over him to silence his screams.

It was only because I knew Labyrinth personally that I knew he was alive. She was a sweet girl; had she been anyone else and that pit could just as easily have been a punji pit, or worse.

The next few were met with lion-headed pillars sprouting up at speed to welcome them. They shot into the air, grasping their druggie cargo in their maws and leaving them stranded four stories in the air.

Faultline pulled out an extendable baton and proceeded to work with Newter to beat the rest of the Merchants senseless. She received covering fire from Gregor, who used adhesive sprays to attach Skidmark to anything he picked up, preventing him from using his power to launch anything. The battle, if it could be called that, ended when Newter dragged an insensate Squealer from the driver seat of her truck.

'It says a lot about Squealer that I have no idea if she was in this state before Newter touched him,' I mused.

The last to go down was Mush. After Gregor glued some of his tendrils together, he also glued the trash to the ground, forcing Mush to shed even more mass. Faultline took advantage of his reduced mobility and drilled a hole to a tendril. Before it could be closed, Newter's tail lashed out and grazed him almost gently. The tendrils were a part of Mush's organic body and he was soon out like a light.

In less than five minutes, the Merchants were out cold or wished they were. The ground opened up to reveal some very terrified druggies who must have had a hell of a trip inside Labyrinth's world.

They were lined up in a row, on their knees before Faultline's Crew. She said something to them, slapped Skidmark like a fool, confiscated their guns, then walked back up the hill to her club. Slowly, the ground creaked and groaned as the world reverted back to the way it was, only the four scraps of what used to be serviceable cars and twenty Merchants with the fight beaten out of them to show what had happened.

"She didn't arrest them?"

"Why would she?" I asked my sister. "She's a mercenary. Hell, leaving them to lick their wounds and walk away is probably a message in itself. It says 'I don't care about the city or its gangs. Leave me alone, or else.' If she restrained them for the Protectorate, she would be changing the geopolitics of the city. Worse, she'd be catching villains for the Protectorate, and that sounds like the kind of thing she'd want to be hired to do."

"Huh, makes sense. I still wish she would've just had that big guy glue them to the ground until the heroes arrived."

"Yeah, would be nice, but I get why they didn't. If they did, they'd be players in the city's game and they don't want that."

"How do you know?"

"I'm pretty sure there's a PHO statement from Faultline confirming their neutrality," I pointed out.

"Yeah, that does sound like you. You would ignore these cool fights then read the boring PSAs. Nerd," she jostled me.

"Whatever. Go order us pizza," I sniffed. "You're just jealous because I'm smarter."

X

That night after dinner, I found myself back in the lab. It would be a short project, a series of attempts to extract something known as a lineage factor. Oda had based the idea off DNA and according to the scientists of One Piece, eating a devil fruit altered the consumer's lineage factor.

However, I saw one critical difference that told me the lineage factor wasn't exactly the same as conventional genetics: fruit powers weren't inheritable. This would be my first foray into biotinkering, something I knew Amy might well kill me over, but then again, she had no reason to visit my lab again and the possibilities were far too enticing for me to resist.

Several examples of biotinkering could be found throughout the events of One Piece. The prime examples were the Vinsmoke children, who had all been tinkered to be super-soldiers. They were impressive, but they all came with significant downsides.

Another prime example was the creation of the artificial devil fruit; not that joke Doflamingo called SMILE fruits, the one made by Vegapunk to replicate Kaido's mythic zoan. Having the knowledge of One Piece also included the brilliance of Dr. Vegapunk, the ability to create a mythic zoan, albeit one weaker than the original.

I intended to create a devil fruit, but I had no intention of eating it myself.

For starters, having a weakness to the ocean in a setting where one of the three apocalypse-monsters, the one I was practically guaranteed to fight within the year, controlled the ocean like an extension of its limbs, sounded like a creative way to commit suicide.

No, what I wanted wasn't the fruit, I considered that the secondary prize. My true objective was the process of splicing phenotypical traits using the manipulation of lineage factors. If I could learn the process, I should be able to customize it for my needs.

In essence, I wasn't tinkering up a singular invention; I was teaching myself an entire school of science, one mastered by only one man in One Piece.

I had a little over two weeks, two weeks to set the foundations of this research before I lost the specialization. There was one problem though: Vegapunk created a copy of Kaido's fruit using a sample. I had no such thing. I could perfect the SMILE fruit using Vegapunk's knowledge, but that would leave me with a standard zoan at best. And even then, my power kindly let me know that I'd have a greatly weakened version.

My decision was clear: Just as I used examples of cape powers in lieu of moves for the TM archive, I would use biological samples of capes for my burgeoning devil fruit.

I didn't even have the soil or pot to grow a tree, but that was fine. Gardening supplies would hardly rouse suspicion and I wouldn't need a plant until much later. No, the first thing I had to do was design a lineage factor extractor and splicer that could isolate individual traits and graft them to another.

It was an exciting night, but I made sure to return home by one-thirty in the morning. I did promise myself consistent sleep after all. Drawing up the plans and conceptualizing the applications would have to do for the day.

Author's Note

The raid suit Reiju wore took a direct hit from Prometheus, the sun homie. I assumed she reinforced herself with Armament, but even so, Prometheus should have a surface heat of somewhere in the 9,900 degrees Fahrenheit. That's where I'm getting the raid suit's heat resistance from.

In One Piece canon, seastone is made of a special type of mineral found in volcanic ash called pyrobloin. Pyrobloin has the unique property of condensing water vapor around itself, forming both the island clouds and sea clouds of Skypeia. It is unmentioned just what the raid suit's hover boots use, but I'm going with the theory that pyrobloin is a common ingredient that lets the wearer "kick" off of the densely packed water vapor. On a side note, Nami also must use pyrobloin to some degree because her clima-tact can be used to form the milky road.

The Merchant v. Faultline scene was necessary I feel. Sometime before canon, Faultline established herself as a neutral party in the city, but that doesn't mean the gangs would have been happy to leave her be. She had to have done something to prove she wasn't to be fucked with. This is that something. She's officially too strong to fuck with and too ambivalent to be a threat.

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