Wave 2.8

2010, October 9: Brockton Bay, NH, USA

I was right back at Harvey's by the stroke of midnight. I dashed back and forth between the workshop beneath Harvey's and the lab in the Gullrest, building an extra-large soda engine. It took me two hours even with the blueprints all but memorized.

In the end, I had an engine that weighed over four hundred pounds, one I struggled to move even with the GES' strength enhancement. Instead of trying to drill a hole into the basement wall to find a place for it, I removed some of the drawers from the central island and placed the engine there.

I must have phased in and out of a fugue without even noticing because when I next regained my senses, the forge and lathe looked a bit different.

On one side of the forge, I could see a vat of some chemical fluid that definitely wasn't there before. According to my power, it was a solvent that would bind to most chemicals and minerals in the volcanic ash once heated to extreme temperatures, all except pyrobloin. It was the perfect way to separate the miracle mineral from the rest of the chaff without a convoluted process.

Pyrobloin of course did not truly exist on Earth Bet; I suspected that this solvent allowed my power to synthesize the material somehow rather than filter it out. Still, the specifics were irrelevant beyond that I needed volcanic ash from a coastal volcano.

Preparations finished, I could finally work on the fun stuff, the tech that would let me progress forward.

I made one final trip to the main lab to get the volcanic ash that Faultline supplied me with earlier in the week and started to load it into the crucibles.

That was the last thing I could remember before I woke up to all eight crucibles glowing a cherry red.

One by one, I poured the molten liquid into the vat and smiled at the satisfying hiss of evaporation. It would take a while for the pyrobloin to separate out and settle in little beads to the bottom.

While that was settling, I went back to my lab to pick out several bits of metal I'd stashed in the DSS. One day, I'd build another port in here. Titanium golf clubs, bicycle frames, scissors, and other scrap were brought in, all to melt them down into raw titanium for the creation of wapometal.

X

I'd gotten home at six then enjoyed a power nap for three hours. When I woke up, I ate a spoonful of enchanted honey to clear the grogginess from my head and joined my family for breakfast. We were having a French omelet, or at least an approximation of it as made by my mother. She wasn't a terrible chef, but nor did she possess any particular talent in it.

"Bryce, I need you out of the house today," Sierra said.

"Study group?"

"Study group," she confirmed apologetically. "I wanted to suggest the library, but I didn't want to make it seem like I was kicking them out."

I put on an offended expression. "So it's okay to kick your little brother out instead? I see how this is, Sierra."

"It's not like that; we have a deal."

I held the glare for a moment longer before allowing myself to break out into a wide grin. "I know. I like your friends."

"You like them because they're hot older girls," she snorted.

"Guilty as charged," I said shamelessly. "But yeah, I can make myself scarce. Or take a nap or something."

"Thanks, little bro."

"No problem."

X

Sierra had coughed up money for my lunch then told me to go amuse myself. I considered hitting up one of the Wards or Eric to hang out, I did promise him after all, but then remembered that I had eight potential Merchant hotspots to scout.

That was how I found myself twenty bucks richer wandering the Trainyard. I was of course disguised as one homeless bum or another, changing every so often to not draw attention. I would approach as close as I could while disguised as a bum then become invisible for a few minutes while I snuck inside.

The first location was a miss, completely abandoned. The second warehouse was a hit, but not in the way I wanted. It turned out to be some kind of Merchant distribution facility. Crates of unknown drugs were stacked in reasonably neat pillars and I could see street-level gangbangers going in and out to receive their supplies for the day. Had I been a chemicals tinker, this would have been a goldmine, but it wasn't what I needed at the moment so I marked it on the map but otherwise ignored it.

The third was also a hit, this time with what I needed. The warehouse was towards the east end of Brockton Bay, as far away from the docks and Lung as possible, which made sense in hindsight; fire and meth labs had an… explosive chemistry…

I smacked myself for the shitty pun and hopped to the roof before sneaking inside through a window by levitating myself down using Magnet Rise.

The warehouse was filled with far more professional equipment than I'd first expected. I assumed I would have to loot them, then tinker with old coffee makers and other makeshift appliances to create the lab equipment I'd need, but someone had clearly supplied the Merchants with decent gear. Not top notch, I could see some signs of wear and tear that suggested that these were looted from a more legitimate lab's trash, but still serviceable. I would be coming back here soon enough.

Just to be thorough, I checked in on the other five locations. The fourth and fifth were duds, a pair of abandoned apartment complexes that no doubt housed its fair share of the transient community. While it was good to know where the bums hung out, I had no interest in making their lives difficult so I crossed them from my list. The sixth was likewise empty, an abandoned warehouse in truth. The seventh, some kind of gas station that doubled as a seedy diner in its heyday, had a few people hanging about. After watching for a few minutes, I concluded that it was a place to pick up drugs or whores used by the local distributor and pimp.

The last, I struck gold: Squealer's garage. I could have looked for her workshop directly by having SAINT filter for auto shops in particular, but that hadn't been my objective. So when I ended up discovering the location of Squealer's lab purely on accident, I was thrilled at my good fortune. It was located almost at the center of the Trainyard and obscured by several old train cars, no doubt on purpose.

I had a surplus of metals and mechanical components at the moment, but I marked the location as a potential target for a future specialization.

Mission fulfilled to my satisfaction, I grabbed a late lunch and made my way back to the forge to tinker. After making a bunch of titanium ingots, I took some stainless steel and melted it down for nickel. By dinner, I had my first ingot of wapometal, the super-SMA. I collected the pyrobloin from the bottom of the chemical vats and set them aside to dry before heading home.

X

By the time I stepped through my front door, I was fully ready to crash from the long night and daytime scouting mission. No amount of enchanted honey was going to keep me on a sugar high forever and I was dangerously close to falling asleep in the living room.

"Bryce? You look like shit," Sierra said, tactless as ever.

"Thanks, sis, love you too." I looked around to find no one else with us. "Your friends went home already?"

"Yeah, why? Were you hoping to say hi?"

"I wanted to check in on Sabs," I said honestly.

Sierra smiled gently. "Her dad's fine. Our creepy lab assistant is an ass but manageable. You worry about your problems, bro."

"Alright, but let me know if that changes."

"Sure." With that, she turned back to the TV, some drama about a cape infiltrating the Irish mob but falling in love with the boss' daughter. That was something I noticed about Earth-Bet. Everything was tied to capes or cape culture in some way. Cop drama? We had PRT-Miami instead of the CSI series. Sitcoms? At least one of the main cast was guaranteed to have powers. The genre didn't matter; cape culture fully dominated every facet of entertainment.

To be fair, some of those shows were honestly interesting, but I found most to be subpar. The problem with powers was that writers tended to use them as copouts to railroad the plot or get themselves out of a corner they'd written themselves into.

I desperately wanted to go to sleep, but I still had some work to do. I went up to my room and booted up my computer. Art was never my thing, certainly not graphic design, but I did my best to pretty up the catalogs. I also made a PHO handle for my cape persona to be used in future businesses. I sent it off to Faultline then let Morpheus take me.

X

2010, October 10: Brockton Bay, NH, USA

With less than two weeks of my specialization left, I was starting to feel the time crunch. The moment mom went off to church, I was out the door and on my way to the Gullrest.

I had pyrobloin, the same material that could miraculously condense water vapor to varying densities, somehow without forming ice crystals, and form solid clouds. It took me much of the day, but I now had hover boots. Yes, I could fly using Magnet Rise, but I still wasn't agile enough to make use of it in combat, repeated losses against SAINT proved that. Besides, anything that could improve my mobility while conserving my aura reserves would be a godsend.

I also forged myself several nuggets of seastone, each only as large as a nut or ball bearing. Those I stitched to the knuckles of my costume. Don Krieg once boasted to Luffy that his armor had diamond knuckles. Now, that was true of me as well. Add in the physical enhancements of the raid suit and I hit considerably harder than a scrawny boy of five-two had any right to.

I was as ready as I could be for my first gang raid.

In an ideal world, I would have received the One Piece specialization months or even a full year later. I would have had a full set of large-scale fabricators so I could convert the Gullrest into a true pirate ship. I would have had an organic chemistry lab ready to go, along with a room on the ship dedicated to hydroponics so I could experiment with each successive generation of artificial devil fruits. I would have had a larger forge so I could build my own General Franky to tackle an endbringer.

This wasn't that world. As beneficial as the Hillside Heist was for me, I was still lacking in a lot of infrastructure. So, I chose to give up on all of that for the time being. Instead, tonight was about laying the foundation. I didn't need to perfect a devil fruit in the next two weeks, but I did need to teach myself the essence of One Piece-biology. This wasn't about an immediate power up; this was about engraving the school of science into my repertoire for future use.

Going out tonight to bust some Merchant heads would probably leave me a zombie tomorrow at school, but it'd be worth it for the tech I'd get my hands on. If I wanted to do anything more with the specialization, I needed to move tonight; time was not my friend.

It was ten at night when my mom turned in. Sierra was locked in her room, doing something or other on a CAD software she'd bought for class.

I snuck out and headed to the Trainyard, settling behind a shipping crate in an isolated lot. From there, I disguised myself as yet another homeless vagrant and made my way to the drug lab on foot.

I slowly elevated myself to the rooftop with a series of midair hops and looked down from the skylights. As expected of the nocturnal elements of the city, the lab seemed to have just stirred to life. Unlike during the day, there were a dozen shirtless Merchants working on one task or another.

A part of me wanted to come back during the day, presumably when there would be fewer people, but I told myself that I didn't know that for sure. For all I knew, Skidmark kept these guys on a guard rotation of some sort. It was what I'd do after all and he had to have a brain somewhere.

I was momentarily taken aback; these weren't like the Merchant stereotypes. They weren't filthy, with eyes glazed over from whatever drug they'd taken last. I wouldn't go as far as to say they were clean, certainly not professional, but all twelve lab techs were in passable shape, each wearing gas masks and goggles to protect themselves from the fumes. They moved with an intention and purpose that was usually absent among their fellows. Clearly, these were some of Skidmark's finest, or at least the most sober.

I also saw a pair of guards leaning against each of the two entryways. Four seemed like remarkably few for what appeared to be a major operation, but Skidmark seemed to be relying on anonymity as his first line of defense. I counted sixteen potential enemies, but I couldn't discount the possibility of a few being in the second floor offices or even reinforcements nearby.

'Too many,' I thought. It was one thing to consider raiding a major gang's holdings, another thing entirely to actually go through with it. Intellectually, I knew I was all but invincible as far as the Merchant roster was concerned. Barring some extraordinary circumstance, they weren't breaking through a Germa suit.

They had no hope of catching someone who could run on air under normal circumstances. I could retreat at any time. Still I hesitated. Something told me this was a bad idea.

'Yeah, probably my good sense,' I scoffed. Then I remembered that I had two weeks left to manipulate the lineage factor of a subject, to apply that research for the creation of something truly wondrous and cement it into my repertoire or be in danger of losing the possibility forever. 'If I don't do it today, I'm fucked.'

With that, I made a hasty plan. SAINT would emerge, eviolite around his neck, to cause a distraction. Using Thunder Wave and Psychic, he would disable as many Merchants as he could while I ran around the building under stealth to steal everything that wasn't nailed down. With only a few hundred pounds of carrying capacity, it was possible that I would run out of room.

"SAINT, you ready for this?"

"Pory," he nodded. He wasn't eager exactly; he lacked the battlelust that was so common among many organic pokémon, but the impression I got from the bond was that he'd be willing to fight if it meant I wouldn't take the bulk of enemy aggression.

Touched, I gave the little guy an encouraging scratch. "Okay, remember, no lethal attacks, but don't be afraid to get a bit rough. If you're in danger, use Protect and Agility to get out then catch your breath."

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He let out a reassuring trill. Then, he nodded and began to glow with the light of Agility. Mere seconds later, I heard inquisitive prodding, then laughter as the guards poked and prodded at the random pastel-colored duck that had appeared between them.

Then came the light show as Thunder Wave coursed through the two idiots standing guard outside. Laughter turned into shrieks of pain before the Trainyards seem to quiet.

Lastly came the panic.

"We're under attack!" someone shouted.

"No, shit, fuck-nugget!" came the eloquent reply.

I took that as my cue and jumped down through the skylight. Still stealthed, I guided myself through the warehouse in a slow hover. I had no interest in Merchant operations beyond the materials they could offer me, so I skipped over the second floor offices entirely and landed on the ground. Any amount of liquid cash that I could potential loot would easily be overshadowed by a few tinkertech sales.

To my surprise, only a few of the Merchants started running around like headless chickens. They were quickly brought back in line with harsh slaps from someone who looked like he should be the leader instead of Skidmark. He was tan and well-muscled, with a barrel-chest and shaggy beard that could probably hide a pocket knife or three. The way he took charge reminded me of Coach Miller and I concluded that he must have some military training.

"You fuckers on me!" he shouted in an accent I couldn't place. I mentally named him "Shaggy." "James, Kyle, pick up some rifles and join me. The rest of you, find some fucking weapons and get upstairs!"

The two shirtless drug-makers nearest to the entrance immediately complied, digging into a crate in one corner and withdrawing a pair of semi-automatic rifles. I wasn't an expert; I didn't know the model, but I made a note to loot them if I got the chance. They also indicated that the Merchants were far better connected than people assumed.

SAINT had already taken out the two guards with multiple Thunder Waves. I presumed it took so long only because he was trying not to stop their hearts and didn't know how many amperes he could safely use. My loyal porygon started to charge forward, though I didn't see the telltale shine of Sharpen. He was holding back as I'd told him to.

'He must want to save his power,' I thought. A Tackle found Shaggy's torso before he could bring his rifle to bear, sending him flying with a grunt of pain.

I took my eyes off the action and looked around for things I wouldn't mind having. A filtration machine that had been used to make higher purity drugs was the first thing to go into my expanding bag. A set of gas canisters followed. The eight other Merchants that had been scrambling started to pick up pipes, chains, and handguns from crates lined along the walls.

"Which dick-munching piece of dogshit's hitting my lab?" came a voice from the second floor walkway. I turned to find Skidmark, Adam Mustain, in all his dubious glory.

'Man, Wildbow wasn't fucking around,' I thought. Skidmark paid the barest lip service to the sanctity of the mask. His "mask," if it could be called that, was a teal bandana with holes cut out of it for eyes that wrapped around the top of his face. His "costume" was a ratty old wifebeater with suspicious yellow stains. The scariest thing about his snarl was the teeth that looked like chipped pistachio shells.

"You limp-dicked fuckers get your asses up here," he repeated Shaggy's order. He ran along the walkway, leaving ripples of his power along the edges. When the Merchants with handguns climbed to the second floor, they took aim and fired at SAINT, using Skidmark's power to increase the velocity of their guns. Shaggy and the other one swore as they stumbled out of the way.

I saw the emerald glow of Protect and knew he'd be fine. I nabbed several high-quality burners and glass beakers while no one was looking. Then, I felt an urgent pull through the bond. I looked back just in time to see Skidmark layer several fields in front of himself before throwing a knife towards my partner.

Skidmark must have layered over a dozen fields together, because the knife shot forward like a sniper round. Force being mass times acceleration and the knife being far heavier than a measly bullet from a handgun, it struck with a titanic sound reminiscent of a resounding gong. 'He can't take another one of those,' I thought.

"SAINT, withdraw!" I commanded.

It was the first time I'd managed to send an image into his mind through the bond. He'd done so to me regularly, but I could never quite manage it until a moment of urgency emerged. He obeyed, lashing out with a bright light that send the Merchants reeling before hovering into the air.

My shout did not go unheard. Bullets peppered my position as I shoved yet another piece of machinery in my bag, this time some sort of distiller. The rounds missed but struck the tables, beakers, and several tools I could have used. One bullet punctured a tank of coolant I would have liked to have.

'Isn't some of this stuff flammable?' That thought panicked me for a moment before I remembered seeing some of these Merchants move the finished products to the side. Still a hazard, but not nearly as urgent as if they'd left the stuff lying around. 'Who knew Merchants of all people would practice lab safety?'

"Shit, there's a fucking stranger!" Skidmark shouted. He started spraying bullets down randomly, almost hitting some of the Merchants still on the ground. "What the fuck are you cocksuckers doing! Close the fucking doors!"

The six or so Merchants on the ground rushed to obey, or perhaps to get out of the sporadic gunfire peppering the warehouse floor randomly. Either way, I'd have to get through them if I wanted to leave through the entrance.

Blocking the way out meant nothing to someone who could fly out the skylight again, but Skidmark didn't know that was an option for me. He'd issued commands upon recognizing a stranger based on the best information he had. Not for the first time, I wondered how capable Skidmark would be if he wasn't high off his ass half the time.

Before Skidmark could continue firing down at me, SAINT came through with a strafing run of Thunder Waves. The electrical attacks bypassed Skidmark's repulsion fields as though they weren't there, knocking out two more Merchants. One Thunder Wave struck the metal railing, electrifying the metal and shocking the bare feet of several more. I heard vicious cursing before Skidmark shouted again.

"Mush! Where the fuck are you!" he swore.

'Shit, he was here too?' Still invisible, I was about to steal another set filtration machines when Mush's garbage-golem made his way in from somewhere outside.

"Here, boss, I was beefing up a bit," he growled. His voice came out jumbled, muffled through the trash as it was. He shoved aside the two guarding his door and stepped inside the warehouse.

"Good, box the fucker in," the Merchant leader shouted from above. "And one of you call Trainwreck to get his ass here!"

Mush extended his tendrils outward, lashing out in wide, horizontal sweeps to keep an invisible foe at bay. He started to advance and while I doubted he could hurt me, I wasn't in any mood to actually touch the trash-man. Instead, I decided to try and stop Skidmark from calling for more reinforcements. I saw several Merchants fumble with their phones as SAINT made another sweeping pass, this time with Tackle. I rushed to the nearest support beam and grabbed hold of an aluminum vent.

"Thunder Wave," I growled, sending quite a bit of electricity surging up the vent and onto the walkway. I held nothing back. I didn't need nuanced waves of electricity that would paralyze one person without harming them, I needed as much juice as I could produce. The indirect electrical attack made them spasm with pain before dispersing amongst all that metal.

I couldn't hold the attack for long before two of the Merchants who'd gone to bar the entryway finished rubbing their six brain cells together and picked up the semi-automatic rifles the guards had dropped. They started spraying in sweeping patterns and I felt the sting of several bullets strike my back. One even glanced off my helmet, making me yelp, though more in surprise than pain. As it turned out, I wasn't spared the impact of the bullets just because the suit was bulletproof. Most of it was dispersed by my suit, but I'd still have a few small bruises in the morning.

"He's over there," one of them shouted, pointing in my general direction.

At the same time, another Merchant from the second floor must have grabbed his phone, because he screamed, "Trainwreck, get your ass to the lab! We're being attacked by capes!"

I couldn't hear what the Case 53 tinker said in response because I took a second to focus on another set of burners in one corner of the room and dashed there using Agility to steal it along with a butane canister. The light of the move gave me away though and I was forced to hunker down behind my cape. Even without the active shield function, it was more than up to the task of stopping bullets.

"There you are!" Mush screamed. His tendrils seemed to coil in on themselves, forming a giant mallet out of odds and ends before crashing down on me. That activated the shield, a series of concentric yellow hexagons sprouting from the point of impact. It also finally brought down my invisibility module, revealing me to the rest of the warehouse.

"What the fuck? Kill that sentai wannabe!" someone screamed. I felt my eyebrow twitch with irritation. Before the bullets started to fly, I dashed a few feet to my right to snag a few weights and scales.

"Fucker's stealing our shit," another Merchant yelled.

Seeing my cover blown, I no longer felt a need to stay silent. "No I'm not," I shouted back. "I'm just recycling!" I dove out of the way of Mush's trash-lash. "I swear this is a public service, guys."

A salvo of bullets struck where I stood, but I jumped up into the air, activating my hover boots and dashing towards them. I landed on the railing with one boot extended in an approximation of a heroic kick. I couldn't help but think that if Sanji could see me right now, he'd have kicked my ass on principle. There was neither form nor technique, only the flailing of an inexperienced amateur who'd seen one too many kung fu movies.

The physical boosts that I received from the suit were my only saving grace. I tried to copy his signature Diable Jambe in a downward axe kick, charged with electricity instead of heat. It struck one Merchant's bat, shocking him through the metal and making him drop the weapon with a pained yelp. I stomped that foot down then tried to transition into a side kick but whiffed horribly and struck the railing. The resulting sparks made the Merchants flail but the impact knocked me off balance, sending me on my ass.

"Ah, shit. Taekwondo lied to me."

Skidmark recovered before me. He shoved one of his underlings aside before layering a field and taking aim with his pistol. A power-enhanced bullet struck my forehead dead center with a reverberating crack that snapped my head back.

One moment I was trying to recover from my own stupidity, and the next I was staring at the ceiling, unsure of what had happened. My head rang and it was only the supports built into the raid suit that had kept my neck from breaking from the force. My distracted state let the Merchants gather themselves and the mooks charged me in force. I felt bats, knives, and chains strike my body but my suit held against those impacts with not even a wrinkle to show for it.

'I could have died,' I thought in a daze. I barely felt the impact of the gangbangers. 'Skidmark, motherfucking Skidmark, almost killed me. If he had enough fields layered, he could have killed me.' My shock was broken by SAINT's almost birdsong-like roar, a trill that sounded distinctly ominous despite his stature.

"Porygon!" He was by my side in an instant, his usually expressionless eyes glowing blue with the light of aura.

"RRAAAHHHH!" My voice joined his and a massive telekinetic push tossed the Merchants off of me. Was it SAINT's Psychic? Or did I learn to project on my own? It didn't matter. I couldn't tell. I was too pissed off by the indignity of nearly dying to Skidmark to make any rational observations.

A few of them fell from the second story railing and onto the floor below, but I couldn't afford to pay attention to the cracks of breaking bones. Surprise turned to rage and my mind focused on Skidmark, his field still standing between us.

"Okay, fine. You want to go lethal? Let's get lethal," I shouted.

I tossed out an arc of electricity towards him with Thunder Wave before grabbing the bullets in his gun with Magnet Rise while he was distracted. The ambient electrical current I used ignited the gunpowder, turning his pistol into so much scrap. Shards of his gun shot into his hand, eviscerating it into bloody ribbons.

"GAAHHH!" he roared in pain.

SAINT grabbed hold of his filthy wifebeater with Psychic and dragged him forward. He passed through his own layered fields, accelerating dramatically. My seastone crusted knuckles found his face and I felt his pistachio teeth shatter with a series of satisfying snaps. His momentum took a sudden one-eighty from my enhanced punch and tossed him to the metal walkway floor. He wasn't getting up from that anytime soon. I carefully scanned his from to make sure he was still breathing, if barely.

My satisfaction was short lived.

A colossal fireball, twice my admittedly diminutive size, struck me in the side, launching me with the force of a cannonball from the second floor. Perhaps it was the adrenaline, but I managed to get my boots beneath me, puffs of condensed vapor acting as my footholds. I looked to see who had struck me.

Trainwreck had arrived.

Trainwreck was, to the best of my ability to describe, a steam-golem. He was a Case-53, a blob-like creature who could form rudimentary tools with junk. Considering that he made his steampunk suit without hands and out of old autos, it honestly looked damn impressive.

He was what Optimus Prime would look like if Optimus landed in a junkyard. His chestpiece was the cowcatcher of an old locomotive. Two rows of three exhausts came out of his collar to spread over his back like wings and I had to admit that the trails of steam coming from behind him made for a cool image. His arms looked like he took two motorbikes and added joints to them. One ended in a flamethrower, likely a modified exhaust, and the other ended in the shovel of an old crane, or at least, half of one as a full shovel head would have been too cumbersome.

"You must be Trainwreck," I tried. "Any chance you can leave and let me get to my stealing all peaceful-like?" Another fireball was his response. I dashed in midair, even running along the wall for a short time. "SAINT, Thunderbolt! Shut him down!"

"Gon!" my partner shouted, his trilling warcry joined by the flash of electricity.

The blast struck true and for a moment, I thought that would be the end of it, but Trainwreck let out a guttural roar and powered through the attack. 'Must be insulated somehow,' I thought. 'Or maybe his Case-53 body reacts differently to electricity?'

I made short work of the Merchants still left standing on the railing, sticking with the basics this time. No fancy tricks or spinning kicks, just quick jabs to the chin or stomach to take them out of the fight. I didn't doubt that my form was sloppy there too, but my raw speed and strength carried me through.

Trainwreck and SAINT were trading blasts of fire and lightning while Mush tried ineffectually to swat at a flying opponent. Seeing how both were ignoring me for the moment, I took time to take stock and gauge my adversaries. On one hand, I could go straight back to looting; it was what I came here for after all. There were still plenty of things that had not been broken in the scuffle and I had some room left. On the other hand, my cover had been thoroughly blown and I really wanted to kick their asses.

I checked to make sure I had what I needed. Satisfied that I could build the LFES with what I'd taken, I gleefully joined the fighting.

"SAINT," I called, "freeze him!"

He paused in midair to interpret the image I'd sent through our bond and almost took a trash-lash to the head for his trouble. I made a note to work on that at a later date, perhaps with some sort of code to communicate more efficiently. I jumped down, landing between SAINT and Mush to buy him time.

"How's it going, trash-panda?" I greeted him.

He grunted dismissively. "Do you know how many new heroes try their luck with the Merchants?" He took a menacing step forward and entwined his tendrils again to form large arms. "Every fucking rookie with shiny new powers thinks he can fuck with us 'cause we're the weakest gang in town. Well you wouldn't be the first arrogant shitstain to die for it."

I paused. "You know, that was way more coherent than I'd expected from you," I said truthfully. "One thing though." I faded from sight again, then appeared immediately to his left, Thunder Wave at the ready. "I'm not a hero."

He got his trash-arms in front of him, throwing a rubber tire between him and the attack. He roared in pain but the rubber did just enough to insulate him from the electricity to not hamper him.

Behind me, I heart another large explosion and felt shards of Trainwreck's arm-cannon pelt my cape. By "freeze him," I'd meant the flamethrower. SAINT was to use Psychic to hold his flamethrower still before stopping the fuel from releasing out the muzzle. I doubted Trainwreck had accounted for someone directly stopping his internal systems, if he even could.

The heated metal rapidly expanded when presented with that much raw energy. Faced with the force of Trainwreck's internal combustion engine sending another flamethrower through the system, the overtaxed weapon exploded like a grenade.

I cast Agility and ran back to Trainwreck's side before launching Thunder Wave directly into the opening where his arm used to be. He howled in pain and brought down the crane shovel, but I swirled my cape around myself and took the blow. A hexagonal shield manifested from the cape, strong enough to block a strike from a spinosaurus zoan. Trainwreck had no chance.

SAINT then repeated the trick with his steam vents, forcing the exhaust pipes to distort with Psychic. Without the pipes, it didn't take him long to overheat and collapse. The Case-53 shuddered before collapsing, finally out of the fight. I was momentarily tempted to steal Trainwreck's armor, but the guy was a blob who could barely move outside it. I wasn't so desperate that I'd do that to another tinker.

Unfortunately, I didn't see any easy way to take out Mush. The whole city laughed at the trash-man, but truth was, he was surprisingly durable once ramped up and I didn't have Newter's instant nap time sweat to help me out. SAINT and I could continue beating on him and we'd eventually wear him down, but I didn't see a point to the endeavor.

"SAINT, go pick up some guns and ammunition. Destroy what you can't carry," I said as I casually walked to one of the few undisturbed boxes of laboratory equipment. I dumped what I could carry into my bags then shot him a cheeky thumbs up.

"You're not getting away," Mush snarled as he rushed me.

"I beg to differ." I jumped up to the ceiling then waved with a cheeky smile behind my helmet. "I've gotten what I came for, trash-panda. Toodles~"

With a final jaunty wave, I kicked off the air and out the skylight, SAINT close behind, leaving three capes and one trashed warehouse behind.

Author's Note

I rolled for the Merchant lab and rolled a 2. Not a natural 1, but I did consider the worst thing that could reasonably happen in this scenario, then made it happen. So, he ended up breaking his stealth thanks to a stroke of misfortune.

Trainwreck joined the Merchants sometime within the past week on orders of Coil. This area being near the Trainyards, he showed up. Along with both Skidmark and Mush, Bryce ended up fighting three of the four Merchant capes simultaneously. Had he rolled a natural 1, I might have dropped Dauntless or another flying cape who was on patrol into things to add to the chaos.

That said, even though he rolled so poorly, there is only so much I can do to offset Bryce's advantages. He's nearly invulnerable to the Merchants, with higher mobility, a competent companion, and even stealth to add to matters. There wasn't really any way he was going to lose the encounter.

Combat scene did end up being longer than expected but I don't think that's bad, gives me more practice.

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