Scale 5.1
Bryce Kiley
2010, November 30: Brockton Bay, NH, USA
Tuesdays were great. I had the entire afternoon to myself, whether to tinker or to skate around as Creed. I found myself forgoing my usual activities in favor of visiting the hospital. I had promises to keep.
Which wasn't to say I strolled in through the front door. I'd already gotten a taste of what was waiting for me over PHO: Why aren't you healing more? You should distribute your technology with doctors. People's lives are on the line and you're holding a raffle? Why aren't you more like Panacea?
Rather than improve my public image, the reality was that any PHO thread about me was flooded with the sick, desperate, and those who were happy to throw oil onto the fire. I was a greedy, self-serving mercenary whose technology could have done so much more good had it been in someone else's hands.
I should have expected it. Holding a raffle of just ten winners must have made people feel like the lives of their loved ones were hanging on a lottery ticket. Of course they'd be pissed.
No, whether ten or a thousand, the number didn't matter. There would always be people who lost out, people who were ultimately unlucky. It wasn't as though Brockton Bay wasn't already straining from a flood of medical tourists anyway. In that sense, it was almost better that I kept my services exclusive.
Perhaps, if I ever got a spare month without worthwhile things to build or learn, I'd travel the country and make spontaneous visits to hospitals.
"Patricia Murray?" I asked rhetorically as I glanced at the medical chart near her wall. Malignant intradural tumor. Which was to say, spine cancer. Terminal, paralyzed from the waist down.
"W-Who's there?" Patricia was an obese woman with Eastern European features despite her Gaelic last name. She had a thin, sharp jawline and wispy hair that had begun to gray prematurely.
I gently closed the door and emerged out of stealth, my gloved hand outstretched in an offered handshake. "Apologies. I am Creed, a small-time independent in the city. Don't worry if you've never heard of me. You were one of the winners of my little raffle."
"I-I didn't enter anything like that. Who are you?"
I brought up my pokenav and showed her the DM thread. After picking out the winners, I'd messaged them privately to acquire details about the patients, their ailments, and locations. Fortunately, none of the ten were beyond my ability to treat. "Someone by the screen name of ChocoFuzz entered on your behalf then. Does the name sound familiar?"
"I-It must have been my daughter. Choco's our cat. No one else in my family uses PHO like her."
"Then I recommend calling her. This past weekend, I was in Damascus following the Behemoth attack. I recently developed some healing tech and used the endbringer response as my chance to test, refine, and validate the technology," I explained. I suspected I'd be going through this spiel more than once today. "During that time, I met Panacea and she confirmed that my tech works. Out of gratitude to Panacea, I offered to treat ten people at random. Your daughter must have entered on your behalf."
"I-You can heal me?" She asked with naked disbelief. She shook her head with a resigned sigh. "I'm sorry, what I've got is spine cancer. It's malignant. Go find someone else, Creed. I'm sorry for wasting your time."
"I've fixed cancer before. I am capable of converting biological tissue into simple sugars and other harmless chemicals. I can't edit your genome so the cancer doesn't come back but I can easily remove it from your system if you'll let me. Call your daughter. Confirm what I've told you. And then, if you still feel like you don't trust a rogue like me, then I will move on."
"I… Alright, I'll do that. Thank you, Creed."
X
"You have no idea what this means to me," a familiar, ginger boy said as he shook my hand. Dennis Murphy, Clockblocker, and more importantly, my friend.
I had to be careful. I double-checked to make sure my voice modulator was on. "Don't mind it. You're simply fortunate is all."
It must have been quite the struggle for him. By showing up in-person like this, he was all but confirming that he was Clockblocker. I knew of course, but he didn't know I knew, which made this a significant risk in his eyes. He'd quite literally outed himself to a cape who was, as far as he knew, a villain, all for a simple promise that I'd help his father.
I doubted the PRT knew. They'd never allow such a thing. Hell, when they found nout, he'd probably be censured until he graduated before being quietly transferred to a different city to close the potential security leak. And he did it anyway, knowing this locked in his future.
What would I have done, had I been presented with this choice? What wouldn't I have done for my dad?
My estimation of Dennis shot up several notches.
His father's cancer wasn't any harder to treat than that of my first patient's. Really, for such an important moment for Dennis, it was over in just a few minutes. I also had the Pledge Regalia on top of all the medical charts near the door since there was no rubble to clear so diagnosis was even easier than it was in Damascus.
"You're not so bad, for a mercenary," Dennis said with a watery smile.
"What can I say? I've done a lot of soul-searching in Damascus," I said with a shrug. The PRT would find out about his little indiscretion one way or another; I may as well use my friend to send them a message. "I would have loved to be just another comic villain, but I can't deny that my tech is too good, too powerful, to ignore. The impact it can have on people's lives…"
"So be a hero then. Join the Wards. I mean, they'd be happy to have you, right?"
"The Wards? No, no way in hell. I want to make a difference, not shackle myself to the feds."
"So what will you do now if you're not joining the Wards?"
"I don't know," I said honestly. "Say, Dennis?"
"Yeah?"
"Pretend for a moment that you had powers."
"Uh-huh…"
"Let me turn the question on you then. What does it mean to do good?"
He blinked owlishly at that. I was, after all, a villain asking a hero about morality, no matter the facade of his civilian life. This probably wasn't the conversation he expected to have after school. "Do good? I guess… be a hero?"
"And what if you can't trust the heroes? What if you have significant reason to believe you can do better independently than as part of an organization?"
"You're part of an organization though, right?"
I coughed awkwardly. "Let's pretend."
"I don't know, man. I just want to make people laugh. I-I mean, if I had powers…"
"So you'd be a comic hero like Mouse Protector? Or Clockblocker?"
"Y-Yeah, guess he's pretty cool. I don't know anything about all that complicated stuff, sorry."
I didn't know what I was expecting. Maybe some kind of sagely wisdom? Dennis was a good person, far more mature than his normal attitude suggested. He was the one who took charge following the deaths of Aegis and Gallant against Leviathan.
But in the end, he was still a teenager. I had to remember, this Dennis wasn't that Dennis, the one who was forced to step up.
"No, it's fine. Your answer is fine the way it is," I told him. In a way, I was envious. A part of me wished I could be as carefree as my friend.
The look of relief on his face after I fixed his dad was the face of a man who finally found water in the desert. And, though he claimed he didn't know much about morality, he did good work in an uncomplicated way. Alas, the sheer, continuous growth potential of the Tinker of Fiction didn't allow me to have such a narrow perspective.
X
Sabah's father was the last patient I visited today. She was waiting for me with puffy eyes that stood out even against her darker skin. Her backpack had been tossed aside carelessly on a nearby stool, telling me she'd rushed here as soon as her university classes let out. She sat at her father's side, hands clasped tightly over his own.
"Sabah Azimi," I said softly, once again locking the door behind me. More than one nurse had tried to get me to speak with the hospital director but I'd ignored them all in favor of finishing up my contract. It wasn't like they could stop an invisible, hyper-mobile cape anyway.
"Creed, you're here," she said thickly. She took a deep, shuddering breath. "You really came…"
I didn't like seeing her like this. At first, I'd enjoyed her company as one of the few truly good people in Worm canon. Then, as she began to hang out more with Sierra, I started to see her as more than a character I'd read about. She became more fleshed out to me, a person rather than a caricature. It wasn't just that I owed her for helping me pick out a suit for Homecoming.
Really, the crux of the matter was that Sabah was Sierra's friend. The way Sabah's life gradually fell apart around her hurt my sister. I saw Sierra share in Sabah's depression. I saw her get angry at the pushy lab assistant on her behalf. Sisi had always been an empathetic person and the fact that Sabah's misfortunes bothered her bothered me in turn.
There would come a day when I'd be forced to tell Sierra everything. And, to know that I could have helped her friend and stayed my hand… I didn't want to face my sister as that person.
I wanted to take off my helmet, to tell her that she could trust me. I wanted to give her a hug and reassure her that everything would be fine. If I couldn't fix her dad, I'd get Amy to do it, one way or another.
Instead, I forced myself to adopt my trademark irreverent attitude. "My word is my bond. It's in the name, Sabah."
"S-Sorry, I didn't mean to…"
"Don't mind it. You're right to be suspicious. I would be too." I made a show of looking over her father's medical chart, a facade for her sake, if only to imply that I did in fact know what I was doing. "Easily fixable. For all its importance, a heart is not in itself a complicated organ. At its most basic, it is a muscle, a four-chambered pump with some regulatory nerves."
"That's what the doctors said, that if we could only see Panacea for a few minutes, this could all be over."
"But her time is precious."
"Yeah… Thank you, Creed."
I placed a hand on her sleeping father's chest. The seal on my glove began to glow as I began to channel the tectonic forces beneath our feet.
Despite my words to her, it wasn't quite that simple. Shaper granted Amy an intuitive ability to mold flesh. I didn't have that. What I could do, I learned through studying the research notes of men far more accomplished than I.
This was the one operation I couldn't afford to fail. Failing here would invalidate everything; she was a big part of why I'd gone to Damascus in the first place.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
I worked with a single-minded focus. First, I flooded his body with an anesthetic to keep him under. He hadn't woken during our conversation, but that was no reason to get sloppy. The last thing I needed was him waking up in a panic mid-procedure.
Second, I steadily reconstructed his heart, molding each chamber separately. I felt almost like a tailor, weaving muscle fibers into a strong, cohesive whole while purging any damaged tissue. As I worked, I had to transmute trace amounts of fat into oxygen and circulate it through his bloodstream, taking up the function of the organ that was currently out of commission.
Lastly, I finished by reconnecting his heart to the sympathetic nervous system. The two hormones, epinephrine and norepinephrine, were chiefly responsible for regulating heart rate. I ran a final check to ensure the newly formed heart responded well.
I stood back with a sigh. "I'm finished. When he wakes up, he'll be as healthy as an ox."
"H-He won't ever have to come here again?"
"Heart failure is its inability to meet the oxygen demands of the body. The muscle fibers were starting to deteriorate. I can assure you that barring exceptional circumstances, he'll never have to return for that specific condition. I also checked over his coronary arteries to ensure they were not being clogged. I still recommend he eat healthier. His diet wasn't the sole cause of his condition, or even the primary cause, but it's the easiest factor he can control in his life."
"I'll make sure of it," Sabah said. She looked so earnest, like a puppy gearing up for war, that I couldn't help but smile beneath my helmet. I almost felt bad for the man; Sisi did say Sabah could be quite forceful when she had a mind to be. "He won't touch a burger for the rest of his life."
"Please keep in mind that I am unable to manipulate the genome," I said. It wasn't entirely a lie. Alchemy didn't deal with it much and I hadn't gotten to the point where I felt comfortable integrating One Piece's Lineage Factor research with organic alchemy, at least on humans. "If your family has a history of heart conditions, I still strongly recommend seeing Panacea. I'm sorry, Sabah, but the best I can do is to buy you time in that case."
"N-No, this is good. Great. I can't thank you enough, Creed. I… I might know someone who knows Panacea…"
"Then I suppose my work is done here." I turned to leave, only for Sabah to grab my cape. "Was there anything else?"
"I… I want to ask you something."
"Yes?"
"If… You work for The GOAT."
I turned to face her. That wasn't exactly confidential information, but it was the last thing I'd expected her to ask. Sabah wasn't someone who cared for "cape drama."
A sinking pit formed in my stomach. "W-What of it?"
"H-How would someone, hypothetically, get in contact with The GOAT?" she asked. She looked at me, eyes still puffy but with a steel that hadn't been there before. "I need to tell them something."
She triggered. That was the only reason someone like her would seek out a powerful, heroically inclined thinker, one who specifically wasn't aligned with the PRT at that.
I was too late.
I took a deep breath. The world swam around me. Did Sierra know? Did Michelle? What was her power? The circumstances ought to be similar but I thought I had more time, that it'd be fine so long as I kept her father from dying.
But I was wrong. And now, Sabah would get sucked into this life, a cape with a brain parasite she didn't ask for.
I let out the breath I'd been holding. No, this wasn't all bad. Her dad was alive. That alone… That alone should have changed her power. Her power manifested as a master power out of her desire for control in her life. The dead skin thing probably came from her father's passing. Now that he was alive…
I didn't know. I was drawing blanks.
"This seems urgent," I spoke with a calmness I didn't feel.
"It… It is…"
"Very well, I'll pass the message along. The GOAT will contact you at their convenience. However, you must keep all that is discussed private."
"I know. That's… That's fine."
I nodded once and flickered from view. I needed more information and this would be a good start. Perhaps, perhaps it was time for her to meet me again, without secrets this time.
X
2010, December 3: Brockton Bay, NH, USA
"Hey, Creed!" Dodge said as he popped out of his wormhole.
"Hey, Dodge," I greeted back. It was an otherwise quiet Friday night, perfect for a deal. "I almost didn't recognize you. I didn't know you were a blonde."
"Ehehe, yep. Why? My normal costume doesn't look that bad, right?"
I made a show of looking him over. I knew him to be a huge fan of the Sentai Elite. The last time I saw the younger tinker, he was dressed as Hisuiryu, the Jade Dragon who led their Tokyo team. He'd even dyed his hair green to match.
Now, he was dressed in an oversized lab coat, so big that he practically swam in it. Beneath that, he wore a gray jumpsuit with circuit-like patterns.
"I don't think it's bad, but I liked your Hisuiryu costume better. It had more personality, you know? What you have now just looks like a generic mad scientist getup."
"I know, right? But Toy Soldier says I should dress more respectably, 'like a proper tinker, not a fanboy,'" Dodge pouted.
"Well he's got terrible taste then. So, got all my stuff?"
"Yup. Three of Big Rig's fabricators and twelve construction drones, right?"
"That's right. Tell Big Rig I really appreciate this. His tech's a lot more robust than the stuff built by other tinkers. I'll be able to kick up my production rate by a ton."
I reached into my expanded hip pouch and produced three binders. Each contained the same contract. I slid one copy over to Dodge so he could present it to Toybox as a whole. A second copy went to the third person in the room, Faultline.
I'd promised, after all. She was to be my primary link to other factions, someone whose neutrality could be respected by all sides. Though, considering Toybox saw fit to send only Dodge for this, I had to assume I'd earned a measure of trust with them as well.
At first, I hadn't wanted to deal with Toybox as a collective. I thought that, if I made deals with individuals, I could earn more money and concessions from them.
Then I received Fullmetal Alchemist as a specialization and my material concerns flew out the window. More, even if I acquired tinkertech samples, I'd already figured out from Big Rig's drones that I wouldn't be able to reverse engineer them. In that sense, it made more sense to focus on production rate rather than material wealth, hence this deal.
Faultline looked over the document with a weather eye. Digital records could be altered all too easily when both sides were tinkers. Paper copies were also suspect. So, Faultline acted as our guarantor and witness, our literal keeper of contracts.
"Three fabricators thrown in as a sign of goodwill. Twelve construction drones, one per month. In exchange, for the duration of one calendar year, Creed will answer any summons for medical assistance within twenty-four hours of issuance," she summarized. "Exceptions shall be made in times of crises, towards which S and A-class threats all qualify. Should Creed be unavailable, he shall inform Toybox at least three days prior."
"That's right. I think it's a fair trade," I nodded.
In the end, Toybox had seven members. They went out of their way to avoid violent conflict. The odds of one of them actually requiring my assistance were small, at least until Jack found a reason to chase after them in 2013. If, by that point, the Tinker of Fiction still struggled against the Slaughterhouse, I'd do Jack a favor and off myself in shame.
Toybox wasn't buying medical care, not really, they were buying insurance. Glace, their cryogenics tinker, could easily keep someone on ice until I got there, meaning damn near anything short of instant death was fixable. In that light, though twelve drones and three fabricators were a significant majority of Big Rig's current loadout, it was a more than worthy trade.
"Excellent. If both parties are satisfied," Faultline said. She waited until both Dodge and I nodded. "Then I consider this deal concluded."
"Awesome! Creed, wanna come play some games with me?" Newter called. He'd been hiding behind the bar, halfway between napping and following the conversation.
"Ooh, can I join?" Dodge asked with an eager smile. "What games do you have?"
"Sure, little man. Come on, Faultline, don't look at me like that. This is bonding. Bonding between allies, yeah?"
"That's right. Toy Soldier says making connections is important."
Faultline shook her head with a rueful chuckle. "Fine, do what you want. Just know the club will be opening in half an hour."
"Sweet! Creed, you in?"
I laughed. "You know what? Sure, why not?"
I could be doing a lot of things tonight. Today was Friday evening, which meant no school tomorrow. I ought to be studying more alchemy, maybe putting together some automail prototypes so I could get a better understanding of how mechanics and neuroscience melded.
There was also that report from SAINT about Coil's holdings I wanted to read over. And I'd be showing Amy around my lab tomorrow so preparing for that conversation couldn't hurt either. Not to mention, Sabah triggered, which probably meant I ought to have a chat with her as The GOAT.
And yet, Dodge was right too: Connections were important, especially with friends. Truth be told, I missed being a kid. Given the chance to hang out with Newter and Dodge for a few hours, I couldn't help but allow myself to be sucked into their pace.
Let tomorrow come with its worries; for tonight, it was good to unwind.
X
Bryce Kiley
2010, December 4: Brockton Bay, NH, USA
Saturday morning found me at the Gullrest as soon as I could get away from mom and Sierra. A part of me wanted to check in on Sabah but that would have to wait while I got my own house in order. Combined with what I'd already purchased from Big Rig, I had sixteen construction drones and five fabricators, more than enough to scale up my production.
This was good, because Dragon contacted me the other day. I'd loosely been keeping an eye on Syria, out of morbid curiosity if nothing else, but what got reported on the news paled in comparison to the information she had access to.
She wasn't at liberty to tell me everything given my tenuous status, but I could read between the lines: Syria was a powderkeg kept from blowing to kingdom come only by the military might and economic leverage the Guild held over local actors. That she and Narwhal saw fit to contact me at all was telling.
And, truth be told, I felt a little bad about it. Not guilty per se, just because I'd decided on becoming a worthy hero didn't mean I'd also developed a messiah complex, but bad nonetheless.
I was the one who executed Arsalan and crippled the Lionguard. I was the one who healed the rebels and left them with an incredibly favorable position. I'd done what I felt was right at the time, and I was under no delusion that everything would be solved with Arsalan's death, but I hadn't exactly taken into account the consequences of my actions for the delicate balance of power that had persisted in the country's capital until my departure.
In short, given my generally high regard for her and Narwhal and my thoughts concerning Damascus, Dragon's message did an excellent job of coaxing my cooperation. What that really meant was that I'd agreed to build hybrid soda engines at heavily discounted prices, not far above the cost of materials and Strider's delivery commissions.
It wasn't as though I got nothing from it. In exchange for my cooperation, Dragon sent me a copy of the video footage she'd spliced together. I didn't need it for anything, I was there for the whole thing, but I wanted to gauge my actions from an external perspective.
She also agreed to put me in contact with several industrial suppliers for various metals and plastics. I was slowly getting to the point where that would no longer be necessary, but the promise of materials I wouldn't have to transmute was nice, like not having to take out the trash one week.
Beyond any material concerns, both her offer and my cooperation was about signaling. Like with the post-endbringer cleanup, sending a message was an unfortunately large part of cape life. I showed that I could and would work with others during truce conditions; now I was being asked to establish myself in a broader context.
All that to say, Saturday morning was largely spent redecorating my lab.
It wasn't like there was much here. My lab was the old tanker's mess hall. There was a loom I used to spin Germa fibers, a sheathing machine that coated the individual fibers in a special solution to make them as durable as they were, and a sewing machine that wove it all into bolts of cloth. There was a clothing rack for new garments that I'd pilfered from the Hillside Mall all those months ago.
Next to that setup was a metal bookshelf that was largely empty; most of my notes were online anyway. Most of its contents were sketches of ship designs that looked like a cross between an architect's blueprints and a teenager's bored doodles. On top of the bookshelf stood one of the few decorations in my lab, a scale model, working replica of the Thousand Sunny. I'd made it not only as an homage to the Pirate King, but in the hopes of retaining some of Franky's genius shipbuilding skills.
On the other side of the bookshelf was a storage unit that SAINT kept organized on my behalf. Most of it was dedicated to storing seastone, wapometal, and bolts of Germa fiber cloth, but a decent chunk of that space was dedicated to raw materials I'd managed to source from Strider up to this point.
Further away was a long, metal desk fitted with a hefty lamp I could club a baby seal with. Other than my computer, I mostly used that desk to tinker with my air treks. A toolbox sat against the wall, filled with everything I could conceivably need and then some. To the side, where a small bookshelf used to be, was a bullet filling machine that made the special, Muggy Ball rounds for my Walker pistol.
The third workstation contained my biochem lab. It had a homemade electrolysis machine, centrifuge, and the rest of what I needed for my Lineage Factor experimentations. This area had also contained several dozen cages filled with rats and mice from the Boat Graveyard, evidence of the more gruesome aspects of my biotinkering I'd thoroughly disposed of and sanitized.
There was a much larger mockup of the seal embroidered onto my gloves still, engraved into sheet metal. I didn't need it anymore, but it looked suitably impressive, all mystical and occult-y, so I opted to hang it on a wall like a poster.
The fourth and final section of my lab was the production area. Here, I hooked up the three new fabricators alongside the two I already had. They were big, bulky things; carrying them to the lab would have been a pain in the ass without Pokemon's digital storage features. For the most part, I'd been using them to manufacture the frames for more soda engines and Black Rhino bikes, two of my best-selling items in the catalog.
I shut down any bikes in the queue in favor of more soda engines. I had a feeling I wouldn't be needing my civilian catalog for money anyway and I might as well get started on Dragon's request. The power output of three more fabricators was immense but hooking up two more soda engines fixed that issue.
Really, at this rate, I saw myself using alchemy to turn seawater into Coca-Cola in the near future.
Which left the drones. I now had a fleet of them, sixteen strong. I set them all to scavenge the ship, cannibalizing practically everything but the outer hull and the mess hall I occupied. The Gullrest was a tanker, with literally tens of thousands of tons of metal available. The plan was to take that metal and transmute it into iron, copper, and whatever else I needed. As tireless as the drones were, they'd be busy for quite a while.
That said, the drones' usefulness to me had a definitive shelf life. They were construction drones, meaning they weren't made to operate underwater. Once I harvested the Gullrest, their usefulness would diminish a great deal until I started building my own ship in earnest. And, by that point, I hoped to have the capability to manufacture my own drones.
Author's Note
Still not great with emotions. I've got a vague idea of what I want to do with Sabah, but you're welcome to chime in.
Random fact? Sure. I found out I like Skrewball whiskey. It tastes like peanut butter and honey and goes great with a milkshake.
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.