Did they really believe I was so stupid that I would go to another clandestine meeting, after getting kidnapped no less than twice? Especially considering what happened last time?

Yes, yes they did, because I was.

The first part bugged me. A Brainsucker was another name for a telepath. If they had me under telepathic surveillance, without asking for my permission, they were violating my rights in a way I didn’t have an answer for. Telepathic surveillance was usually a last-ditch search warrant for high-category villains. It was a violation of privacy that was impossible to ignore, and unless someone had a very high-powered judge in their pocket, it was even more illegal than public doxxing.

The problem was, that I couldn’t rule it out as a possibility. I was reasonably certain that it was not capable of keeping a lock on me when I apported, but while I could fairly easily sense streams of essence, it was not one of my gifts… among all those types of energy I regularly ignored because I couldn’t use them, someone might have snuck a thread in there I didn’t know about. I wasn’t a psychic, and I had no way of protecting myself from that sort of thing. Not yet, anyway.

Telepaths were incredibly rare. Supposedly, in the most extreme court cases, you could request and pay a huge amount of money for a telepath to be an expert witness, but all they could do legally was confirm or deny if you were telling the truth about not committing a death warrant felony. Fishing was very very illegal, and if a telepath was keeping their mind on me, that was exactly what they were doing.

How much had gone into government databases? How much of my technology did they already know about? Did they know about the partially translated Serenoid manual? Had someone been influencing my decisions the whole time I was at school? Hell, in the worst possible case, was my sudden decision to attend the Kellar Academy my decision, or had someone been influencing me?

I mean, yeah, it was an astonishing opportunity, but even I had to admit that jumping on it like I had was… uncharacteristic. I did tend to make snap decisions in a hurry, but was every detail of my self-reinforcement, from the cultivation to every detail of how my powers worked, written down someplace in a database?

I really needed to know, despite the risk, which was why I had flitted to a restroom off-campus, switched into one of my armors, and then changed the details to look like one of my dead identities, Sno-Cone.

And that was why I was apporting into an old warehouse back in mainland Empire City. This time, though, I made damned sure I had an escape route, and I also brought a few toys with me, specifically an old firearm I’d ‘accidentally’ liberated from a vigilante that thought guns were the same thing as superpowers. Hint, they aren’t.

But, in an emergency, such as, say, someone reinforcing everything around you to prevent your powers from affecting them, a backup ranged attack that wasn’t reliant on energy or kinetic manipulation might be a good idea.

Right now I was dressed up as Sno-Cone. My armor was currently white and blue, a little like Frostweaver’s old glacier girl outfit, but with more of a bubble-style helmet that displayed a holographic image of my masked ‘head’. The reality was that the bubble was utterly illusionary, and my head was the most armored part of my body, but with the giant ‘sub-zero pack’ on my back I was trying for more of a Mister Freeze vibe, and I’d sort of needed to let Sno-Cone die since his first encounter led to a little bit too much collateral damage… he was my second identity on the ‘top 100 villains’ list, deceased.

There’s a reason why fantasy gamers say ‘Always kill the guy in the robe first’. Because the guy in the robe is a lot more likely to have powers, or spells, that can shut your ass down hard so the ratty dudes with daggers and the big guy with a hammer can pound on you safely.

That was one of the reasons I always presented myself as ‘the armored guy’. I didn’t technically need much in the way of armor as long as I was paying attention, but while the power armor types were not at the top of the target list, they also weren’t at the bottom with the anchors. It was a good play for when I needed to do something to stop the action, and it helped that most of my abilities were somewhat subtle.

If I were on a team, and we had to deal with jerks, I wasn’t going to pretend that the enemies all focusing on me wouldn’t turn me into hamburger… armor was also a good place to stash other toys and special-effects gear like flash paper and dry ice packs. You’d be amazed at how much room there is in a ‘jetpack’ without the jets, and if someone decides to try and take out my ‘power pack’ by focusing on the fake proton pack on my back, well, dry ice and flash paper were easy to replace.

Could I have weaponized the armor? Probably, but lasers, projectile launchers, and even high-tech melee weapons were a rabbit hole I really wasn’t ready to go down. Even with my ability to microscopically manipulate metal, there is a world of difference between designing something that can take a hit and one that can dish one out.

Not to mention, if I started making high-tech weapons, I might start to feel responsible if other people used them. I didn’t really believe that, consciously, a weapons dealer was responsible for the evil that people did with their product, but anything I started producing had a better than even chance of winding up in someone’s hands that I didn’t intend… heck, the pieces of the armor that was wrecked when I had my little altercation with Frost Phoenix were getting passed around already.

And then there were technomancers and stuff. The more ‘high tech systems’ a power armor type used, the easier it was for a technomancer or cyberkinetic, rare as they were, to turn it against its user. That’s one of the reasons I was being so picky about who could create software from my suit systems… to be fair, ‘hardware coding’ was incredibly difficult for even a decent tech controller to disrupt, but software? Easy as pie.

As they stood, I had a hell of a powerful set of computers in each suit, but all of the resistance and bracing and active reinforcement and defense were either engineered into the suit or pre-programmed into the circuitry. Even shutting down the suit’s power completely, like with an EMP burst that could somehow penetrate the heavily shielded systems, would barely affect things other than the active defenses, and at that point? Well, it would be easier to destroy the armor completely than attempt to alter its function.

The computers, in the end, mostly just tied into the heads-up display and helped with communications. I wanted to expand the functions a lot, but never to the point of needing hardware drivers. Of course, if this quiet code could do what I hoped, there was a chance of adding much better active defenses, maybe even some tech I wouldn’t dare to try and create myself, like flight systems, but that depended on this girl.

Inside the warehouse, as I carefully worked my way through the rafters, I could see two people, not one. I had my suit completely powered down, but it was still decent armor that could protect me from several different effects… and I’d already scouted out five other potential exits above and beyond simply charging through the walls, which was also an option.

“Are you prepped?” I asked Chinook on our Q-communications channel. It was still staticky, but Network had helped me look up some decent information on old-school squelch hardware they had invented when the q-storm interference was getting really strong before wireless communications went down altogether, so it was sounding quite a bit better for analog communications.

“Yep,” she replied. “Got a visual and a tracer, half a mile up. Ready to bust in if your carrier goes down or you call for it.”

Chinook, as a flying, wind-controlling brick, was absolutely ideal as an emergency backup in case something went wrong… I was stupid, but not that stupid. I dropped to the floor of the warehouse about fifty feet away from the two young women with a clunk.

***

“Have you patented this stuff?” Quiet Code asked, the Karen-pink haired, slender girl peering closely at my mark five armor. She was dressed very oddly, wearing buster browns, striped black and pink stockings, and a sort of pink bib overalls with the legs turned into shorts to expose the stockings.

That and a bunch of earrings and bracelets made of silver, and while she was fairly nicely small up top, she didn’t wear a shirt or bra under the overalls. I mean, it was like she was trying to push so far into adorable that she skipped right past sexy and met it on the other end, and I wasn’t sure if I was attracted or appalled. Probably attracted, because she was about as far away from Crystal as you could get and still be cute.

I shook my head, “I can’t. I can’t patent the materials because I don’t have an industrial process other than my abilities, and to be honest, I am not an inventor… every single subroutine in the armor is already a patented circuitry design, I just made them smaller, changed the materials, and linked them differently.”

“I can certainly sell the armor as individual pieces, but even if I could create a manufacturing process, I wouldn’t be able to sell them except as handicrafts.”

Quiet Code was looking at me oddly, and her friend Kali was standing behind her, a bodyguard similar to what Chinook was doing for me.

“Have you filed for a patent?”

I shook my head, “No, Network filed for materials patents, but like I said, a lot of the circuitry I pulled directly from existing designs and books.”

She slowly shook her head, and then looked at the armor. “You haven’t been to school for engineering, have you? The best answer to queries about patents is to ignore them. If they want to fight for patent rights, force them to prove it, and then use your profits to tear them to pieces in the battle. If they are too big, like Santo-Zoogle, well, screw ‘em. Do each armor as a handicraft until you can afford to tie them in legal battles until the end of time.”

She shrugged, “Sorry, that’s my rant. I think people have a right to profit from their work, but not from random ideas that a million people have but one guy drags to a patent office before anyone else can do it.”

I smiled slightly, “Isn’t that a little supervillain-ish?”

She smiled back, “What makes you think I am a hero? I do a job, nothing more. But the reality is, that the stupid Paller patent on quantum entanglement communication is a failed patent. Patent farms try to do that, patenting every idea that they can find, and hoping that if anyone ever actually invents it, they will be stupid enough to pay them off instead of shutting them down.”

“Oh.”

She shrugged, “Or you can decide not to bother with them at all. I mean, what’s going to happen? They will whine a little and drool in greed as the world steps two steps closer to oblivion. Who cares? I just want to save the world.”

“Okay, maybe not so supervillain-ish? What do you know about the end of the world?”

She smiled a little and put a piece of chewing gum in her mouth. “I know that the Q-bombs set in place a chain reaction that has grown stronger and stronger every year. Plus, you know, supervillains, aliens, dimensional invaders, power-hungry time travelers… Bad guys only have to win one time and we’re screwed, we have to win every time.

I was scanning through the warehouse, looking for possible ambushes, and finally, Kali spoke. “You catch her?”

I glanced at her, “Catch who?”

Kali smiled a little. She looked like an attractive, albeit very tall blonde wearing sunglasses. “Codex, our friendly neighborhood brainsucker, is trying to find a way to get close enough to spy on this conversation without alerting me.”

I nodded slowly, “I felt some kind of energy feeling along the edge of this space, but I don’t think I have seen telepathy before, so I didn’t know what it was. You are producing something,” I glanced at Kali, “That is creating a… maze, or prismatic deflection puzzle. It looks like we have ten minutes or so before she will figure out how to thread the maze and start doing whatever it is brainsuckers do.”

“You can see alpha energy?”

I nodded, “Some of it. I can’t see yours, but Frost Phoenix gave me a pretty good idea. An odd sort of cyberkinesis?”

She smiled, “That’s one way of putting it. It’s a hybrid of light control and cyberkinesis. I create and interpret sentient cyberkinetic energy constructs with semi-sentient capabilities. I can’t technically program beyond basic levels, but my constructs program themselves.”

“Like a learning algorithm or an AI?”

She shrugged, “A little. More like, while I am invested in technology, I animate it. It has a personality, but that personality is based upon me. Quiet Code is the name of my...elemental I guess? My name is Princess Pixel, but we can act separately for brief periods where she controls the hardware, and I control the energy.”

I looked at her oddly, “Why are you giving me this much information?”

Princess Pixel glanced over at Kali, and Kali answered quietly, “I have Codex temporarily locked out, but she’s going to report this meeting to the BSA even if she doesn’t witness it. Fortunately, you lost your tracers, but Princess can slide a scrambler into your helmet for replication.”

Princess glanced at the model armor, then the one I was wearing. “That one,” she said, pointing at me.

“Huh?”

She smiled slightly, “Quiet Code wants to merge with that one. You KNOW that it has a ton more hardware. I will leave her with you temporarily, to get the suit’s code working, and when I’m done, I will set up another meeting.”

“So wait, she’s like an AI?”

Princess shook her head, “Oh no, she’s more like... I guess an astral clone, would be the closest approximation. She’s me, in a very real way, but I can act independently for a while before she comes back to me. I can help you build an active artificial sentience.”

“And THAT would be like an AI?”

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

She laughed, “Everyone gets so stuck on that label. Yes, what I leave will be artificial, yes, it will have a lot of intelligence. It will simulate a bit of my personality, but it won’t be some kind of rogue personality or murderous Skynet, not unless you choose to instruct it to become so. I don’t recommend doing that, though.”

"But not an artificial sentience. code can't be sentient by its very nature. You can program it to recognize and react to its own existence, but that's not self-awareness, it's simply programmed recognition, like facial recognition."

I nodded, “That makes sense. So what is your price?”

She looked thoughtful. “I want you to make a decision. Do you want to save Empire City, or do you want to save the Universe?”

“The two are mutually exclusive?”

She shrugged, “I have no idea, but Haruspex told me to ask you that question and to talk to you again once Quiet Code finishes building your interface. Haruspex can get a little weird, but she told me that asking you about that question would be important and make you think about the answer.”

I nodded, “How long will it take?”

Princess shrugged, “Probably about a week, depending on what kinds of demands you put on me. But I optimized Titania’s energy bands in a week. In addition, my payment will be that set of armor that you brought as a sample, while Quiet Code works on what you are wearing.”

I thought about that for a few moments and then nodded, “Fine. If you can replicate the data structures without me, more power to you.”

She laughed, “If I could have done that, I probably would have let Frost Phoenix keep you at a distance. You are a very dangerous man.” She leaned forward and then smiled slightly. “It is done. It will take a while to interface with your data system, but there’s an awful lot to work with.”

I grinned, “I was pretty proud of… Shit!”

The incursion alarms were going off.

“Take this,” I said, handing a small earbud to Princess, and offering another one to the larger woman, Kali, who was dressed in what looked like a decent enough action uniform.

“What is that?” Kali asked although Princess Pixel didn’t even slightly hesitate to tuck one into her ear.

“That”, Pixel stated, “is a quantum link, it should keep us connected, through the transfer station in Blueprint’s helmet. I am not… set up for fighting an incursion, but I think you should.”

“It’s coming from the Northeast. Are you coming?” I asked Kali. She LOOKED like a physical type, tall, fairly muscular, and well-protected. If she said no, well, I wasn’t a hero but I wasn’t a coward, either. If I were still on the island, the students and I would probably be hunkering down while security and staff dealt with it, but Kellar Island was not the same kind of target Empire City was, despite all of the alphas.

“Do you travel?” I asked Kali.

She shook her head, “No, but I can catch an assembler transit. I should be there in twenty minutes. Morphing physical enhancement, subjective time enhancement.”

“Chinook? I am going to head to the north side with a ride-along. Go ahead and keep up.” at full speed, without a passenger, Chinook’s wind control could probably get her there even faster than my apportation. “Meet me at the Stacey plant wall, that’s the sector two assembly point for defenders.”

“Sure thing, on my way,” Chinook replied.

I held out my hand to Kali, “Care to ride the rollercoaster?”

***

Kali was panting when we blueprinted to the top of the sea wall just clear of the dilapidated remains of the old clay plant, which were mostly torn down, even though I knew there was an extensive arcology beneath it, hopefully heavily shielded, but I was one of the folks that could make sure that there were no tunnelers and that ground impacts were minimized. Hopefully. I was much more powerful than the last time I’d helped with an incursion, but I was hoping to get a good writeup of my armor finished BEFORE I’d have to fight a wave.

Kali’s blueprint was… odd. At first, I thought that, like me, she was disconnected from the chaos force that fueled most alphas, but then I realized that she was purifying almost all of the incoming energy, and had a far greater pool of it than I could hope for. The wild and unformed essence I felt dropping into her twin core was getting spun up almost entirely into the bio and tachyon essence she seemed to be using rather than dragging in huge amounts of unformed essence and ditching what she couldn’t use.

I was pretty sure, based on what I had blueprinted, that she only barely qualified as human. Her density was a lot higher than a human woman, obviously, but even the way that her cells were formed was… different. She still used DNA, but her entire bone and cellular system was like what mine might someday be if I refined it far more than I currently could, and I determined that assuming we survived this incursion, I might have to ask her a few hard questions.

Two of the alert pylons on the seawall were flashing, and we were immediately met by one of the monster hunters, in her trademark camouflage and heavily armored outfits, a woman that was nearly seven and a half feet tall and looked like she could chew I-beams and spit out chain links.

“You are here very fast,” the woman, whose name patch said “Breakwater,” said, “Names, roles, and tiers?”

“Kali. Tier six. Heavy melee,” Kali answered, “No special transit needed.” That probably meant she could jump to the top of the wall under her own power, and move quickly if not with any special movement abilities. Beside me, Chinook landed on the wall.

“Chinook, tier four durability and high-speed air intercept,” Candace stated. Short and to the point.

I sighed, “Umm… Blueprint. Tier six manipulator.”

Breakwater looked surprised, “Tier six manipulator? New graduate?”

I shook my head, “No, just visiting. I have been on the wall before, but my power has...expanded, since last time, so I am not sure what my role is now.”

Chinook snorted, “His role is sweeper, medic, light melee, ground intercept, and subsurface sensor. Limited energy, but a decent patcher.”

“Medic?” Breakwater asked, even more surprised, “At tier six?”

Chinook nodded, “Yes, but like I said, limited energy, and still in the experimental phase. Both of us are still in training, but he can fill a short-term hole in our lines just fine and has done so several times during training. Just consider him a sensor with special bonuses.”

I nodded to Chinook, “That sounds about right. If I have to patch more than a few people up I’ll be out of any heavy fighting and gasping for energy.”

“No, you won’t,” I heard a voice coming from my helmet's internal speakers. NOT from any of the quantum communication circuits.

I was not sure what was going on, and I wanted to question the voice, but Breakwater noticed more people arriving, and said, “Try to listen for my orders, if you can. We have an entire spawn group of snapdolphins coming in that are about five minutes out according to the sonobuoys. They are being chased by something big, but it’s still out of sonobuoy range.”

I noticed Carousel and two of her duplicates racing up to hop on the wall. Technically, Carousel was considered a much worse villain than I was. She played the game, but tended to discourage vigilante interference in her plots much more lethally than I did, and sometimes intentionally challenged specific heroes… which meant that she occasionally won, and got to keep her spoils. She was several spots down on the most wanted list from some of my alter-egos, but that’s because her targets tended not to be as ridiculous and flamboyant as mine were. But during an incursion? Well, let’s just say everyone was on the same side.

We never worked together, but she probably remembered my Sno-Cone outfit, which made me glad I had returned my current armor to its original blueprint when I transited rather than keeping the overdone frosty look I’d shown up for the meeting with. Explaining to a supervillain I had met why I wasn’t dead wasn’t high on my list of priorities.

More people were arriving on the wall, from some of the heavily armored widgeteer types that might have just been there for heavy ranged assault, and might be completely human inside of their armor, to a few well-known types, including, to my shock, the members of The Flare, including Crystal. She was still beautiful, even in her fully crystalline form, but you know what? I had zero interest in talking to her. Less than five feet away was Candace, and in her eagle feathers and animal leather costume, Crystal just couldn’t hold a candle to her now.

I stepped away for a moment, “Umm… Quiet Code?” I said with my external speaker turned off.

“Yes, I am still adapting your suit systems. Damn boy, what the hell were you planning to do with this? I’ve been in less powerful supercomputers, and I am pretty sure you have more short-range sensor suites than the entire coastline.”

“I was planning on setting things up so that armor users had almost complete control over their evolutions. I am not a fan of the way superpowers are a gigantic mystery, and I was hoping the suits would get rid of some of that mystery, especially for people who were still growing into their powers. I just can’t design a decent UI for most of the data.”

“Well, I’m in love. Do you have a girlfriend or three? Put me on the list. You have over eighty gravities of nested defense systems, and environmental impact systems that would make this thing the next space suit. You have a curious lack of external tools, though, and the fact that this isn’t actually power armor is a little shocking. What’s this nest thing?”

I growled, “That’s something you need to keep your hands off of. Blueprinting is good, but that’s an experimental way of expanding my microkinetic construction out a lot farther. It’s not a device, it’s a series of unpowered microdrones that I am still experimenting with. Think nanites, but the control is based exclusively on my power, and if you trigger my hive while I am not expecting it you are going to waste a huge amount of my time and materials and leave a giant metallic oil patch on the ground.”

“Touchy, touchy. Fine. I won’t mess with it. I can’t control unpowered drones anyway. I still have a long way to go before I can give you a reasonable UI, but do you want me to actually set these sensor systems recording? You have everything in here, and a bunch of crap I have never heard of and will need to learn how to use before I even try to integrate them.”

“If I get killed, will you?”

“Nope. I am not really here. I am an uncontained fragment of Princess Pixel’s psyche nested inside her power framework. Mind if I power up your kinetic collection batteries? This will make everything a lot better. Meanwhile, your EEG interpreter is reading you at close to six thousand energy right now, and based on what your databases are telling me, that is NOT minor.

Most solid class 4’s seem to have close to that amount, but unlike them, you don’t gain radiation damage or shed excess quantum radiation when you use your abilities.

“What? Wait, you know about that? And yeah, go ahead and kick in the accumulators.”

“Of course. Most of those who work with Alphas regularly know that. It is not known to the general public… nobody wants the kind of kerfluffle that could develop if people knew that an over-drained alpha shed radiation. Mostly it’s simple Unruh effect thermal variations, but there’s a reason almost all of the popular alphas are class three or four.”

“Class five or higher alphas tend to be kept in a lifestyle that will seldom require serious energy expenditures, learn to not draw on Chaos for their energy like you and Graviton, are immune to radiation and need regular decontamination, or die pretty horrible deaths that often take those around them as well. That's why higher level alphas are usually considered strategic reserve or only show up when there’s a class six or higher Kaiju.”

At my silence, she continued, “That is known information even at the academy level. That’s what happened to Doc Quantum, Peregrine, and Vortex. I take it you haven’t taken advanced power exploitation courses yet?”

“No, I haven’t. I mean, I knew about the quantum shedding, but I thought that was a secret or no one understood it.”

“Oh. yes, lots of people know about it, but alphas are… important, and generally low-impact alphas even at higher power levels, such as tinkers, healers, and oracles are not affected much. Healing is not terribly uncommon among alphas, it’s actually one of the more common gifts, but to be effective on other humans you almost have to be at least class five or six. Unfortunately, curing a human while simultaneously dosing them with enough radiation to equal hundreds of X-ray treatments is not considered particularly effective.”

Oddly enough, that simultaneously stressed me out and set my mind at ease. “So you are saying I don’t have to worry about getting disappeared by black bag corps for my healing gifts?”

“It is unlikely. Up to class four is generally only self-healing, but many gifts have minor healing additions, or regeneration, as part of the package. That’s why so few alphas are out of action for very long after regular combat injuries, and why so many of them live extended lives. The Beast, for example, is a class six that is entirely self-healing, which is why he is a nearly unkillable psychopath and a plague on the west coast.”

“As a class eight capable of healing others without giving them a lethal dose of radiation, it is not a surprise that you attract a lot of attention, but considering your capabilities, it is unlikely in the extreme that even government officials would be stupid enough to alienate you by attempting to capture you. It would require the full-time services of at least a class six alpha capable of either reinforcing your surroundings past your ability to adapt, like the Maxwell consortium contracted, or shut your abilities down, which means you would be useless.”

“I assume if a government organization black-bagged you, you would likely be uncooperative, especially considering your resistance to mental coercion?”

“Very uncooperative.”

“They would obviously make the same assumption. Better to train you, build goodwill, encourage you to think of yourself as a hero, and look for long-term psychological controls like potential blackmail material or patriotic loyalty. The governments are not evil, as such, but they are patient, and very very good at digging up trauma if necessary to encourage your cooperation.”

“Now please, the snapdolphin swarm is only moments away. Feel free to use as broad a variety of sub-abilities as you can in order to allow your systems to gain as much information as possible for building your interface. Not that I am hoping the defenders get injured, but it would be useful information. If you can meditate to regain energy while you are fighting, that would also be helpful, but based on your history, your delightfully broad affinity can simulate a wide array of potential sub-powers that would all be useful for effective calibration.”

“Might I request permission to run a digital link over your quantum communication network to calibrate based on Chinook’s abilities as well? I cannot install a UI on her armor until this is complete and I can physically contact her as well, but the information could be highly useful.”

“Chinook, can I umm… monitor your armor while you are using it? Supposedly that should be helpful for calibrating your onboard systems.”

“You can do that? Sure, it’s not like how I fight is some big secret. Besides, maybe I like the idea of knowing that you are watching me as close as my skin. Makes me all warm and fuzzy. You know I am naked under the costume, right?”

I laughed, damn, she did seem to know how to get under my skin, at least a bit. “I assumed so. Just remember that while the reclamation systems are active, I haven’t loaded any supplies other than basic medical yet, you know how to trigger those, right?”

“Yep. Are you going to be okay? With… her here? I can kick her ass if you need me to.”

I shook my head, even if she couldn’t see it. “No. She can go fuck herself. I’d sooner stand in line at a hundred man orgy to have at Angel than touch her again.”

“Ironically, I actually have footage available of that happening in the seventies, if you’d like me to share after the fight?”

“No, thanks.”

“Did you know she has the unique honor of having slept with more male alphas since the sixties than any other woman in existence? I am sure Network could contact her if you are interested, and I am certain she’d be accommodating.”

“Definitely no thanks. I’d rather sleep with Peregrine.”

“She’s dead.”

“I know.”