Isaac had never actually fought another meta. Aside from a few fistfights when he was just a kid, when everyone got stuffed into the foster home left there while the world moved on, he’d avoided anything of that nature. He hadn’t even bothered with any structured martial arts, and only come to his appreciation for the gym after leaving foster care. Of course he could throw a punch, but he was a meta, and his fights were super-fights. The slightest slip-up could kill him or someone else, destroy a car, wreck a building.
Despite it being necessary, those were the thoughts that weighed on his mind as he unwrapped the chains around his arms. On the street below, the lights of the convoy vanished into Smokeshow’s power, Banshee’s voice lifted up in an eerie song, and muffled detonations flashed through the obscuring smoke. Blast Fist’s power, Isaac presumed.
A second later, a strangely distorted echo of gunfire rose from the smoke, echoing off buildings and making Isaac wince, prompting him to push even more inertia into his clothes. It sounded a lot more powerful than the handguns he got plinked with when he stole the softchips, but there were limits on how much he could push into something. He would have loved to have proper tinker armor, something tailored to his powers, but regular cloth and the theatrical chains would have to do.
He heard some tinny sounds from Smokeshow’s communicator pin, then more gunfire, and suddenly someone in dark tactical gear launched themselves out of the cloud and up toward the roof. The meta pointed a small, ugly-looking gun at Isaac and Smokeshow, and Isaac forced himself to step in front of the girl, crossing his forearms in front of his face – and wishing he’d worn a mask or something – as another rattle of gunfire hit.
The bullets felt like being smacked by a small child, enough to sting but not enough to bruise, most hitting his clothing but a few pinging off the chains. The merc landed on the roof, eyes narrowed behind a military helmet, so Isaac flung the handful of chain his way. Rather than dodge it, the man flicked up some kind of energy shield, holding it out in front of him — not expecting Isaac’s chains to hit like a half-ton of metal.
The merc clearly had super strength, and probably some other ancillary powers, but didn’t have whatever he needed to deal with the physics of high-inertial chains. The shield held, but the guy was launched over the edge, back into the smoke, and Isaac found himself breathing heavily even if the entire exchange had taken only a few seconds. It wasn’t even a real fight, not yet.
He spun a few feet of the chains, leaving the rest to dangle from his wrist and waiting for the follow-up. There was more gunfire, explosions, and some shouts from the completely obscured intersection below, and Isaac took a step forward to peer over the edge. Apparently someone was waiting for that, since a fist smashed into his face.
Isaac staggered back a few paces, but even without armor it was more like being slapped than the bone-crushing punch it was meant to be as the inertia applied to every part of him. Even the face. From his own testing with invested sandbags, he knew how strange it was to hit something that felt denser and heavier than it really was. Or, because weight didn’t actually change, like hitting something embedded in gel or water. So for something to hit him hard enough to send him reeling backward, it had to have a lot of force behind it.
He stumbled back a step, the sudden shock focusing his thoughts, and whipped around one of the chains as the same merc hopped onto the rooftop again,. Unlike Isaac, he did have training, and ducked. Though when Isaac clipped the metal roof and tore right through it without slowing, the merc aborted any attempt to charge, pausing a moment to eye Isaac while flexing the hand he’d used for the punch.
Isaac blinked again, his face slightly numb, the clarity that came with being punched in the face was so welcome he could almost thank the merc. Because now Isaac realized he didn’t have to attack at all, just sit there and be a discouragement against anyone going after Smokeshow. Who probably didn’t really need the help anyway, if she could shift into smoke. But nobody was completely invulnerable, as shown by the defeat of powerful villains – and the occasional hero – over the years.
The merc stowed his gun, reaching for his tactical rigging and extracting a pair of batons — which crackled with electricity. That was a problem, since Isaac was pretty sure his power did nothing against that. Still, Isaac kept the chains swinging and didn’t make any offensive moves. With the amount of investment he had, the chains were cutting through metal and brick, and without the shield Isaac wasn’t sure that the mercenary could take a hit from them. He sure didn’t want to kill anyone, and for his purposes just keeping the meta off-balance was good enough.
For a few moments neither of them moved, the sounds of gunfire and detonations echoing from below, then the merc charged forward with one baton outstretched. Isaac didn’t bother with anything fancy, just letting the chain slip to its full length as he swung it, not aiming directly at the merc but just in front of him, trying to make the opponent back off. Despite not going all that fast, it made an odd ripping noise as it displaced the air. Not that it mattered since the merc ducked under it easily and then was inside Isaac’s reach.
The baton touched Isaac’s chest with an odd, hollow jolt, a bizarre sort of pain that hazed his vision as the merc tried to shoulder-check Isaac but bounced off. Isaac’s other hand twitched from the baton’s effects, smacking the merc in the hip — and sending him flying off the roof again. Isaac wobbled, and had to fight hard from falling himself, his whole body twitching and aching in a way that was more disturbing than outright painful.
“Alright, we’ve got the stuff,” Smokeshow said abruptly. “Let’s get outta here.”
“Right,” Isaac croaked, tottering toward the fire escape as Smokeshow shifted into her vaporous form, but they were interrupted yet again. Not by a mercenary, but by a bona fide superhero appearing in the sky. In the dim light of the city and the crescent moon, all he could tell about the costume was that it was some light color, with short fins on the forearms.
“Stop!” The super said, not that anyone was going to listen to her. Isaac just hoped the superhero wasn’t some tactical or strategic-class powerhouse, and that Smokeshow could shield their escape. Unfortunately, thanks to the smoke meta’s efforts, he was the only one of their little hijacking squad that was visible. When her ultimatum fell flat, she went after Isaac.
There was a blur and then an absolute hammer-blow as something seemed to kick his stomach through his spine. He gagged, folding over as he vaguely recognized he was in motion. It was like the one time he’d been in a car crash, everything blurred and distant as things just happened, out of control.
Stone, metal, and glass gave way as he smashed through a building. The ground shuddered as he landed again, and with a blink he realized he was in the road once more, in a small crater of asphalt. Smoke rolled over where he was, and part of Isaac was glad that Smokeshow wasn’t just leaving him to get picked up by Star Central as he staggered to his feet. He spat bile, taking a moment to figure out exactly where he’d gone before a clear corridor opened up in the smoke. Isaac staggered blindly along it, lurching into a one-way sign and sheering it off before he had the presence of mind to pull away all the inertia he’d invested in himself. Hobbling forward along the pathway, he stumbled upon the car, which had been maybe fifty feet away.
“Good job,” Smokeshow said from the driver’s seat, eyeing him uncertainly while Columbuzz waited patiently in the seat behind her. “You okay?”
Isaac grunted in reply, wondering why he hadn’t seen or heard any followup from the super – or the mercs for that matter – but not wanting to question how Smokeshow’s power worked. He found himself in the passenger’s seat, hands automatically buckling the seat belt, and Smokeshow stepped on the gas.
He slumped there, holding his stomach and fighting nausea, brooding as the car chimed and sped along the smoke-obscured roads. It was one thing to play at being a ganger and try to get at Crash’s secrets, but it was another to get into superfights that wrecked buildings and could hurt innocent bystanders. That was exactly the kind of hypocrisy he wanted to expose, not participate in.
It was a given that Crash had close contact with Blacktime; Cayleb had done enough snooping on Isaac’s behalf to confirm that. Actually tapping the communications was another matter entirely, and Blacktime certainly had tinkers on payroll to keep that from happening. Isaac didn’t have the talents with electronics that Cayleb did, but his goal was to get physical access to Crash’s records anyway. Secure phones couldn’t stop Isaac from swiping papers, or entire computers for that matter.
If Isaac had to play at being a villain for weeks on end to get that material, though, then it was obvious he needed backup plans. Hopefully it was either extreme good or bad luck that there had been an operation so soon after he showed up. Because he wasn’t sure he could do it again.
“Lunar Bolt hits pretty hard,” Smokeshow said, driving along inside a cloud of smoke, completely unconcerned by the fact that even the road was obscured. “We’ve got some QwikMed if you need it.”
Isaac grunted again, trying to figure out if he was really all that hurt.
Most supers with some form of durability – most physical supers, really – also had amplified healing. Isaac had neither, and didn’t even know how bad being kicked through a building was. It hadn’t been fun, but it was hard to know if he had to worry about injuries he hadn’t noticed. The fact that he could still breathe meant it wasn’t too bad, at least; he’d been punched in the gut before, without powers, and it had been slightly more unpleasant.
“Glovebox, right side,” Smokeshow told him, and Isaac followed the directions. He didn’t even know why he’d been so against asking for it, because better safe than sorry. It wasn’t like he could go to a hospital straight from a crime scene.
QwikMed was technically a controlled good, since taking too many, too quickly could have serious side effects. Isaac had seen plenty of them, of course, since he’d actually carried around boxes of the stuff when he worked at the hospital. They looked like a giant adhesive bandage, about the size of his palm, but were actually some form of bizarre drug injector. He opened the little box and peeled back the film, rolling up his shirt and applying the patch to his quickly-bruising belly.
The relief was instant, the nausea and a disorientation he didn’t know he had vanishing. It seemed miraculous, and probably was, but he remembered all the warnings on the box. Food, drink, rest, and lots of it. Nothing came for free, even if it was meta work.
“I had some doubts,” Columbuzz said, speaking in his strange vibrato. “But you acquitted yourself well, Chains.”
Isaac grunted, finding he actively resented the approval of the ganger. On the other hand, it sounded like his identity sure had established itself among the metas. Something to take advantage of as soon as possible.
A few minutes of driving later and the smoke cleared up, showing that they’d arrived in an entirely different part of the city. Behind them, the other car with, presumably, the object of interest followed, lights reflecting off the side mirror. They quickly lost themselves in the usual traffic of the commercial parts of the city, which was not insignificant even in the dead of night, and Smokeshow drove the car in an unhurried, sedate manner that certainly implied she’d done it before.
There wasn’t much conversation as Smokeshow steered them on a roundabout route past skyscrapers, gas stations, banks, and malls. The only real conversation was when Smokeshow spoke through the comm pin to correct the driver of the other car – one of the Smack Twins – when they took a wrong turn after getting separated by a red light. Eventually, though, they did return to the slums, putting the cars into a little garage a couple blocks from Crash’s place. The garage itself was nice on the interior, despite the run-down look, showing it was part of the same black-market operation.
Isaac got out and stretched, finding himself in surprisingly good shape, though suddenly starving. Given Chains’ persona, he didn’t complain, just grit his teeth and followed everyone else out of the garage, and down the street to the main building. Unsurprisingly, Crash was already there, looking no worse for the wear save for one of the spikes on his oversized pauldrons being bent.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
“Great!” He boomed as they trooped in, looking around at them. “Got the package?”
“Yes,” Banshee said, holding a metal box maybe two feet on a side with a pair of digit-code locks integrated into the sides. She put it down on the table and Crash immediately popped it open by simply ripping off the locks and lifting the lid. It revealed a number of tiny machines, each one about the size of a finger, all packaged in a plastic matrix, their cameras glinting in the overhead light.
“Perfect,” Crash said, setting the plastic and its machines aside to reveal a control box, which he toggled on. The lights on the machines ignited, along with a faint whirring to show they were actually drones, miniaturized surveillance devices. “Great job, everyone.” He reached into a pocket and tossed a small credstick to each of them. Isaac caught his absently, still staring at the package.
“Take a couple days off and enjoy yourself,” Crash told them, turning off the controls and putting the drones back in the box. “We’ve got to figure out what to do with the new toys.”
Isaac didn’t really listen to any of the chatter going on as he walked out of Crash’s place. He was too fixated on the fact that he recognized the hand behind the drones. Every tinker had their own style, and after a decade, Isaac certainly recognized that one. They were Cayleb’s work.
***
Administrator Ike tapped a finger impatiently on his control pad as he waited for the other supers to arrive. The briefing room was just as he liked it, a severe and unornamented set of white chairs around a white table, with white lights and black walls. His own podium was also black and white, sized to hold the life support chair that kept him alert and mobile and hid the troubling deformities from his old life as a superhero.
Captain Bulk was the first to arrive, his enormous frame demonstrating the need for nine-foot-tall doors within Star Central, and he lowered himself with deliberate care into a chair sized for him. Despite the silly name, Captain Bulk was definitely one of the best at his rank, the tactical-class hero not only having flight, strength, and speed, but the sort of earnest, gentle personally only people who grew up knowing their own strength created. Absolutely a hit with the public, and trustworthy.
The next set were what Ike considered to be fairly middling, though still important. Greengrocer and her plant powers did the heavy lifting for feeding Star City, augmenting the massive vertical farms and underground ranches built into the mountain and preventing a need to seize territory outside the city even when the population grew. Something that might have destabilized the balancing act between the Five City Alliance and The Grove Guardians, who claimed most of the wilderness along the coast. Her assistant, Sunspot, was just as involved in the massive farming operations, and while both of them could have been decent combat heroes, they were better used on support.
Lunar Bolt limped in last, favoring her right foot and grumbling under her breath. Ike raised one sparse eyebrow as she took her seat, as it was fairly rare for the common-class superhero to take any sort of injury — at least, without her being put into full medical care. He knew exactly where she had been deployed and why, so he looked forward to hearing what had happened.
“Greengrocer, Bulk,” he said, starting the debriefing without any ceremony. “Any significant damage to the farms?”
“No, Crash just did some aesthetic damage, really,” Greengrocer said. “Collapsed a nearly-empty warehouse, but we can get that fixed quickly.”
“He didn’t stay to fight much,” Bulk said, his voice an almost musical bass. “Obviously just a feint, but maybe a reminder, too. That he and Blacktime know exactly where Star City’s weakness is.”
“It doesn’t take much of a genius to attack a supply train,” Ike said, but nodded at Bulk. His input might not have come from an analysis after the fact, but the interaction with Crash in the moment. For the most part, Administrator Ike knew which supers he could trust to judge such things and which needed to be kept on a short leash, and Bulk was definitely the former. If only the man could have been sovereign-class rather than tactical-class, the world would probably look quite different.
“Power’s fine,” Sunspot said, the thin and frankly limpwristed man said without prompting or even a fleck of care, clearly wanting to return to tend his generators and solar lamps buried in the mountain. Ike didn’t press him, and turned to the last and most interesting participant of the night’s excitement.
“It was Crash’s little team,” Lunar Bolt sighed. “I recognize Smokeshow’s work, so I assume the rest of them were around, but I only saw a new guy, young, maybe twenties. The mercs said he was bulletproof, so I assumed standard toughness. But, I don’t know. Never run into anything like that.”
“Elaborate,” Ike said, narrowing his eyes at her.
“It was like kicking, I dunno, a sack of wet concrete? Only, super concrete? Broke my fucking toe, I tell you what, and he went through like three walls and two floors. Left an actual crater in the asphalt.” Lunar Bolt shook her head. “Not the normal feel of a toughness power. Can’t say more since he got away because, y’know, Smokeshow, but very strange.”
“I see,” Ike said, mentally sorting through the villains he knew of. It sounded a bit like a mass-based power, but such powers were fairly rare and came with a number of issues. He didn’t like the appearance of a new meta, especially so soon after another minor supervillain popped up out of nowhere, and vanished again. Dimetria’s assault on of one of the many softchip suppliers was of only minor concern by itself, but when added to a second supervillain in only a few weeks, implied perhaps a major move by Blacktime.
There was always a normal froth of metas no matter how hard Ike worked to track them all, as new people awakened and old ones retired or died. But usually new metas stood out, either through an awakening incident or because they didn’t know how to handle their powers, and were easy enough to corral. Even if the new supervillains were only common-class types, they shouldn’t have been able to set up infrastructure to make power armor or learn their abilities enough to threaten trained superheroes or mercenary companies.
“I will get a further description of the new super from Hard Work Hurts,” Ike said, grimacing at the name of the mercenary company. “The loss of the package is not so great an issue. We expected to lose at least one.” And knowing which of the various sets of their new tinker’s toys had been intercepted helped plug certain leaks within Star Central. The other issues involving Machine Head were another problem altogether, and one that the night team didn’t need to know about.
“Fuckin’ hate Smokeshow,” Lunar Bolt muttered. “Why haven’t we brought her in yet?”
“Finding her outside of operations is difficult,” Ike said patiently. “And we have, several times, but her power makes it easy for her to escape.” Not to mention they’d have an irate tactical-class supervillain loose in the city in the form of Crash if they could isolate Smokeshow into a containment cell. The Administrator was certain that Blacktime wouldn’t care overmuch, but a tactical-class supervillain going on a rampage would be bad enough. Dealing with Smokeshow necessitated dealing with Crash first, and doing so permanently would necessitate dealing with Blacktime. That would be Glorybeam’s job as Star City’s sovereign-class super, but the two didn’t fight each other. It was an unholy mess, but at least the so-called Iron Nails kept their mischief contained.
“Meh.” Lunar bolt said. “Just make sure someone’s warned about him so they don’t break a hand or something.”
“Certainly,” Ike said, his fingers having already made a notation on the profile of the new, unknown supervillain. Although maybe super-henchman would have been a better name, as Crash’s crew of metas only worked at his direction. Though just because he was working for Crash now didn’t mean he wouldn’t go independent in the future. It had happened before, and would happen again. Criminal organizations, even small ones, just bred other criminal organizations.
“That will be all for you, I think,” Ike said, dismissing the four of them. “I am just glad there was no major damage.”
“I’ll still need someone to fix the warehouse,” Greengrocer said as she stood, her mint-green hair spilling over the ivy-green skin of her shoulders.
“Of course, I’ll send over Kon’s Struction,” Ike assured her, naming the meta-based construction crew contracted by Star Central. The others followed her out, Lunar Bolt still grumbling about her toe, but her healing would probably fix it soon enough. If not, she knew where the medical wing was. Once Ike had finished making notes, he steered himself out, fingers working the control pad with the ease of long habit as his floating life-support chair slid into the hallways of Star Central.
Despite the sun not yet having risen, he already had another meeting. As the Administrator, he rarely had time to sleep, which was not a problem as his particular condition meant that he rarely needed to. It was a much higher profile meeting, too, not just the usual froth of the criminal element. The appearance of a long-retired supervillain was not quite an emergency, but it sure wasn’t business as usual.
He made it to the open, glass-fronted room with an expansive balcony just as Princess Liesta of the True Lunar Kingdom – normally known as the sovereign-class hero Moonburst – arrived. Lunarians were a tall, willowy folk, with enormous eyes and matte-silver skin, marking them as very much inhuman. Not that Moonburst was all that unusual compared to some of the physical mutations human supers could get.
“Thank you for coming, Princess,” Ike said politely.
“It is of no moment,” she assured him, in that oddly breathy tone Lunarians were forced to adopt in Earth’s atmosphere. “The potential release of Mechaniacal is of concern to me, as well. However, I have been to Luna and visited the containment facility myself — he is still there. He claims that he would help us track down whoever has found one of his caches, but of course I made no promises.”
“Of course not,” Ike agreed, not asking Moonburst to sit. She wouldn’t, preferring to stand at attention with the threads of her silver-blue suit pulsing slightly as they offset Earth’s higher gravity. “I do have an update for you, however. The components that were stolen from the hospital — those machines were provided under one of Mechaniacal’s shell companies. So it seems likely someone has access to a way of tracking Mechaniacal’s work.”
“Then I may have to visit him again when the window opens,” Moonburst said with a sigh that would have sent the curtains waving, if the room had any. “The rebellion makes it so much harder. Only a few of the rune circles still work.”
“I do sympathize,” Ike said, though it was policy for literally every single polity on Earth to not get involved with Luna’s political problems. There was enough trouble with ordinary supervillains, divergent timelines, and the Deep Kingdoms far below the surface to invite a crisis from the broader universe. It was bad enough that the mystical runes of the moon could cross through the empyrean crystal shells of the Solar System — though that was better than actually breaking them. Astronomical surveys had found holes in the shells that implied something had traversed between planets that way once upon a time, but using those passages wasn’t really feasible. Even for tinkers.
“Keep me informed if any more of Mechaniacal’s work surfaces,” Moonburst said at length, when it became clear that Ike wasn’t going to make any unwise offers. “Or if you find any other tinkers who might be able to bypass the crystal spheres.”
“I certainly will,” Ike said, lying without even a twinge of worry. Moonburst wasn’t even one of his, so he owed her only so much. Mostly he wanted to prevent anyone from unearthing some of Mechaniacal’s real terrifying work. The old man had never been insane enough to actually employ the superweapons, but they’d still been built and used as a threat. The ones Ike had gotten his hands on had been summarily destroyed, but there might be some still out there, hidden in one of Mechaniacal’s old labs.
After a few more pleasantries, Moonburst left again, arcane runes shimmering in the air as she rose from the balcony and vanished into the pre-dawn sky. Ike sighed and tapped his control pad, heading back out into the hall and passing various early-morning supers. If Mechaniacal or his toys were coming back into play, there’d be no time to deal with newer villains like Blacktime. They might both be sovereign-class villains, but Blacktime had never built clockwork to unwind the sun.
The elevator took him all the way down to the bottom of the tower and then below, where the tinkers had their lairs and heavily-reinforced laboratories. He guided his chair through hallways made of thick steel slabs with blast doors between sections, function taking precedence over form. His interface with Star Central told him exactly where Machine Head was – sometimes he regretted giving people free reign to choose their own superhero names – and that the tinker was already awake and working.
Ike tapped a button at the entrance of a brand-new lab to request entry, and the door opened a moment later. While he had overrides to every door in the facility, it was just stupid to walk in on a tinker in the middle of work. As his chair floated inside, Machine Head, aka Cayleb Ruston, raised a hand in greeting. A hand that held a half-eaten sandwich, and Machine Head swallowed hurriedly as Ike halted his chair in front of the clutter.
“Good morning, Administrator,” the kid said, putting the sandwich back down on a small plate and wiping mustard off his fingers. “I’m still working on the—”
“I’m not here to check on your work,” Ike said, amused. Machine Head was obviously still discomfited by Ike’s visage, scarred and bald even if he had healed long ago. “One of your drone sets was stolen. You can still shut them down remotely?” He had specifically requested that some overrides be built into the devices, given the likelihood for theft or pilfering.
“Unless they have a tinker of their own who can adjust the internals,” Machine Head said, still clearly unaware of the potency of his gift. But of course, he was one of the Lost Generation, the hundreds of kids who had been put through a system already overloaded during a time when Star City didn’t have any resources to spare. Yes, the metas had been noted, but most of them were incidental-class, so some of the gems like Cayleb Ruston had been missed entirely and not given the chance to become supers. An appellation only given to those who did hero work — or opposed it.
“Certainly, ignoring that,” Ike said, looking around at his other work. All tinkers had styles and focuses, and Machine Head seemed to be very interested in surveillance. That he incidentally created vector drives and long-distance communication that worked outside of Star City’s ancient phone network was simply a bonus. “But don’t kill them yet. We want to see where they’re going.”
“Sure, that isn’t a problem,” the tinker replied, casting a glance at his sandwich and then looking back at Ike. “You think it’s connected to the Mechaniacal stuff?”
“That’s the worry,” Ike admitted, though Machine Head hadn’t been given the full details. After Cyberlocution had picked the kid up, the standard screening had found a few problems, but only one that had yet to be resolved. Until it was, both Ike and the kid knew that he couldn’t be fully read in.
Someone had messed with Cayleb’s mind. It was exceedingly subtle, barely amounting to anything, but it was still there, stretching back years. Thoughtstealer – and Ike was glad she was not a combat super or even publicly known, because that was not a hero name at all – was certain of it, though the reason for the manipulation was impossible to discern.
With everything else that was going on, he didn’t need a rogue telepath mixing in.
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