Scale 5.12

  Bryce Kiley

  2010, December 22: Undefined Coordinates, Atlantic Ocean

  I twisted in the air with almost all the torque I could muster, gritting my teeth from the strain along my spine. I could now confidently say I held a great deal of sympathy for dish rags and wrung out towels everywhere. It was a bond of brotherhood forged through shared suffering.

  Jokes aside, mastering Crown Chimera was a work in progress. It was, after all, a Regalia compiled from three others: Rumble, Flame, and Water. I’d made it with the expectation that mastery would be the work of months if not years.

  Even now, imparting maximum force onto these skates without ripping my own spine to shreds or popping my hip joints out of my pelvis was like walking a tightrope. Crush Claw, my go-to offensive trick, relied on the stream of pyroblion-enhanced mist and the weight of the water condensed into my regalia to accelerate my feet into a bone-crushing kick. Effectively, it turned my foot into a rocket-propelled hammer with a water theme.

  I considered it an imperfect trick. The trail of mist that allowed me to accelerate even mid-kick was actually something of a crutch. Other kings like Agito and Ringo didn’t need an external source of momentum. Whether through the way they twisted their hips or spines, the force of their attacks came from internal torque alone. Until I could impart the same kind of force, I was ultimately a king only in name.

  It was why I was working so hard. Even though I didn’t have anything to fear from most people in the Bay anymore, I still felt as though I’d only just begun to touch on all the nonsense characters from other settings could do.

  That was what made this specialization so perfectly timely. Despicable Me was a setting of superspies and supervillains. Though it had plenty of large-scale tech, there were just as many that were meant for spies: discrete, and most importantly, small. Making something from this specialization didn’t take much time. In the past few days, I’d already made several cookie-bots, taser-pens, and a freeze ray for SAINT to copy via the fabricator.

  Of course, this being winter break also helped. I planned to spend most of my time practicing the skills necessary to use my tech to the fullest. After all, what was the point of having a legendary weapon if you could barely lift it?

  All the moisture I could tear from the air condensed around my foot as I crashed down into the ocean. My ax kick tore through the choppy waves like the prow of a great ship, sending a cascading column of water into the air large enough to collapse a house.

  It wasn’t enough. The trouble with mixing the Flame and Lather Roads was that the two functioned off of two different principles. The Flame Road amplified friction and oxygen intake to catalyze ignition. The Lather Road used fluid dynamics and surface tension to contain and magnify vibrations.

  Obviously, one couldn’t ignite something without oxygen so the two roads weren’t compatible at their most basic level. I couldn’t use After Burner and Crush Claw at the same time because the moment I started gathering moisture around Crown Chimera, my flames would in turn be snuffed out.

  My solution for this was Orca, another king-level rider. Though he was officially a storm rider of the Bloody Road, all of his tricks revolved around water, so much so that I suspected he’d have made a better king for the Lather Road than Om had he had the opportunity.

  His signature trick was the Exploding Fang, a sweeping kick that created cavitation bubbles around the opponent, not unlike a mantis shrimp. Except, as with all things anime, it was taken to absurd extremes until he could control the water pressure directly inside living things. He liked to turn little fishes into suicide bombers if I remembered right.

  I didn’t need quite that level of expertise. Somehow, I doubted throwing exploding mackerel at people would be seen as very heroic. Then again, it did sound hilarious…

  I wrote it down for future reflection. Instead, what if I took inspiration from the fish-murdering psychopath but went in another direction?

  Orca proved that the bubbles made by our Roads could in turn be used for energy. And, fire could come from water when provided the right electric current. Theoretically, I should be able to modify my regalia in such a way as to use the cavitation bubbles erupting from my heels as a source of energy.

  This could then be converted into an electric current for electrolysis of the water. Then, the separated hydrogen and oxygen could be used for Flame Road shenanigans. It was exactly how rockets worked… with a bit of anime nonsense thrown in because Air Treks really were that bullshit.

  That sounded wonderful. I was already drawing up design plans on my HUD. Unfortunately, it also meant I’d need to be a much, much better rider. The modifications made to my brain and otolithic system meant I had the perception; now, I needed to earn the dexterity and experience the hard way.

  I leapt from the water to try again. Whether it was by “surfing” along the biggest waves I could find or trying to cleave said waves in half, I’d catch up to the kings from that distant world, eventually.

  X

  2010, December 23: Brockton Bay, NH, USA

  I jolted awake in the middle of the night. Bleary-eyed, I looked around my room, only to find SAINT psychically holding my pokenav in my face. The screen’s fluorescent lighting seared into my retinas, and I shrieked away from it like a vampire before the Lord’s cross.

  “Gah! Fuck, SAINT,” I hissed.

  “Gon, porygon,” SAINT trilled apologetically, but I knew better. The little turd knew where the brightness settings were. Really, who taught him to play pranks, anyway?

  I ignored my own hypocrisy and waited for my eyes to adjust to the brightness. When I didn’t feel like gouging out my own eyes, I took my overengineered smartphone to find an incoming call.

  I shuffled out of bed and reached for my quick-change canister. The number of people who had access to my cape phone had increased recently, but none of them were the type to call me at two in the morning.

  “Creed here. Someone better be dying, or you’ll wish you were,” I grumbled.

  “Aww, did I ruin your beauty sleep?” came a cold, mocking voice. She was new, with a distinct southern accent I’d have remembered. I didn’t think “Atlanta belle” could sound frosty, but there she was.

  “Who the fuck–”

  “Glace, Creed. From Toybox? You may have heard of me.”

  “Right, Mr. Freeze’s disappointing cousin. What do you want?”

  “Ouch,, I’m at least as good as Captain Cold.”

  “Please get on with it, or let me get back to bed.”

  “You’re a grumpy waker, aren’t you?”

  “Good nig–”

  “No, wait! Business then. We need help. You have healing. We have someone who needs healing. We can send Dodge to pick you up at your usual meeting place.”

  I bolted out of bed. Tired or not, if they were asking me for healing, that meant someone was likely on death’s door, or close enough. I had work to do.

  I got dressed and tapped my helmet. SAINT morphed into a cloud of pixels before slurping himself in through my helmet cam. We were out the window the next second. “Right, I’m up. Headed that way, ETA six minutes. I need to pick something up from my lab. Talk to me. What’s going on?”

  “Toy Soldier, our boss. He went out to St. Louis to meet with a potential recruit. She agreed to meet up at midnight but got jumped by one of the local gangs. Toy Soldier got shot protecting the dumb bitch before Dodge arrived and extracted him.”

  “And the tinker? Doesn’t sound like you got her too.”

  “We didn’t,” Glace growled. “The moron panicked and ran away from Dodge’s teleporter before she got gunned down. Guess the gang decided that if they couldn’t have her, no one could.”

  “Shit, sorry to hear that.”

  “Yeah, Dodge is traumatized. We’ll have to stay out of St. Louis for a few months, maybe the Midwest altogether.”

  That made sense. Despite being a conclave of powerful tinkers, Toybox was a skittish bunch. Their main base was located inside a dimensional pocket, with exits leading out to various cities across the US and Canada.

  Whenever one such entrance got found, or an incident like this occurred, they moved from the region altogether to avoid any further accidents. It was how they kept themselves safe, both from forceful recruitment and theft.

  Theoretically, though Dodge was the one with the master controls, anyone on staff should have had a teleporter they could use in emergencies. It must have been bad if Toy Soldier couldn’t use it in time and needed Dodge to extract him.

  “Tell me about Toy Soldier’s injuries,” I asked. “It’s always better to have a prognosis before going in. How bad is it and what have you done so far?”

  “Bullet grazed his heart. Chamber’s torn, no clue what it’s called though. I think the shockwave ripped it apart. I had him on ice within a minute or two so brain death shouldn’t have set in.”

  “Sounds doable. I’m on my way so sit tight.”

  X

  I found Dodge behind the Palanquin. His costume had been modified again. This time, his helmet was modeled after a giant insect but the overall look still paid homage to the Sentai Elite, Power Ranger aesthetic. Teal Tonbo, if I wasn’t mistaken.

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  He was standing around behind the garbage bin. He shuffled from foot to foot like a shifty drug dealer. I’d never seen him this antsy before. Then again, he was a kid, about Vista’s age. He shouldn’t have had to do the extraction for Toy Soldier.

  I dismissed my cloaking module and turned up Crown Chimera’s engine to let him know I was coming. He still flinched like a frightened mouse when I landed.

  “Hey, Dodge,” I greeted gently, nudging the Pledge Regalia so it sat more comfortably on my back. “How are you?”

  “M-Me? I’m good, Creed,” he stammered nervously. “C-Can you fix Toy Soldier?”

  “I’ll try my best. Let’s get going, shall we?”

  “Yeah, h-hold on, Creed.” He took my hand before fiddling with something on his belt. A series of lights lit up and played the chorus from the Sentai Elite anime before a portal opened up in front of him. He stared at the belt buckle, then at me. Face tomato-red, he said, “I-It’s not childish.”

  “Only children worry about looking childish. Big boys love what they love and aren’t ashamed,” I said sagely as I followed him into the portal.

  I had no idea what Sierra was talking about. I too could give good advice… from a fortune cookie…

  X

  I didn’t get to spend much time touring Toybox’ inner sanctum, not that there was much to see. It actually looked a lot like a doctor’s waiting room rather than a tinker’s workshop. Then again, maybe that was the point; this was supposed to be a place to host clients and secure appointments.

  I was rushed to Glace’s lab. We passed a threshold that looked like any other office doorway but pinged the Pledge Regalia’s sensors. There was a point along the edge at which vibrations didn’t quite bounce right.

  It took me a second to figure it out: This was Dodge’s work, all of it. The Toybox dimension wasn’t actually one dimension but several, one per each tinker. If my hypothesis was right, Dodge probably had almost total control over the space and could freely switch the rooms around, like playing with a customizable dollhouse.

  That had to be expensive, which probably explained their cutthroat attitude towards contracts. Then again, in terms of security and containment of hazardous experiments, this was probably as foolproof as one could get. My estimation of the young tinker rose several notches. These portals were likely his only trick, but damn if it wasn’t a good trick.

  Glace’s lab was completely sterile. There were several capsules along the wall, each with the logo of a tanning salon she’d likely stolen them from. If I had to guess, Glace made one for each person in Toybox so that even should the worst happen, she could save as many of her friends as possible.

  Comparatively, the rest of the lab wasn’t too special. I could see several canisters of liquid nitrogen, a shelf full of exotic coolants, and a host of tools one might find in a research university’s chemistry lab. The real kicker was that I now recognized most of her half-finished projects thanks to having worked on Gru’s freeze ray. Much of her work was ridiculous, an insult to the artistry that was true mad science, but that was only to be expected of a Shard-based tinker.

  I looked over my patient. He was submerged in a translucent, blue fluid. He’d been stripped down to his briefs, with an opaque, full-face rubber mask to hide his identity. It wasn’t necessary for his wound, but I’d imagine the fluid wouldn’t play nice with his power armor.

  The wound over his heart was a mess. It didn’t look like a regular bullet wound; I’d seen plenty of those from Damascus. Rather, something hefty had caved in a ping pong ball-sized section of his chest before tearing through to his chest cavity. The dent wasn’t deep, but there was noticeable bruising.

  If I had to guess, the breastplate of his power armor had the bulk of the blow before giving in. Or maybe, the local gang there had a combat thinker who managed to shoot him in the same place twice.

  I let out a low whistle. “That’s a bit worse than a normal bullet.”

  “Can you fix him or not?” Glace demanded. She was a tall, almost unhealthily thin woman with pale skin and messy brunette hair. She wasn’t any more personable in person.

  “I can. Drain the fluids and let me take a look at him.” So saying, I released the Pledge Regalia. Since she hadn’t mention the shattered ribs, I definitely wanted a second look before I started fucking with his insides.

  “You won’t have much time once we get him out of there.”

  “I know. It’s fine; this isn’t the first bullet wound I’ve treated.”

  “Alright. Fix him. Toybox won’t forget this favor.”

  “We’ll talk about that later,” I waved her off as I got to work. I laid my hand on the man’s chest and froze. It wasn’t that he was freezing cold; I’d expected that. It was something else, something far worse.

  “What? What is it?”

  “We need to go outside.”

  “What? What’s wrong with here? Hey!” she shouted. I grabbed Toy Soldier in my arms and bolted out of the room.

  Toybox’s base existed in a series of pocket dimensions created by Dodge. I’d known that coming in of course, but though I had all the dots, I couldn’t quite connect them into a complete picture until it was almost too late:

  This was a separate dimension. This dimension was anchored to Earth-Bet, but it lacked a direct connection with the earth. Alchemy used geothermal energy from tectonic motion to fuel its processes.

  There was no earth. Ergo, there was also no alchemy.

  “I’m a fucking idiot!” I screamed out as I carried the man through the lobby and back outside.

  X

  We made it in time.

  Fortunately, Dodge hadn’t quite closed off the gate to the Palanquin yet so I got to freak the boy out a second time tonight by rushing out of his dimension like a bat out of hell.

  I dumped Toy Soldier’s body on the parking lot asphalt and got to work.

  “Wha-Creed? What’s going on? Is that Toy Soldier?” Dodge asked.

  “Shh!” I shushed him. “Working!”

  I slammed my hand down on him and sighed in relief. The geothermal energy was flowing again. I brought up the readings I’d gotten from the Pledge Regalia and began to fix the damages. His chest noticeably lightened as the pooled blood was remade into healthy blood cells and his ribs were reformed into their unbroken state.

  I felt a hand clamp down on my shoulder. Something hard tapped against my helmet. I glanced over to see the cryo-tinker pointing a gun to my head. It was a common Glock, like you could find on every two-bit gangster these days.

  “What the hell was that, Creed?” Glace snarled. “Explain yourself!”

  “Shush, Glace. I’m fixing him,” I replied calmly. She didn’t know it, but SAINT would never let her so much as get a shot off, not that a pistol like that would do anything to me in the first place.

  “And the parking lot is better than my lab for that?”

  “It is. My gloves require contact with the earth, at least on a metaphysical level. My biotinkering won’t work if I’m in a dimension without earth.”

  “What the hell kind of limitation is that?”

  “The kind that’s saving your boss’ life,” I shot back. “Now shut up and let me work, Glace.”

  Dodge walked over. He took a look at my gloves. “They look like magic circles.”

  “Alchemy circles, Dodge. Not the same thing,” I corrected him gently.

  “Cool…”

  “Yup… And… done! He should wake up in a few minutes.”

  “R-Really? Toy Soldier is going to be okay?”

  “Yeah. You did good, kid. You got him somewhere safe and did it quickly. Remember, four minutes is the average time. If you can get someone frozen within that time, I can probably bring them back,” I told him. That was roughly how long it took for brain death to progress irreparably. “Although, faster is better, obviously. You saved his life, kid.”

  “Y-Yeah… Thanks, Creed.”

  I nodded towards Glace as she slowly put the gun away.

  Toy Soldier stirred and groaned before propping himself up on his elbow. He looked around and saw his concerned teammates, the beat up sedan we were hiding behind, and the rats fucking by the dumpster.

  “Glace? Dodge? Where are we?” he muttered. His eyes fell to me. “Who-No, you’re Creed.”

  “Hey, boss. I put you on ice til we could get a medic,” Glace said, far more softly than she’d spoken to me. “What do you remember?”

  “I got shot. Our recruit had an ex-boyfriend who knew about her identity and ran with a gang. The gang didn’t like that she was leaving the city and decided if they couldn’t have her, no one could.”

  “Bitch. I thought we asked about cape associates before we agreed to take her on?”

  “She wasn’t associated with the gang directly. Her ex acted as her middleman and she did some mercenary work in the city. The guy’s not a cape so Cranial’s lie detector didn’t pick it up during our interview.”

  “Well she should have. Fuck!”

  “Let it go, Glace. Interpersonal relationships cause problems, you know that. We’ll have to make the questions more thorough. We were all supposed to revise the screening questions so this is on all of us, not just Cranial,” the Toybox leader said. “We pull out of St. Louis?”

  “The entire Midwest,” Glace responded. “We’re not taking any chances, just in case those fuckers have connections outside St. Louis.”

  “Good. They shouldn’t, they were pretty small-time, but there’s no sense taking risks.”

  “Toy Soldier? You’re okay? Really okay?” Dodge asked, voice cracking a little. I’d seen dozens of injuries like this one in Damascus, but for Dodge, this must have been the nearest brush with death he’d had so far.

  Toy Soldier sat up and punched the kid lightly on the shoulder. “Yeah, I’m okay. You did good, little guy. And you, Creed. Thanks for that.”

  I nodded. “You’re welcome. We’re at the Palanquin, by the way.”

  “Why the parking lot though?”

  “My biotinkering has limitations. Don’t worry about it.”

  “Alright, let me go settle the score with Faultline first,” he said, standing. “Then we can head into my office and talk about what I owe you.”

  “Faultline?”

  “This is neutral ground, her neutral ground. I know we didn’t trade materials, but I’d say exchange of services count. I owe her a fee.”

  “You’re a fair man.”

  “I have to be in this business. Relationships are worth more than money, Creed.”

  “True enough.”

  “So think about what you want from me while I go settle the tab,” he said. Then he looked down at himself and chuckled sheepishly. “Okay, maybe after I get some clothes.”

  X

  The rest of the night passed swiftly. Toy Soldier got dressed in his regular costume, a cross between the nutcracker outfit and one of those red, Buckingham Palace guard uniforms. He also apparently had power armor that was currently in disrepair.

  Faultline had been expecting us. She saw Dodge appear on her security camera and assumed we’d had another material exchange. Seeing Toy Soldier was a surprise for her, but it wasn’t hard to explain what was going on. If anything, she looked rather happy. After all, she received a considerable sum of money from Toybox for doing absolutely nothing.

  As for me, I didn’t really need any more drones from Big Rig, and I was quite confident in my abilities without Toy Soldier’s power armor, so I asked for complex polymers and other industrial-grade materials instead. A good chunk of this payment was in the form of sulfuric acid, liquid nitrogen, and similar resources.

  I had a harder time making polymers and plastics with alchemy than basic elements and alloys. The more complicated the compound, the more complicated the alchemy circle. And, seeing how I didn’t enjoy the Amestris equivalent of theoretical mathematics, simply importing the resources from Toybox was a much more appealing solution.

  As for the liquid nitrogen and acids… One required a special canister that completely prevented any form of thermal exchange with its contents and the other was too reactive to be convenient. Too many things in Despicable Me required a modern industrial complex, which my Gullrest unfortunately lacked.

  It wasn’t an unproductive night, but all told, I still would have preferred to sleep.

  Author’s Note

  Did the Air Gear technobabble make sense? No? Good, business as usual then.

  Creed should build more things from Despicable Me, though I’m not sure what. I refuse to torture myself with the movies again so you guys can drop ideas.

  Animal Fact… Theory(?): It is thought that children bite their nails because children receive controlled exposure to pathogens this way. It can help build a child’s immune response. Adults do this later in life when nervous or stressed because it is a learned response to anxiety.

  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: .