Ancient Legos [Worm/Stargate]

TCGM · Jan 31, 2018

Ancient Legos
Story Description: This is a Crackfic, meaning the story is not intended to be taken seriously. Ancient Legos is written for laughs and humor. A Self Insert story, Weldon is a teenager living in Brockton Bay on Earth Bet. Somehow without triggering, he starts getting... Ideas. Features Lego Spaceships. (FF.net rating T because of light, Worm-style swearing and a comfy chair joke.)

Whooo boy. Okay, this is actually try two. It was recommended I move over here to QQ after the shitstorm that went down on SB due to the comfy chair joke in this story. So here I am!

Original SB post:

Hi. I'm TCGM. I like puppies, games, making games, trolling Eric, GMing and writing crack. People over on FF.net recommended I post my stories on SB. Also Eric. He said it was fine not to have an introduction after being an SB ghost for almost half a year.

I didn't believe that, so here's my intro.

Also I'm brand new to this forum software so please bare with me if I mess something up badly.

On to the story!

(I will try to post Chapter 1 immediately after this first post but idk what the cooldown is on posting here.)

TCGM · Jan 31, 2018

Ancient Legos
Chapter 01
Legacy

Captain's Log, Earth Date: February 6th, 2011

I don't remember my trigger. Most parahumans do. The only ones that don't are Case 53s, and I am not monstrous in any way or form. I am not sure what happened to me, to be honest.

Not sure at all…

All I do remember is that one week, everything was going fine. The next week, that hadn't stopped, but I started getting…

Sigh. Ideas.

Odd ones, honestly. It's as if something inside me is telling me that I can make things, incredible things. All kinds of spacecraft, technology like you wouldn't believe. Even stuff that makes what the Tinkers of our world come up with these days look like calculators.

But none of that can be right, because it tells me I can make these things with Legos.

Legos. The children's toy bricks that can be used to construct models. Colorful, varied, but mostly rectangular plastic.

I have many craft constructed in my bedroom now. Even as I compose this log, I'm messing around, or as my brother and sister say, 'Stupid Tinkering', with my smallest craft model. Something that looks like a cylinder with a sloped top and bottom. It even has a little window on the front.

But something is missing. All my projects have that problem.

Not to mention, it's clear to me now that I haven't actually triggered. I'm not a Tinker. No amount of Tinker bullshit can make Legos do something. My parents are disappointed, not in me but for me. They've seen how much this means to me now. They've even followed my pleas for random, esoteric Lego pieces that haven't been made for decades.

Thankfully I haven't needed many of those. They aren't exactly cheap, especially after Leviathan sank a large part of Japan, wiped out a portion of the East Asian coastline, and the most relevant, brought international shipping to a halt.

Well, the product and stuff kind. The pairing kind has only escalated in response.

Anyways… I'm disheartened. If I indeed have powers, they're cruel. They fill my mind with visions of fantastic space battles, spacecraft flying through the sky, advanced alien metropolises and even flying cities.

Yet they relegate me to reproducing these designs with frakking Legos.

Oh, and they don't actually do anything, either. At least if they did I could actually help my city. Might look kinda stupid but at least my powers wouldn't be useless.

End Log.

I sighed, placing my laptop down next to me on our porch swing couch. It'd been two weeks since I 'triggered'. Models of ships were filling up my bedroom. But no matter what I did, nothing came of it; just more Lego models.

Is that what I was? The world's lamest Tinker? Someone with a specialization so bad that I had eclipsed Leet? Frakking Leet, the guy who could never build anything twice and had most of his creations explode in his face?!

I was done with this shit, frankly. I abruptly found myself standing up, growling. My anger rose fast.

"It's not fair!" I yelled to the sky.

Nobody answered.

They hadn't the last six times, either.

With one last look of disgust, I turned back from my yard and started to enter my house. In a final fit of anger, I threw the model of the little shuttlecraft over my shoulder as hard as I could. If they wouldn't do anything for me, well…

I was done indulging whatever power I might have.

FWOOMPH

A huge displacement of air slammed into my back. It rattled the porch, set our swing chair moving, and slammed the screen door I'd just opened shut in front of my face.

Thankfully my laptop was decently heavy, so it only moved an inch. My heart rate began to come down from the beat of a hummingbird's wings it had so helpfully decided to emulate.

What in the hell?

I spun back around to try and see what happened. What I found made me stand there, stunned.

What the frak.

What. The. Frak.

No seriously. What.

My brother came out of the screen door, initially looking at me. "What happened?" he asked. "We heard some kind of boom!"

I just put my hand on his shoulder and slightly turned him. My brother was confused for a couple of seconds until his eyes landed on what I was looking at too.

"Bro," he asked, "what the hell?"

My jaw worked up and down, trying and failing to speak. "I… It was just a Lego model. In my hand," I finally managed to get out.

My brother looked at me again. "How did you turn a Lego model into that?!"

"I just… I threw it over my shoulder," I stammered.

"You threw a model over your shoulder and it turned into a spaceship," he deadpanned.

I gulped. "Ye-yeah."

My sister exited the house next. "Guys, what's taking you so lo-" she started, but cut herself off. "Woah."

Our parents were last, having followed my sister out. "Son," my dad asked, "Why is there a spaceship on the lawn?"

My mouth was dry. The implications of this were… staggering. Absolutely incredible. "I was working on my shuttle model, got pissed at how useless my apparently completely real powers seemingly were, turned to go back into the house and threw it over my shoulder," I explained. "Then… that." I raised both hands in the direction of the craft, shaking them for presentation.

"Your powers are bullshit, bro," my sister said it all for us.

Of course I became a Ward. I wasn't remotely interested in the Villain shtick. And while I could have made it well as a rogue, I'd rather help the guys trying to fight against the bad guys, thank you very much.

That doesn't mean that I wasn't massively entertained when I uncloaked my shuttle in front of the PRT building. Or the reaction of the Director when she interviewed me.

"You're a Tinker," Piggot stated flatly, "who makes things out of Legos, and then somehow brings them to life?"

I looked between the assembled capes and my family. They all were wearing chagrined disbelief on their faces. I looked back at Director Piggot and nodded. "Uh, I think so?" I cautioned.

At her unimpressed lol I hastily contributed. "All I know is, I've got plans in my head, need to make them into Lego models, and somehow one of those models turned into my shuttle when I threw it over my shoulder."

Piggot stared at me for a good thirty seconds. "Weldon," she said evenly, "I've met a lot of Tinkers. You have just managed to eclipse them all in your severe levels of complete, total, and utter bullshit."

I grinned. "Thanks?"

She sighed and rubbed her nose. "What else can you conceivably build? Do you know your specialization?"

"I'm decently sure it's ships, Director," I announced.

She let her hand hang, a now entirely, completely disbelieving look sent my way.

"Ships?" Armsmaster asked.

"Yeah. Like spaceships," I confirmed.

Now everyone was staring at me with even more disbelief. "What?" I asked.

"Your Tinker specialization is just as much bullshit as your power itself," Assault grumbled.

"How big are these… Ships?" Miss Militia asked, looking like she really didn't want to.

"Uh… They vary? I mean, if you want the biggest one's dimensions, the Cityships are like… Five kilometers square and one tall," I informed them. "I think, anyways."

More disbelieving stares. "What?" I asked again, confused.

"I take it back," Director Piggot said. "Your power now holds the record for bullshit, period, Tinker or no."

I grinned widely. "I've got a really cool battlecruiser in my pocket. Want to see it?" I looked more at Assault than the director as I said this.

What? I'm a cape geek. I knew he'd appreciate the joke.

"Hah!" he exclaimed. "Are you happy to see me?"

"I don't know man, you might have problems keeping up," I fired off.

The guy's eyes widened and he grinned back. "Please, please join the Wards," he almost begged. "I need someone besides Clockblocker with a sense of humor!"

Battery punched him on the shoulder, facepalming with her free hand. He barely reacted beyond the clearly exaggerated wince and the expression of mock pain that would win him one of my school's drama awards. "Don't encourage him," she complained.

I shrugged. "Hey, I want to join the Wards. If the PRT thinks they… you, can handle my apparently unique levels of bullshit, I'm game."

A stern glare from my mom brought me back down to Earth again. "And, y'know, if my folks agree."

They agreed. After making me promise to fill out everything as payment for that comment.

...

Paperwork sucks.

I met the current leader of the Wards just outside the conference room.

"Aegis!" I greeted him, happily shaking his hand. I had a lot of energy now that I'd realized my powers really existed.

"Hey," he responded. Despite the shock in his eyes at my display, he weathered through it. "I wanted to welcome you to the Wards, Will. I've also been asked to take you to see the Wards themselves while the adults finish up in there."

I pumped his arm one more time and grinned. "Sounds good. Gotta admit, full disclosure; I'm a big fan of yours."

He snorted. "Not the first and won't be the last. Come on, the elevator's this way."

Aegis led me to the obviously Tinkertech elevator on the other end of the building from the one my family head taken from the lobby. "So what's your specialty? I know we have you pegged as a Tinker, but your power ratings didn't mention it."

I grinned widely as the elevator doors interleaved closed and the metal box started to move downwards. "Spaceships."

Aegis' eyes shot wide open and he looked straight at me. "You're joking."

I shook my head. "Nope. I also have this odd Breaker/Striker power that makes my creations real, but I don't really have a solid handle on activating that yet," I explained. "Just a hunch."

The elevator arrived at the Wards floor far faster than it should have. Tinkertech indeed. As we walked out, Aegis raised his eyebrows. "Why do you need to make them real? I mean, you build spaceships, right?"

I snorted and shook my head. "Yes and no. I build Lego models of my ships, and the second power turns them into fully functional, full size ones."

Aegis stopped dead. When he looked at me again, his face was a mask of disbelief.

"Yeah, that's how the entire room looked when I announced my powers."

The leader of the team I'd just joined blew out a breath. "Dare I ask how big your spaceships get?"

"The Cityships are five by five by one kilometers," I revealed.

Aegis tripped over his own feet.

"You okay dude?" I asked him, feeling concerned.

He got up shakily, groaning. "I'm fine. They must have redone the floors in this hallway when I wasn't looking."

I smirked at him as we arrived at the end of the hall, a heavily reinforced door with an obvious eye scanner rig next to it. "Suuure," I snarked.

"You, of all people, don't get to say anything about belief, mister I make spaceships," he shot back.

I grinned at him. He'd gotten over the surprise fairly quickly. "That's fair."

Aegis scoffed. "At least we've got another heavy hitter on the team," he managed, sending me a somewhat stable grin.

I gave him a thumbs up. "It'd be a pretty lame specialization if I didn't get big honking space guns out of it."

That one cracked his grump. He laughed, rolling his eyes. "Good point. Anyways, let's go in." He held his eyes down slightly to the wall mounted eye scanner. Two little beams of green light flashed out, traced his eyes, and disappeared. A mellow alarm started chiming softly.

At my raised eyebrow, he explained. "There's a thirty second delay so that anyone who needs to mask up can do so before someone comes in."

"Ah," I nodded.

"Wards," Aegis boomed, "I'd like you to meet our newest member."

"Hey guys," I waved. "I'm Weldon, but I go by Will. Don't really have a costume or cape name yet."

"That's fine. Good to meet you, Will," Gallant said. "I'm Gallant. Or Dean Stansfield on the street."

Well no shit, hard to miss that particular armor design.

Also, score one. Though it didn't really count because of Glory Girl being as subtle as the brick she flew.

Kid Win was sitting at what I recognized as the infamous Console. He turned to look at me, but didn't get up. "Hey," he greeted me. "Kid Win, or Chris."

"Hey Chris," I nodded to him. Internally, my eyes were wide. Not necessarily in surprise, more with glee, because Chris being the Ward meant I won the betting pot. That Tinker pudding would be mine!

"Sup," Clockblocker said, approaching me with an offered hand. "I'm Dennis, or Clockblocker in costume."

...Wat.

Oh hell no. They were both Wards?! MY PUDDING!!!

I noticed Vista approaching out of the side of my eye while I peered at Dennis' hand disbelievingly in order to cover up my internal turmoil. I was sure Dean was getting an eye full but he at least seemed to be considerate enough to not mention anything.

"Dude. I'm a cape geek. I frequent PHO. I'm not falling for that."

Dennis frowned. "Damn. Well, nice to meet a fellow forum troll," he smirked.

"Likewise," I grinned back.

"Vista, or Missy when I'm out of costume," the resident space warper introduced herself, shaking my hand.

"Nice to meet you, Missy," I greeted her.

Well, she was technically in the running... but she didn't go to my school. Our school, I guess, since I was in the room with several classmates. Anyways, she wasn't really a priority target.

Also, it hit me that I wouldn't actually be able to collect my wins because it would violate the conflict of interest thing that my friends and I had set up.

But I also couldn't not participate because that would blow my cover faster than I already thought it was going to be!

...On reflecting, that policy was so obviously a logic trap just in case any of us became a Ward and didn't want to tell the group that it was obscene.

When nobody else approached me, I turned my head with a raised eyebrow to Aegis.

"Browbeat and Shadow Stalker are currently out on patrol," he informed me.

"Ah," I acquiesced. I was about to turn fully around when he took his helmet off.

"I'm Aegis, though you already know that," he grinned. "My name is Carlos out of uniform."

SON OF AN ICEBERG! IT'S ALL THREE OF THEM!!!

"Nice to meet you, Carlos," I said, shaking his hand again. Dean was starting to send me weird looks and if I kept cursing my cape geek friends and myself in my head he'd probably eventually say something.

I resolved to try and calm down and deal with the fact every single one of the schoolmates my group had pegged as Wards were in fact exactly what we thought they were.

Also that their ability to keep a secret identity really, really sucked.

"Alright well, since you've been introduced to everyone, and given you seem to be up to date on our powers given your statement about PHO," Aegis said, knocking me out of my thoughts, "would you mind telling us about yours?"

I saw that grin. "You already know them, Carlos, you just want to see who faints from shock," I accused.

"I reserve the right against self incrimination," he smirked back.

"Cape nerd!" Dennis coughed under his breath.

I mean, he was right, but I wasn't going to let the class clown of Arcadia one to me. Especially not as a fellow Ward.

"Just for that, Dennis," I said, "you're gonna be the one who learns about them first."

He widened his eyes and grabbed his chest in mock pain. "Woe is me! Will is going to turn his terrible powers upon my lowly self!"

Vista scoffed, did something incredibly uncomfortable with spacetime, and smacked him.

"Hey!" Dennis protested.

"Stop being such an idiot," she complained.

"So I can be a little bit less of an idiot and that's fine?"

Turning to me and ignoring him, she smiled. "Go ahead, Will."

I nodded to her. Then I allowed the glee I felt for my powers to reach the surface, smirked, and crossed my arms. "I'm a Tinker with a rather interesting Breaker/Striker ability." Kid Win, Chris, sat up and paid attention. "Yes Chris, that means we can both nerd out over tech at some point."

Several of the Wards chuckled as he blushed. Carlos barely managed to remain straight faced.

"However, you might not be very compatible with me. It's not you, it's me. I need to figure some things out," I joked.

Dennis took a second to realize what I'd said… then he busted up laughing.

"In all seriousness, I'm a Tinker. I was told I'm a Tinker 10," I announced.

Dead silence. Chris dropped his pen. Even Dennis cut off his laughing fit. I guess the info was shocking, or something?

Carlos crossed his arms. "You didn't mention that," he scowled.

"Oops?" I sheepishly offered.

"What the hell can you build that made them give you a Tinker 10 rating?!" Chris bristled.

"My specialization is spaceships," I revealed. "Carlos already knew that."

Every face except our team leader's paled. Even he was a little… put off base is probably the best term, shuffling back and forth on his red clad feet.

"Like…," Dean spoke up, "Star Wars, Star Trek spaceships?" he asked hesitantly.

I shook my head. "No. My ships pretty much make those look like kid toys. They might not be as big as some of the 'Wars ships, but they are so much more advanced the difference is akin to that between an Abacus and Dragon's Tinkertech mainframes."

Chris gulped. Carlos eyed me speculatively.

"Okay, well, even if you can build really powerful spaceships, they must cost a ton and take a lot of material, right?" Dennis asked, half smiling.

In response, I pulled one of my spare Shuttle models out of my pocket. "Nope."

Missy blinked. "Is that Lego?" she asked.

"Yup."

"You make Lego spaceships," Chris drawled.

"Uh huh."

"They gave you Tinker 10, for Legos," he repeated.

To respond to that, I eyeballed the open space in the middle of the Wards room. It looked like enough area. "Watch and learn," I grinned.I turned around, held the model over my shoulder, and tossed. I also nearly prayed, hoping this was the right way to trigger my bullshit powers.

It was.

FWOOMPH

"Holy shit!" Chris yelled.

Various screams of shock and alarm erupted from the other Wards as the wave of air slammed into us. Papers on the tables flew into the walls. Chairs shuddered, and Missy's hair blew out of shape.

Oh she was gonna be maaad when she finally looked in the mirror. She looked like she'd been in a hurricane.

"You weren't kidding," Carlos breathed, staring at the huge gray shuttle sitting on the rug.

"Told ya," I grinned, moving towards the ship. It'd spawned with the back end facing me, just like the one on my lawn had earlier that day. I located and hit the external button for the back hatch, noting the other button right below it that looked like a tilted cross made out of red Lego pieces.

My other shuttle was sitting in the PRT garage. I hadn't managed to find a way to make it return to Lego form, if that was even possible. If it was, I was even more bullshit than before, and it was possible that button was what did it. I must've missed the red X on my other craft.

I'd have to test that later.

The back door shifted down, touching down on the rug with a solid sounding thunk.

"Anyone wanna come in?" I asked. Not waiting for a reply, I strolled up the ramp, through the cargo compartment, and into the pilot cabin.

The clear crystalline dashboard caught my eye first, much like my other shuttle's had. It lent credence to my idea that all ships of a given class I created would be identical.

I sat in the pilot's chair, on the left, and sighed as the incredibly advanced gel padding conformed to my body.

"Oh that feels good," I groaned. My eyes closed and I escaped into ergonomic bliss for a few moments.

The sound of short heels on the metal floor brought me out of it. "What feels good?" Missy spoke up.

I opened my eyes at her, grinning. "These chairs. They're super comfy. Feel free to grab one," I offered.

She raised an eyebrow, but did as I suggested. She took the copilot's chair. She was positively groaning when she felt the gel kick in.

"Oh my God," she breathed. The chairs were that good.

"Nice, right?" I asked her.

"Will, you're giving me one of these," she declared.

"They come with the ship, Missy," I apologized. "Otherwise I'd have put these in my house before we got here."

"I was talking about the ship," she corrected me.

I opened my mouth to protest, but jumped when an annoyance entered the cabin. "What's all the groaning about in here?" Dennis grinned. "Nobody's getting it on inside the ship are they?"

"Shut up and sit down, Dennis, before I make you just fit that comment," Missy ordered, understandably rather annoyed.

I subtly edged away from the girl in the copilot's chair. "Uh, Dennis," I asked, then shook my head and sighed. "Nevermind. Missy, are you alright? I've never had anyone else sit in one of my chairs and they are tinkertech so..."

"I'm fine," she responded, relaxing. "These are just really, really nice chairs. Other than being really comfy I don't feel anything off."

Dennis directed a joking glance my way. I had the sinking feeling that he was about to do something stupid. I subtly shook my head to warn him off of it, but it was useless. This was the guy who'd named himself Clockblocker on live TV.

"Are you sure they're not really nice chairs? I mean, you were groaning-" he started to ask.

Abruptly the girl sat up, blushing to her toes. "Not a word, 'Clockblocker'," she declared, "or you'll find your home suddenly Non-Euclidian." Then she glared at me, almost physically daring me to join in with Dennis.

I gulped and raised my hands. "Hey, don't look at me. This is all him." I turned to look at the dashboard, ran out of resistance, and teasingly muttered, "Still… damn."

Missy must've heard me, because her face went even redder. Dennis spared me from her wrath though. "So," he grinned, wiggling his eyebrows, "Really good chairs, huh?"

Why was he still trying?!

Missy was mortified. "DENNIS!" she shrieked. Space warped, Missy's shoe suddenly planting deep in his groin.

I winced and instinctively curled in on myself. "Damn, Missy. You didn't have to do that."

As Dennis lay whimpering on the floor, she shrugged. "He deserved it," Missy replied.

"Uh huh."

"...Why is Dennis on the floor?" Carlos asked, walking into the cockpit.

Missy and I looked at each other.

She raised a challenging eyebrow.

I sighed in defeat.

"He deserved it," we both repeated Missy's earlier words.

"Your powers are bullshit," Chris remarked. He'd repeated that and only that whenever I tried to say anything to him since I'd summoned the shuttle. Dean informed me that it was his power that was jealous, not Chris himself, and given Dean's power set I was inclined to believe him. I'd give Chris the time he needed to soothe his power's rear end from the kicking mine gave it.

That by no means prevented me from teasing the ever living shit out of him by offering to let him take a look under the hood of the shuttle. The first time his face lit up like a kid at Christmas.

The next seven times earned me scowls after he realized the technology was complete gibberish to him.

Dennis and I tag teamed the poor guy. We'd hit it off well, even with Missy crushing his groin because of his jokes about my shuttle's chairs.

I mean, she didn't actually do any damage because she knows how to hold back and Dennis is a drama queen, but still.

Once we'd all had a chance to check out the inside of the ship I hustled everyone out and closed the back door from outside. After the hermetic vacuum sealing was finished, I hesitantly placed my hand on the red Lego X below the back door button.

A moment later, I had my Lego model of the shuttle sitting in my hand again.

CRACK

"OUCH!" I yelled. Damn it, that felt like thunder going off in front of me!

"CAN ANYONE ELSE HEAR THEMSELVES THINK?" Missy asked.

Carlos glared at me. "NO MORE DEPLOYING SHIPS INSIDE!" he declared.

I gulped, nodded, and put the ship away in my pocket. "LET'S GO TO THE ROOF! I NEED TO GET SOME AIR!"

"SOUNDS GOOD!" Dennis yelled.

That's when the alarms went off. Our ears started ringing, so we evacuated the Wards room.

We went to the roof.

Several PRT officers passed us, offering greetings. They also ran away when faced with six yelling Wards.

"Ahh," I breathed in, "Non-thundered air."

We were standing on top of the PRT building's roof. It was more like a patio than a proper roof, basically just another floor of the building with some railing around the outside to keep non fliers from falling off.

"Like the view?" Missy asked, walking up to lean on the rail beside me.

"Not bad," I agreed. "Needs something, though."

Missy quirked her lips, amused. "Oh? Like what?"

I eyed the Bay itself, calculating distance in my head. "The Bay's bigger than five by five kilometers, right?"

Missy had an instinctual sense of distance, something I'd learned came with her power on the walk up. "It's almost eight by ten," she corrected me.

"We could totally plop a Cityship right in the middle, then."

Missy's eyes widened. "You mentioned Cityships before. What are they?"

I grinned at her and sighed happily. "Imagine a giant metal snowflake, gleaming silver and reflecting light off thousands of skyscrapers, floating on the surface of the water," I began describing. "The central tower dwarfs the others in height. Every other skyscraper is unique, somehow managing to also look themed. A Cityship can house over five million people in the residential towers, has space for hundreds of thousands of science labs, and the top of the central tower even contains a Gate." I'm sure my eyes were twinkling after that.

Missy's eyes were wide with awe this time. "Wow. But that just sounds like a city from the future. Where does the -ship part come in?"

I grinned sideways at her. "It flies."

Her mouth dropped open. "You're kidding me."

"Serious like a heart attack," I refuted.

"How? The power requirements must be enormous!"

I mimed holding a Potentia in both hands. "Crystalline power source. Contains an artificial region of subspace. Extracts power from that, but can't be recharged except by a station that sits inside a star. A Cityship can technically fly on one, but they're designed to run on three."

Chris yelled at me from the other side of the roof. "Your power is bullshit!"

Was he ever going to stop?

Missy eyed me warily. "How much power does one of those contain?"

I screwed up my face for a moment. "Well," I finally answered her, "rupturing one would take a good sized chunk out of the planet, even if it was only 1% charged, so use that for your answer. I don't think I can really express their total power capacity in human energy terms, it's just too much."

Missy's face was white. Carlos spoke up from behind me. Apparently he'd been listening.

"You are not to construct one of those without authorization," he almost growled at me.

I turned around and leaned back on the railing. "Which? The Cityship or the Potentia?"

He looked confused for a moment. "Is Potentia the name for that crystalline energy source you just talked about?"

"Yes."

"That. Do not build that," he declared.

I shrugged. "It's fine. Cityships can be powered by anything from coal to lightning, it won't be too hard to find a replacement," I reasoned. "But they won't be able to fly without a Potentia."

"You can save the flying five kilometer square city for when you get clearance for these 'Potentia'. Just keep it non flying for now. I'm sure it'll be difficult to resist, but you must resist the thrill of danger," he semi joked.

I was just glad he wasn't upset with me.

I grinned at him. "Sure thing, Chief." I even gave him a mock salute.

"Hey, Will?" Dean approached.

"Yeah?"

"What's a Gate? You said the central tower of a Cityship contains one," he asked.

My eyes lit up. "Ah! Sorry, Gate is short for Stargate. Their proper name is Astria Porta."

I was getting dumbfounded looks again. "What? Why do people keep looking at me like that?"

"What," Carlos sighed, "is a Stargate?"

"Stable wormhole generator that allows near instantaneous travel between itself and another Stargate, no matter where in the galaxy they are," I explained. "Uses about the power output of a decently advanced fusion reactor for each connection, unless you want to reach another galaxy. Generally you need a Potentia for that. It has a ridiculously impressive capacitor built in, so one could easily use lesser energy generators to just charge it up slower. Either way, they're designed to be plopped down on millions of planets, and they utilize a glyph system and seven glyph addresses, almost like telephone numbers, for locating the target Stargate. Eight glyphs for another local group galaxy, nine for special hardcoded addresses like Cityships or extragalactic distance research vessels have."

Every Ward had come over to me as I spoke. Now they were standing around me and just staring. Their mouths were all gaping, no exceptions.

"What? Why is this so surprising to you guys?"

I was back in Director Piggot's office again. This time with all the Wards on the base present behind me.

They'd just finished giving a rather panicked rundown of what I'd 'revealed' on the roof. I honestly didn't understand why they were so concerned. Rupturing a Potentia was hard. It was so much easier to destroy a planet with a Naquadah fusion bomb than to destabilize the crystalline batteries.

Of course when I told them what Naquadah was and how it magnified explosions, that the Stargates contained vast quantities of the material, plus the multi-teraton yield of the bomb I'd mentioned, that was when they lost their cool and marched me down to the Director's office.

"Weldon," Piggot asked testily, "why didn't you tell us any of this?" She gestured to the nervous Wards behind me.

I blinked and tried to sit up. "Uh, you never asked?" I ventured.

She scowled. "When a cape has the ability to create multi-teraton nuclear bombs out of thin air, it's incredibly important they notify us about that," she seethed. "Ignoring the dangerous aspects of forgetting to do so, we have treaties in place about this kind of thing!"

I looked around at the gathered faces and swallowed. "Oh," I sheepishly said. "Sorry."

Piggot sighed, clasping her hands together above her desk. "Anything else Earth-shattering you'd like to share with us today about your abilities?"

Dennis and I both smirked, but her scowl tightened. "That pun was unintended. Focus. What else can you make that is dangerous as hell?"

I twisted my lips slightly as I thought, my head worlds away. I tried going over all the things I could build. Tried to see if anything registered as dangerous to me.

There were a few devices and sciences that came to mind. Galactic Scale Matter Manipulation, and the Wave Generators that emanated the effect, Stargate Destroyers, Singularity or Wormhole bombs, Supergates, even that one idiot Janus' experiments with time travel, Hyperdrive/Subspace band blocking and the failed Arcturus project. A few people believed the experiment with sentient nano-mechanical life had also been dangerous and a failure, something I did not agree with, but those who thought like me had been outvoted, and so our children died.

Screaming.

I shuddered in remembrance. They did not deserve what the Council had decreed.

Regardless, all of those could be, if not handled, at least contained by my civilization. We hadn't lasted hundreds of millions of years after all for no-

Wait.

My eyes widened to their maximum. "Ooohhhh, I see it now," I mumbled.

I wasn't an Alteran. I hadn't spoken up against the destruction of the Asurans. I didn't answer to a Council. I never lived on Atlantis.

I was human. And so was my civilization. But apparently I happened to have memories of an Alteran in my brain.

Now I could see why my teammates had been freaking out. Okay, look at it from a human point of view, seal up the Alteran memories and psyche for later review.

How much was dangerous?

…

Oh.

…

That's… that's a lot of stuff.

"See what?" Armsmaster demanded, snapping me out of my headspace.

"Okay, so," I began, glad I'd finally fixed the little (huge, not going to tell them that though) problem I'd just found. "I apparently have a different Tinker specialization than we thought."

Everyone raised their eyebrows. "Explain," Piggot said.

"It's not just ships. I have the ability to build anything a certain civilization made, at any point in their several hundred million year history," I admitted.

"You've gotta be kidding me," Chris complained. "First spaceships, now you can access an entire civilization? Goddamnit, Will."

"What kinds of items did this civilization manage to create?" Armsmaster asked.

"And do any others violate treaties?" Piggot added.

"Uh, way too many to list, Armsmaster," I answered him first, "and for the Director, uh… Like, sixty percent of it. Probably. I don't know treaties that well, so I'm probably overestimating it."

Piggot ground her teeth. "Give me an example," she demanded.

"Alright. Uh… off the top of my head, all 'modern' Alteran craft, that's the name of their civilization by the way," I trailed off slightly, "are armed with Drones. These are golden squid like objects about… yea big," I held out my hands to indicate something twice the size of a football, "that are essentially incredibly smart, hunter killer missiles. They have their own drive units, work in space, and phase through shielding and hull until they can detonate in crucial components of an enemy ship with the force of a small nuke. Their passage actually emits a crapton of heat, so they can be sent through ships for multiple passes until they run low on energy, then explode," I explained.

Piggot was pale. "That certainly violates a few treaties," she grumbled, "though they sound like a fantastic weapon."

Carlos spoke up. "Wait, you said all Alteran craft?" he asked.

"Yeah?" I sent back, curious as to why he was asking. "At least the modern ones."

"Including the 'shuttles' you can make? One of which is currently parked in the PRT building, one of which you deployed in the Wards common room?!" His voice was steadily raising.

"Well, yeah. Pretty sure each shuttle is loaded out with thirty in each magazine for a total of sixty," I confirmed.

Chris stared at me. Armsmaster stared at me. Piggot glared at me. Carlos looked defeated. He even made this catlike mewling sound.

"Are you telling me that you have sixty nuclear level, intelligent, guided, and countermeasure defeating weapons sitting in our parking garage, and the ability to summon more from your pocket?!" Director Piggot shrieked.

I shrugged. "I guess so."

Dennis, Dean and Missy were basically catatonic at that point.

Several seconds went by without anyone saying anything. The continual focus on me and my powers was starting to actually get to me. I began to curl in on myself, stopping only once I realized it wasn't my fault.

"We're going to need to revisit your power ratings," Piggot bit out, finally.

I winced and continued with one of the things I thought might also infringe upon some kind of treaty. There must be an anti-teleportation one, surely? "It's probably worth mentioning that every ship I can make above the shuttles, including Cityships, have beaming arrays borrowed from an Alteran ally race built in," I hesitantly mentioned.

Armsmaster sighed. "And what are beaming arrays?" he sounded like he'd rather just forget I even existed.

I fidgeted and lowered my head. "Uh… planetwide range, from geosynchronous orbit, connectionless, nearly unblockable matter transporters?" I half asked, half told.

Piggot's head hit the desk.

"Goddamnit, Will," Carlos said.

Missy started sobbing. Gallant was holding her, rubbing soothing circles into her back.

Chris glared at me. "I hate you. You know that, right?"

I grimaced. "Sorry?"

Tinker 20+.

Blaster 10.

Mover 10+.

Breaker/Striker 7.

Those were my new ratings.

I had no idea that my stuff was considered that powerful by PRT standards.

They'd flat out told me that they added 10 levels to the Power Scales just for my Tinker rating. And then realized it wasn't enough. Thus, Tinker 20+.

I hadn't even told them about personal shields, nanites, constructors, or the computers themselves.

Or the devices which even the Alterans thought dangerous.

Shit, they'd probably just slap 20 all across the board if they found out about those.

To tell or not to tell. That is the quest-

No, wait. Do I want my friends, the Wards, safe?

That is the question.

"Hey Carlos?" I spoke up from my spot on the couch.

The team leader froze in the middle of taking a step. He took a deep breath, visibly tried to relax, and then spun to face me. "Yes Will," he asked.

"How would you, the Wards, and the PRT feel about impenetrable energy shields that are emitted from a cell phone sized amulet thing that sticks to whatever you're wearing via the Coulomb effect?"

Carlos sighed a long suffering sigh. "You can make those?" he asked respectfully.

"Yeah. Just need a few standard Lego pieces for each one," I confirmed.

"And what about maintenance?" he asked. "That's the primary problem with Tinkertech, only the Tinker can keep it from breaking down."

I blinked, surprised. "Maintenance?" I asked. I kept mouthing the word to myself.

My Tinker specialization didn't know the meaning of the word. Literally.

Seeing my confusion, Carlos sighed and growled at the same time. "Let me guess. Your stuff doesn't need maintenance," he deadpanned.

"Alteran stuff lasts for millions of years without any kind of wear, tear, or charge loss," I confirmed.

"Of course it does." He just walked over to a couch and collapsed into it. "Nope. We'll deal with your crazy extinct alien civilization bullshit tomorrow. I'm done."

"But-" I tried to speak up.

"I'm done! Go home! Take your unholy bullshit with you!"

I went.

I walked into the PRT garage, opened my shuttle, went inside, closed it, fired up the gravitational inertia engines, and slowly inched the craft out of the garage.

Once I was in the open air I accelerated, not feeling a single thing as I did. Even the high velocity air tricks I did up above Brockton Bay didn't affect me.

I did eventually actually go home. Landed on the lawn, walked out of my shuttle, closed the door, touched the red Lego X that I had confirmed was also on this craft, collected the Lego model, and went into the house to greet my family and go to bed.

After all, it'd been a long day. And I became a superhero, even if I was kinda driving the PRT insane with my capabilities.

Ah well, they'd get used to me.

After all, what could possibly go wrong?

Mana_Knight_Jorin · Jan 31, 2018

TCGM said:
(I will try to post Chapter 1 immediately after this first post but idk what the cooldown is on posting here.)

I'm not sure, since I don't post fics, but I think you can just post all of them if you want to since your the OP.

TCGM · Jan 31, 2018

Jorin said:
I'm not sure, since I don't post fics, but I think you can just post all of them if you want to since your the OP.

Huh, neat, if correct. Also, hi!

Mana_Knight_Jorin · Jan 31, 2018

TCGM said:
Huh, neat, if correct. Also, hi!

Yep. Your fic is pretty good from what I've seen of it so far. I hope to see more of it soon. *Hint* *Hint*

Will the Alterans be showing up?

Or the Wraith perhaps?

TCGM · Jan 31, 2018

Jorin said:
Yep. Your fic is pretty good from what I've seen of it so far. I hope to see more of it soon. *Hint* *Hint*

Will the Alterans be showing up?

Or the Wraith perhaps?

Alterans... well, sort of. Maybe reviewing the names of the Wormverse heroes might lend a further clue?

The Wraith? If a certain plot twist I want to make actually works when I get to the point it's supposed to be revealed at, yes. Otherwise no.

And I use GDocs to write my stuff and an exporter to convert it to BBCode, but I have to make all the newlines manually. I'm about to post CH2 right now actually.

Mana_Knight_Jorin · Jan 31, 2018

TCGM said:
And I use GDocs to write my stuff and an exporter to convert it to BBCode, but I have to make all the newlines manually. I'm about to post CH2 right now actually.

Really? I have friend who types his up in plain .txt file and and he adds the bbcode, or the html code depending on where he's going to post it at, while he's typing it and then he just copy/pastes the thing over to um... wherever. He says he uses something called metapad 3.6 for it.

TCGM · Jan 31, 2018

Ancient Legos
Chapter 02
Tests

Captain's Log, Earth Date: February 7th, 2011

Day two of being a superhero. It's much more boring than I thought it would be. I mean, you're always hearing on the news about the Protectorate heroes' latest adventures, or captures and whatnot, usually with support from at least one of the Wards.

Speaking as a Ward, that's apparently… not quite reality.

My meetings with Glenn Chambers, a PR specialist they flew in from New York, and the PRT PR department have painted the true picture.

A superhero doesn't spend most of their time battling the forces of evil in the form of a Villain or teams of minions.

No. We fight the everlasting war against the great demon Paperwork, who draws power from every crossed t, dotted i, and paper cut.

Seriously, I thought I was done after filling out the application for the Wards. But nooo, I had to learn how to fill out AARs, after action reports, in triplicate.

Those things are ten pages long. And that's just the first kind of form I needed to learn.

The less said about the absolute disaster that was the PR department's attempts at naming my superhero identity, thinking up a costume, and trying to shove public etiquette lessons down my throat, the better.

Round two is scheduled for Saturday, the 12th of February, 2011. I've gotta say, I'm rather looking forward to it.

Of course, this time I'll be a level 20 rated Tinker. I will be the decision maker, not Glenn frakking Chambers.

I mean, seriously? Tie-dye paint jobs and The Shipper as a name? I'm not a tween girl who reads crappy fanfiction about sparkly vampires.

You have no idea how relieved us PHO forum goers were when we found out that book series is hated on Aleph too.

Anyways, school was nice. Got to indulge my scientific and linguistic know-how that came with my powers in an academic setting for the first time ever. The work was so offensively and pathetically easy I had to actually answer a couple wrong so I didn't jump from Bs and Cs to perfection in a day.

That is one of the guidelines in the Newbie Cape's Handbook On How To Out Yourself In Three Easy Steps, after all.

Anyways, that's it for today. I'm on my way to the PRT building at the moment, so I'm signing off. Got hero stuff to focus on!

End Log.

I relaxed back into the pilot's seat of my shuttle. As the gel conformed to my body shape I sighed, smiling. A quick thought and the shuttle sent my new Log off to my home computer system for storage and transcription.

My life was going great. I'd become a superhero yesterday, finally let the reigns on my education-specific knowledge loose, leading to a massive boost to the grades I received, and was currently on my way to the PRT for my 'after-school elective' as Arcadia called it.

In my invisible, undetectable, gravity defying, space capable, nuclear-equivalent weapon equipped shuttlecraft, flying a decent distance above the skyline.

I glanced at the speedometer, or at least what passed for one, to double check the ship was following my instructions. Mentally directed and incredibly smart the shuttle systems may be, but they were no AI. It was prudent to make sure the craft was working correctly. It would do no good to go above the speed of sound; destroying the windows of Brockton Bay's skyscrapers would not be a smart beginning to my hero career.

A small part of my mind needled me about the fact that no Alteran would ever think about any of that, much less do so. With my human mentality back in full force I was becoming quite cynical about the race whose technology I'd essentially inherited. As much as I wished otherwise, that part of me was right.

The Alterans, intelligent and powerful as they were, simply did not have common sense. It would shock me if they had a term for that in their language.

…

Of course not. Common Sense, Maintenance, what other concepts would I learn the Alterans didn't comprehend?

…

-I cut my power's linguistics section off before it could answer that. I really didn't want to know.

Being on the other side of the nearly nonexistent PR wall of Parahumans was quite the experience. I'd always thought it strange that so many kids had after school electives. Much like my classmates, I'd also wondered why, when a new student transferred in, so did at least two others that looked just like them. A lot of people believed that it was to confuse theorists like I used to be, or Thinkers, from figuring out who the Wards were.

I now knew that rumor to be completely accurate. Thankfully I didn't need to worry about doppelgangers of me running around, as I had already been enrolled in Arcadia for two years.

School had been absolutely amazing now that I knew who was really a Ward.

I still hung out with my friends, of course, and we were all a bunch of cape geeks. The speculation didn't stop because I suddenly became a Ward. Nor should it have, as they didn't know that there was a new one, much less that they were me.

I was laughing internally every time they formed theories on who they, we, might be. That morning in the shower I'd had the terrifying thought that I might have to run interference to prevent my friends from hitting the truth like a miner who struck gold.

I needn't have worried.

Amazingly, nobody even came close. And that's saying something, because Dean and Victoria 'Vicky' Dallon didn't tone down their PDA at all.

Seriously, it was freaking public knowledge Glory Girl and Gallant were dating. How Dean wasn't unmasked for the world still escaped me.

When I arrived in the PRT parking garage I had a greeting party waiting for me.

The moment the shuttle touched down and decloaked, Armsmaster banged on the hull.

I lowered the rear ramp, exited, closed the ramp, and before Armsmaster could walk around the shuttle, hit the red X.

A moment later and with a crack of thunder, the Lego model was in my hand.

"Sup, Armsmaster?" I greeted him cheerily. I was in a really good mood.

"Will," Armsmaster growled.

I stopped walking towards him. Was something up? "What's wrong?"

"What's wrong is that you took an untested piece of nuclear armed Tinkertech for a joyride above the city last night!" he yelled. "And then, you used it to get to Arcadia, left it lying around all day ready for absolutely anyone to find and steal, then flew it directly here after leaving the school for an 'after school elective', something which some people think is a cover story for the Wards! Which it is!"

I opened my mouth to respond, found nothing, closed it again, then went with the less obvious question. "I wasn't supposed to take it to school?"

I could see him visibly taking a chill pill. "No," he seethed. "It was going to be moved to a lab where we were to study it."

I raised my eyebrows. "Oh," I said intelligently.

"We are going to that lab. You are going to deploy this 'shuttle'. And then the Director, Aegis, and I will be going over the rule books with you," he declared.

I sighed, preparing for a boring day. "Lead on, party pooper."

The sound of him grinding his teeth was music to my ears. I could even vaguely hear laughter coming from his helmet.

He must've been in a call with someone. Rude.

Halfway to the PRT testing lab I was intercepted by a tiny, female, green costumed missile which decided I was the perfect target for lamprey behavior.

"Oof!" I grunted, bracing myself against the hallway wall.

"Thank you," a young girl's voice squeaked from inside my jacket.

I glanced down to see a head of blonde hair emerge from the confines of my upper body coverings. "Hi, Missy," I greeted her with a smile. "Not that I'm complaining about getting hugs from a cute girl or anything, but why are you hugging me?"

She squeaked and bounced away from me, cheeks flushing red. "H-hey," she stammered, "it's not like that!"

I crossed my arms and smirked. "Oh so you just spontaneously hug everybody then?" I countered teasingly.

Missy stamped her foot and tried to frown, but she was still too young to look anything but cute no matter what she did. "No!" she shot back indignantly, "I get to use my powers to help test yours today!" Her grin tried to turn feral, a manic look in her eyes at the clear belief she was getting back at me.

I brought one hand to my chin and started rubbing, leaving the elbow cupped by my other hand. "Hmmm…," I mused.

Her face fell. "What?"

I abruptly snapped my fingers with an 'oh snap' gesture. "Nope, even your menacing is cute."

Missy's eyes flared. "I'm not cute!" she refuted, smacking the back of my head through time and space.

Me being built like a brick shithouse, this of course did absolutely nothing.

"You totally are," I shot back, grinning mercilessly.

"Are not!"

"Are too!"

"Not!"

"Are!"

"NOT!"

"ARE!"

"CHILDREN!" Armsmaster bellowed, apparently having arrived at the argument after his inattention lost track of whether I was still following him or not.

I turned a disbelieving eyebrow on him. Missy scowled.

I heard the woman who was apparently still connected to his helmet say something.

Armsmaster growled. He obviously attempted to reign in his temper and apologize. It was hilarious. Equally obvious was how much he hated it. "Sorry, Wards. Will you please stop your petty squab-" another burst of female speech, "-disagreement, that is, so we can get to testing?"

I grinned at his discomfort and merely nodded.

Missy snapped to something resembling attention. "Yes Sir!"

"Thank you," Armsmaster bit out through mashed teeth.

I winced externally, but internally I was laughing my head off. This day was going to be a nightmare for Grumpy McStickInTheMud. Serves him right for making me read a rulebook of all things at some nebulous point in the future.

Yeah, it's petty. Shut up.

He turned around on the spot and resumed his walk towards the elevators, not bothering to ensure we were following him. I spun around, gave Missy a sarcastic flaunt of a salute, and jogged to keep up with his long strides.

Missy just scowled, warped space to be next to me, and smacked me on the head.

I shoved her shoulder.

She kicked my shin.

I whacked her thigh.

This silent match of Rock'Em Sock'Em Wards continued until Armsmaster turned around to make sure we went into the elevator. We barely had enough time to bring our hands back to our sides and plaster innocent, angelic smiles on our faces.

I rated Missy's an A+. Mine barely mustered a passing grade.

I could feel Armsmaster's narrow eyed glare on my back the whole ride down. It was accompanied by an orchestra of synchronized giggles coming from his helmet, muffled, and the little girl next to me in stereo.

Stupid cheating little girls with overwhelming cuteness and adorable features. Damn you, Missy, damn your cute face to hellllll!

"Weldon!" was the exuberant, expectant cry I was greeted with when the lab door opened.

My eyes shot wide open and I began engaging in a tactical withdrawal. Coming at me was a nerd with glasses, a white lab coat, and an actual pocket protector.

"I'm too young to become a scientist!" I cried out loud, trying not to trip as I walked backwards.

Missy giggled, which was always good in my books. Operation: Get Missy to Embrace her Cute Side was on schedule.

No I didn't just make that up.

…

You have no proof, extrauniversal entity in my head!

"Weldon," Armsmaster stated flatly, his voice booming.

I gulped and turned around. I'd instinctively stopped my backward walk just in time to avoid ramming my head on the guy's armor.

"Yeees, Armsy?" I asked lightly.

Missy and the entire testing team snickered. I felt the heat of Armsmaster's glare as if it was a physical thing.

If looks could kill, my seat in the Underworld would have been assured.

Knowing me though, that seat would probably be the throne.

"We are here to test your abilities," he flatly declared. "Deploy your shuttle in the marked area and assist the testing team with anything they might need." He leaned in close, the semi transparent part of his helmet almost touching my nose. "Do you understand?"

I gulped and nodded. "Yes sir."

"Good," he seethed. He straightened back up and addressed the scientist I'd mentally labeled Nerd Alert. "You are clear to test anything with him that does not violate treaties the United States is required to uphold. Director Piggot has also banned anything that might pose a threat to any portion of the planet's crust above 0.00015%. Is that clear?"

Various kinds of disgruntled agreement arose from the team.

"I have other matters to attend to. After he is done, please send him to the Wards' Common Room." With that and without so much as another glance at me, he strode out of the lab.

If I didn't know better I'd say the doors slammed closed behind him, but they had an automatic pressure system straight out of Star Trek. I highly doubted that could be changed on the fly just because Armsmaster wanted to be a drama queen.

Not because any Tinker who made them wasn't that petty, but because Director Piggot wouldn't allow it.

I spun back around and clapped my hands, abruptly rubbing them with anticipation. I hammed up the manic smile on my face to the maximum level I could sustain without throwing up.

There is only so much cliché I can take, you know.

Then I laughed. "Mua ha ha ha! Much fun will be had todaaay!"

Missy scoffed and whacked me on the head again.

"Hey!"

"No manic laughter in the testing chamber," she scolded me.

"Oh come on!"

"It's a rule," a scientist spoke up.

That brought me up short. "Seriously?"

She nodded. "Yeah. These two idiots," she thumbed over her shoulder to indicate Nerd Alert and the third scientist, someone I could only nickname Captain Neckbeard, "kept doing it when testing the powers of prospective Protectorate or Ward capes. It scared them."

"Hey! It's not our fault!" the two refuted.

"Yes it is," Missy agreed with the only other girl in the room.

"It is entirely your faults," a third woman's voice said.

Okay, not the only other gal in the room. I spun around looking for the third one. "Either I'm hearing things or something screwy is going on," I announced.

A screen on a robotic arm extended from the wall to face me. The static on the monitor cleared and I was looking at the image of a woman.

The image was clearly digitally generated, and kind of average all around, but it was impressive nonetheless.

Then it, she, spoke again.

"Hello Weldon," she said with a slight grin, "I'm Dragon."

I immediately connected her with the voice that had been in Armsmaster's helmet. And, of course, with the most famous Tinker in the world besides the late Hero.

Dragon was talking to me.

Dragon wIas going to test me.

Dragon was projecting herself into the same room as me.

I may have squeed a bit.

"Dragon!" I squeaked, trying and failing to pave over my voice cracking. "Uh, hi! Why are you here?"

I immediately facepalmed. Meet the most famous living Tinker in the world and what do I do? I ask her why she was present in the power tests of another overpowered Tinker.

I was batting well below my average today.

She must have seen my realization and taken pity on me. The other four people in the lab sure didn't, they just snickered endlessly. "I'm providing remote assistance and advice for your power tests, Weldon," she explained, smiling at me. "And laughing at your impressively effective efforts to irritate Armsmaster, but that's just a side benefit."

Missy's jaw dropped. "Wait, you were doing all that on purpose?!"

I grinned.

"God damn," Captain Neckbeard said. "You and Clockblocker must get along swell."

Missy groaned, hiding her face in her hands. "You have no idea," she complained.

"I believe the most accurate phrase to describe their collaboration would be 'like a house on fire'," Dragon commented.

I crossed my arms and scowled. "Screw both of you! You're just jealous you can't pull spaceships out of your pockets!"

More snickering rang through the room. My face fell. "Whaaat?"

Nerd Alert grinned at me. "Is that a battlecruiser in your pocket or are you just happy to see Leslie?" he asked, sniggering.

I sighed. "I knew the joke I told Assault in front of Piggot and Armsmaster was gonna come back to me at some point," I complained, "I just didn't expect it to be this soon. By the way, who's Leslie?"

The female scientist raised her hand. "Leslie Davis, Power Testing Director," she introduced herself.

I grinned at her. "Well, nice to meet you. And yes, I do have a battlecruiser in my pocket. It's just a battlecruiser."

Leslie rolled her eyes and sighed. "Boys," she muttered. "Anyways, shall we begin testing? Or do you need further preparation?"

I rubbed my hands together and opened my mouth to start cackling.

My head was whacked from behind. "No manic laughter!"

"Stop whacking me!"

"Alright, first things first, let's get your… shuttle deployed," Leslie announced.

I pulled the model out of my pocket and rolled it around in my fingers. "Where do you want it?"

"If you could please place it in the blue lines?" Dragon asked.

I looked around for the destination. Sure enough there was a section of the pretty much unbroken concrete floor pattern outlined with softly glowing blue highlights. It was surrounded by all kinds of equipment, some on carts, some big enough to have its own wheels, and even a couple mounted to robotic arms that extended from the ceiling.

I walked over and eyed the space critically. "Is all this equipment wind resistant?" I asked.

"Why?" Captain Neckbeard asked.

"Because when I summon things, they seem to displace the air of their volume near instantly," I explained.

The testing team quietly conferred among themselves for a few moments. Dragon's robotic arm monitor joined their little huddle shortly after it began.

Almost as one they turned back to look at me with an answer. It was creepy how synchronized they were.

I was under no illusion that the creepy factor wasn't intentional.

"All the equipment should be fine," Dragon informed me.

"It's rated for much more abuse than a windstorm," Leslie elaborated.

I shrugged. "Aight. Don't blame me if you're wrong," I acquiesced. I walked to the middle of the short side of the rectangle on the floor nearest me. I had to make sure I was positioned juuuust right or it wouldn't be in the blue lines.

With a last look of contemplation, I tossed the shuttle model over my shoulder.

FWOOMPH

Everyone but Dragon flinched, their hair being blown back. Missy, Neckbeard, and Leslie's hair, all of them wearing it down and long, didn't survive the blast wave without remodeling. Even I flinched, still not quite used to the sound my manifestation power created as it treated the atmosphere like a punching bag.

Missy scowled. "I forgot it would mess up my hair," she grumbled.

Leslie blinked several times, patted down her hair, and stared at the shuttle. Well, from my perspective she was staring behind me, but I knew the shuttle was what she was looking at.

Captain Neckbeard… just kinda shrugged, pushed his hair behind his ears, and returned to what I swear was watching the testing screens in awe.

"Sweet, huh?" I grinned.

"Cool guys don't look at explosions…" Captain Neckbeard started humming, still not tearing his gaze away.

"Thank you!" I exclaimed. "Someone finally referenced that!"

Dragon was staring at me, not the shuttle. She was visibly dumbfounded. Such a look was pretty interesting on a 3D character, let me tell you.

"T-That's not possible," she stammered.

I raised an eyebrow her way. "What's not possible?"

Dragon's 3D avatar gulped. That surprised me. Why would you code such a thing into a remote interaction program? Something smelled fishy about that, but I couldn't put my finger on what it was, exactly.

"Weldon, all the equipment around you is sensor and reconnaissance equipment. From what they're telling me, that shuttle didn't show up instantly," she started explaining. "Somehow your power drew atoms from nothing, enough to synthesize the shuttle from scratch, in a shorter timespan than the human eye can see."

I raised both eyebrows. That wasn't possible, but not for the reasons Dragon thought. "I'm sorry, what? You're telling me this craft," I banged my hand against the rear hatch to both to provide emphasis and prove to myself that it was real, "was assembled out of nothing?"

Dragon shivered. "Yes."

"But that's impossible!" I refuted.

Leslie managed to get a grip on herself at that moment. "You're telling me. Making matter out of nothing isn't possible. Even Changers draw it from somewhere else-"

I held up a hand, interrupting her. "Oh no, that's not the impossible thing. The beaming arrays on my ships can do that with enough energy. It's the fact that this shuttle is made out of a high amount of Naquadah that's bullshit. You flat out cannot convert energy to Naquadah. It just can't be done."

"What," Dragon stated.

"Naquadah is essentially impossible to synthesize," I continued explaining. "It's too dense for any kind of matter assembly system to create."

Leslie, Nerd Alert, Missy, and Dragon all kept staring at me, dumbfounded.

I sighed. "I know that look. What did I say now?"

"You… you have access to technology capable of assembling matter from nothing but energy," Dragon carefully asked.

I tilted my head back and forth, waving my hands in a 'so-so' manner. "Yes and no. The shuttles don't have beaming arrays. I'd need to create a battlecruiser at the least to get the arrays. But they are capable of synthesizing any element or combination thereof up to the 131st element of the Periodic Organization." Realizing what I said, I corrected myself. "Sorry, I mean Periodic Table."

More stares.

"There are only 118 elements in the Periodic Table, Weldon," Dragon said.

I blinked. "Uh, what? Naquadah is number 145," I refuted.

Leslie and Dragon leaned in, suddenly looking very interested. Well, the latter woman moved her monitor forward a bit, but it accomplished the same effect.

Namely making my hair stand on end.

"You know more than 118 elements?" Leslie excitedly asked me.

I sighed. "Yes. Off the top of my head, Trinium is 128, Neutronium is 140, Naquadah as I've already said is 145 and its much more volatile cousin, Naquadriah, sits one up the table at 146. There's a total of 160 elements known. The Alterans theorized that it could go up to 210, but that was never proven. Beyond that is degenerate matter which doesn't belong on the table due to a lack of protons or neutrons."

The looks of glee everyone except Missy in that room were wearing told me I wouldn't be getting out of there anytime soon.

"Kid Win is right," Missy said. "Your powers are bullshit."

Dragon recovered from our impromptu 'make-Will-say-ALL-the-elements' session the quickest. "As fascinating as learning of over fourty new elements is, and as much as I hate to rush through our tests, I recommend immediately building one of these 'battlecruisers' as you call them. That way you can synthesize some samples of the new elements. Or at least the ones your beaming technology is capable of creating."

I blinked at her. "You do know this ship is massive, right?" I asked, gesturing to my pocket. "Like, way, way, way bigger than a shuttle?"

Dragon nodded at me. "That's actually why I requested Vista's presence. Creating the ship, that is, I certainly wasn't expecting to do actual, non-Tinker science today. She can extend this room far enough for the ship to materialize. We have plenty of Lego pieces by the wall in bins over by the entry door-"

I cut her off by removing a model from the same pocket I'd indicated that was half the length of my arm. "I actually already have the model finished, not just with me. It's apparently fully operational. I figured it would be a good idea to have a battlecruiser I could deploy at any moment. You know, just in case some villain tried to kidnap me," I sheepishly admitted.

Leslie sighed. "Of course you do. I think I'm starting to understand why your team leader refused to be here. I'm already getting a headache."

"We're not!" Nerd Alert and Captain Neckbeard piped up. They were over by a few tables with tons of scientific-looking machines, and at least five different computers. Nerd Alert seemed to be going over the results of my shuttle summoning in detail, while Captain Neckbeard was furiously writing notes on a tablet.

Missy shook her head. "Will, I don't know of any villain that's insane enough to try and kidnap someone who can pull spaceships out of their pockets."

I smirked at her conspiratorially, wiggling my eyebrows. "Just because you don't know about them doesn't mean they don't exist. Who knows, there might be a huge shadow organization running the world from the shadows," I narrated with a spooky voice.

...

Huh.

For a second there I could have sworn I heard someone inhale quickly. Oh well.

Missy crossed her arms. "A shadow organization from the shadows?" she scoffed. "Really?"

I shrugged. "Hey, I calls em like I sees em."

Dragon coughed lightly to get our attention. I immediately turned to look at her robotic monitor and grinned. "Yes, Dragon?"

She sighed. "As interesting as that idea is, we have a spaceship to spawn," she gently reminded me.

My eyes brightened and I actually smiled. "Right! Vista, could I please get a…" I trailed off as I tried to find the dimensions of the Aurora Class Battlecruiser in my head. Instead the answer seemed to come to me from the Lego model in my hands. "Uh, three by half a kilometer space?"

Missy scowled. "That'll tax my powers a lot, Will," she declared.

I shrugged. "I'm sorry, I can't help it. The battlecruiser is just that big, according to my powers. And that space is leaving less than an inch on each side as room for error."

She sighed. "Alright, alright. I'll try."

She turned to face one of the walls of the testing lab, holding both hands spread in the air as if bracing against a wall. She breathed in, breathed out, and suddenly I could sense something absolutely immense pushing on the fabric of reality.

I didn't get a chance to contemplate how it was possible for me to sense such a thing, given how I was staring dumbstruck as the wall flew away from us. It expanded on each side too, but not nearly as much.

In less than five seconds, a cavern of spacetime dickery existed where a simple concrete wall was before.

"Daaamn," I whistled. "Color me impressed."

Missy stumbled, but caught herself before I could finish racing over. She leaned over slightly, hands on her knees, and breathed hard.

"Are you okay, M- I mean, Vista?" I asked, only barely catching myself and using her hero name in the presence of non-Wards.

She glared at me for my near slip, but nodded. "I've just gotta catch my breath," she explained.

I shrugged. "If you're sure," I warily said, hesitating to leave her.

She just waved me off and focused on her breathing.

"Whenever you're ready, Weldon," Dragon said.

I casually strolled over to the midpoint of where the wall used to be, cradling my battlecruiser model in my arms. Lego gets surprisingly heavy when the models reach a certain size. "I'm in position," I announced. Suddenly an idea occurred to me, and I figured it was better to ask than get in trouble later.

"Dragon? Leslie?" I called out.

"Yes, Weldon?" Dragon respectfully asked.

"We have permission from Piggot to do this, right?"

Leslie, Dragon, Nerd Alert and Captain Neckbeard all looked at each other.

Each of them, one by one, shook their heads in a 'don't look at me' sort of way.

Once all of them had shown they hadn't mentioned it to the Director, Dragon sighed. "I'll call her," she lamented.

The sound of a phone ringing took over her speaker output for a couple of seconds. Someone picked up, and I heard a groan as the person on the other end learned who was calling.

"Yes, Dragon?" Piggot began, her tone touchy as hell. "What has he done now? It's only been two hours."

Missy giggled in between her deep breaths, the science team joining her with snickering. The two guys only started chuckling when I flipped them off.

Dragon sent me a tight smile and answered the Director. "So far we've discovered his beaming technology can apparently synthesize matter from energy, that it can do that up to the 131st element of the Periodic Table, that there are actually 160 elements in said table, and that the one just above Naquadah is a form of it several hundred times more reactive and powerful than its predecessor he calls Naquadriah."

Piggot sucked in a breath. "Did you say 160 elements?"

"That is correct, Director."

"131 of which he can materialize out of thin air?"

"His beaming technology supposedly is capable of doing so, yes."

Piggot inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly. "Great. Another thing I'll have to brief the Chief Director and the President on."

I wisely kept my mouth shut. As fun as antagonising Piggot was, it must be really serious if those two were demanding briefings from her.

"At least he can't create Naquadah or this Naquadriah, Director," Leslie spoke up.

"Yes, what a small mercy that is. Is there anything else, Dragon, or did you just call to report?" the Director finally asked.

I didn't have the heart to correct their assumptions. Dragon frankly should have realized the implications of my Tinker power's database crossed with the second power, the one that caused things to become real. Hell, for all I knew she did and was covering for me to keep me from being sent to the Birdcage.

After all, I needed exactly three standard Lego bricks to apparently materialize a Naquadriah bomb capable of wiping out five sixths of the solar system.

My Alteran self was keeping up a constant cry of 'Bullshit!' in the back of my head. My materialization power was world breaking.

Literally.

And that's saying something, because the Alterans had some pretty insane shit. For it to seem off to my memories from one of them? Yeah… big, bad, explosive.

On another note, eat your heart out, String Theory. Your moon destroyer has nothing on me.

Frak, now that I thought of it, Galactic Matter Manipulation Wave Generators could wipe out the entire galaxy.

I shuddered. I hoped I'd never need to build anything like that, for any reason. But much like Einstein before me, I knew I'd eventually have to put my foot down with a massive explosion of some kind. There were too many monsters in the world to believe otherwise, and that was just on Earth.

"We were going to go ahead and have Weldon spawn his battlecruiser for us. Originally I just wanted to compare the two, but with the revelation of the beaming technology's matter assembly abilities I would like to have him create samples of every new element he can. Vista has already provided an expanded space big enough for the ship."

Piggot mused on that for a few moments. "Very well. You have a go. But do not bring any weapons online. I'm not dumb enough to think something with the word battle in the name is weaponless. If it's a proper analogue to the Navy's battlecruiser, the ship will have a lot of them."

"Very well Director, we will leave all offensive systems we can offline," Dragon agreed. "Right, Weldon?"

"Right!" I happily agreed, tossing her a thumbs up. I had no idea how to actually do that, but hey it's not like they could tell whether the guns were online without them firing and I had absolutely no plans to do that anytime soon.

"Good luck, you'll need it," she shot back. Then she hung up.

Dragon focused on me again and smiled grimly. "You can go ahead and spawn it, Weldon, but please try and follow the Director's requests," she pleaded.

Dang it, she asked. Nicely, too. I couldn't shut them off prematurely, but the Throne probably could do it. So, I shrugged. "We're underground. It'll be deploying in an incredibly tight space. Even if the weapons do come online, the shields won't, and we can get to the bridge fairly quickly to turn them off."

"Very well," Dragon acquiesced. "We have a go from my end."

"Sounds good," Leslie agreed.

"Sensors are monitoring," Nerd Alert announced.

"Hit it!" Captain Neckbeard said.

I nodded. "Spawning now," I reported. I lifted the ship model up with one of my hands, aimed, and heaved it over my shoulder as hard as I could.

I spun around just in time to see it fall into the black abyss that was the unlit cavern Missy had created.

Seconds passed.

Nothing further happened.

"Uh," Captain Neckbeard asked, "so... where is it?"

Suddenly an almighty boom rocked through the building.

FWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO-

The earth shook, the PRT building along with it. Missy fell to the ground with a scream. Dragon's monitor cracked. The science team only stayed standing due to clinging to their desks, and I held onto the rattling wall of the lab for dear life so I wouldn't fall into the cavern.

Five seconds passed, the quake and the boom still continued.

-OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO-

Ten seconds, the shaking began to taper off.

-OOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMM-

Fifteen... and the boom finally stopped.

-MMMMMPPPPPH

Silence, stillness, for the first time in what felt like forever. My head was ringing something fierce. From the groans and complaints of the others, they weren't doing so hot either.

"What the hell was that?" Leslie demanded.

"I don't know," came Dragon's voice, distorted. The speakers of her monitor assembly must have been damaged.

"Uh, guys? Where's the ship?" Nerd Alert asked, staring along with me at the decidedly still empty cavern.

I opened my mouth to respond.

And that's when the lighting turned red, an alarm began to chime, and the wail of the Endbringer Sirens erupted across the city.

TCGM · Jan 31, 2018

Jorin said:
Really? I have friend who types his up in plain .txt file and and he adds the bbcode, or the html code depending on where he's going to post it at, while he's typing it and then he just copy/pastes the thing over to um... wherever. He says he uses something called metapad 3.6 for it.

I write across a lot of devices and as such need the syncing of GDocs. Plus I really am not interested in manually adding bbcode, I'll take the newline issue instead.

TCGM · Feb 1, 2018

Ancient Legos
Chapter 03
Reactions

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♦ Topic: (Locked) Power Ratings Now Go Up To 20
In: Boards ► Places ► North America ► United States ► Brockton Bay
Bagrat (Original Poster) (Veteran Member) (The Guy in the Know)
Posted On Feb 6th 2011:
Some of my contacts in the PRT have mentioned that they might be increasing the scale of Parahuman power levels by 10 soon. This is not unprecedented, Labyrinth of Faultline's Crew is a Shaker 12, but it worries me.

What could have possibly made them officially add 10 levels to the Power Scales? They've held off on doing so their entire history. Not even Labyrinth, again someone confirmed to be officially rated Shaker 12, got them to do it.

Is it a new Parahuman? I don't know. For once, I don't have any idea. The PRT is being super hush-hush about everything involved in this.

What do you all think?

(Showing page 3 of 3)

►Brocktonite03 (Veteran Member)

Replied On Feb 6th 2011:

This is so not good. If they're raising the scales to 20, it's because they met a Cape that matches that level. I can't think of any Power Rating I'd want someone to have 20 of. Not even Brute. That's more than Alexandria.

►Valkyr (Wiki Warrior)

Replied On Feb 6th 2011:

Thanks for the heads up, Bagrat. I'll wait for the official announcement to update the Wiki though. No offense.

►Bagrat (Original Poster) (Veteran Member) (The Guy in the Know)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

@Valkyr none taken. I hope my sources are wrong this time.

►XxVoid_CowboyxX (Verified Idiot)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

It's spaceships. I'm calling it right now. They're gonna make all the other Tinkers look like idiots.

User has received an infraction for this post.

Void Cowboy, you know the rules. I'm not repeating them again. -TinMother

►TinMother (Moderator)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

I am locking this thread to prevent unwarranted speculation before a PRT announcement, if indeed one is coming.

End of Page. 1, 2, 3

■

♦ Topic: WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!
In: Boards ► Places ► North America ► United States ► Brockton Bay
Bob (Original Poster) (Veteran Member)
Posted On Feb 7th 2011:
HOLY-

So THIS just appeared above the PRT building. It was accompanied by a sound like thunder that vibrated my bones and a windstorm that blew people standing outside over. It lasted for 10, maybe 15 seconds? The ground was shaking too, like an earthquake. Probably from that ridiculous thunder sound.

I should know. I'm standing on the sidewalk I just ate. With my face! I also can't hear much right now, my ears leaked a little blood. My hearing better not be permanently damaged from this!

Then the Endbringer sirens fired up for a minute or so. I could only barely hear them, but I got the memo once I saw people further away from the thing start running. Once whoever runs the sirens realized the thing wasn't doing anything but sitting there in the sky, they turned them off. Looks like some people are still running to the Shelters even so.

I can't even see both ends! It's massive!

EDIT: People are saying it looks like a spaceship. Can't say I blame them.

EDIT 2: Think a Tinker is behind it? Whoever they were upping the scales for? As much as I hate to see Void Cowboy be right, I can see Tinker 20 being a spaceship builder.

(Showing page 4 of 35)

►Brocktonite03 (Veteran Member)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

That is one big machine. If it even is a machine, it looks like a weird building, only flying and horizontal.

►Bagrat (Veteran Member) (The Guy in the Know)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

Welp. I suppose we now know the new level 20 Cape is a Tinker. Moreover we can be reasonably sure that thing showing up was unexpected given someone hit the Endbringer sirens, even temporarily.

►Winged_One (Veteran Member)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

I cannot see this spaceship you're all saying is there. What are you talking about?

►Chaosfaith (Cape Groupie)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

A FUCKING SPACESHIP?! ARE YOU SERIOUS RIGHT NOW? I know Tinkers are bullshit, but GOD DAMN.

►Valkyr (Wiki Warrior)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

If that thing is what we immediately assume at first glance, Tinker 20 is underselling the new Cape.

►XxVoid_CowboyxX (Verified Idiot)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

HAH! I told you! I told you ALL!

Finally a spaceship Tinker! It's about time a cape made something from scifi!

►Brocktonite03 (Veteran Member)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

No. I refuse to live in a world where Void Cowboy called something.

►AllSeeingEye (The Girl in the Know)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

That is definitely a spaceship. A three kilometer long spaceship. Holy shit.

►L33t (Verified Cape) (Villain)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

Guys, I just sent my flying camera drone up to take a look at the ship.

That thing is not a civilian ship. It has guns.

Big. Fucking. Guns.

Take a look at this, these, and those. And this area, if my Tinker senses are tingling correctly, is a series of some kind of projectile weapon deployment port.

If the Heroes have this kind of firepower now, Uber and I might switch teams.

►GstringGirl (Cape Groupie)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

O.O

End of Page. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 ... 33, 34, 35

(Showing page 5 of 35)

►AllSeeingEye (The Girl in the Know)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

...

Those cannons, and I can only describe them as cannons, have a caliber of 40 meters, or 131~ feet.

The largest gun barrel in the world, the Schwerer Gustav railway gun from Germany, only has an 80cm caliber. That's 0.8 meters. 2.6~ feet.

Holy fucking shit.

►Procto the Unfortunate Tinker (Not a tinker)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

Someone must have looked at the guns on a Star Destroyer from Star Wars and decided they just weren't big enough. The ship's way smaller, but holy shit those guns.

►Reave (Verified PRT Agent)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

I have been told from on high that since the cat is clearly severely out of the bag, I am allowed to release some basic info on our new Wards member.

We are tentatively calling him Shipyard. He is a Tinker. As some have speculated, it is he who we have increased the Power Scale's maximum level for.

He is the world's first Tinker 20+. Yes. PLUS.

Why so highly rated? He creates spaceships (he says they're starships, nobody is very clear on the difference). Not builds, mind you, creates. He has some kind of secondary power which allows him to make the things he builds out of Lego (yes, you read that correctly) into real objects.

Armed objects in the shape of spaceships.

I've been cleared to reveal that because after letting it out, the higher ups are decently confident nobody is going to be stupid enough to attack or otherwise hurt him. To any villains thinking otherwise, he can summon spaceships from his pockets, spaceships which have weapons on board equivalent to small nukes.

He got our PR department, including Glenn Chambers, to capitulate to his costume idea and name. Think about that.

►Acree

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

...In the immortal words of Clockblocker, that's bullshit.

►Clockblocker (Verified Cape) (Wards ENE)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

Yeah, that's what I said when he showed us his powers. My new teammate is bullshit personified.

►Vista (Verified Cape) (Wards ENE)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

Clock, be nice to Shipyard. He can't help his power's absurd levels of bullshit and you know it.

►Kid Win (Verified Cape) (Wards ENE)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

Fucking Tinkers.

►Brocktonite03 (Veteran Member)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

But Kid, you are a Tinker.

►Kid Win (Verified Cape) (Wards ENE)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

He summoned a shuttle bigger than a car in the Wards common room with a fling of his arm, from a Lego model. What's more, I can't understand his tech at all.

Fucking. Tinkers.

►AllSeeingEye (The Girl in the Know)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

Aww, does Kid Win have Tinker envy?

End of Page. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 ... 33, 34, 35

(Showing page 6 of 35)

►Kid Win (Verified Cape) (Wards ENE)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

Shut up, AllSeeingEye, nobody asked you.

►Bagrat (Veteran Member) (The Guy in the Know)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

Roughly 10 minutes after the ship appeared, a white and blonde blur was seen flying towards it from the ground. I'm assuming for now it was Glory Girl, but I can't be sure.

The Cape got within a certain distance of it, passed some kind of threshold, and a glowing barrier appeared around them. It seemed to stretch around the ship in a bubble. The Cape didn't make it much farther, though, because the barrier showed up again as they fell out of it like a ragdoll and kept going towards the ground. I managed to get a video, here.

From the dust cloud I can see from my apartment, they must have hit terminal velocity before impact. I sure hope it was Glory Girl, and that whatever interfered with her flight didn't also knock out her invulnerability.

►XxVoid_CowboyxX (Verified Idiot)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

:O IT HAS A SHIELD TOO?!

►AllSeeingEye (The Girl in the Know)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

It's a shield. God damn it, not only is it a massive spaceship with huge guns, but it's shielded too?! And it looks like that shield interferes with Parahuman abilities, at least ones dealing with flight. Why else would Glory Girl fall? She looked unconscious too. I hope she's okay.

►Glory Girl (Verified Cape) (New Wave)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

I'm fine guys, whatever hit me only turned off my flight and knocked me unconscious. Hitting the ground woke me up. I didn't get hurt though.

►GstringGirl (Cape Groupie)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

Whew. That's good.

►XxVoid_CowboyxX (Verified Idiot)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

I wonder why the ship's shield stopped Glory Girl from flying. She should have just bounced off if it registered her as a threat.

►Panacea (Verified Cape) (New Wave)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

Vicky's not telling the whole truth. She got bruised. Badly. I'm lucky I got to her in time.

Whoever Shipyard is, you need to apologize to Vicky.

►Clockblocker (Verified Cape) (Wards ENE)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

Ooooh @Shipyard, she's calling you out!

►Shipyard (Verified Cape) (Wards ENE)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

@Panacea I am truly sorry for your sister's injuries, but I did not make her fly up and attempt to breach the shield of my battlecruiser. Please do not allow her to do so again, I am not yet on board the ship and it's anti-intrusion systems are active.

This goes for anyone else, too. DO NOT BREACH THE SHIELD. I'm on my way to a shuttle right now so I can get on board and put it in Peace Mode.

I REPEAT: DO NOT BREACH THE SHIELD. If the ship senses too many attacks in a certain timeframe it will automatically engage Defense Mode and start wiping out threats to it or my safety.

Also I'm pretty sure Director Piggot is going to have me on monitor duty for weeks because of this.

End of Page. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 ... 33, 34, 35

(Showing page 7 of 35)

►AllSeeingEye (The Girl in the Know)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

It has a Defense Mode. Great.

Please tell me L33t's camera drone won't trigger that.

That ship's weapons probably make an Endbringer look tame. I'm also a little concerned that you described it as a 'battlecruiser' implying it is not, in fact, a dreadnought class ship.

What the hell else can you build?!

►Shipyard (Verified Cape) (Wards ENE)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

@AllSeeingEye provided Leet keeps his drone outside the shield, he should be fine. As for what I can build; I'm going to go with not giving any more details given Vista is currently whacking me from across the shuttle. A lot.

►AllSeeingEye (The Girl in the Know)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

...You can make bigger things, can't you.

Oh god.

►L33t (Verified Cape) (Villain)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

@Shipyard No worries I am going to keep my drone far, far away from your ship.

Side note, how do we go joining the good guys' team?

►Shipyard (Verified Cape) (Wards ENE)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

@L33t I'm not sure. I showed up at the PRT HQ with a cloaked shuttle and uncloaked it in front of the doors. Let's see here...

Okay, I've contacted the PRT. They should be getting in touch with you about turning yourselves in.

@AllSeeingEye Shhhhhhhhh, don't get me in trouble with the Bosses.

►Brocktonite03 (Veteran Member)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

...And somehow Shipyard makes two villains switch sides within moments of his debut. What is even going on right now?!

►Reave (Verified PRT Agent)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

@L33t I've messaged you privately about, as you said, 'joining the good guys'.

►Bagrat (Veteran Member) (The Guy in the Know)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

A much smaller dark gray ship just flew out of the PRT's garage doors, turned in the air on a dime, and flew up to the 'Battlecruiser'. It bypassed the shield without any kind of effect and flew into a large door on the bottom of the ship that opened when it approached.

I saw at least six others like it on the inside through my binoculars.

@Shipyard, any comment?

►Shipyard (Verified Cape) (Wards ENE)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

Yeah, that was my shuttle. I've landed in the hangar bay and am currently booking it to the Bridge. Hopefully I can turn the automatic defenses off because some idiot tried hitting the shuttle window with a sniper bullet or something. The ship is not happy about that.

►AllSeeingEye (The Girl in the Know)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

...God damn it, is he trying to get us all killed?!

End of Page. 1, 2, 3 ... 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 ... 33, 34, 35

(Showing page 8 of 35)

►Bagrat (Veteran Member) (The Guy in the Know)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

@Shipyard thank you for replying. Out of curiosity, are those more 'shuttles' I saw?

►Shipyard (Verified Cape) (Wards ENE)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

@Bagrat Yeah, the Battlecruiser's main hangar fits like 30 of the things. Neat, huh?

►XxVoid_CowboyxX (Verified Idiot)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

@Shipyard Your ships are so cool! Can I get a ride in one sometime?

►Shipyard (Verified Cape) (Wards ENE)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

Void Cowboy, that would require you telling me your identity. Right now though I need to stop browsing the forums on my phone, I've reached the Bridge.

►AllSeeingEye (The Girl in the Know)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

Of course you have 30 more shuttles. I shouldn't be surprised at this bullshit anymore.

Wait, how did you get from the hangar to what I think is the Bridge?

►Shipyard (Verified Cape) (Wards ENE)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

@AllSeeingEye The battlecruiser has a network of transport booths to many locations across the ship.

►XxVoid_CowboyxX (Verified Idiot)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

:O

O_O

YOU HAVE TELEPORTERS?!

►Winged_One (Veteran Member)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

A hidden craft that can stop Parahuman powers?

No, this will not do.

►Shipyard (Verified Cape) (Wards ENE)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

@Winged_One ... Huh.

Gotta admit, I didn't see that one coming.

Why are you posting on the forums, Ziz, and how can you speak English?

►AllSeeingEye (The Girl in the Know)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

OH SHIT.

...

Guys, he's not kidding.

He's not wrong.

Winged_One is the Simurgh.

FUCK.

End of Page. 1, 2, 3 ... 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 ... 33, 34, 35

(Showing page 9 of 35)

►Winged_One (Veteran Member)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

Interesting, little ship builder. How have you tracked me?

►GstringGirl (Cape Groupie)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

She didn't even deny it.

►Reave (Verified PRT Agent)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

I've alerted my superiors. This is a big problem.

►Shipyard (Verified Cape) (Wards ENE)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

You are not as subtle as you think you are, Endbringer. My ship's sensors cover the entire solar system and far beyond.

And don't think I can't see your real body. The Alterans were nothing if not interested in different dimensions and other realities.

►Winged_One (Veteran Member)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

Well, then. I will simply have to come deal with you.

►AllSeeingEye (The Girl in the Know)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

OH. FUCK.

►Clockblocker (Verified Cape) (Wards ENE)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

@Shipyard THIS IS NOT FUNNY, MAN.

►Shipyard (Verified Cape) (Wards ENE)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

@Clockblocker Sorry Clock, but it's true. My sensors show her leaving orbit right now.

I imagine Dragon is yelling at me, but I'm too integrated with the ship right now to hear her.

Welp, guess it's time to see what the might of the Alterans can do to a hyperdimensional construct.

@Winged_One COME AT ME, MOTHERFUCKER!

►Winged_One (Veteran Member)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

Challenge accepted.

►AllSeeingEye (The Girl in the Know)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

He just challenged an Endbringer to a fight. Directly.

I don't want to live on this planet anymore.

►XxVoid_CowboyxX (Verified Idiot)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

Guys the Endbringer sirens just started up again. They haven't stopped.

►Aegis (Verified Cape) (Wards ENE)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

@Shipyard GOD DAMN IT, SHIPYARD.

End of Page. 1, 2, 3 ... 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 ... 33, 34, 35

(Showing page 10 of 35)

►Bagrat (Veteran Member) (The Guy in the Know)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

What look like engines on the back of the Battlecruiser just lit up. It's starting to move upwards into the sky. I think the guns on it turned to point up too.

►Reave (Verified PRT Agent)

Replied On Feb 7th 2011:

For anyone still reading this and those who haven't gone to the Shelters, this is legit. The Simurgh is on route for Brockton Bay. Get off the forums, go to a shelter, RIGHT NOW!

--LB--

"Oh shit," Greg Veder said, as he bolted out the door with his family. He didn't even log out of his PHO account.

Prince Charon · Feb 1, 2018

... well, you've certainly beaten all previous records for 'most impressive debut.'

I'm a dubious about Browbeat already being a member, given that IIRC, he was new enough during the bank job (in April) that Tt hadn't heard that he was a member of the Wards.

Gindjurra · Feb 1, 2018

TCGM said:
They aren't exactly cheap, especially after Leviathan sank a large part of Japan and wiped out a portion of the East Asian coastline.

Why would the prices of toys from a company in Denmark be affected in the long term by the sinking of Kyushu, Japan? Sure, tsunamis wreck sea ports, but that was many years ago.

TCGM said:
simply did not have common sense.

This. Just about every 'insurmountable' problem the Alterans ever had could have been handled by the application of the rule from the Evil Overlord's List concerning five year old children. Too bad they were so arrogant that it never occurred to them to try.

TCGM said:
How Dean wasn't unmasked for the world still escaped me.

He Kents so well that Superman is taking notes.

TCGM said:
Neutronium is 140

Neutronium is neutron-degenerate matter. Either he's talking about something else, or the Alterans discovered that are stable elements beyond the point of degeneration in normal matter.

TCGM said:
If it's a proper analogue to the Navy's battlecruiser, it will have a lot of them."

The US Navy does not have battlecruisers. Those it did have (back during and before World War Two) have all been scrapped or sunk as practice targets. Not even museum ships remain.

TCGM said:
clear to test anything with him that does not violate treaties the United States is required to uphold

Actually, most of what he makes doesn't violate any treaties, so long as it remains in the planet's atmosphere, below the altitude where space officially begins.

The Alterans didn't use anything so crude as a nuclear weapon, so even if his stuff has the power of very large nukes, they don't violate nuclear weapons treaties. Even Naquada-Potassium bombs are a chemical reaction, not nuclear. Likewise, Potentia are not nuclear reactors so US laws that regulate nuclear reactors don't apply to them -- they're techncally just very dense batteries.

The only way his stuff would violate treaties is that it's illegal by treaty to launch weapons into orbit or beyond it.

What will get him personally into trouble though is that he is a US citizen, any properly ratified treaty the US sogns becomes federal law, and breaking federal laws of that nature is a felony. If the felony involves both violence and a weapon of mass destruction, it would result in a Birdcage-level offense for a parahuman on the first offense.

TCGM · Feb 1, 2018

Gindjurra said:
Why would the prices of toys from a company in Denmark be affected in the long term by the sinking of Kyushu, Japan? Sure, tsunamis wreck sea ports, but that was many years ago.
This. Just about every 'insurmountable' problem the Alterans ever had could have been handled by the application of the rule from the Evil Overlord's List concerning five year old children. Too bad they were so arrogant that it never occurred to them to try.
He Kents so well that Superman is taking notes.
Neutronium is neutron-degenerate matter. Either he's talking about something else, or the Alterans discovered that are stable elements beyond the point of degeneration in normal matter.
The US Navy does not have battlecruisers. Those it did have (back during and before World War Two) have all been scrapped or sunk as practice targets. Not even museum ships remain.
Actually, most of what he makes doesn't violate any treaties, so long as it remains in the planet's atmosphere, below the altitude where space officially begins.
The Alterans didn't use anything so crude as a nuclear weapon, so even if his stuff has the power of very large nukes, they don't violate nuclear weapons treaties. Even Naquada-Potassium bombs are a chemical reaction, not nuclear. Likewise, Potentia are not nuclear reactors so US laws that regulate nuclear reactors don't apply to them -- they're techncally just very dense batteries.
The only way his stuff would violate treaties is that it's illegal by treaty to launch weapons into orbit or beyond it.
What will get him personally into trouble though is that he is a US citizen, any properly ratified treaty the US sogns becomes federal law, and breaking federal laws of that nature is a felony. If the felony involves both violence and a weapon of mass destruction, it would result in a Birdcage-level offense for a parahuman on the first offense.

Sshhhhhhh it doesn't have to make sense and I totally knew Legos come from Denmark. Totally.
Now there's an idea for a fic... Evil Overlord List Alteran.
Indeed.
I'm gonna chalk it up to Alterans are bullshit and call it a day.
Piggot is probably talking about those older ones. She's the kind of person to be an old war buff, before them nasty Parahumans showed up and ruined everything.
What Weldon makes might not violate any of our world's treaties, but I guarantee you there are different ones in a world with Parahumans. Especially for things from Tinkers which emulate extremely high-level Blasters or can wipe out a star system.
See above.
And again, see above.

Also, Hi! Welcome to my shenanigans!

TCGM · Feb 1, 2018

Prince Charon said:
... well, you've certainly beaten all previous records for 'most impressive debut.'

I'm a dubious about Browbeat already being a member, given that IIRC, he was new enough during the bank job (in April) that Tt hadn't heard that he was a member of the Wards.

It certainly turned out that way didn't it. Still, this was really the only way this could go down, Endbringers can't hide from Alteran tech.

TT ain't perfect and besides, I claim handwavium. It's close enough to April for his presence to be up in the air. I chose to include him in the Wards for a reason. Which I might reveal, eventually.

TCGM · Feb 1, 2018

Ancient Legos
Chapter 4
Flight and Fight

Captain's Log, Earth Date: February 7th, 2011

So.

Things have happened.

Um.

Okay, quick summary then given how I'm currently flying a highly advanced warship on course to tackle the most bullshit of the Endbringers.

Said warship didn't spawn where we thought it would. It popped up above the PRT building, in full view of everyone, and let out an immense pressure wave.

I got chewed out by Piggot, Armsmaster, and even Miss Militia.

Then all the Wards.

Then Dragon.

I had to attend an emergency PR meeting. Glenn Chambers tried his Shipper idea again. Needless to say after the 'discussions' I'd undergone with the aforementioned people I was not in a very good mood.

I may have pulled an Alteran energy weapon out of my pocket and implied that if the PR team didn't let me choose they'd be stunned in short order.

Dragon de-escalated by offering me Shipyard as an idea provided the meeting ended without anyone unconscious.

Anything to get me out of that torture chamber was good with me. So now I'm Shipyard.

I was being chewed out by Piggot, again, when the Hyperion (that's the name of this particular Aurora class) mentally connected with me and gave me an alert.

Collateral Damage Barbie had decided my ship was a good idea to Directly Damage.

Thankfully she didn't actually attack the ship. That would have been all kinds of disastrous. She breached the shield barrier and instead fell out of the sky.

Regardless, the Hyperion started counting down to an initiation of it's Defense Mode, something that is probably not a good idea to let loose above a city full of villains.

After telling Piggot this, the fact I was the only one who could fix it, and that I had to be on the Bridge to do so, Dragon's suit picked me up and ran through the PRT building to the garage. As the only one who could keep up currently present, Vista came with us.

Even at their fastest I had enough time to review and even reply to the thread about the ship on PHO that Dragon told me about. Clockblocker had posted and pinged my new account about Collateral Damage Barbie's sister Panacea calling me out.

I apologized, but also covered my ass. The PRT wasn't nicknamed the Public Relations Team for nothing after all. I figured that I should at least try to give an excuse.

When we got to the garage I deployed the shuttle, we got in, and I punched it out of the way too slowly opening doors.

I might have left a sonic boom in my wake but that wasn't really that important given, y'know, actively arming itself warship above the city I live in.

The shuttle easily connected to the internet so I could watch the PHO thread to see the panic level. It wasn't that bad, to be honest, which was nice. Seems people were taking my warning seriously. And I apparently got the duo of gaming villains to turn over a new leaf by way of implied potential for Sufficiently Impressive Firepower, so there's that. I almost spilled information about how big my ships could get to somebody who was an Eye? And saw everything? Usernames are weird. Anyways, I almost spilled it to them but Missy smacked me via spacetime dickery from across the shuttle.

I blamed her for my silence in the post, as is my right.

Everything was going to plan right up until some fucking idiot shot at the shuttle.

Directly at the spot my head would have been hit.

Hyperion really didn't like that. The time to Defense Mode activating dropped like a stone.

So I panicked and put the shuttle into overdrive. Ignored the collapse of Vista as she cried out except to mentally log it for examination and possible apology later. Ignored Dragon trying to get my attention, just pointed her to the medical supplies. Flew into the hangar bay, landed, waited the seemingly agonizingly long seconds for the ramp to descend, and fucking sprinted to the nearest transport booth.

Was able to actively participate on the PHO thread too, thanks to my mental link with the Hyperion's computer systems. Comms system access wasn't enough to stop the countdown though.

Got to the Bridge, nearly threw myself into the Control Throne, laid back, and interfaced.

Defense Mode Activation stood down. Thank fuck.

Oh yeah, and then I traced a surprisingly high number of active dimensional signatures the ship had picked up.

Found out all Parahumans had a pair of trans-reality portals in their heads, including me.

Found out that Dragon wasn't actually in her suit and due to the shield's active counter-surveillance systems, couldn't be remote controlling it.

World's foremost Tinker is actually an AI. Good to know. As soon as I knew that I made damn sure that no transmissions of any kind could reach her.

What? I'm not stupid. We had the Terminator movies on Earth Bet. Even if her creator hadn't built in shackles or a kill switch, someone else probably had.

Oh yeah, and my latest screw up; finding out about the forum account of a feathery death machine, then directly challenging The Simurgh.

On PHO.

Publicly.

Have I mentioned how much below my average common sense I'm batting today?

Shit, there she is!

End Log.

--LB--

I watched the sensor readout as the Endbringer came through by the cloud cover. She flew down toward my ship like an avenging angel, all her wings spread out to the sides and angrily fluttering. Her travel speed was slow and arcing. No doubt this was to add to her psychological impact. Behind her trailed thousands of meteors like a hailstorm of fire. Space debris. She must have wanted a dramatic entrance.

I had to admit it was an awesome scene.

All the main cannons on the Hyperion turned and locked onto her. Drones were loaded into their chutes. Shields drew immense amounts of power from the Potentia the ship had spawned with to reinforce themselves. Point defense beam arrays deployed, ready to intercept all that burning wreckage that was no doubt intended for my ship.

I mentally made a note to apologize to Aegis, I'd accidentally broken the promise about not making one of the crystalline super batteries.

If I had been sitting up or had my eyes open, I would have screamed a war cry at her. With how I was essentially asleep in the Chair Throne, I decided to use the ship's external sound projectors instead.

On second thought I made sure to start recording this and capturing any video others managed to get. Added the video of the Simurgh's spectacular entrance too, it was only fair to the effort she'd clearly put into it. Maybe I could make a little action video out of the footage.

"AND SO I SAY UNTO THE FALSE ANGEL OF DEATH AND DESPAIR; COME AT ME, ZIZ!"

Her normally impassive and blank face curled into a snarl.

I grinned.

She thrust her arm forward, the hell storm of space debris rocketing towards the Hyperion. It screamed through the air, sonic winds buffeting everything which could listen. My point defense arrays opened up, destroying a lot of the projectiles. Even with them going full speed though there were still just too many individual objects for the limited number of beams to intercept.

They didn't seem like they'd be a danger to the shields. I suppose that's why Alterans didn't give the Aurora more than a small loadout of the point defense emitters.

Oh well.

I charged the primary cannons. The entire deck hummed under my feet, vibrating my body down to the bones. The readouts of the cannons reached 100%, and I fired.

The initial volley of bright blue light, so radiant they shined like a star in one's eyes, exploded out of the barrels of the sixteen cannons which had lock on of the Simurgh. The other sixteen were on the underside of the ship and she wasn't yet in their firing arcs. I intentionally had them spread out so some would hit her if she stayed where she was and others would intercept her if she moved. I knew she had precognitive capability, but knowing something is coming and being able to dodge it are two different things. This way, given the travel speed of the blasts, she would be hit by at least one.

I had a decent hunch that she couldn't predict me when I was inside the shield given her PHO statements about being unable to see the ship, but I was hedging my bets regardless.

She didn't react at all until the blasts cleared the shield. It confirmed my hunch about the shield, at least, but I wanted to see how she fairs against the blasts now that she could see them.

The remaining distance only gave her a second of warning time.

What did she do? Did she dodge or attempt to intercept the blasts with her space debris?

Nope, she let the main cluster hit her.

Ear shattering booms ripped the surrounding airspace apart. Flares of bright blue light and explosions eclipsed the feathery death machine from visual view. My sensors could still see her inside the cloud of near star-level heat and pyroclastic miasma that surrounded her.

Or what was left of her, anyways.

Most of her wings were gone. Half her body was vaporized. Only a very large wing and the upper left side of her body, including her neck and face, were still present.

What the fuck. In one go I'd done more damage to an Endbringer than ever before. I knew Alteran weapons were powerful, but nothing brought the resounding truth of the concept home quite like seeing it firsthand.

Even my Alteran memories didn't really prepare me for their destructive potential.

But even more than that, I was shocked at the Simurgh's behavior. Why did she do that? I didn't even really notice the drumming impacts of her debris against the shields with how surprised I was.

To be fair, neither did the shield strength. It just dipped a single tenth of a percent.

She shouldn't have let those hit her. I wasn't really willing to buy the idea that she didn't see them, they were visually quite present if nothing else. She should have dodged into one of the single boxing in blasts, not allowed the main cluster to hit her!

When the last of the explosions from our first volleys finally cleared, over a minute and a half later, I got to witness an expression I'm sure nobody has ever seen on an Endbringer.

The Simurgh was surprised.

What little of her face and lips remained told me that.

How? She should have known what electron stripped plasma blasts the size and power this ship could produce would do to her.

She turned her gaze on the bridge, narrowing her one remaining eye. Suddenly the speed of regeneration quintupled, her body and wings regrowing from the remaining piece in a few seconds.

Okay. I guess she stopped holding back.

Alerts started popping up all around the ship's shield. Close examination found that something was twisting the very air in hundreds of places around the bubble into vortexes, siphoning gallons of air a millisecond. Out of the tips of those vortexes came spouts of plasma, impacting the shield like primary cannon blasts.

But they were beams.

The Hyperion's shield matrix started dropping percentage points. 99%. Ten seconds later, 98%.

Well then. She'd stopped sandbagging.

My physical lips smirked. My turn.

Every drone port on the Hyperion spiraled open. The entirety of the ship's Drone stores was dumped into their chutes. I turned the ship so that all the primary turrets could target her, ignoring the plasma vortexes for now.

"ROUND TWO, BITCH!" I projected.

All the cannons fired in sequence. One after the other, the drum of the booms of Alteran war sounded out, bursts of light rocketing towards her. Like before she had only about a second's warning before the continual barrage rammed into her. Explosions bloomed all over her body, wings included, as her regeneration fought with the destructive energies unleashed.

She started doing the only thing she could do; dodging. Or trying to, anyways. My turrets were all on automatic at that point, instructed to set up situations where she'd be hit by at least one blast no matter where she went.

Provided she didn't try breaking the sound barrier, anyways. Either she wasn't that desperate yet or she couldn't.

I was going with 'not desperate' given her telekinesis should easily be capable of it.

Oh well. It was my job to make her desperate.

When the blasts had guided her towards the front of my ship, I let loose Wave Two.

Out of each the thirty two drone tubes onboard a thousand golden lights spilled forth. Like undulating streams of light they extended into the atmosphere around us. They formed into arcs of blinding light, going away and out from my ship, then closing on the Simurgh with deadly accuracy.

"My god," I heard Dragon say, "it's beautiful."

I got to see another expression on the Simurgh's face that day. One nobody had ever seen even more so than surprise.

Her porcelain caricature was paralyzed, eyes wide, and face somehow paler than ever.

It was fear.

"THIS IS FOR EVERYONE YOU'VE EVER KILLED, MONSTER!" I screamed at her.

And then, she showed something that shocked me out of my rage.

Acceptance.

Just before the lights hit, she bowed her head and closed her eyes. I was surprised to see a peaceful, relieved smile on her lips. A monster like her shouldn't have been capable of making such an expression.

Before I could reconsider, hundreds of phase shifted nuclear level weapons hit her in a single second. Hundreds more the second afterwards. And even more hundreds the second after that. For a good half minute, the light, heat, and energy that erupted out from the Simurgh's body was cataclysmic. The atmosphere for five miles around us turned to plasma. The shields struggled under the strain, dropping a solid two percent per second. The ship rocked and bucked in the firestorm like a bronco, the inertial stabilizers not fully capable of countering the turbulence even at maximum.

But eventually, it cleared.

Thank the gods and my own sense that I'd engaged her far, far above Brockton Bay, because otherwise there wouldn't be an Eastern Seaboard anymore.

All the Drones were gone. They'd either been shielded from the apocalyptic explosion by their phase shifting until they hit the Simurgh and exploded or simply were overcome. My ship was scarred by charred swaths of areas where the shields hadn't been strong enough to prevent all that energy from getting through. Almost all the turrets were down or exploded. They'd just kept firing, as I'd told them to, and overloaded because of it.

At the time I gave them that instruction I was throwing everything at the Simurgh just to see what would finally take her out. Everything went to hell before I could countermand the order.

I took a glance at the shield readout, despite not really wishing to see how close I'd come to death.

The red three sent shivers down my spine.

Right. So. I scheduled in a good few hours later on where I could ponder my existence and release the immense panic attack I was actively suppressing.

I just fought and beat an Endbringer on my second day as a superhero. 'Panic Attack' doesn't really describe what I was going to experience when I finally let go of my emotional control.

A quick upload of the footage I'd gathered of my fight with the Endbringer was posted to the PHO forums. As shaken as I was, the rest of the human race deserved to know the good news and see how one of our destroyers had been silenced. Today would be a good day for everyone else.

I was feeling guilty on top of the panic. Immensely so. I had a nagging suspicion I'd just killed a person. A person who was doing evil things, yes, but against their own will. There was no other explanation for why she'd been peaceful and relieved at the end.

The Hyperion, picking up on my thoughts, brought up the results of a new scan. I sagged into the Control Throne with exhausted relief.

I was wrong. I hadn't truly killed her. If I'd been anyone else… well, that would be terrifying. All the firepower I'd hit her with and it still hadn't killed her. It just made my guilt evaporate instead.

The only thing left of the Simurgh was a small ball of hyper dense matter within which a trans-reality portal latched into this spacetime. It was cracked and certainly had a compromised integrity, given I could scan the inside of it, but it had survived nonetheless. Even now it was starting to emit new mass, supposedly to recreate her body.

With a smile I directed my beam arrays to scoop it up. The core, for that's what it was, of one of humanity's terrorizing monsters and possible coerced, forced, or maybe even enslaved siege engine disappeared in a white light. I directed it to rematerialize in one of the science labs. It relieved me when the rate of mass creation stopped. Apparently she was content to sit there in the lab until I could get to her.

Her portal was still active, so it wasn't that she was incapable of regenerating. But given the data I now had like the portals in Parahuman brains, the fact Glory Girl couldn't fly inside the shield, the lack of the Simurgh's precog ability working inside the same shield, and the emotions I'd seen on her face before she 'died'...

Something smelled fishy in Wonderland.

The fact she stopped regenerating and hadn't attacked me once her core was inside the shield was just more proof.

Something from another reality was providing powers and probably the control signal for Ziz, if indeed she was being controlled like I suspected.

Before I could handle the shitstorm all that implied, though, I needed to deal with my two other guests. They'd found the Bridge right around the time I started firing on the Simurgh with the main cannons a second time. Now they were standing in front of me.

I set the ship on course for Brockton Bay again and got up from the Control Throne.

I opened my eyes to see an irate Dragon suit and a certain cute Ward clinging to it's side as if she would fall. Missy was paler than she should be, with dark circles under her eyes, and Dragon seemed to be shaking.

They were also both clearly torn between being pissed at me and in awe.

"Oh hey gals," I greeted them. "How's it going?"

My response to their dark scowls was to grin ear to ear.

TCGM · Feb 1, 2018

Ancient Legos
Chapter 5
Skynet? But She's So Nice!

It took two whole minutes for them to respond.

"Will," Missy nearly whispered, "did you just kill the Simurgh?!"

I locked eyes with the young heroine. I had a choice here. I could lie, say I had defeated the Simurgh...

To anyone else that statement would seem like confirmation despite it not being so.

No, Ziz, I corrected myself, not 'The Simurgh'. She's a victim. Most likely. Gods I hope I'm right.

Or I could tell them the truth.

…

Given I'd been plagued by a lack of common sense so far that day, going with the opposite of my initial gut-reaction fueled idea was probably a prudent, if cautious, course of… well, action.

"My ship defeated the Simurgh," I neutrally answered my fellow Ward.

Missy's eyes widened and she shuddered. "How?"

"Lots and lots of Drones," I snarkily responded.

Missy abruptly smiled, her eyes taking on a wet sheen, and she sighed with relief. "Yes!"

The look of awe on her cute face left me with even more guilt to add to the slowly evaporating pool I'd received when I thought I'd killed Ziz. Regardless of my feelings I pumped a fist in the air. "Hooray!" was my contribution to the celebration.

"Weldon," Dragon interrupted us, "something's wrong with Vista."

My tiny little good mood evaporated. "What." I flatly growled. Now that I was paying attention again, she did have a far paler complexion than she should. She was also shaking and, as I'd previously noticed but become distracted from, holding onto Dragon's suit leg with a death grip.

"Vista," I sharply said with a commanding tone, forcing her to straighten up as much as she could, "Report."

Hey, unlike a certain clock-based co-worker of mine, I did read the PRT manuals. In the absence of a Protectorate or Wards superior, the eldest member of either was the boss, with Protectorate obviously winning out by default due to the minimum age of eighteen. Dragon was a Guild member, not Protectorate, and thus didn't count.

I was four years (ish) older than Missy. That made me The Big Boss even if my level of experience was peanuts to hers.

"S-sir," the shaking space warper stuttered, "My powers are gone. I can't balance. My entire sense of space is gone. And…," she trailed off with a wince, "I'm pretty sure I've got migraines."

A mental command caused the Hyperion's internal life detectors to focus all their sensors on the young girl. What I found made me pale. I rocketed out of my seat. No time for pleasantries.

"Dragon," I snapped out, "will you take orders from me without any kind of even a guarantee of an explanation?"

Her suit's head inclined slightly as if she was astonished at my audacity. "You are not a government official. You do not have that clearance."

Then before I could reply she jumped a little, shock clear throughout her suit. Three seconds passed.

She stared at me.

I stared at her.

Missy looked confused.

Dragon growled at me. "How did you figure it out?"

I opened my mouth and raised a finger as if to respond before realising something. "Out of curiosity exactly what do you think I figured out?" As I said this, I discreetly had the Hyperion beam a certain device to my other hand, the one behind my back.

I really didn't want to have to use it, but if I had to do so to save Dragon's life from the no doubt observing watchdog program embedded within her code, I would. If it was there, all it would take is my acknowledgement of Dragon's state of being for one of the many potential triggers a Skynet fearing programmer could have made to go off.

After all, an AI that self destructs when someone learns it's an AI is totally within the paranoia profile. It's what I'd do.

If I was a racist prejudiced against digital beings, of course. I wasn't. I was just really, really good at putting myself in other people's mindsets to then develop a counter for their counters.

If I happened to be wrong and there wasn't an external or internal killswitch for her?

Meh. I'd apologize later.

After healing Missy.

Who was watching the whole exchange between us like a fan at a football game.

On another horrifying thought, I shut down the Porta Relay built into the shield. I did not need whatever gave powers relaying a signal to Dragon. If there really was such a thing. Better to be paranoid and safe than sorry, right?

The relay shutdown had the both lucky and unlucky side effect of making Missy collapse. Lucky because Dragon cut off her glare at me to look down and try to catch the girl.

Unlucky should be self explanatory.

I took the split second her attention was off me to fire my 'weapon'. A conic wave of blue energy erupted out in a cone from five inches in front of my hand. It expanded as it traveled, getting just enough area to include the entirety of Dragon's suit.

She froze, all the lights in her armored form fading entirely.

I pulled the barrel of the gun-like emitter up to my mouth and blew imaginary smoke off it.

I'd always wanted to do that.

"Will!" Missy shrieked. I peered around the dark green 'body' of Dragon to see her. She was angry.

Why was she angry?

I glanced between my emitter and Dragon several times before it dawned on me how this appeared.

I'd just shot a world famous Hero in front of her on my second day as another one.

You say I'm not world famous? PHO and the fact I'd just soloed an Endbringer like a mid game farming boss disagree.

Back on the 'just shot Dragon in front of teammate' note…

Whoops.

"Uh…," I tried, "I swear, this is not as bad as it looks."

My teammate gaped at me for a good ten seconds. Then she continued yelling. "IT LOOKS REALLY, REALLY BAD!"

--LB--

"As I've already told you, Missy, she's an AI," I repeated for the umpteenth time, trying to drag said AI's ridiculously heavy suit towards the transport booth right outside the Bridge.

My fellow young hero was watching me like a hawk to ensure I didn't, as her abrupt yelling session accused me of, 'do anything weird' to Dragon. The Cute Ward has a set of lungs on her, no question.

And the idea that she's innocent?

HAH.

Let's just say the PR machine of the PRT must be really good at their jobs. The only other explanation is that Missy has a lot more self control when she's not giving me a thorough lesson on how expansive her vocabulary is.

I'm not sure which option is more terrifying, to be honest.

"And I still don't believe you," she shot back. The poor girl was taking every step next to me very carefully, to keep both her accusing glare on me and her balance.

Almost there. I saw the transport booth doors open as they detected our presence. "How can I prove to you that I'm telling the truth?" I sent her way.

Just five more muscle cramping tugs to go. Come on, Will! You can do this!

My internal cheerleader wasn't really helping at the moment, but A for effort.

Missy narrowed her eyes at me. "You can't. Dragon never leaves her base, wherever that is, and so you can't."

I knew this, of course, just like most cape geeks (and I guess capes too? Huh. Possible opponent threat assessment or worldwide dick measuring contest?) knew it. But that actually made it easier for me to prove it to her than any other idea.

"Okay, Missy, let's say you're right," I began, humoring her while shoving the still fucking heavy Dragon suit into the transport booth. "If you are, then Dragon must have been remote controlling her suit up until I disabled it, yes?"

How was I going to do this? There wasn't enough room in the transport booth for a suit and me, much less with Missy squeezed in alongside us. Just her and Dragon could barely fit uncomfortably in the rather large cubicle that was the booth.

"Right. Dragon remote controls her suits. Everybody knows that," Missy agreed. She was still glaring at me, even if her face had become thoughtful.

Apparently she liked to debate. Who knew?

"What's your point?"

"My point, Missy, is that Dragon was incapable of controlling her suit remotely ever since we breached the shield of the Hyperion," I explained absently, only a small part of my mind in the mostly useless discussion.

"What are you talking about and what is Hyperion?"

I opened my mouth to respond, realized something, and spun around. "You don't know what the Hyperion is?" I asked, confused.

The Cute Ward brought her cuteness factor up another notch by crossing her arms and furrowing her eyebrows. Frak, no wonder the PR team made her so… cute and adorable as a superhero image. She really didn't have the disposition or mannerisms to offset her raw cuteness.

It was like watching a puppy try to look mean. I had to resist my instinctive urge to cuddle her up in my arms and snuggle my face into her hair, as I was quite sure such action wouldn't be appreciated at that moment in time.

Later…? Meh. I'd try and get the other Wards in on it too so she couldn't rain her wrath down upon me alone.

"No, Will, I do not know what 'The Hyperion' is," she growled.

I blinked, even more confused. "Why not?"

"Because you probably think you told me and didn't," she offered, a smirk gracing her lips.

My eyes widened and I let out an embarrassing "Ah." Yeah, now that she brought it up, I'd only thought of the Hyperion in my own head and written it into a log I composed from the Throne Chair, neither of which were necessarily verbal communications methods. I cleared my throat awkwardly and gestured to the deck below us. "Yes, well. Sorry about that. The name of this ship is the Hyperion."

Missy's glare only lessened a tiny bit. "Uh huh. Great. Can we get back to the fact you shot a hero in the back now please?!"

I rolled my eyes at her melodramatic tone. "Fine. Like I said, ever since we breached the Hyperion's shield, Dragon could not possibly have been remote controlling her suit."

"Why not." Uh oh. Missy's patience was starting to run out.

Dennis had warned me that if I ever heard that tone from her I was to either apologize or run the hell away.

Option A was out because I didn't do anything wrong and B because she could just warp spa-

Wait.

Could she do that now that whatever was providing powers was blocked?

"WILL!" she yelled, her face coming back into abrupt focus right in front of my face.

"Gah!" I cried out, jumping back.

Several things happened in the next five seconds.

I hit Dragon's precariously balanced suit in the very open transport booth doors.

It lost any semblance of stability I'd managed to coax out of the inactive servos.

We both collapsed to the floor outside the booth, Dragon's incredibly heavy suit on top of me. The limbs of it that met the floor expressed their irritation with me by letting out several ear-splitting CLANGs.

The Hyperion, sensing I was in danger, automatically used the Asgardian Beaming Arrays to move the inactive suit off me and to the floor next to me.

Missy jumped back and got into a wobbly combat stance at the sudden light and sound.

I groaned on the ground, brought a palm to my face, and banged my head against the floor.

I'd completely forgotten about those.

"Will!" Missy called out.

"I'm okay!" I called back, coughing a little at the damage my ribs had received from the momentary collision between a several hundred pound mech and my vulnerable body. Those were gonna need a patch job. "I'm also an idiot!"

"Why?"

"I just remembered that the Hyperion has beam arrays. We don't need to use the transport booths!"

I expected her to be happy, or even relieved.

I did not expect the Tone of Death, another warning Dennis gave me.

"WHAT."

Uh oh.

TCGM · Feb 2, 2018

TCGM pulls up to your screen, whispering under his breath.

"Why nobody talk to me?"

He frowns, glancing back up at the lack of posts between Chapters 4 and 5. There's gotta be some way to bait the forum goers into posting, he thinks. Perhaps I shall insert intentional mistakes into the text in order to stir controversy. Works for the news.

kingtaso01 · Feb 2, 2018

TCGM said:
TCGM pulls up to your screen, whispering under his breath.

"Why nobody talk to me?"

He frowns, glancing back up at the lack of posts between Chapters 4 and 5. There's gotta be some way to bait the forum goers into posting, he thinks. Perhaps I shall insert intentional mistakes into the text in order to stir controversy. Works for the news.

Sorry! It's just that I've already read the story both in ff and Spacebattles. Trust me, I'm keeping up with it. Maybe to make it more attractive here in QQ post it in the NSFW thread?

Horus · Feb 2, 2018

personally, this is the 3rd place i've read this, no new content so nothing worth remarking on.

more generally, this is the quietest of the 4 main sections, so not a lot of people to comment.

TCGM · Feb 3, 2018

kingtaso01 said:
Sorry! It's just that I've already read the story both in ff and Spacebattles. Trust me, I'm keeping up with it. Maybe to make it more attractive here in QQ post it in the NSFW thread?

horus said:
personally, this is the 3rd place i've read this, no new content so nothing worth remarking on.

more generally, this is the quietest of the 4 main sections, so not a lot of people to comment.

Ah yes, I forgot the readership here is present on SB as well.

Sorry, it just felt a little lonely.

Mana_Knight_Jorin · Feb 3, 2018

TCGM said:
Ah yes, I forgot the readership here is present on SB as well.

Sorry, it just felt a little lonely.

*Gives TCGM a friendly hug*

I'm reading your story and I think it's cool.

If you get this in the NSFW section it will get more traffic for it.

TCGM · Feb 3, 2018

Jorin said:
*Gives TCGM a friendly hug*

I'm reading your story and I think it's cool.

If you get this in the NSFW section it will get more traffic for it.

But it's not NSFW :/

Not after I redid the joke in CH1 anyways.

kingtaso01 · Feb 3, 2018

TCGM said:
But it's not NSFW :/

Not after I redid the joke in CH1 anyways.

It's not yet NSFW. Wait a few more weeks in QQ and you'll probably get corrupted. Possibly by Cambrian or BigBoom

Winged One · Feb 3, 2018

So... was anyone else expecting Replicators instead of Alteran tech in general from the title?

moonberserker · Feb 3, 2018

Winged One said:
So... was anyone else expecting Replicators instead of Alteran tech in general from the title?

Yeah I was expecting him to build replicators with the legos or at least Asurans.

TCGM · Feb 3, 2018

Winged One said:
So... was anyone else expecting Replicators instead of Alteran tech in general from the title?

moonberserker said:
Yeah I was expecting him to build replicators with the legos or at least Asurans.

Replicators and Asurans are coming. Our Lady of Escalation needs something after all, and there's the issue of Dragon...

KickInator · Feb 3, 2018

I kept this fic open in a tab for 5 days. Probably should have read faster. This is completely hilarious. The next chapter is gonna be awesome.

Mana_Knight_Jorin · Feb 4, 2018

KickInator said:
I kept this fic open in a tab for 5 days. Probably should have read faster. This is completely hilarious. The next chapter is gonna be awesome.

Simply "awesome" or Rainbow Dash levels of "Awesome!" instead?

Horus · Feb 4, 2018

I'm hoping for Heterodyne levels of "Awesome!"

KickInator · Feb 4, 2018

Jorin said:
Simply "awesome" or Rainbow Dash levels of "Awesome!" instead?

Nyancat levels of 'AWESOME!!'

Ancient Legos [Worm/Stargate]

(Unverified God/Space Snek)

(Unverified God/Space Snek)

The Mana Knight

(Unverified God/Space Snek)

The Mana Knight

(Unverified God/Space Snek)

The Mana Knight

(Unverified God/Space Snek)

(Unverified God/Space Snek)

(Unverified God/Space Snek)

Just zis guy, you know?

Versed in the lewd.

(Unverified God/Space Snek)

(Unverified God/Space Snek)

(Unverified God/Space Snek)

(Unverified God/Space Snek)

(Unverified God/Space Snek)

Not too sore, are you?

God Of The Sky, Protection, And Kingship.

(Unverified God/Space Snek)

The Mana Knight

(Unverified God/Space Snek)

Not too sore, are you?

Not the Simurgh

Experienced.

(Unverified God/Space Snek)

Know what you're doing yet?

The Mana Knight

God Of The Sky, Protection, And Kingship.

Know what you're doing yet?

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