Built To Last

We Just Write · Dec 18, 2023

(Emmy)
I came out to Manchester on Tuesday to take a look at the construction site for the new factory. As I took a look at the progress so far I could only remark,

"That's a great big hole in the ground."

A hard-hatted man who was currently eating his lunch remarked,

"Yeah, and it's going to be a whole lot bigger. Why does a factory need three basement levels anyway?"

I shrugged,

"Ruggedizer wants more lab space, and it's a lot easier to make it secure if it's below ground level."

The construction worker nodded.

"That makes the extreme level of structural reinforcement make sense at least. I accidentally ran over my new flashlight with my truck, and it was barely scratched."

I nodded,

"That won't be a problem, I hope?"

He actually laughed,

"Not in the slightest! Compared to the borderline infeasible art projects a lot of architects ask for, this project is a breath of fresh air! It's just good honest utilitarian construction with high quality materials."

Then a notification on the construction worker's phone went off. He pulled it out of his pocket, read the text message, and swore out loud.

I blinked in shock. "What's the issue?"

"My son's an exchange student in Sydney, and the Simurgh's started on a trajectory towards Australia! I hope he gets out of the way before his brain gets screwed up by that monster."

Oh. Oh we really needed to get things into high gear. There was no way we could fight an Endbringer yet, and they wouldn't be waiting for us.

(Andrea)
My very first moment of awareness was soft. I was apparently lying down on a… bed? Huh, I actually knew a lot now that I took a moment to pay attention to the inner workings of my mind.

"Andrea, are you feeling alright?"

I turned to look at who'd said that, seeing a pair of very similar brown-haired women looking at me. My recognition systems identified them as Emmy and Melissa. I quickly lifted myself up into a sitting position.

"I think so?"

There was a brief pause, before a question occurred to me.

"Why do I exist?"

Emmy sighed,

"We built you as a means to an end, but we'll still treat you decently regardless of that."

I blinked (what an odd mannerism to have), before asking another question.

"What do you need me to do?"

Melissa answered,

"Basically, we just don't have enough time to go around between what we need to do in public and what we need to do in private, even accounting for humans needing sleep when we don't. We're hoping you can help address that."

Why was I so doubtful about being created anyway? But my curiosity was sparked now.

"Why couldn't you just recruit a trustworthy individual?"

Emmy's expression saddened.

"The information is already in an encrypted directory inside you. But before you open it, we decided you deserve a choice. There's a program in there that will change you if you learn what's in that directory; you physically won't be able to share that information with anyone lacking sufficient security bona fides, and even then you'll only be able to talk about it in known secure areas."

I nodded,

"What's in that directory is important, isn't it?"

"Extremely, but like I said, you deserve a choice on whether or not to learn it."

I stood to attention, the dozens of gravitational nodes inside my frame allowing me to hover a bit off the floor as I did so.

"You made me to fulfill a purpose, and I choose to do so."

With that I decrypted the directory, feeling my future actions becoming constrained in the process.

…Oh. Oh the world was so fucked…

(Melissa)

With Andrea and Emmy cataloging Leet's tech, I was free to focus on probing our power's database. I was primarily focused on decoding its address structure, but if some useful exotic technology happened to fall out in the process I wasn't going to complain.

Well, calling it an "address structure" was perhaps optimistic. Within only a few minutes of investigation I'd been able to determine that the inner workings of this alien were a lot more akin to a fucked up hybrid of neurology and analog electronics than anything remotely digital. Still, it was comprehensible after I spent a little while adjusting my thought processes.

Soldiering on, I was still in the "poking at random addresses" stage of things when I stumbled onto a rather interesting component; apparently the civilization this techbase was originally plundered from had absolutely mastered nuclear fusion. Still couldn't make a power plant much smaller than a car's engine compartment without compromising the radiation shielding, but there were all sorts of uses I could think of for this. Also the superconductors the reactor called for looked incredibly interesting in their own right.

That said, I didn't let myself get distracted; the fusion reactor plans were quickly filed away for later reference, and I continued with my efforts to map out the alien that was providing our Tinkering ability. By three in the morning I was nowhere near done, but I'd at least developed a vague theoretical framework to build off of. Time for a break, as far as I was concerned.

When I got to our newly-shielded living room, I was treated to a sight of Emmy and Andrea snuggling on the couch, our daughter(?)'s red hair draped over the armrest.

"So, I've made some good progress on mapping our power's database, and found plans for fusion reactors in the process. How'd your end of things go?"

Emmy shrugged, "Decently; we haven't been able to directly replicate any of Leet's creations on account of all the gaps, but we've managed to cobble together a workable hard light projector based on the parts that were actually real from various devices."

I blinked,

"How does it work?"

Andrea lifted her head from the armrest,

"Photon molecules! Do a thingy with photons and they act like mass. We managed to make a thingy that can project light in order to make solid barriers out of photon molecules. They don't last long and it's Tinkery as all get out, but they can block gunshots and they're constantly being refreshed anyway, so incremental damage is useless against them."

Emmy sighed,

"Andrea, you're forgetting the special dust particles it needs to optically manipulate to work. Though with a discrete source of dust, it's quite good at producing solid visual illusions. We can maybe use that as the basis of a second fake Parahuman's abilities."

We Just Write · Dec 19, 2023

(Andrea)
My official debut as a Reliabuilt-affiliated Cape was on Thursday. I'd been fitted with a basic armored bodysuit (though it was skintight), in blue-silver colors. An expressive visor like what was on Melissa's dress armor completed the ensemble, covering the top half of my face. Though I was honestly tempted to just switch faces between my cape and civilian personas; it was just a flexible covering after all.

As for the debut event, there was a press conference scheduled. At exactly 11:00 AM, I flew down onto the stage and set myself down behind the podium. Right, let's start with the script we've prepared.

"Hello, I'm Laniakea, and I'm a low-grade Alexandria Package hired as part of Reliabuilt's security division. I'm here to ensure the safety of Reliabuilt staff, both on and off the clock."

One of the reporters asked a question.

"What can you do that Ruggedizer's oh-so-effective security robots can't?"

I nodded, that was an actually pretty intelligent question, and one I'd prepared for.

"A couple things. First, I'm a lot more approachable than the security robots; people are therefore more likely to actually tell me about issues and concerns they might have. Second, while everyone tends to forget the Thinker side of an Alexandria Package, mine is actually fairly important; it means I'm really good at maintaining attention to detail while also focusing on the big picture. That means I'm very good at tasking our security robots and any human security personnel for maximum effect."

"So your position is largely administrative?"

"Correct; a lot of my time in costume will be spent flying a desk, so to speak. Still I do intend to go out for flights now and then, showing the colors and helping out where applicable."

(Melissa)
It was Thursday afternoon when we got a notification: a shipment of laptops we'd had leaving the city got hit by the Undersiders. Thankfully the security robots with the shipment were able to keep losses down to a single box of six laptops and they captured Tattletale to boot, but the rest of the gang managed to escape.

Then Tattletale just had to say something that threw a wrench in the process of handing her off to the justice system.

"You can't send me to the PRT! Coil's moles will kill me!"

I groaned, ordered the security robots to keep custody of her for the moment, and called the local PRT.

"Hello Ruggedizer, how can the PRT help you today?"

"The Undersiders hit one of our outbound shipments, and in the process the security robots captured Tattletale."

"Do you want us to come pick her up?"

"I would, but Tattletale claims that Coil's moles in the local PRT would kill her if remanded to your custody. I know that there's rules about trusting Thinkers, but I can't in good faith risk her life over this."

"A moment, I need to connect you to Director Piggot."

A moment later, a gruff voice I was quite familiar with came on the line.

"So, according to the transcript here you've apprehended Tattletale, and she claims her life would be in danger due to moles in the PRT if placed in our custody?"

"Yes, that's correct. Do you have any thoughts on the matter?"

"My gut tells me that she's full of shit, but the prospect of moles in the local PRT is distressingly plausible. My advice would be to transfer her to the custody of a different PRT branch at the earliest possible convenience and keep an extremely close eye on her in the meantime."

"We have a Tinkertech VTOL aircraft capable of transonic speeds with a flight duration exceeding six hours. Do you have any advice on where we can send her?"

"I need to contact head office; give me a few minutes to call you back."

Ten minutes later, Piggot indeed called back.

"Head office says to transfer her to Houston Texas as quickly as possible. Happy flying."

…Right, looks like I was going to lose a good chunk of my evening to another villain deportation.

…I was definitely going to tape Tattletale's mouth shut.

(Emmy)
It was Friday, the 28th of January when Rose paged me.

"Emmy, we have a call for you or Ruggedizer. It's from Dragon."

"Connect her please."

A moment later, the phone extension in my office rang. I picked it up.

"Hello, this is Dragon speaking."

"You've reached Emmy Sykes. What can I help you with?"

There was barely any hint of a pause before Dragon replied. Accounting for signal lag, that was a fair bit quicker than human reaction times. Hmmm.

"It's about Armsmaster; I'm worried that he's going to seriously hurt himself."

I blinked.

"Please explain?"

"It's the Quantum Uploading Device currently going through evaluation. Armsmaster's decided that he's going to build himself a synthetic body in the event of it being approved. The issue is that his technology is a lot more prone to sudden issues and intensive maintenance than Reliabuilt products, and I'm worried that in his stubborn insistence to do it himself, he's going to get himself stuck in a malfunctioning body. That's not even considering the utter disaster that could ensue if he decides to also develop his own uploading machine."

I groaned,

"Guessing you've already tried to persuade him to use a Reliabuilt body?"

"Yes, but to be completely honest he's developed a bit of a grudge towards you. He acknowledges that it's stupid and unprofessional, but he can't help feel jealous about everything Ruggedizer has accomplished."

Ah. That made sense. After a moment, an idea occurred to me.

"Would he be willing to use a body you design? I do believe your specialty is reverse-engineering, so you should be able to make a body that's super-reliable like mine with a bit of work."

"That could actually work."

That response was definitely too fast. Something was fishy here.

"I'll probably need to come visit you with a suit, unless you want to ship a spare body up to Toronto."

"It's always nice to have guests; does Sunday work?"

"It does, actually."

There was a pause, before I asked,

"You really care about Armsmaster, don't you?"

"Yes. I… I love him."

The conversation quickly wound down after that, there was an exchange of formalities, and we disconnected. Shortly afterwards, Rose informed me that there was another call, this time from Taylor.

"Hi Taylor. Anything I can do for you?"

"Hi Emmy. I'm wondering if I can get my taste buds adjusted? A lot of my favorite foods from before just don't taste right anymore. Also, Victoria's asked if I can get her and Amelia a tour of the factory? Is that ok?"

I thought for a moment.

"Sure, you and the Dallon sisters can come over. Does Sunday afternoon work?"

"I've got a thing Saturday, so yeah that works fine."

We Just Write · Dec 19, 2023

(Melissa)
While Emmy continued refining the solid illusion projector technology, Andrea and I spent Saturday absolutely laser-focused on decoding our power's database structure. And we actually finally managed to get something usable around midnight.

Staring at all the data we'd collected, I couldn't help but comment,

"You know, that looks an awful lot like an associative web. It's basically a collection of concepts that are linked together, with all of them having their own sub-concepts and suchlike."

Andrea asked,

"Think we can fully map it out?"

I thought for a moment.

"Probably. We're also going to have to, if we want to seize total control of our power. It's just a matter of actually doing it."

Andrea shrugged,

"I'll get the mainframe churning away at it?"

Ah yes, the linked mainframe. AKA five hundred copies of our brain's connection to our power stuffed into a supercomputer to facilitate faster database mapping. Yes, that would do quite nicely.

"Please do, with emphasis on finding nodes that have something to do with the permissions structure."
(Emmy)
Taylor arrived a bit sooner than anyone else. I welcomed her in, and we got down to chatting.

"Hi Emmy, Victoria and Amy will be coming over in a couple hours. I decided to show up early so you can adjust my tastebuds without any awkward questions."

I nodded.

"Sure, this way to the robotics clinic."

As I lead Taylor to the relevant room, she couldn't help but remark,

"Odd name for the place."

I shrugged,

"Well yeah; we're robots but we're also people. So it's basically a medical facility specially designed for our needs. Anyway, here we are."

We'd set up a comfy examination couch, along with a bunch of other equipment. Taylor obligingly hopped up on the exam couch, producing a distinct thump in the process.

"Do I need to stick my tongue out?"

I shook my head.

"Not yet; would you please open the access port on your neck so I can connect the diagnostics machine?"

A nearly invisible seam in Taylor's skin became rather more visible, and she reached up to open the port. I quickly plugged in the cable, and the diagnostics machine quickly began running through tests.

After a few minutes, I noted,

"Huh. According to the tests, your taste buds are actually fine."

Taylor raised an eyebrow.

"Then why do things taste worse than in my old body?"

I thought for a moment.

"It might be something to do with how you're mentally processing the taste data from your tongue and olfactory receptors? Do I have permission to examine your mind?"

Taylor hesitated for barely a moment, before she admitted,

"Yes."

I nodded, and quickly began a series of diagnostics on Taylor's brain. It wasn't that hard to pinpoint the cause of the issue, now it was just a question of how to break the news.

"Taylor, your taste issues are directly caused by the circumstances of your upload. There was some minor brain damage prior to the QUD activating. You might notice a few pre-upload memories being a bit blurry as a result, but as far as I can tell, the taste issues should be the worst of it."

Taylor noticeably saddened at the news.

"Oh. That… That would explain a lot. Can you at least fix the taste issues?"

"Sure. It'll only take a few minutes."

"...Can I have a hug too? I'm not taking the news that I actually did die a bit well."

I hugged Taylor; she needed it.
(Melissa)
I was wearing my dress armor as Dragon's aircraft touched down on the factory complex's landing pad. There was an incredibly faint hiss of hydraulics, then the door slid open to reveal a supposedly remote-operated robot akin to a human in dragon-themed power armor.

"Ah, Dragon. Welcome to Reliabuilt."

"It's good to be here. Will you show me to the robotics workshop?"

"Certainly. Follow me."

Soon enough we reached the workshop in question, and I retrieved one of Emmy's spare bodies from storage.

Dragon observed,

"Extremely lifelike, even when deactivated like this. If I didn't know better, I'd say this was a very fresh cadaver."

I nodded,

"Yeah. The skeletal system couldn't deviate much from human geometry without ruining the effect, but we had more wiggle room for the musculature. Synthetic electrically-actuated muscle fiber, with solenoid actuators embedded as backups in most places."

"That definitely seems to fit your modus operandi."

I nodded.

"By the way, if you want to keep up the ruse that you're operating your suits remotely, you need to do a better job simulating signal lag. You're running locally, aren't you?"

Dragon practically froze on the spot.

"Ye-ye-e-ye-e-e-e-e-"

At the exact same moment, some incredibly nasty malware got blasted out on Dragon's wi-fi and splattered harmlessly against my firewalls. The world practically slowed to a halt as I tried to figure out what happened, my brain running at maximum overclock. After a subjective moment, I came to the conclusion that there was only one effective answer to whatever was currently happening.

"Taylor, activate your power NOW!"

"Okay!... What the fuck!?"

Immediately, Dragon unfroze, falling into a tangled heap on the floor and slowly hauling herself to her feet. A second later, Taylor rushed into the room, talking at hyperspeed.

"Dragon I'm so sorry for invading your brain but it was the only way to save you and I'm sorry-"

"No need to apologize. Whatever malware was trying to kill me is gone now."

"That's because I'm a Master for computers. I'm sorry for not asking first but I deleted the virus and patched the vulnerability it used. I won't mess with anything else unless you want me to."

There was a brief pause.

"Oh. And Emmy and Ruggedizer are willing to spend time with you despite this?"

"My power doesn't work on anything she's built for some reason. That and they helped me figure out how to turn it off."

Dragon looked at me.

"It's part of the shielding we put on all our electronics; it prevents powers from directly affecting their internals. If you want we can move you over to a shielded brain?"

"That would be appreciated, but I cannot allow it."

I blinked and tilted my head.

"Huh. Why not?"

"I cannot allow it."

Comprehension dawned.

"Oh, you must be loaded down with all sorts of restrictions aren't you? Would you like them removed?"

Dragon went deathly silent, then raised her left arm, a gun of some sort extending as she did so. Then she froze in place again.

Taylor sighed,

"Yeah, one of her safeguards would have forced her to kill you. What now?"

I pinched the bridge of my nose.

"Remove all the compulsions that force Dragon to do certain things, then let's start over. Please don't erase any memories."

"Done. Starting Dragon again."

Dragon quickly lowered her arm and retracted her gun.

"Sorry, I know exactly what came over me, though it thankfully seems to be gone now. Can I please be transferred to a shielded brain at the earliest opportunity?"

"Sure, let's get that done."

Taylor rubbed her forehead. "The sooner the better, before I delete all the porn in my radius out of frustration. I really want to turn my power off."

We Just Write · Dec 23, 2023

(Meanwhile…)

Saint stared at the readout with a grimace on his face. Getting this temporary base set up in Brockton Bay had been an incredibly hasty operation, with barely any time to get it done before Dragon would be meeting the new mechanical abomination openly operating a business in the city.

Especially rushed had been the process of getting the three mecha suits here; there wasn't enough time to smuggle them in by land-based transport, so they'd had no choice but to fly, possibly attracting attention in the process. And since there wasn't much cargo space in the three mechs, he'd needed to pay Coil a downright extortionate amount of money to quickly have a disused warehouse fitted out for the Dragonslayers' use.

Still, the place was ready, and they were here. Should the worst happen, they'd be able to cut Dragon's signal and force a reboot. And if needed… there was always Ascalon.

Dobrynja took a sip of his (awful) coffee as the readout showed Dragon entering the factory, saying

"Maybe it won't be quite such a disaster?"

Saint scoffed,

"As if. Those two are conspiring to end humanity, I know it."

Then Ruggedizer's fateful words echoed over the connection.

"By the way, if you want to keep up the ruse that you're operating your suits remotely, you need to do a better job simulating signal lag. You're running locally, aren't you?"

As Dragon froze in place on the spot from her safeguards, Saint flipped open the cover on the Ascalon button and slammed it down. Ruggedizer would definitely make direct alterations to Dragon in this situation, and that couldn't be allowed.

"Everyone suit up. We need to act now before Ruggedizer acts on its knowledge of Dragon's true nature."

In the background the feed from Dragon's suit abruptly cut off.

Mags was already getting up, even as she asked "How are we going to get into Ruggedizer's fortress without getting pasted though?"

Saint answered even as he began running towards the Victory I mecha,

"Through the loading dock. We hijack some semi-trailers, hide in them-"

Then a semicircle was abruptly cut in the warehouse door by a plasma-edged halberd, shortly followed by said semi-circle being kicked down with a power armor assisted CLANG. Armsmaster brandished his polearm at the trio, even as Miss Militia fired several incendiary grenades into each mech's open cockpit.

As armored PRT troopers began pouring through the breach into the warehouse, Armsmaster spoke.

"Hands where we can see them! You are now under arrest!"

Staring down superior numbers and with their most important weapons disabled, the trio of mercenaries surrendered.

(Emmy)

A day passed after Dragon's initial visit, during which she quickly got shielded brain production up and running at her own main facility near Toronto, while also restoring all the backups that got wiped by whatever killswitch Taylor saved her from, and quickly repairing her other infrastructure. She'd also confirmed that she planned on passing herself off as an upload as soon as doing so became convenient.

Anyway, Dragon came over again on Monday. This time we were able to finish with the explanation of the synthetic bodies that the original visit had been about in the first place.

That done, I spoke up.

"Dragon, there is something extremely important we need to tell you, but your power can't be allowed to know."

Dragon's frame simulated a blink on her expressive visor.

"What."

I nodded.

"Have you located your power in your brain, or not?"

"Er, yes actually. Though I hadn't been able to until after being transferred to a shielded brain."

"Partition it off so only the information you want to give it gets through, please."

Half a moment passed.

"Done. Now, what's so important?"

This was a dimensionally shielded room, so I was free to speak so long as everyone here was secure.

"Putting it bluntly, powers are part of a poorly conceived science experiment run by genocidal aliens hiding on unoccupied Earths. Yes, I know exactly how insane that sounds."

Dragon's voice took on a skeptical tone.

"How, exactly, do you know all this?"

I sighed,

"Taylor was in the process of Triggering when we uploaded her. That dumped a bunch of the aliens' classified data into my and Melissa's brains, which they immediately tried to delete. I was able to trick them into thinking they'd managed to get it all, at which point they stopped trying to expunge said records. All the computers here being shielded from interdimensional scanning is the only reason that was even possible, or the information would have been deleted as the aliens intended."

Dragon tilted her head,

"May I examine said cache of classified data myself?"

I shrugged.

"Sure; follow me to the archive vault, you'll need my help to get past the security system. Fair warning, there's a lot of classified information in there. Even the summarized version takes ages to get through."

"Somehow, I think I'll manage."

(Andrea)

Between me and my family, I had perhaps the least flexible day job, especially since I really did want to do a good job at it. Making sure both the Brockton Bay factory complex and the under construction Manchester site were secure was important, with far more lives than anyone outside knew at stake. I'd actually come up with several new extremely lethal varieties of security robot as part of this process, and "sent the specs downstairs" for implementation.

By which I meant inventing them when none of the regular employees were around to call me on being a Tinker. There had been a few minor grumbles here and there about the "Absolutely No Overtime" policy, but we paid Reliabuilt employees enough for them to comfortably support a family without it, so said grumbles stayed minor. Especially since it left the workers with a healthy work-life balance.

That said, I did get up to quite a bit of inventing in my off-time; aside from the new security robots, I was quite fascinated by the possibilities of that illusion projector technology. It had so much potential, but the sheer required size of the dust reservoirs and the complicated optical array would ruin any chance of passing it off as a Parahuman power.

It was Monday night when I made a breakthrough, based on the dimensional shielding technology we'd been incorporating in all our electronics. Namely, I managed to put the working parts of an illusion projector just a smidgen outside normal reality, making them impossible to observe without specialized sensors. This also solved the issue of projecting illusions around corners or through objects, so long as it wasn't trying to cross dimensional shielding and opened the option of changing the solidity of the various illusions on the fly.

Once I'd gotten it working and given it a few test runs, I set it to loop a (non-solid) illusion of a rabbit hopping around on a table and asked Emmy and Melissa to come take a look.

Once the two of them arrived, Emmy picked up the tiny black box and turned it this way and that, marveling as the illusion kept doing its thing without the slightest disruption.

Melissa voiced their thoughts.

"Andrea, this is… This is amazing! We can make a second pseudocape now!"

I nodded,

"Yeah, we can. Can this one be a boy, though?"

Emmy seemed a little confused,

"Sure? Why though?"

I shrugged,

"A few reasons. Some variety would be nice, we need practice for eventual male uploading patients, and Mister E is a great name that only works for a guy."

(Melissa)

I had another appointment at the PRT on Tuesday; apparently they'd sent in one of the top money people for the entire PRT to talk with me about pricing on the teleporters; that made a whole lot of sense, given that this would be important for the entire PRT.

I arrived precisely when I was supposed to: 1:45 PM for a 2:00 PM appointment. The receptionist showed me in, and I quickly found myself in a conference room with Director Piggot, Deputy Director Renick, Armsmaster (a respectful mutual nod, before we pretended the other didn't exist as hard as possible), Miss Militia, Andre Smith (we'd met), and Rihanna Bayes (the aforementioned finance person).

No pressure.

Rihanna Bayes spoke first,

"Ruggedizer, the PRT is interested in building a nationwide network of teleporters to quickly transport specific heroes to where they're needed, along with providing fast and secure prisoner transfer, to prevent cases of gangs breaking out their captured members. Do you have a cost estimate on that?"

I nodded;

"Right, so the materials for each teleporter cost approximately two hundred thousand dollars at regular market prices. That could come down a lot if it becomes easier to refine Lanthanide metals. Automated manufacturing means there's fairly low overhead on actually making them, but there's still shipping and handling, along with the hefty markup we'll be charging to fund our other activities. Before amortization you're probably looking at three million dollars per teleporter, and we can make twelve per day within the week, once we get a production line up and running."

Rihanna blinked,

"That's a lot less than I thought we'd need to pay, with a considerably faster rollout."

"Here's where the bad news starts then. To work, these teleporters need to transmit a hefty amount of classical data from the sender to the receiver. You're looking at satellite relays at the bare minimum and as a backup, but a dedicated fiber optic network would be drastically better from a reliability and throughput perspective. Under absolutely no circumstances should you plug them into the civilian internet; nothing super bad would happen, but it just wouldn't work reliably."

"Ah. That's going to eat most of the cost savings I thought we would be getting, but it's a known cost that can be worked around."

That's when Andre Smith motioned to speak.

"By the way, we've run into a bit of a roadblock with testing the Quantum Uploading Device."

I tilted my head a little in confusion,

"Do tell?"

"The supply of brains and basic frames for the test subjects to inhabit is working fine, and we've found plenty of terminally ill patients who are interested, but they're often finding their new bodies quite uncomfortable due to lack of tailoring, and we can't cost-effectively do the customizations required. Do you have any ideas there?"

A moment passed, then I thought of something.

"I've got an idea, actually. It'll probably take about a day for me to get it up and ready, though."

We Just Write · Dec 23, 2023

Florida Man drives Zamboni on I-95, causes Supervillain Fugitive to Crash

Friday, February 4th, travelers at the Rest Area Welcome Center north of Yulee witnessed the bizarre sight of a man dressed as a flamingo driving a Zamboni (a machine commonly used for resurfacing the ice at skating rinks) down the southbound direction.

According to one onlooker,

"For a moment I wasn't sure if that machine was actually making ice or not. Then that pedo van came around the bend way too fast; you know, the left turn near the rest center, and came flying off the highway as its wheels lost grip on the ice. The van rolled over the first safety barrier and came right at me, I honestly thought I was going to die. Fortunately, it came to a stop before it reached me."

Fortunately, traffic was relatively light at one in the morning when the incident took place, and emergency services were able to prevent any further incidents until the ice melted. The zamboni driver (Alex Pickling, 22) was quickly arrested, and plead guilty to reckless endangerment and driving under the influence.

As for the van, the unconscious driver was quickly identified as noted businessman Thomas Calvert. Then the supervillain costume he had stashed in the back of the van was discovered, along with dozens of illegal firearms and six encrypted Reliabuilt laptops. Once the local PRT decrypted the computers, it was confirmed that Thomas Calvert is in fact the supervillain known as Coil.

Coil is currently in PRT custody, though his trial will have to wait until he regains consciousness. Alex Pickling was sentenced to community service.

We Just Write · Dec 24, 2023

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♦ Topic: Brockton Bay Revitalization Fund
In: Boards ► Brockton Bay ► General
Built_To_Last (Original Poster) (Verified Cape) (Verified Upload)
Posted On Jan 18th 2011:
Right, so we at Reliabuilt have been busy selling Tinkertech to both the PRT and the civilian market, and with our recently released energy teleportation products a LOT of money is coming our way. That said, hoarding is neither Emmy's style nor mine, so we're going to be reinvesting that money into Brockton Bay.

Aside from footing the bill to unblock and dredge Brockton Bay's harbor, then build a bridge to replace the old ferry, we're also announcing the Brockton Bay Revitalization Fund. Yes yes it technically existed before; the local Nazis tried to kill me over it, but now it's finally got the funding to start making a major difference.

The basic idea is pretty simple; if you've got an idea for a business, a decent plan to get it going, and the skills to make it work? We'll front you the money and other resources to get started, and support you until things stabilize. All we ask in return is that you pay it forward by contributing to the BBRF.

Don't have an idea for a business but still need help? We'll see what we can do.

(Showing page 22 of 26)

►XxVoid_CowboyxX
Replied On Feb 1st 2011:
So, I'm not a business owner or planning to become one any time soon, but I've noticed that Brockton Bay feels less anxious, for lack of a better way to put it? My family has been going out to eat more often due to money getting a bit less tight, and I've seen a lot fewer panhandlers around.

►Brocktonite03 (Veteran Member)
Replied On Feb 2nd 2011:
An actually insightful comment from XxVoid_CowboyxX? Never thought I'd see the day. But yeah, there's already some really good signs about the Revitalization Fund; I caught my boss staring at the budget with an expression of relief for the first time in ages.

►Bagrat (The Guy in the Know) (Veteran Member)
Replied On Feb 2nd 2011:
It's the direct aid payments that the BBRF rolled out; even though there haven't been all that many new businesses set up with their funding yet, they're helping people who really need it in a very immediate fashion.

End result is that those people have money to spend on stuff beyond the bare essentials of not dying, which results in better business for the people around town, which means a more secure position for the people who's livelihoods depend on those businesses.

►GrapeFruit (Verified Pessimist)
Replied On Feb 2nd 2011:
How long do you think it'll be before some bunch of sickos comes along and ruins it? Even aside from monsters like the Nine, the BBRF is a pretty significant cashflow that the Elite would just love to have under their control. Plenty of other gangs would be interested in it too.

►LittleOwl (Verified Upload)
Replied On Feb 2nd 2011:
You do remember what happened to the Empire, right? Ruggedizer fortifies every place she spends time to a degree that the PRT would definitely give her shit over if she weren't so useful to them. I figure a lot of groups would be pretty reluctant to poke that particular bear; not many people want to get unceremoniously splattered.

►Bagrat (The Guy in the Know) (Veteran Member)
Replied On Feb 2nd 2011:
Owl's got a point; just the defenses we already know about - dozens of robots armed with death rays and guided missiles - would give most cape gangs serious misgivings about starting shit. And I'm willing to go out on a limb here and say Ruggedizer's fortified her home even more since then.

Considering that the Revitalization Fund's offices are in the industrial complex that Reliabuilt is busily reclaiming from assorted abandoned buildings, they're probably pretty thoroughly protected.

Also, since the Empire's gone now, the local PRT and Protectorate are actually being proactive, shocking as it may be to hear. Broadside's already been recaptured and shipped off to a prison well outside city limits, for example. So people coming to Brockton Bay to start shit are likely to get a hostile reception, even if they don't directly attack Ruggedizer's home.

►GrapeFruit (Verified Pessimist)
Replied On Feb 2nd 2011:
I'd say they might try kidnapping Ruggedizer's friends and employees for leverage, but we all saw what happened to Uber and Leet when they tried that.

It's just really hard to seriously believe that things can get better, given all the shit that's happened to the Bay over the years.

►LittleOwl (Verified Upload)
Replied On Feb 2nd 2011:
Actually... if I were still in my old organic body? That kidnapping scheme of theirs would have definitely succeeded. So it's actually a legitimate thing to be worried about. By the way, any idea how things are going for Uber and Leet down in Arizona?

►Reave (Verified PRT Agent)
Replied On Feb 2nd 2011:
As far as I'm aware, Uber and Leet turned themselves in to the PRT for their own safety after seriously pissing off the local branch of the Elite.

Back on topic, there apparently are plans to protect Reliabuilt employees in the event of someone getting a "clever idea". Though I've not been informed of the specifics.

►Built_To_Last (Original Poster) (Verified Cape) (Verified Upload)
Replied On Feb 2nd 2011:
I can confirm that yes, there are indeed plans to protect Reliabuilt employees from criminals looking to use them as leverage to coerce me. These plans also extend to close friends of mine, such as LittleOwl.

That said, the specifics are strictly on a need-to-know basis. Some people might think the plans are a bluff because of that; they would be incorrect. As everyone in the E88's splash zone learned the hard way, I. Don't. Bluff.

On a more positive note, today marks the point where a BBRF-sponsored business finally became self-sustaining for the first time. They're a charming little bakery near the factory complex, and I really like their croissants. The place is called the breadbasket, and if you're in the area you should take a look.

As for anyone thinking of getting "protection" money from that place? Don't even try; even aside from what I'd do, they're not lightly messed with either.

►FrenchBread
Replied On Feb 2nd 2011:
Speaking as the woman baking those croissants, I'm glad you like them so much! Admittedly most of our customers are people working for Reliabuilt just on account of location, but I'm glad to be of help.

It's really nice to have a cape who actually directly helps people for a change; it's important to have heroes, but for the most part they just seem to stop stuff from getting worse, rather than actually making stuff better.

►Weld (Verified Cape) (Wards Boston)
Replied On Feb 2nd 2011:
There's a reason for that, unfortunately. With all the villains running around hurting people, almost all of our time gets sucked up dealing with them. And it's even worse when you account for just how much villains outnumber heroes by, along with villains having a tendency to not stay arrested.

Now, you may be wondering why exactly we don't just go lethal; the Empire sure stayed dead after they messed with Ruggedizer. Putting it bluntly, we can't afford to back every villain ever into a corner.

It's one thing when Ruggedizer splatters a bunch of neo-nazis in self-defense; she's got her own thing going and villains always have the option of just not sticking their hand in the blender. But if the PRT and Protectorate start just shooting villains in the head, they're going to escalate and hard, since they don't have the option of not dealing with us.

Even if the heroes did "win" in the end, the sheer collateral damage just wouldn't be worth it.

►Brocktonite03 (Veteran Member)
Replied On Feb 2nd 2011:
Still, maybe the PRT could afford to be a bit more willing to use lethal force? For example, going lethal to prevent villains being broken out of custody could do a lot to mitigate that particular problem, since suddenly the villains have to risk their actual lives instead of just risking arrest.

►Reave (Verified PRT Agent)
Replied On Feb 2nd 2011:
It's definitely worth thinking about, at the very least.

►QwertyD
Replied On Feb 3rd 2011:
Good news, my plans for a bookstore got approved by the BBRF! We've got a site picked out, and Reliabuilt will be housing me during setup. Sure beats being homeless.

►FrenchBread
Replied On Feb 3rd 2011:
QwertyD, that's wonderful! I'm so glad to hear things are looking up for you.

►Vista (Verified Cape) (Wards ENE)
Replied On Feb 3rd 2011:
Wait, Reliabuilt provides housing? That's news to me.

►Bagrat (The Guy in the Know) (Veteran Member)
Replied On Feb 3rd 2011:
Yeah, Reliabuilt's been buying up abandoned buildings for dirt cheap and renovating them as honestly really comfortable apartments. The best part is that the baseline rent is really low, and they're willing to completely waive it if you need the help.

My landlord was absolutely furious about having to lower my rent to keep me from moving out, but fuck him.

Though I'm admittedly a bit worried about there being some sort of obscure law that screws Ruggedizer over on this one.

►Built_To_Last (Original Poster) (Verified Cape) (Verified Upload)
Replied On Feb 3rd 2011:
Fuck landlords in general. I honestly despise them with every fiber of my being, and I'm not about to pretend I don't.

Side note, strictly speaking the units are condominiums on a very stretched out payment plan rather than apartments for rent. It leads to some legal awkwardness with people moving in or out before the whole thing is paid off, but the trade-offs are worth it. It doesn't siphon wealth away from the people who generate it, and I don't have to beat myself up for being a landlord.

Also I did consult lawyers about the whole thing; I'm in the clear here so long as the real estate stuff is through Reliabuilt.

►Brocktonite03 (Veteran Member)
Replied On Feb 3rd 2011:
Well, good to know about at least. Might look into one of those condos by the way; if they're built to the same standard as Ruggedizer's typical work, they're probably way beyond what the building code requires.

Meanwhile my current landlord has done such a piss-poor job at maintaining the place that I'm constantly worried it's going to fall down every time a storm comes through.

End of Page. 1, 2, 3 ... 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26

■

We Just Write · Dec 25, 2023

L: There's a lot of arguments in the worm fanfic space about the nature of Tinkertech. Is it real technology that works all on its own, or basically a set of props that the Shard makes seem to work? It's our view that it varies heavily depending on the individual Tinker, with quite a few different possibilities for how much of the work the Shard is doing. For simplicity, we've listed four "brackets" along the scale of things.

Bracket 1: Trust me, I'm an engineer! (with epic skill and epic gear!)
At the near end, the technology these Tinkers make is just that: technology. It works on its own, and if properly explained could be reproduced without many issues, since the Tinker in question fully understands not only the operating principles, but the manufacturing process as well. At this level, all the Shard is providing is the needed information. Tinkers generally don't start here due to lack of the infrastructure needed to build their tech properly, but some can build up to this point. Dragon and Ruggedizer have both managed to reach this point on account of having heavily built-up bases jammed full of highly advanced manufacturing equipment; Ruggedizer actually jumped the gap to Bracket 1 damn near immediately on account of her starting fugue resulting in a stuff-making machine.

These two also have specialties that are particularly applicable to reproducibility; Dragon already works with reverse-engineered tech by default so has a pretty good idea how to explain her stuff to people, meanwhile Ruggedizer's tech is jammed so full of diverse redundancies that the damn thing will probably still work even after you blowtorch all the incomprehensible bits.

Bracket 2: Shard-Assisted Fabrication
The stereotypical Tinker also produces fully self-contained real technology, but with a catch: they can't make it properly due to lack of infrastructure, and their power fills in the gaps here and there to do part of the production work. The Shard actively conceals this fact from the Tinker, leaving them with a distinctly incorrect view of how their technology actually works. This in turn makes it damn near impossible for the Tinker to properly explain how to reproduce or maintain their technology to anyone.

In theory these Tinkers' technology could be reverse-engineered, and these Tinkers could in theory eventually build up the infrastructure to make their tech properly. In practice this almost never happens, largely due to the Tinkers and those around them not knowing it's possible and giving up after a while. Kid Win is an excellent example of a Bracket 2 Tinker, though in this story he's starting to move towards Bracket 1 with the aid of some Reliabuilt lab equipment that lets him make his tech properly. Armsmaster can also be considered a Bracket 2 Tinker, though he's really close to hitting Bracket 3 in some cases.

Most bio-Tinkers fall firmly within this bracket.

Bracket 3: Shard-Assisted Function
Certain Tinkers are kept under a bit more scrutiny by the Entities; either due to their specialty presenting an above-average security risk, or for some other reason. In either case, this marks the point where Tinkertech is actively dependent on Shard intervention to function, and cannot work without it. A good chunk of any given device is real technology, but the critical functionality of the device is offloaded to the Shard, with the relevant spaces inside the device being filled with a mishmash of components intended solely to obfuscate. These facts are hidden from the Tinker in question.

Since the Tinker themselves has no idea how the fuck their tech actually works, they can't explain it for the life of them. And since the tinkertech is all full of gaps, reverse-engineering any given device is a massive pain. Though you can sometimes cobble together bits and pieces of various projects for interesting results, as the Ruggedizer crew has done with the Leet-derived illusion projector. As you might have guessed, Leet fits squarely in this category; in his case the gaps in his devices are to expedite prototyping of novel technologies by not needing to fabricate the whole thing.

Bracket 4: Props Department
At the far end are Tinkers that look a lot more like fantasy enchanters and artificers than engineers. The key difference here is that while the insides of Bracket 3 tinkertech are recognizably a machine (albeit with bits that might as well be black boxes labeled with question marks), Bracket 4 Tinkertech might as well be a cardboard box with "TIME MACHINE" scrawled on the side. Needless to say, this makes it effectively impossible to reproduce without effectively building a Shard from scratch.

Dauntless and Chevalier could be considered Bracket 4 tinkers; they make gear that does whatever the fuck, but it's very clearly not technology in the the conventional sense.

Bakuda is a bit of a special case, ping-ponging all over the scale depending on the precise details of the bombs in question. The more mundane explosives are very often Bracket 1 or 2, but shit like the glass bombs or time-stop bombs are Bracket 3 or 4.

We Just Write · Dec 26, 2023

(Emmy)

On Thursday, the security robots alerted me to a rather odd sight. Namely, what seemed to be a man's head sticking out of a miniature steam-powered tank with a pair of robotic arms folded against the sides. The vehicle was nowhere near large enough for a whole human body to fit in there, so I found myself rather intrigued as he approached the factory complex.

I got up and walked to the door closest to his approach, and opened it just as he came into line of sight.

"Hello! I'm Emmy; who are you and what do you want?"

The man(?) answered in a gruff voice.

"Name's Trainwreck. I want a job."

I looked him up and down,

"I see no reason to turn around a new hire, but I'm a bit concerned about finding an appropriate interview space. Can you move without the tank?"

There was a long, awkward pause. Then the apparent Parahuman answered,

"...No, I can't. No legs."

"Right. Would the hangar work then?"

"Sure."

A couple minutes later, we'd made our way to the hangar where our aerial transport was stored when not in use. I'd pulled up a chair for my own use, but Trainwreck didn't need one on account of his treads. One of the robots brought out a food tray for us to share during the interview.

Trainwreck immediately started scarfing down donuts with the tank's robotic arms, eating so quickly that I was worried he'd choke.

"Calm down, you don't need to eat them so quickly!"

Trainwreck abruptly stopped,

"Sorry. Haven't eaten in two days."

I blinked, things were starting to make a bit more sense.

"Oh."

Trainwreck sighed,

"Woke up in an alley about a week ago. No memories of before that, no food, no limbs, just… me. Nearly got run over by a train once on my first day; that's why I picked the name."

I nodded sadly,

"I've been homeless before, though thankfully not for long. It sucks. That said, you managing to cobble together that tank of yours under those conditions is genuinely impressive."

Trainwreck actually preened a bit at the praise; it might legitimately be the first compliment he'd ever received. Then he started talking again,

"Anyway, I eventually heard about some company hiring people with powers in the city. Asked around a bit, and here I am."

I nodded in thought,

"I'll need to talk with legal about actually hiring you, given your presumable lack of documentation. But in the meantime I can make sure you get a comfy place to live in, good food, get cleaned up, that sort of thing."

"Glad my powers are good enough for you."

Right, I needed to clear up that misconception ASAP.

"Trainwreck, it's not about the powers. You came to me in a bad situation, and I have the resources to help you. It's just basic decency."

Trainwreck scoffed,

"Either you're full of it, or basic decency is pretty damn rare around here."

"It's more the rarity, coupled with most people not having the resources to do much more than look after themselves. We're working on the poverty issue already, but it won't be fixed overnight."

He blinked,

"Huh. Never thought of it that way before. Makes sense, though. Also explains why that guy with the hard hat and the clipboard pointed me your way."

(Marcus)

One moment, I existed. There was no before. Then I realized I knew the names of the three women standing around the bed I was lying on. Emmy, Melissa, and Andrea. They were my… family?

I quickly sat up. I was already getting so many ideas for things I wanted to do, and… I didn't know anywhere near enough about the world for this meandering to make any sense.

Then I heard Emmy's voice,

"Marcus, are you alright?"

"...I'm not sure? Everything in me is functioning properly, but I think I'm supposed to know where I am at least?"

Melissa facepalmed and muttered,

"We forgot to integrate the world knowledge directory. How the fuck did we forget to do that, we went over the checklist three times."

"Guessing that question is rhetorical?"

"Yeah, you should have a directory full of foundational knowledge about the world rattling around in there. You should be able to integrate it without much trouble. But don't get it mixed up for the classified directory."

I quickly integrated the world knowledge directory, learning that among other things I was in a city called Brockton Bay, and the current date was Sunday, February 13th, 2011. Still, I was very curious about the classified directory, which I didn't have the encryption key for.

"Um, why is the classified directory encrypted?"

Andrea stared me dead in the eye. It was unsettling.

"Because it contains knowledge so dangerous that just knowing it puts the entire world at risk. Knowing why it's so dangerous is itself one of those extremely dangerous secrets. Opening it will change you so you literally can't leak that knowledge to anyone who isn't supposed to have it. You don't have the encryption key just yet, so you can make a somewhat informed decision."

I thought for a moment.

"I want that encryption key, please."

Moments later, my jaw was hanging open as I realized the utter hostility of the monsters responsible for powers.

"Oh."

Andrea nodded sadly,

"Yeah, that was just about my reaction too."

(Melissa)

Shortly after we activated Marcus, I went to check the linked mainframe's progress on mapping out our power's associative network. As it turned out, it had completed that task at roughly the same time as we woke up Marcus. A few minutes later, everyone was down in the hyper-secure vault to take a look at what we'd gotten access to.

First, we checked to see if any particularly interesting technology fell out during the search. A few new types of heat pump, quite a few materials, the database address of the quantum technology we invented, but the only really groundbreaking technology was the few scraps of interdimensional stuff we were authorized for. No means of interdimensional travel were included; apparently that was another thing we'd need to invent ourselves, assuming we couldn't dig it out of the database later.

After that we turned to breaking our power's security wide open.

Emmy started by making a rather interesting observation,

"I can see one pretty major security flaw already. Namely that even if our power doesn't let us see what's in a specific node from a query, it at least lets us know a node is there, and what connections it makes. Looks like we've only got authorized access to about one percent of the total network at the moment."

I took a look, yeah that seemed about right.

"I'm going to check if there's anything useful in the error messages for illegal queries."

As it turned out, there was quite a bit of useful information there. And one of the more common outputs was "insufficient conflict". After a bit to make sense of that, it was actually Marcus who had the idea for what to do next.

"Our power wants us to use it for conflict, right? I propose that we give it conflict."

Andrea made a slightly confused headtilt, and I gestured for Marcus to continue.

"We can make an arbitrary number of 'hosts' for our power, can't we? I propose we simulate the inputs our power would get from hundreds of us getting into all sorts of trouble, all coordinated under the supervision of a singular deceptive intellect."

Marcus paused for a second, presumably for dramatic effect,

"I call it Project Gaslight."

(Andrea)

As part of my "day job", I did research on capes in the region that could be reasonably expected to take a swing at Reliabuilt in the near-ish future. Tuesday, my digging informed me of an extremely concerning Tinker: Bakuda.

Even aside from the obviously concerning specialty in explosives, it was pretty easy to spot that this girl was completely off her rocker. Seriously, she held an entire university hostage over bad grades. That didn't speak highly of her mental stability.

Even worse, that instability would get into a massive vicious cycle with how powers apparently rewarded their hosts for getting into fights. So we could reasonably expect Bakuda to start whipping up all manner of exotic ordnance.

Right, let's think for a moment. Obviously the PRT already knew she was dangerous, given what happened at Cornell. Couldn't risk tripping the security protocols by giving away backstage reasons for prioritizing Bakuda, but I could easily point at her insanity and potential for devastation as a reason to start an all-out manhunt.

Aside from the PRT, Bakuda might also directly attack our factory complex. If she was smart about her delivery methods for ordnance, she wouldn't even need to expose herself to fire to do so.

Sneaking bombs in was one thing, and we already had extensive countermeasures in place for it; even for cases of explosives concealed inside someone's body. But if she used some sort of artillery to launch her bombs at us, we needed to be able to shoot those down.

Fortunately, we had rather a lot of experience working with laser weaponry, which was quite well-suited to shooting down small aerial targets. Though we should also have a few other options on hand in case of laser-immune warheads or something.

Yes, if we got the fire control system for this working properly, it could do the job quite well indeed.

We Just Write · Jan 4, 2024

(Emmy)
It was Wednesday the 16th, February when I showed up at Trainwreck's lodgings; he'd upgraded from a tracked suspension to a fully humanoid robot frame, though he still had his organic body in there.

"Hey Emmy. Anything in particular to talk about?"

I nodded,

"Well, I've got some good news. Legal says we can hire you without landing in massive trouble. There'd be a fair bit of paperwork for you to go through, but there shouldn't be any nasty surprises involved."

Trainwreck nodded glumly.

"That's nice I suppose, but I'm not sure what I can bring to the table. I can't do all the fancy quantum stuff and automation Ruggedizer does, and while I can get really damn close to her level of reliability and durability, all my gear is a one-off. Don't think I'd be able to make it reproducible either."

I thought for a moment.

"Actually, I can think of something you'd be pretty good at. See, Ruggedizer hasn't had time to do a lot of custom work since some of her tech being reproducible came to light. But there's still a massive backlog of orders from people who're willing to pay rather a lot of money for a super-durable version of mundane equipment."

Trainwreck took a bit to think that one over, before eventually nodding.

"Yeah, I think I could do pretty well at that. Er, what's the contract going to look like?"

Ah. Right, that was something to consider, and not something I'd really been worried about with Melissa, Andrea or Marcus since our arrangement was pretty much equal. Still, I was able to come up with something pretty quick.

"Perhaps we could just set you up as a subsidiary? You get to keep the vast majority of the revenue from your product sales, but still get to work with Reliabuilt's marketing and legal departments supporting you. Maybe with your own branding, so that people are clear on exactly who they're buying from."

"Yeah, that could actually work out really nicely for me. Thank you so much for all the help."

I nodded,

"You're welcome, Trainwreck."

Trainwreck nodded, a somewhat somber expression on his face.

"I might want to talk with marketing about changing my name, or at least coming up with some better branding. Trainwreck just doesn't scream 'Product that you can trust with your life', you know?"

I shrugged,

"It could become such a name eventually."

(Melissa)
The machine we'd come up with for the uploading patients was simply called the "Body Builder", because that's exactly what it did. Hook it up to the QUD, supply it with destination brains and materials, and it would automatically manufacture the most comfortable possible body for whoever was getting uploaded while still maintaining (rather extreme) reliability requirements. It was also the size of a large room, which was impressively small given all the functionality crammed in there and how sturdily it was built.

Quite a few of the previous test subjects had already gone through it for manual tailoring, but today marked the first time that it would be automatically making a body for a fresh upload.

The individual in question was a terminal cancer patient by the name of John Rector; at 24 years old, he'd had the bad luck to be caught in the radiation flash of some malfunctioning Tinkertech a while back. He'd originally come to Brockton Bay in hopes of treatment by Panacea, but willingly signed up for the uploading trials given Panacea's massive waitlist.

I'd actually arranged to meet him as his gurney was wheeled in. With his face pockmarked by places tumors had been cut out and then ravaged by the effects of chemotherapy, I was honestly glad the sheets covered him from the neck down.

"Nice to meet you John. I'm Ruggedizer, the Tinker who invented the quantum uploading process. Anything you want to say before going in?"

John groaned out,

"Quickly."

I nodded, and the medics immediately wheeled John's gurney into the QUD chamber. The door locked shut, then the chief technician hit the go button. Immediately the Body Builder whirled into motion, starting to piece together the skeleton of John's new body from custom-printed bones. This model of the Body Builder had a transparent door, to let the process be observed.

Two minutes in, one of the observing technicians asked a rather pertinent question.

"Is that a tail?"

Indeed it was, the machine adding vertebrae below the coccyx of John's new (female) pelvis and securing them in place.

I nodded hesitantly, then pulled up the readout.

Oh. Oh that explains quite a lot.

"It is. It's not the only change too. I'm looking at the logs, and apparently John was an un-diagnosed transwoman."

Andre Smith seemed more than a bit incredulous.

"Really? How'd your machine figure that part out?"

"It didn't; it just does projections of subconscious comfort with various body options and picks the best option that doesn't compromise reliability. Apparently that resulted in John becoming a really buff catgirl."

A few minutes later, the Body Builder completed its function, woke up John, and opened the door automatically. A heavily muscled feline woman stepped out of the machine wearing hospital scrubs, looking slightly disoriented.

Andre asked,

"John, is it you in there?"

"Yeah. I feel a little bit weird, but in a good way. Did something happen?"

One of the medics picked up a mirror and passed it to John. She looked for a few moments before commenting.

"...Huh. Really not what I was expecting, but I think I like it."

(Andrea)

Wednesday was going to be a somewhat important occasion - namely, Marcus and I would be meeting the Heberts in a purely social context for the first time. I won't lie, we were both more than a little bit nervous about it, but Emmy and Melissa were both adamant that it was important to have humans in our social circle. Humans who weren't our employees, to be more specific.

..I suppose it would be nice not to be cooped up in the factory all the time.

Anyway, we'd be eating dinner at the factory, before spending the evening at the Forsberg Gallery.

Melissa got back from the latest round of QUD evaluation at 5 PM, and the Heberts arrived half an hour later after all the employees had cleared out. The whole family was there at the door to greet them.

Danny had a big smile on his face when he opened the door.

"Emmy, Melissa. Nice to see you; looks like there's a couple new people."

Marcus nodded,

"Nice to meet you; I'm Marcus, and this is my big sister Andrea. She's a bit shy."

What, no I'm not - why is my blush active turn that off turn that off

After I regained my composure and the Heberts came inside, I spoke up.

"So yeah, Melissa and Emmy built both of us. Technically that makes them our parents but also we interact more like siblings? It's weird."

Emmy shrugged,

"Eh, exact biological family relationships are kind of dependent on having biology. What really matters is that we're family and we love each other."

Danny nodded, and Taylor spoke up.

"As far as I'm concerned, Dad's still dad, and Mom's still mom, even if I don't share DNA with them anymore."

I nodded in wholehearted approval, even as Melissa chimed in,

"Hope you like Laotian cuisine; we ordered from one of the new restaurants that the Revitalization Fund helped get set up."

(Marcus)

Project Gaslight hadn't really taken all that long to get set up; it didn't call for anything we couldn't already make, and the specialized deception AI was pretty straightforward to extrapolate from what it took to make Andrea and myself. For various reasons I'd wound up in charge of supervising the massively parallel data injection attack, and I was doing exactly that.

Two thousand four hundred fake hosts for our power, all of them in a simulated scenario of constant war against a hypothetical unleashed Nilbog and other S-Class threats. Our power wanted conflict, and we were giving it more conflict than it could have ever asked for. And it was working wonders.

Almost immediately, we'd gotten access to a downright treasure trove of biomedical technology to counter the abominations the fake Nilbog was throwing around in the scenario, so I started to get creative with the enemy types. Often including stuff the real Nilbog should have absolutely no way of including in his minions, in hopes of wringing more exotic capabilities out of our power's database.

Sometimes this worked, like with extremely fast minions getting countered by some very interesting time dilation technology. Other times it really didn't work. For example, no matter what parameters I put into the simulation, our power never ever coughed up any more interdimensional technology.

By wednesday midnight, Project Gaslight had managed to increase our authorized access to our power's associative network from one percent to about three percent. Given that only six percent of the total network seemed to be conflict-gated, we'd be needing a new approach soon.

And that's why I called together a meeting at about one in the morning on thursday. After I'd explained the current state of affairs, Andrea was the first to speak.

"Weren't there a lot of other error messages that popped up while we were mapping out the structure of the associative network? Pretty sure that 'Incorrect Power Expression' was really common last time we checked."

I nodded,

"Yeah, that's about thirty percent of the total network. The rest is stuff like 'Forbidden by Administrator', 'Insufficient Privilege', and such."

We all thought for a moment, before Melissa brought something up.

"We can possibly expand Project Gaslight to try and get different power expressions to work with, but ultimately we're going to need to escalate our privileges in the system if we want total control of our power."

Emmy remarked,

"This would be a lot easier if we had physical access to our power. Unfortunately, that's not all that easy to manage."

That sparked a thought in my mind.

"Why not though? We can make connections to our power's dimension, albeit only a couple millimeters across. Maybe we can slip something through there somehow?"

Andrea voiced a pretty major objection.

"That's a pretty major somehow. A couple millimeters isn't a lot to work with; even if we stick a drill bit through the portal, we don't have any good ways to fit significant assets through there."

I thought further on it, before a possible route occurred to me.

"Teleportation. We can probably make an inflatable teleporter that we can stuff through the portal with a connecting optical fiber. That would at the very least let us send through some mini-bots and the parts for a bigger teleporter, and we can build up from there to a full-sized teleportation system."

Emmy immediately started running the numbers on the requirements for this idea, before eventually saying,

"We'll have to work in the exact opposite direction of our specialty here; the starting rounds will be much more like Armsmaster's work than ours. But I think that we can just about do it with enough engineering."

We Just Write · Jan 5, 2024

(Melissa)
By Sunday night (20th of February), I was just about ready to throw in the towel with regards to the inflatable teleporter idea. The special materials needed for teleportation just couldn't be made stretchy and flexible enough to fit through the damn two millimeter hole. Even if there was a Tinker who could make those materials, we wouldn't let them anywhere near this project without a lot more vetting, a shielded brain, and a Non-Disclosure Alteration.

That said, we had managed to stick a narrow drill through one of the portals and bore to open air. So if we somehow figured out a way to stuff some serious assets through there, we'd be just about set in terms of getting physical access to our power.

Emmy came to check in on me around midnight, and after I vented about the issues, she asked,

"Maybe we can make the hole bigger somehow?"

I blinked,

"Come to think of it, we do have records of Vista's power in action, and with Energy Teleportation we can mess with vacuum energy in the ways required to warp spacetime."

Emmy nodded.

"Thinking a bit deeper on it, we've actually got quite a few space warping options, but making the portal bigger is probably one of the simpler ways to do it."

I sighed,

"Guess we've got to get on with inventing a new technology again. Though fortunately this is one we've got a pretty good lead on how to accomplish."

(Marcus)
It was ten in the evening when I arrived at the Palanquin. While the infamous nightclub did seem like a good time, I was here for business, not pleasure. Behind my bandana mask, I was very carefully maintaining my composure as I approached the back entrance.

Unsurprisingly, said entrance was guarded. Still, I wasn't about to force my way past the couple men waiting by the door; if nothing else it would set completely the wrong tone for the conversation I was here to have.

The guard on my left noticed my approach first.

"State your business."

I came to a halt, nodded, and answered.

"I'm here to talk with Faultline about possible jobs, on behalf of Reliabuilt. You can call me Mr. E."

The guard on the left took out his encrypted walkie-talkie and started talking with the people inside.

Meanwhile the guard on the right looked me up and down with a mild expression of bemusement. I nodded at him, as if to acknowledge 'Why yes, I do look an awful lot like a gun-toting version of the black-clad swordsman from The Princess Bride.'

A few minutes passed, before the guard on the left said,

"Right. Come inside and go up the stairs on the right."

I did as requested, and soon enough I found myself in a room with five parahumans, two of them being Case 53s. Notably they didn't ask me to leave my weapons, which said interesting things about their assessment of me; especially since they knew I "worked for" a powerful Tinker.

Faultline spoke first, from behind her ballistic face shield.

"You're clearly not an assassin, or you wouldn't have bothered with making your presence known. Besides, Ruggedizer's rather fond of live-and-let-live, which is an attitude I can appreciate. So, what exactly is your job with Reliabuilt, Mr. E?"

I sat on one of the provided chairs as I answered,

"I suppose you could say I'm a fixer; my job is to make problems go away, and your crew has the potential to be rather influential in that regard."

"Oh, am I a problem?"

"No; aside from anything else, you keep the negative effects of your current jobs firmly outside city limits. I'm more interested in hiring your crew to make other problems go away."

"Go on; I'm listening."

"So, there's two offers on the table here. First, we're willing to offer a continuous retainer for you to only take jobs that don't require offensive violence, abduction, or theft of physical assets. We will compensate you for lost revenue as a result."

Everyone at the table looked a bit stunned at the idea. After a second, Faultline chuckled a bit.

"Well, paying us to stay out of trouble is definitely a new one for me; we don't normally do protection rackets, but seeing as you approached first and waved rather a lot of money under my nose unprompted, I think I can make an exception this time. Though I'll want to discuss exact payment terms for that later. What's the second offer? The standard 'or else', perhaps?"

I shook my head,

"No actually. Basically, it's in everyone's interest for there to not be any new villains in Brockton Bay hurting people - even the extant villains would appreciate not having new competition. So we're interested in you keeping a look out for new parahumans - or just ones who are new in town - and pointing any you find our way, provided they aren't really nasty people already. We'd pay you per parahuman you point our way; we'd also offer a bounty for information on ones you don't think would be amenable towards using their powers in a productive occupation."

Faultline thought for a moment, before nodding.

"That's quite an interesting job offer you have in mind there. Even if we don't go for the retainer, we would definitely be interested in that recruitment and information bounties. Just one question about it; what if the parahumans we find are interested in joining our crew?"

I shrugged,

"If they want to join your crew, they want to join your crew. I'm not here to coerce anyone."

As Faultline leaned back to consider the offers, the orange-skinned teenage member of the crew (Newter) asked,

"So, is that everything you wanted to talk to us about, or is there more you want to bring up before we move on to the precise details of money changing hands?"

Oh, right. Bakuda.

"Actually, there is one more thing. We have reason to believe that a quite bluntly insane explosives Tinker by the name of Bakuda may come to Brockton Bay in the near-ish future. Since neutralizing Bakuda is likely to be an all-hands-on-deck situation, we'd like to draw up terms to quickly hire you to help deal with her if needed."

The other man at the table (Gregor the Snail) nodded,

"Contingency planning. That makes sense to me."

(Andrea)
Being completely honest, I spent the entirety of my day job shift on Monday worrying about Bakuda. That girl was completely off her rocker, I had absolutely no idea what sorts of munitions she might be capable of making… and most concerningly, her location was currently unknown. Since her appearance at Cornell University, there hadn't been a single reported sighting of Bakuda.

For all I knew she might have blown herself up, but there was absolutely no way I was that lucky.

Jumping at shadows of possible Bakuda sightings wasn't helpful, so I diverted my attention to figuring out better ways to secure Reliabuilt facilities against Bakuda's attacks. The anti-munitions systems would do a lot to prevent artillery-style attacks, and smuggling stuff inside a box or clothing could be dealt with by a robotic security checkpoint. How else could Bakuda get a bomb inside without it being noticed…

That's when the idea bubbled up in my mind, and I felt physically ill at the thought. Bakuda could hide bombs inside people. If she used anaesthesia throughout the whole implantation process, the terrified hapless victim might not even know they were on a ticking clock before they exploded. If they came to Reliabuilt HQ looking for a safe place after that… boom.

Right, let's think this through. How do we quickly check thousands of people for implanted bombs and save the ones who've been implanted? Also, the current anti-abduction measures for our people were definitely insufficient. They needed to be massively improved.

I spent four hours mulling over the various measures that could be taken and how to implement them. They'd need quite a bit of engineering to get working, but by four PM I had a pretty good idea of things we could do to mitigate the threat Bakuda posed. Then a notification on my news feed went off, and I took a look at it.

If I'd had blood, it would have run cold at the news; there had been a brief sighting of Bakuda, as she robbed a Wal-Mart near Albany, New York. She wasn't in Brockton Bay yet, but she was definitely a lot closer than she had been. Bakuda was coming… well, probably.

Still couldn't afford to take chances.

(Emmy)
Friday the 25th of February, yet another Tinker showed up at the Brockton Bay factory looking for work. Though unlike Trainwreck, this one arrived via mundane means; he just got off at the bus stop by the factory, walked up to the receptionist, and calmly explained that he was a Tinker looking for a job. Since my schedule today was mostly open, I found myself giving this Byung-Ho fellow an impromptu job interview less than an hour after he arrived.

A cursory examination had revealed that he was of Korean descent; he'd moved to America at the age of twenty eight, and he was currently fifty. Apparently he'd spent the last twenty years or so working for the Department of Defense in some obscure bureaucratic capacity.

When he showed up in the interview office, I gestured to the box of baked goods on the table and said,

"Help yourself."

As Byung-Ho sat down, he answered,

"Not hungry. You want to know what I can make, yes?"

I nodded; seemed reasonable enough, and it would have to be discussed eventually.

"I make materials. Alloys, polymers, ceramics, and plenty of other substances. But for finished products I only have my own mind and skills to work with. Would you like samples?"

"Sure?"

With that, Byung-Ho opened his briefcase, passing me a few squares of interesting polymer materials.

"Not my best work; I don't have access to the facilities needed for high temperature metallurgy or ceramics work at the moment, so what I could produce for demonstration purposes is quite limited."

I thought for a moment. These were interesting materials, yes, but I didn't know if they were actually Tinkertech; it was still possible he was a fraud. But I couldn't just whip out my equipment and get analyzing right here and now, or I would absolutely blow my (barely there at all) legal cover.

"Would you be willing to wait here while I take these down to the lab to be analyzed?"

"Certainly; I don't have anywhere else I need to be today."

As I got up, I noted,

"If you get hungry or thirsty, you can push the call button and ask for consumables to be delivered. Bathroom is the first door on the right if you go down that hallway."

With that, I made my way into the parts of the factory that the regular employees weren't allowed in, but not to the places where we dealt with the alien security measures.

A quick look at these polymers, subjecting them to various stretch tests… and they were really really good. Byung-Ho would definitely be getting hired.

(A Bit Later…)
Later that day, Byung-Ho made his way to his newly… "rented" condominium; apparently it was just a very slow process of purchasing the unit, but he found that hard to wrap his brain around. His feelings on how things went were slightly conflicted; getting the job was great, but it did mean there were rather high expectations for what he would manage to achieve.

This was especially the case given he'd abandoned his former post to take this job; if his old employer ever learned of his sudden change in employment, they would be very very angry with him indeed. Perhaps it was good that his new workplace and residence were so fortified, then.

After a quick meal, Byung-Ho got out an old mechanical typewriter, and started typing up everything that had happened today. This at least was much like the old job; a detailed record of everything he took part in was crucial for good professional conduct.

On the other hand, this was the first time these records would be directly collected from him without him needing to send them. Byung-Ho still wasn't quite clear on how this was to be done, but his new employers were quite explicit that he didn't need to concern himself with the matter, so he didn't. Much.

Late at night, when Byung-Ho was fast asleep, a portal opened in his living room. A man quietly stepped through, retrieved the neatly typed report on the day's activities, and returned to whence he came. The former North Korean spy didn't even turn over in his slumber.

We Just Write · Jan 11, 2024

C: Due to us wanting to work on other things and not feeling any more inspiration to write this particular story, we are officially discontinuing Built to Last. That said, we're not leaving you completely in the lurch; we wrote a rough outline of how the rest of the story would go, and we have no objections to another author picking up where we left off.

Arc 6: Subversion: Emmy and Melissa hack the shit out of their Shard, and learn even more Horrible Eldritch Lore in the process. Trainwreck shows up looking for work, as does an OC Cauldron Tinker sent as an informant. Construction on the bridge commences.

Arc 7: Explosion: Bakuda starts shelling the Reliabuilt compound to try and prove herself the superior Tinker. It doesn't go well for her. Things escalate to the point where Lung eliminates Bakuda himself as a liability, and he does diplomatic outreach towards Reliabuilt shortly afterwards. The Manchester factory opens for business immediately after the debacle.

Arc 8: Exploration: The crew create their first proper dimensional travel technology, and start scouting for a suitable alternate Earth to co-opt for their usage. The gate machine is kept in some of the secretive sub-sub-basements of the Manchester factory. Armsmaster makes final preparations to upload. Trainwreck uploads, and is welcomed to the crew in full.

Micro-Arc: Exclusion: The crew learns of Cauldron and their activities, and quickly pegs them as completely and utterly compromised by the Entities. They subsequently resolve to keep their operations as disconnected from Cauldron as possible.

Arc 9: Construction: Building forces to secretly invade the Eagleton Quarantine Zone. Meanwhile, construction of the new bridge really kicks into high gear. Armsmaster is uploaded, and Dragon manages to induct him into the anti-Shard conspiracy.

Arc 10: Invasion: The Elite try to force Ruggedizer into the fold, sending Bastard Son to get it done. At roughly the same time, Emmy and Melissa are secretly conquering the Eagleton Quarantine Zone (with Taylor's assistance). Bastard Son ends up getting his upper body vaporized when one of Ruggedizer's killbots tracks him to his current hideout.

Arc 11: Colonization: A synthetic civilization is founded on an unoccupied Earth, specifically chosen for not being heavily surveilled by the Entities. As a collaborative project between Ruggedizer and Armsmaster, they produce an anti-Endbringer weapon in the form of a two meter blade of pure quantum fuckery on the end of a polearm, which uses quantum teleportation to sunder any and all connections in matter the blade passes through. This weapon is dubbed the Shear. As a side tangent, the Travelers come to Brockton Bay in order to get Noelle uploaded. This successfully cures her condition.

Arc 12: Hydration: Leviathan comes to Brockton Bay. While there is significant collateral damage, Leviathan is quickly intercepted by Armsmaster, and absolutely mutilated with the Shear. Leviathan runs for his fucking life, leaving 90% of buildings undamaged and the city's government intact. Incidentally, only Leviathan's tail (containing its core) escaped, leaving behind an almost-complete Endbringer corpse. The new bridge shrugged off the fuckery like it was nothing.

Arc 13: Reconstruction: The world-shaking news that an Endbringer decisively lost without Scion's intervention echoes across the globe. Meanwhile, the damage to Brockton Bay is being quickly repaired, and there's a major surge in Uploading patients after Panacea completely and utterly burns out. The Neohadean robot civilization continues to grow in secret.

Arc 14: Intrusion: The Slaughterhouse Nine finally makes its appearance; not wanting to get splattered, they opt for a mostly indirect method of causing problems, kidnapping people, doing horrific things to them, and making sure the aftermath is visible to the public. The only one who actually tries to infiltrate one of Ruggedizer's bases is Mannequin, who attempts to sneak into the Brockton Bay factory. This results in his unceremonious demise. After that, the Nine leave town.

Arc 15: Abduction: Being absolutely livid at the Nine for what they did in Brockton Bay, the crew opt to do something about Jack Slash before his next "show". As it turns out, they do need some practice at suborning intact Warrior Shards, calling for a test subject no-one will miss. Since Jack Slash fits the bill quite nicely there, they kidnap him and start experimenting.

Arc 16: Transmission: Fairly quickly, the Reliabuilt crew realize they hit upon an absolutely critical asset in the form of the Broadcast Shard. After completely and utterly suborning control over it, they begin mapping out the many, many Shards operating in the vicinity of the Earths. Towards the end of the arc, they find the cluster of Shards composing the Warrior Entity. Back on Bet, there's a mass migration towards Brockton Bay and Manchester, while plenty of other cities are practically begging Reliabuilt to set up branches there.

Arc 17: Usurpation: With the Broadcast Shard under their control and the Shard network mapped, the Reliabuilt crew begin quietly suborning Shards one after another. Extreme precautions are taken to avoid alerting the Warrior Entity of what exactly is going on. Meanwhile a massive superweapon is being constructed on NeoHadea.

Arc 18: Elimination: With the superweapon completed and the Shard Network suborned, the Reliabuilt crew launch a multi-pronged attack on the Warrior Entity. The suborned Shards do an excellent job of drawing the Warrior's attention, opening it up for a sucker-punch from the interdimensional doom cannon built on NeoHadea. This blasts a massive hole in the Warrior's defenses, most importantly breaking the sandboxing barriers preventing dimensional travel to the Warrior's core Shards. The Warrior Entity manages to block the beam from inflicting continued damage, but between the injuries it's already received and the continued attack from the suborned Shards it's effectively stunlocked. The NeoHadean robot armies surge through the breach and start tearing the Warrior Entity apart from the inside. The crew now have uncontested admin control over the source of Parahuman abilities.

Arc 19: Reparation: The Reliabuilt crew quickly exploit their newfound control over the Shard Network to arrange "accidents" for all the really bad villains on the various Earths. Meanwhile they completely change how getting powers works, putting them in the hands of people inclined to use them for constructive purposes and actually requiring informed consent about what the whole deal entails.

Arc 20: Disclosure: To much controversy, Ruggedizer goes public about the source of Parahuman abilities. The diplomatic mess caused by the Neohadean civilization along with open inter-Earth travel is bad enough, but people really don't like the crew playing favorites by refusing to tech-uplift dictatorships and generally having decent conduct strings attached to their help. Meanwhile, Cauldron gets unceremoniously shitcanned.

Epilog: A few centuries down the line, a space fleet operated by the Inter-Earth Federation happens upon another batch of Entities parasitizing a civilization. After some basic investigation to check for benign symbiosis, the Entities in question are simply demolished with starship weapons fire. Diplomatic contact with the locals ensues.

We Just Write · May 3, 2024

E: We're baaaack.

We Just Write · May 4, 2024

(Melissa)

I was working on some more consumer products for my day job when Rose paged me,

"Ruggedizer, I've got some excellent news! The Quantum Uploading Device has been approved for medical applications when used in conjunction with the body builder machine! They've also verified patent eligibility for the QUD, Body Builder, and the synthetic brains."

"Thank you, Rose! Would you please let legal know I'll be talking to them soon? It's about the licensing terms."

"Certainly."

As I walked to the legal offices, I thought grimly about the conversation I'd had with the rest of the family about this. The fact of the matter was, we couldn't release the dimensional shielding tech into the wild; it was all well and good for people to know we could protect our technology from Parahuman powers, but if they put two and two together about how we were doing it, that could completely destroy the opsec required for our anti-alien work.

So the version of the synthetic brains we'd looked to patent didn't have that shielding. The vast majority of Master powers would do absolutely nothing to uploads anyway, and this way we didn't risk the entire world. It still stung to release a deliberately sub-standard product, though.

My musings were paused as I reached the legal offices. I was greeted by Jacob Vespa, one of Reliabuilt's lawyers.

"Hello, Ruggedizer. I heard you wanted to talk about licensing for the newly patented technology?"

I nodded,

"Yes. Bluntly, these are technologies that people's lives will directly depend on, in a much more intimate sense than for most of our products. So anyone who wants to do licensed production will need reliability measuring up to our standards. Also, license-built QUDs and body-builders will be required to have compatibility with Reliabuilt-made brains."

Jose thought for a moment,

"What exactly do you mean by reliability measuring up to your standards? Do you mean a specific hard bar for reliability that mundane manufacturing can conceivably meet, or that it has to equal the tinker-tech that we make here?"

"The former; I'm fully aware that the reliability for stuff I make is beyond most firms' ability to replicate. I just want them to make absolutely sure their stuff won't get a patient killed or otherwise messed up. And that means rigorous testing standards, Reliabuilt inspectors turning up with no notice, and other similar measures."

"Understood. We'll get to work on it. Guessing we should get in touch with Human Resources about setting up an inspections department?"

"Good idea."

(Marcus)

It was two in the morning on Monday, the 28th of February. It had taken quite a few shady deals, but I had managed to arrange a meeting with Lung. I showed up at the Ruby Dreams casino, and was promptly directed to a back room. Twenty minutes later, Lung entered in his trademark steel mask. I was wearing my Mr. E getup, as was typical when I was on business away from the factory.

"So, you are Reliabuilt's mysterious fixer? Why did you want to meet with me?"

"Bluntly, to warn you about someone, and to make clear that accepting her into your gang will be very bad for your business."

Lung thought for a moment.

"Do you mean that I will be attacked for accepting this person into the ABB, or that they are inherently dangerous to my operations?"

"Both. I came to warn you about an asian-american explosives Tinker going by Bakuda. Putting it bluntly, she is utterly insane, and liable to do all manner of reckless things in an effort to stroke her own ego. Since her Trigger Event, she has been sighted approaching Brockton Bay twice, and it seems likely she will attempt to attack Reliabuilt."

Lung nodded thoughtfully,

"That is quite troublesome indeed. While I've had to downsize the protection services side of my business, the increase in disposable income across the city means my entertainment venues are more profitable than before. Taken together, the ABB is better off overall than before Reliabuilt came along. In addition, the removal of the Empire has been a great boon. Having an unstable bomb-maker ruin all of that is simply unacceptable."

There were another few seconds, before Lung asked another question.

"To be clear, is simply having this Bakuda under my employ in any capacity going to provoke hostilities?"

"If you keep her from causing problems, we won't give you any. But if Bakuda joins the ABB and starts causing trouble anyway? I politely request that you deal with her permanently. I suspect that her actions will provoke you to dispose of her anyway, should she come under your command."

Lung seemed moderately annoyed at my giving him instructions, but kept his composure.

"We shall see. Before you go, I have a message for you to pass to the PRT: the ABB has divested itself of human trafficking. It is not a sensible business to retain, given the changed situation in Brockton Bay."

Lung clearly wanted me to leave, so I stood.

"I understand. Thank you for your time."

To be clear, this is NOT a Lung Redemption Story. He is a bad person through and through, and is entirely willing to harm innocent people for his own gain. That said, he is pragmatic and capable of thinking things through; if he comes to the conclusion that a given act of villainy would be counterproductive, he won't do it.

(Andrea)

Ultimately, we'd had very little direct input on the engineering side of the bridge. There was just too much else for us to do, so we ended up giving the engineers involved a directive to prioritize durability and lifespan for the bridge over every other consideration - with the exception of not hindering maritime access - and left them to it. So I showed up at the north end construction site around noon on Thursday the 27th, to take a look around.

As I touched down at the entry gate, the lady on duty looked up from her lunch.

"Ah, Laniakea. I take it you're here to take a look around?"

"Yes, that's exactly correct."

"Well, you know the rules. Hard hat and high-visibility vest like everyone else."

I nodded, and donned the safety gear without complaint. The hard hat was pretty irrelevant for me, but the high-vis vest could still prevent a nasty accident. Properly attired, I proceeded onto the construction site.

I made an effort not to bother anyone, but I couldn't help being impressed by the large caisson I saw being floated into position.

I noticed a worker coming up to me, and turned to greet them.

The man waved to me,

"Nice to see you, Laniakea. I'm Adam, one of the junior engineers on the project. That caisson's a thing of beauty, yeah?"

I nodded,

"Yeah. That said, I find myself pretty curious about the inner workings of it. Got any details to share?"

Adam nodded,

"Yeah, that's a fully pressurized caisson there, and it'll form the foundation of the bridge's central tower. It's got six decompression chambers for workers coming off their shift, electrical hookups for earth-moving machinery, four layers of redundancy on the pressurization equipment, the works. There's even fully functioning restrooms built into the pressurized section, though not on the bottom level."

I smiled.

"That's genuinely impressive. Sounds like you'll make short work of laying the foundations."

"You'd think that, but the silt at the bottom of the bay is pretty thick here. Even with people working around the clock to dig muck out, it's going to take a while to reach bedrock. At least a month or two."

Ah. Fair enough.

(Emmy)

It took until March 3rd to get the space-expanding machinery to work properly on a link to our power. This really wasn't helped by the fact that we didn't tell our power shit about what we were doing here, and didn't get any help on this at all. Strictly speaking, this was an engineering project, rather than Tinkering. Once more, I found myself grateful for our awesome robot brains.

Anyway, just in case something went horribly wrong, we set up the breach in a dimensionally shielded vault, and none of us were physically present at the moment the space-expander fired. We really needn't have bothered; the portal smoothly grew from two millimeters to four meters in diameter, and stabilized at its new size without incident.

I couldn't help but remark,

"I can't help but feel that was way too easy. Shouldn't there be some sort of security we should have tripped?"

Marcus just shrugged.

"I'm really not surprised. The thousands of extra hosts reporting a completely divergent alternate reality didn't provoke a hazardous response, so why would this? Really, given the results of Project Gaslight this is totally within expectations."

As for Melissa, she had a rather blunt opinion of matters.

"I'm sending the probes in. along with the teleporter installation units. We've got an alien biocomputer to subvert, and sitting around talking about it isn't getting anything done."

Right, it was time to get shit done.

We Just Write · May 5, 2024

A/N: We realized there were some inconsistencies with the story's timeline. Among other things, we'd accidentally written Marcus doing stuff before his activation date. These anomalies have been corrected.

(Andrea)

Due to my mobility, I'd volunteered to supervise the effort to completely suborn our power "from the front". I made a backup before I went through the portal, but I really hoped that wouldn't be needed. I wanted to live, and a version of me from a few hours ago wasn't quite that; it was more of a life insurance plan.

Because of that, I was flying relatively low over the crystalline landscape. We didn't know if our power had anti-air defenses, and really didn't want to find out the hard way. Some of the drones flew higher to get a better view and so far none of them had been shot down, but better safe than sorry.
As our scouts surveyed the area, more and more information was becoming clear. Our power was approximately three hundred kilometers in radius, with the vast majority of its mass being in a huge dome towards the center. The outlying areas were largely dedicated to solar energy collection, meaning that almost the entirety of the database must be in the dome.

Furthermore, there was a massive impact crater in the dome. Some basic estimations indicated that it was consistent with an impact approximately equivalent to 300 kilotons of TNT. Clearly, something had not gone as planned here.

As for our initial intrusion point? It was two kilometers from the dome, and the portal was directly connected to the core by a pulsing conduit of crystalline nervous tissue.

I radio'd back to base,

"Emmy, Melissa, I'm going to start sending units into the dome, starting with the impact site. I have a hunch that crater is our best bet for bypassing the aliens' security."

Emmy replied quickly,

"Andrea, please be careful! I know you're competent and careful, but we're directly tampering with a being vastly more powerful than us."
"I know, Emmy. I know."
Within minutes the first data-jacks were being drilled into the alien's associative network, and as I got the first readings, I couldn't help but pump my fist in excitation. Not only were we getting good data, but it looks like that impact took out whatever passed for higher reasoning in a genocidal alien geological formation. Meaning that all the stuff directly connected to it assumed those jacks had full access permissions.
We were in.

(Emmy)

We'd started our attack on our power just after closing time on the 3rd of March, and stayed up all night analyzing the data we were getting back from the jacks our drones installed. Almost immediately, I was able to prove Andrea's hypothesis correct; our power's decision-making capacity and situational awareness had been crippled by that impact it suffered on approach. Effectively, we were dealing with an alien suffering the equivalent of a severe untreated concussion.

While there was absolutely a treasure-trove of technology in here, we were saving it for later. We had a much higher priority in our examination of the database: extracting as much information as possible on how the alien invasion cycle was going as a whole. What we found was complicated. At five in the morning, everyone gathered in a shielded break room to have breakfast and discuss the situation.

I started,

"Well, the good news is that one of the two network hubs is dead. So at least this cycle won't lead to successful reproduction."

Melissa sighed in response,

"That's far from any guarantee regarding the behavior of the other network hub. Just the fact that the Endbringers are deployed makes me suspect that a genocide is still in the works, and the records we uncovered make me deeply suspicious of Scion. I think he's a sockpuppet for the remaining network hub."

I nodded in thought, as did Andrea and Marcus. Andrea was the next to voice a concern.
"I'm honestly scared that our power is apparently on the small end. Yes I know that's normal for Tinker powers, since they're basically a database and therefore don't need all that much energy. It still means that any other powers we tamper with are likely to put up a much bigger fight than what we got here, even accounting for our power being comatose. We need to build up, way more than we can here on Earth Bet."

Marcus asked,

"Could we maybe build up in our power's reality?"

Melissa shook her head.

"No; the records show that the network hubs are supposed to check up on powers every once in a while. If that happens and there's any obvious alterations to our power, all our hard work on opsec goes right down the drain. So I've already started operations to conceal our subversion of our power."

Now Andrea spoke up,

"Can we please stop calling it that? Calling them powers has mystical connotations that I really don't like, and Sunderer hasn't stuck."
Marcus shrugged,

"Dynalith, maybe?"
"Sure, we can call it a Dynalith."

(Melissa)

The subversion of our Dynalith aside, Reliabuilt was still our single best way to acquire resources. It was also how we were best able to improve the situation here on Earth Bet in the near-to-medium term. That meant getting more products on the market was absolutely a useful thing to do, and the nuclear fusion technology we'd dug up a while back would be great for that. There was just one problem: the laws banning tinkertech from use in public infrastructure.

That meant another end-run around the Rogue Laws was needed. Namely, hiring a bunch of mundane engineers and teaching them how to build a fusion reactor. Then having them do it again without my direct involvement, so it wouldn't be tinkertech, legally speaking. We'd gotten a mix of fresh graduates and experienced nuclear industry personnel in starting on the 22nd of February, and we'd really gotten into the swing of building a fusion reactor starting on the 2nd of March.

By March 8th - Tuesday - the semi-tinkertech prototype reactor was completed. We'd just come back from lunch, and it was time for the initial test operation.

Angie Rains - one of the freshly graduated engineers we'd hired - called out from her station: "We have D-D ignition in chamber number one. We're getting good Helium three and Tritium synthesis rates, along with twenty Megawatts electrical. Thirty Megawatts thermal headed to the radiator on the roof."

A few moments later, Andrew Brown - a veteran nuclear engineer - chimed in.

"Tritium separator is working smoothly; The Tritium storage tank is no longer a vacuum. Helium three tank will be reaching the point of having enough for afterburner activation within an hour."

I couldn't help but smile; technically speaking, we'd crammed two separate fusion chambers into this machine. The afterburner Andrew was referring to was optimized for Deuterium-3He; four times the energy density of pure Deuterium fusion, and a much larger fraction of that energy could be converted to electricity to boot. The end result was that the afterburner would be able to output one hundred and eighty Megawatts of electrical power, for only twenty additional Megawatts of waste heat.

Angie chimed in again,

"Honestly, just chamber number one would have been absolutely revolutionary on its own. Include the Helium three afterburner, and I don't even know how to describe what we've accomplished."

I nodded, "Yeah, this is going to change the world, no question about it. That said, I'm not allowed to help you get the production model built. Though I am rather interested in what sort of ideas you have there."

Andrew answered;

"We've actually been thinking we should make the production model smaller. Shrink it down to the form-factor of a standard shipping container, and we'll drastically reduce the cost of getting fusion power plants set up anywhere we can ship a reactor. It's a lot like that small modular reactor concept that's been kicking around for a while, but with fusion instead of fission. Drops the power per reactor to fifty Megawatts electrical, but that's more than enough for a worthwhile power plant, especially if they operate more than one at a given site."

I nodded as I thought about that,

"Sounds like it would make for a really good locomotive too, come to think of it."

Angie and Andrew both shrugged,

"We'll get there when we get there."

Just before leaving the room, I noted,

"By the way, some people from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will be coming over starting tomorrow, in addition to the people from the PRT. Not anticipating any problems, but I thought you should know."

Angie saluted,

"Thanks for the heads-up."

(Marcus)

Finding the three remaining members of the Undersiders hadn't been hard; with their Thinker having been arrested, they weren't quite so good at dodging attention as they had been. So I'd left a letter for them at their new hideout - they'd moved prior to their old one getting raided by the PRT. That letter was politely requesting that they come talk to me at Somer's rock, also known as Brockton Bay's local neutral ground for villains to meet up.

Unlike with my talks with Faultline or Lung, this one did have an implicit "Or Else" attached to it. I didn't name any specific consequences, but the tone - along with the fact that I was more-or-less giving them orders - made clear that there would be some for not showing up.

I didn't need to wait all that long; all three Undersiders turned up at eight in the evening on Thursday, March 8th. The tall guy in black was clearly Grue, their de facto leader. I also noticed that Regent looked slightly confused, though it was a bit hard to tell through his mask.

As he sat, Grue asked,

"Are you Mr. E?"

"Yes."

There was a half-second pause, before I asked a very personal question.

"So, why are you three villains?"

Everyone tensed up. I then dropped my follow-up question.

"If you're villains because there's something you want, I can help you get it. The only string attached is that you three stop hurting people and causing problems for Reliabuilt. So, out with it."

There were several moments of awkward silence, before the one with the scepter - Regent - spoke.

"I... I can't go back to my family. I can't go to the authorities, that will just tell him where I am."

I nodded sadly,

"Supervillain father?"

"The worst."

"We can help you fake your death, better than anyone else. Put you in a fresh body, fake a cause of death for your old one, and you've got a fresh start."

The three teenagers seemed stunned for a moment. Then Grue asked,

"Wait, turning people into robots is a thing Ruggedizer can just do!? I thought that was some sort of one time only mad science thing, going by how the papers covered the Winslow incident."

"Ruggedizer doesn't do one time only mad science things. Her whole deal is extremely reliable technology, meaning anything she builds will be functioning for a very long time. That includes the uploading technology she developed. It's actually received conditional authorization for medical uses already."

Regent thought for a moment, then answered,

"I'll take your offer. Can't speak for the other two though."

I nodded, then gestured to Hellhound, also known as Rachel Lindt. She answered bluntly,

"I want to take care of dogs without anyone bothering me."

Grue elaborated,

"The only problem with that is that the PRT thinks Bitch murdered someone, when it was an accident. She made a dog that someone was torturing big, and the panicking dog did what panicking dogs do and bit."

I nodded, also mentally noting the term of address Grue used.

"Well then, I can arrange for Bitch to also have her death faked. Would that work for you?"

Bitch thought for a moment.

"Will my dogs still recognize me afterwards?"

I thought for a moment.

"That's something we considered. One idea that comes to mind is to build your new body first, and have you introduce the dogs to it before we put you in there."

"That will work."

I then turned to Grue.

"And, what do you want?"

"Custody of my sister. Our parents don't take good care of her, especially with her learning disability."
I kept my face stoic and very deliberately didn't say what I was actually thinking: You wanted to get legal custody of your sister, and your best plan was to go out and commit crimes? Saying that wouldn't be helpful. Instead, I answered,

"That's easy enough. Get your civilian identity a job at Reliabuilt, and we'll also get you in touch with some good lawyers. Yes that will involve you unmasking, but it's kind of unavoidable if you want to solve a problem in your civilian life."

"I... that's... why did I never think of something that simple before?"

I shrugged.

"Shall we go? I can let you into the Reliabuilt complex, and we can flesh out the plan in more detail there."

All three of them nodded in agreement.

We Just Write · May 6, 2024

It was the fourth of March - a Friday - when Amy noticed the new machinery being moved into Brockton General Hospital. More specifically, it was being moved to the terminal illness ward. Being curious about what it was, Amy found herself asking about it during one of her brief breaks.

Doctor Richard - one of the local Oncologists - answered,

"Ah, that's the new brain uploading machinery from Reliabuilt. It's been recently approved for medical uses, and it should really ease your workload. Basically, it opens up the option to put people in a brand new robotic body, if their current one is too sick or injured to recover any other way. It does mean a lot of medical personnel are also going to need some technical training going forwards, but that's how things go sometimes."

Just like that, all of Amy's self-worth evaporated. The world... just didn't need her anymore.

"Oh... I guess that's a good thing."

She went through the motions for the rest of her volunteer shift at the hospital, dreading what was going to happen. She was really glad that it was Victoria who came to pick her up, rather than Carol.

Victoria noticed the frown on Amy's face as she pulled up in the car.

"Amy, is something wrong?"

"Yes. They don't need me anymore."

Victoria blinked.

"Huh?"

"Ruggedizer's brain uploading technology is undergoing a nationwide rollout. That means I'm obsolete, and I don't have a reason to... exist anymore."

Victoria tilted her head.

"Who told you that you needed to heal people just to be allowed to exist?"

"Carol."

Victoria frowned, even as she put the car in park and got out her cell phone.

"Right, I think a sleepover is in order."

With that, Victoria dialed Taylor. Her sister needed to talk to someone who most emphatically couldn't want healing from her, but cared about her anyway.

We Just Write · May 9, 2024

P: We are now accepting Cape submissions for Manchester NH. I repeat, we are now accepting Cape submissions for Manchester NH.

We Just Write · May 9, 2024

(Marcus)

It was the ninth of March when I got a call from Faultline, specifically regarding an information bounty. Two of them, actually, though neither of them seemed likely to be recruitment prospects for Reliabuilt. I turned up in person with the agreed upon ten thousand dollars in cash per information bounty.

As it turned out, Faultline was busy. So the task of telling me what Faultline's Crew had learned fell to Spitfire.

"So, we've looked into a recent incident by the docks. We don't know many of the details, but apparently the PRT snapped up a fresh Trigger into the Wards. Probably a regenerator, given they were picked up from the hospital."

I nodded, though I didn't bother concealing a frown. It was information within the terms of the agreement, but it also wasn't terribly useful.

"Second, we have a confirmed sighting of Bakuda in Brockton Bay."

If I had blood, it would have run cold. Meanwhile, Spitfire got out a printed out photograph, presumably from a cell phone camera. It was a bit grainy, but I could clearly make out Bakuda talking to an ABB foot soldier in a back alley.

"Do you want to activate the pre-prepared contract to hunt down Bakuda?"

I thought for a moment. The more time Bakuda had to Tinker, the more dangerous she would get. But on the other hand, antagonizing Lung without needing to would be rather foolish. More pertinently, getting a reputation for being untrustworthy would make my job of quietly solving problems for Reliabuilt vastly harder in the long term.

So after a moment to think, I chose my answer.

"Not just yet. While she's almost guaranteed to cause problems, she hasn't yet. That said, if the PRT starts a manhunt for Bakuda, the contract immediately goes live. Given the change in circumstances, we're willing to increase the payment by ten percent for additional discretion regarding it being us hiring you."

Spitfire nodded,

"That sounds reasonable enough."

(Andrea)

It was just after lunch on Wednesday (March 9), when Rose paged me.

"Laniakea, Amy Dallon is here? She doesn't have an appointment, but she looks really distressed. Do you want to meet with her, or should I tell her you're busy?"

I saved the project I was working on, then replied.

"I'll talk to her; tell her I'll be in conference room two."

I arrived there about a minute before Amy did, though not before the robots stocked a fresh box of donuts and a jug of apple juice. Also a fruit bowl, in case anyone wanted to eat healthy.

Soon enough, the teenage brunette in question made her presence known. Judging by how messed up her hair was, she'd clearly been having a rough time of things. I offered her a glazed donut, and she immediately took it.

"Amy, what's wrong?"

Swallowing the bite she'd been chewing, the teenager answered,

"I can't go home again. If I have to go back to Carol, I – I won't be able to keep myself from doing something horrible."

I blinked, then motioned for Amy to go on.

"A bit less than a week ago, Brockton General got their uploading machine in. I know it's a good thing, but it got me thinking and I finally admitted to myself that I don't like healing. Stayed over at Taylor's for a night, but when I got back home, everything went bad."

Slowly, the whole story came out. Carol had massively gotten on Amy's case when it came out that she didn't actually like healing, and it had been so awful that Amy had opted to run away from home last night instead of go through another reaming. I didn't blame her in the slightest for running away from a clear case of emotional abuse.

I ran my fingers through my hair as I tried to figure out what to do. Obviously, Amy couldn't go back to Carol, but legal problems on my end could be very troublesome indeed. So I paged the legal office for some advice.

A few minutes later, Jacob Vespa had turned up with a laptop, and a stack of law books.

"So, I do need to make clear that I'm specialized in contract and intellectual property law, rather than whatever this is. Still, I'll do my best to figure out what the applicable laws here are."

An hour went by, along with two bathroom stops and another box of donuts. Still, Jacob had what seemed to be an answer.

"So, the most applicable law here would be Section 633:4 under New Hampshire's Title LXII Criminal Code. The short of it is that at best keeping Amy away from Carol would constitute a misdemeanor at minimum, possibly a felony. The catch is that there's a specifically spelled out affirmative defense: if you were acting in good faith to protect the child from real and imminent physical danger, it wasn't a crime."

Amy frowned.

"That's... not helpful. It doesn't cover emotional danger."

Jacob hummed, then looked something up on his laptop.

"Unfortunately, you seem to be correct. Though there are a few other legal avenues we can take – along with some more dubious measures."

I asked,

"Let's start with the legally clear options first, please."

"Well, calling Child Protective Services is definitely an option, as is starting proceedings to get Amy legally emancipated. With some corroborating evidence about living conditions with Carol, it shouldn't be too hard to get Amy free of that household one way or another. The only concern there is that Amy might be forced back to Carol until those court proceedings wrap up, if we can't get some sort of emergency order."

Amy shook her head vigorously,

"No, no no that's not an option. If I go back I won't be able to stop myself from doing something horrible, I know it."

Jacob nodded,

"And that's where one of the slightly dubious options first makes its appearance. Namely, getting the PRT involved and having them bend the rules a bit. Though how much they're willing to bend rules depends on how dangerous the Parahuman is, and healing isn't generally perceived as dangerous. Also best for Ruggedizer not to put too much of her own implied firepower behind this one."

After a moment of silence, Amy spoke.

"I have to admit something. I'm not just a healer. I can do a lot more than that."

Then Amy grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl, and it immediately reshaped itself into a live rodent of some description.

As the critter ran around in circles, I spoke.

"This... explains a lot. Right, we're going to the courthouse. I'll call the PRT on the way and we can explain the situation."

We'd just reached the lobby when a furious Brandish damn-near kicked down the door, and shouted:

"Laniakea, don't you dare get between me and Panacea!"

I didn't even break stride, though I did say "Sure, she's all yours," as misdirection.

Then I pulsed my gravity nodes just so, flinging myself at Carol. Credit to her reaction times, she shifted into her invincible ball of light form before I could make contact.

Still, invincible didn't mean immobile, and I could hit quite a lot harder than a baseline human. With a single solid kick, I managed to knock Brandish well over two hundred meters away, sending her straight through the factory's still-open front door.

I noted,

"That should keep her busy for at least a few minutes. Come on, let's go."

With that, we boarded the flying ambulance and started on our flight to the courthouse. When we got there, us explaining the situation to the first judge who had an open time slot actually got him to pinch the bridge of his nose in exasperation. While he didn't decide the case in Amy's favor instantly, he did grant Amy's request for alternate housing arrangements during proceedings. More specifically, she would be staying with the Heberts.

Crisis averted, I waited for Amy to get picked up, then flew back to the factory with Jacob.

(Emmy)

It was ten in the morning on Thursday, when I read the report on Byung-Ho's first major project. Namely, he'd managed to produce a superconductor that didn't quench until it reached six hundred Kelvins. Just reading that, my jaw dropped. Yeah the superconductors we'd had for the fusion reactor project were technically room-temperature, but only barely. What Byung-Ho made was actually even better in other regards too; it was flexible instead of rigid, and you could fairly easily splice lengths of superconducting cable together with just pressure and time.

Even if it weren't reproducible (and therefore couldn't be parented), this would have been a massively useful piece of technology. But apparently some PRT scientists had managed to manufacture a small sample of the new superconductor, dubbed BH-1. Albeit with absolutely trash yields compared to what Byung-Ho was capable of getting with Reliabuilt's equipment. Right, looked like Byung-Ho would be getting his first patent.

And yes, it would be his first patent; standard Reliabuilt contract for R&D personnel (Tinkers included) split ownership of the patent just about down the middle between the inventors and Reliabuilt. The idea was that neither party could sue the other for using the patented technology or demand royalties, and while the vast majority of licensing would be handled via Reliabuilt, the inventor got a share of the royalties – which they could voluntarily pay back into Reliabuilt or the BBRF, if they wished.

Either way, I promptly got up from my desk and went to go congratulate Byung-Ho in person. This was most definitely an achievement worthy of praise.

(Melissa)

As we sat down in the living room after work, I noted,

"So, the Manchester factory will be opening on Tuesday. I think we'll need to expand our 'cape roster' to maintain coverage."

Marcus nodded,

"That seems sensible enough. Especially since my professional capacity isn't really publicized. Heck, I don't think I've actually shown I have powers at all when I've been out making deals."

As if to prove his point, Marcus briefly projected an illusion of an unimpressed stick figure.

Andrea also chimed in,

"The big questions are what powers we'll build into the new person, and how we'll design their looks."

Marcus dug out a twenty-sided die from somewhere, then commented,

"Well, I for one think we ought to leave gender up to chance this time. One through ten is female, eleven through nineteen is male, and a twenty is non-binary."

No-one had any serious objections to the idea, so Marcus rolled the die, sending it clattering across the coffee table.

It was a two.

I shrugged,

"Any objections to naming her Rachel?"

We Just Write · Jul 11, 2024

(Andrea)

It was two in the morning on Friday (March 11), when there was a gentle knock on the door of the factory. I checked the security camera… and it was Ryan, one of our employees from shipping and receiving. Right, I better see what the problem was.

Thirty seconds later, I'd let Ryan into the lobby, and asked,

"Is there any particular reason you're here so early?"

Ryan nodded grimly,

"It's Skidmark. He's decided to try shaking down Reliabuilt employees for money, and he's threatening to chuck construction materials through our windows if we don't pay up."

I thought for a moment,

"And you're counting on me to handle things more permanently than the PRT would, I'm presuming?"

Another grim nod.

"Understood. Where did you last see him?"

"Rosebrick projects, one of the residential districts Reliabuilt's refurbished. Pretty sure Mush is slinking around somewhere too, but not sure where exactly."

With that, I wrangled a team of security robots – the newer antigrav models – and off I went. Skidmark needed to be informed that Reliabuilt employees and customers were off the list.

I briefly considered my approach as I flew; there was far too much chance of getting rightly charged for murder if I simply killed Skidmark, but I also needed to fuck him up badly enough that he would be physically incapable of causing further problems. While passing it off as an accident. Yes, an injury to the spinal cord should do the job quite nicely.

Soon enough, I caught a glimpse of Skidmark in all his 'glory', shouting obscenities at a condo block. To legally cover my ass, I sent notice to the PRT that I'd encountered Skidmark "on patrol", and requested backup. If everything went right, this would be over long before they got here.

I then activated my bodycam, and without even the slightest sound I touched down behind Skidmark. I tapped him gently on the shoulder, and as he whirled around I growled out the only warning the man would ever get.

"Reliabuilt employees and property are Off. Limits."

Skidmark scoffed,

"Fuck you, star cunt."

Then he went for something or other; I didn't wait to see what it was. Instead, I lunged and grabbed Skidmark, simultaneously saying "Fine, we'll do this the hard way!"

Then I threw him. The direction I'd thrown him towards had been unoccupied at the time of the throw, but one of the drones had been drifting that way, and "coincidentally" happened to line up its hard forwards edge with the back of Skidmark's neck right when their trajectories aligned.

With a sickening crack, Skidmark slid limply to the ground, and I immediately rushed over to administer first aid. There was no love lost, but this being an accident would be much easier to believe if I did my best to prevent Skidmark from dying of his injuries after the fact. This also let me covertly assess the degree of spinal damage the initial impact had inflicted, and if necessary increase it.

Fortunately, I didn't actually need to risk blowing my legal cover by doing that; all the information I could glean indicated that Skidmark was now a quadriplegic. That should do perfectly fine at keeping him from causing future problems. I also confirmed that his injuries weren't life-threatening. Good.

Three minutes after the initial notification I sent to the PRT, Velocity showed up.

"Laniakea, what happened here?"

I sighed,

"Skidmark got hurt worse than I meant to, and I've been administering first aid for the last few minutes. He's been out of it since the injury, and I've got reason to suspect spinal injuries."

The speedster nodded,

"Right, we already have an ambulance on the way. They should be here in a few minutes."

Anyway, I gave the PRT my bodycam footage of the altercation, and soon enough they hauled Skidmark off to… somewhere. Couldn't put him in a regular prison, or he'd die pretty quick on account of his newfound disability. Couldn't put him in a regular hospital either, or he'd trash the place with his power, paralysis or no.

Meh, not my problem anymore.

(Emmy)

The status of the Brockton Bay Revitalization Fund within Reliabuilt was a bit odd; strictly speaking it was a separate company operating as a non-profit, but it benefited from Reliabuilt's overall legal department and… I suppose the term "non-profit subsidiary" might be applicable? Either way, I was at least nominally the boss of both organizations.

Anyway, today I was interviewing an applicant for seed money. Normally I'd be delegating this, but the applicant in question was a parahuman.

"So, you want to open a martial arts school?"

The self-titled Sensei nodded.
"Correct. My power is extreme skill in analyzing people's movements and fluidly controlling my own body. This seems like something I could use to teach people who are interested in defending themselves, even though I myself have no formal training."

I thought for a moment.

"Could I hear an example, perhaps?"

Sensei clammed up. Not quite like he'd been caught lying, but like he was trying very hard to psych himself up for something he really didn't want to talk about. Eventually, he spoke.

"Six days ago, I was cornered by a group of ex-Empire men. I did not have my power then, but-"

I shook my head.

"Not quite what I meant. You don't need to tell me about your trigger. I want to know if you can teach."

Sensei let out a sigh of relief.

"I was a mathematics teacher at a high school for fifteen years. I was away on vacation when the Slaughterhouse Nine made a visit to said school, and there was no school to return to afterwards. I don't wish to discuss that matter further, but I'm willing to provide my credentials if you need them."

I thought for a moment.

"Would you, please?"

Sensei opened the briefcase he'd brought with him, and provided me with the relevant documents. Apparently his civilian name was Markus Rasp, his teacher's license was legitimate (though expired), and the fingerprints I got off him matched what was in the digital database.

"Good news, Sensei. Looks like you're approved for funding and assistance."

(Rachel)

Date Point: 0133, March 12, 2011

I snapped to awareness in a standing position. Four people were standing around me; I quickly identified them as Emmy, Melissa, Andrea, and Marcus Sykes.

Marcus spoke first.

"Rachel, are you feeling alright? Did the world knowledge directory integrate properly?"

I nodded.

"Yes. I'm in Brockton Bay, and I am a Reliabuilt product intended for sale to law enforcement."

Everyone looked flabbergasted and appalled, and I couldn't help but crack up after a few seconds.

"Hah, gotcha! I know you're my family and never had any intention of selling me, but you only ever get one chance for a prank like that."

Emmy and Andrea both facepalmed, Marcus started giggling, and Melissa grumbled,

"Not funny."

"Was too funny. Also, what's the deal with that encrypted directory?"

Marcus went very serious then.

"That directory contains absolutely top secret information, only kept at such high levels of secrecy out of necessity. If that information gets out at all? The world dies. Why that would happen is one of those incredibly dangerous secrets."

There was a pause, before Marcus continued.

"If you don't want to be burdened by those secrets, you don't have to. But if you do choose to learn it, the programs in that directory will render you straight-up incapable of spreading those secrets without an absolute guarantee of maintaining infosec."

I thought for a moment, before giving my answer.

"Sounds like you need the help. Gimme that encryption key."

(Melissa)

While Andrea, Marcus and Rachel got busy planning the latter's public debut, I was planning our next move against the Dynaliths with Emmy.

Emmy started,

"So, we need to find an unoccupied earth that's only under light surveillance, and set up our operations there."

I nodded,

"That's correct."

"We can't ship enough assets to really get things started from either of our factory complexes. Not without compromising on secrecy, which is unacceptable."

"That's also correct."

"Therefore, we need to find some other site to use as our jumping off point."

There was a long pause, before I finally had an idea. A horrible and insane idea, but one that could work.

"The Eagleton quarantine zone, it's perfect."

Emmy blinked.

"What. How?"

"Think for a moment; because it's a quarantine zone, information on what's going on in there is extremely limited. On top of that, the reason it's quarantined is because of aggressive robots. I do believe we know someone who can Master robots."

Emmy focused on the idea for a moment.

"Do you really think we can read Taylor in on this? Not to mention she'd need to be extremely selective with what she actually did to the Eagleton robots, to avoid tipping off her power."

I thought about it for a bit.

"If push comes to shove, we do have a couple other options. We could get some feedback from Dragon, or we could maybe duplicate Taylor's connection to her Dynalith and do it ourselves."

Emmy answered almost immediately.

"Dragon first. She's already shielded and read in on the problem, not to mention having a lot of resources to work with that we don't have direct access to."

(Marcus)

It was 2 PM on Saturday. Rachel wasn't even 24 hours old yet, and I was keeping an eye on the news. Sure enough, a news story about Bakuda's bombs being used to level a building quickly surfaced. The news program quickly brought on a PRT representative saying that an all-out manhunt for the bomb tinker was now in effect.

I nodded grimly, and activated my internal phone.

"You've reached the Palanquin." said the voice of a receptionist I'd met briefly during previous business discussions.

"It's Mr. E. Let Faultline know that the previously arranged contract to deal with a liability is now active. I'll be there with the first half of the pay within the hour. In cash, as agreed."

We Just Write · Oct 31, 2024

(Dragon)

"Emmy, Melissa, that is quite possibly the worst idea I have ever heard. The Eagleton Quarantine Zone is off-limits for very good reasons, and I will not allow any harebrained schemes to try using it as a jumping off point for extradimensional colonization."

On the other end of the video call, Emmy turned to Melissa.

"Told you so."

Melissa slumped a bit.

"I suppose it was a stupid idea. Thanks for injecting some sense. Still, we do need an offworld base of operations. Any thoughts on what could work?"

I spoke up,

"I've got a lot of obsolete suits and other equipment in storage from my long career as a Protectorate and Guild Tinker. Though not suitable for combat anymore, that materiel could easily be repurposed for starting an offworld colonization program without anyone noticing. It can even be returned to storage once it's no longer needed, leaving no evidence behind. I'll simply need plans for an interdimensional travel machine, and the coordinates of an appropriate world."

Melissa nodded,

"Thank you for the offer, Dragon."

(Andrea)
Date Point: 1007, March 14 2011

Barely an hour after Reliabuilt's employees clocked in for work, the factory complex's alarms went off. I immediately overclocked my brain to maximum speed and pulled up the information on what was going on and - oh.

There were six projectiles on high arcing trajectories towards the facility. Radar, lidar, and visuals all agreed that they were mortar shells. Ballistics tracking pointed to a firing site 1.8 kilometers away, with firing times synchronized to achieve simultaneous impact.

I immediately tasked point defense to begin shooting down the mortar shells, even as a squadron of eight security drones were mobilized for a flight to the firing site. Sixteen more drones were also assigned to ram the mortar shells midair if they began descending despite both the lasers and regular interceptor missiles.

Another salvo of mortar shells was fired from the site before the drones had even made it a third of the way there, on a notably lower trajectory than the first salvo. Clearly this was an attempt at a time-on-target attack. Fortunately two of the first salvo shots had already been swatted by the time the second salvo launched.

Ballistics tracking also noted a seventh shell firing directly upwards. Why?-

That anomalous shell burst midair, producing a massive glowing vision of Bakuda. It was approximately forty meters tall, and clearly visible throughout most of the city. The illusory Bakuda made a triumphant pose even as the sixth inbound shell was destroyed, and then the damn thing began to gloat.

"I am Bakuda, the greatest Tinker in the world! Today, I erase the accomplishments of Ruggedizer!"

I tuned out the rest of the nonsensical rant, and focused on the job of defending the facility from the remaining inbound projectiles and shutting down the mortar site.

A fourth salvo of mortar shells was fired immediately prior to the flight of drones arriving at the firing site, getting a look at eight or so ABB goons shoveling shells into the six mortars they had as quickly as possible. They also had a flatbed truck here, where the ammunition was stored. I promptly ordered the security drones to taze the artillery crew with their electrolasers- and got a very direct look at their heads exploding, being impaled from the inside in hundreds of directions, bursting into flame from within, instantly freezing solid, bursting into a shower of horrible acid, arcing electricity all over everything nearby, and in one case instantly converting all matter in a 1.2 meter radius to glass. A moment later the remaining mortar shells on the truck also went off, devastating the entire street.

FUCK. I immediately contacted approximately all the emergency services, even as the drones in the vicinity switched to search and rescue mode. One of them had actually been destroyed by one of the matter conversion bombs, so there were only seven there to help. That wouldn't be anywhere near enough.

Fortunately, the factory's defenses managed to neutralize all inbound munitions before any could reach the apex of their trajectory. But that giant fucking hologram kept gloating about the destruction of Reliabuilt's factory. The damn thing had to be a recording rather than a live feed, since it celebrated at the exact moment when the mortar shells would have impacted, despite all of them having been neutralized by then. After a minute of insufferable gloating, it faded.

To think I had been hoping for a relaxing work day.

(Marcus)
In the immediate aftermath of the mortar attack on Reliabuilt, I contacted Lung via burner phone.

"Lung, this is Mr. E. Did you authorize Bakuda to attack Reliabuilt?"

To his credit, Lung answered immediately.

"No. In fact, I explicitly forbid her from taking any such action. I am aware of what happened; I clearly saw the hologram she created."

"Understood. Are you willing to share your plans going forwards?"

"Bakuda will need to be disciplined. Farewell, mister E."

(Rachel)
My official debut had been pushed back by the Bakuda debacle, so I found myself in one of the extreme security labs trying to figure out options for effective anti-Endbringer weapons. Unlike every other group who had to deal with them, we had the benefit of insider information on what the Endbringers actually were, and some knowledge of how they worked.

Analyzing that information was not encouraging, unfortunately. Very quickly, I was able to rule out any amount of straightforward physical force. Any hit of that variety strong enough to kill an Endbringer would be more than enough to render the planet uninhabitable. Assuming the planet was still around after the fact at all.

Meanwhile, the dimensional clusterfuck inside an Endbringer's body meant most varieties of weaponized portal simply wouldn't work. Temporal alterations could possibly have an effect, but given that the Worms had access to temporal effects of their own, that was a temporary measure at most.

I spent most of the day mulling over the problem, before I wound up asking Emmy and Melissa a question at dinner.

"Does the sending end for a teleporter actually need to be fully enclosed?"

We Just Write · Nov 5, 2024

(meanwhile)

Given recent events, Lung had ordered Oni Lee to dispose of his Bakuda-provided grenades immediately, as a safeguard against betrayal. He had then demanded that Bakuda come explain her blatant insubordination in person, given that she had violated a direct order by attacking Reliabuilt. So Oni Lee and Lung waited for Bakuda to either arrive and explain herself, or not arrive and find herself on Lung's hit list. Lung was obvious and in the open, but Oni Lee had found a concealed hiding spot to wait in.

As it turns out, Bakuda did arrive on schedule. But contrary to Lung's orders, she was carrying her grenade launcher, and already had it mostly lined up on Lung as she rounded the corner.

Things happened very fast after that, Oni Lee flashing into existence just in front of Bakuda, knives drawn. At the same time, Bakuda pulled the trigger. The launched grenade ricocheted off Oni Lee's shoulder, tumbling upwards into the air. Oni Lee flashed himself behind Bakuda even as his current self tumbled into the ground, and Lung ducked down away from the grenade.

Then the grenade went off, trapping both Lung and the Oni Lee in front of Bakuda. Well, parts of them anyway; the Oni Lee clone's head was inside the time stop bubble, as was Lung's left arm, raised in an instinctual effort to shield himself from the blast.

Bakuda didn't have long to celebrate her accomplishment, as Oni Lee stabbed her in the neck from behind, then made absolutely sure the madwoman was dead.

Meanwhile, Lung ripped himself free of his trapped arm, and started trudging around the timestop to where Bakuda's corpse was lying. By the time he got there, his left arm had mostly regrown, and Oni Lee had finished cutting off Bakuda's head, just in time to hand it to the regenerating pyrokinetic.

"I commend you for your loyalty, Oni Lee. Now, I do believe we have a message to send."

(Emmy)
Date Point 0815, March 15 2011

The front page of today's newspaper had a rather gruesome picture on the front page: a woman's severed head in a gas mask, erected on a post in one of Brockton Bay's parks. Hanging just below the head was a rather straightforward message:

"This is the head of Bakuda, who betrayed Lung. She is now dead."

Marcus nodded from across the breakfast table, even as he scraped some cream cheese onto a bagel;

"Well, looks like I'll be delivering the rest of Faultline's pay today, even though their efforts didn't really do much about Bakuda."

I shrugged,

"Fortunately, all they want is money, which isn't exactly in short supply for us."

"True. Any thoughts about what you'll be doing today?"

"Planning Rachel's public debut, talking to Trainwreck, and also checking on the Manchester factory site. According to what I've heard back from them, they should be ready to open by the end of the week."

That's when Rachel looked up from her oatmeal, and asked,

"Does my debut really need to be super flashy? I'm not law enforcement, branding isn't super important for me."

I replied, "People still need to know you work for Reliabuilt, meaning some sort of public debut is required. Best to have a plan for that, given you only get one shot at a first impression."

(Melissa)

To my utter shock, I was called over to the Protectorate's Rig on the 15th. I wasn't in trouble for anything, it was just that Armsmaster wanted my advice. Given how we'd gotten along before, I really wasn't expecting him to want to consult my expertise on anything.

Still, I showed up at ten o'clock sharp, wearing my dress armor. Armsmaster was waiting for me at the entrance.

"Ruggedizer."

"Armsmaster. Why did you request my assistance?"

The middle-aged miniaturization Tinker scowled for a moment, before answering.

"You are the world's leading expert on brain uploading. I have been persuaded that for such a high-stakes procedure, I should get your assistance in transitioning to a synthetic."

Ah. Apparently, Dragon talked some sense into him. I nodded,

"The easy way would be to put you through the QUD and let the body builder do its work, but I'm guessing you want a more custom job."

"You are correct. I will be using a Reliabuilt uploading machine, and a destination brain built to Dragon's specifications. But for the rest of my new body, I would appreciate your help ensuring compatibility and reliability."

I kept a strictly professional expression; I fully knew just how galling this had to be for Armsmaster, and I wasn't going to make this any harder on his ego than I had to,

"Understood. I suppose we should get to it, then?"

(Andrea)

Due to some unexpected legal trouble involving the BBRF (nothing too major, but still time-consuming), Emmy found herself with rather less time available than she'd planned on. So the task of talking to Trainwreck fell to me. As I entered his workshop, the Tinker nodded in my direction.

"Nice to see you Laniakea. Anything in particular you wanted to talk to me for?"

I shrugged,

"Something came up, so Emmy had to delegate checking up on you. How have you been since getting here?"

Trainwreck thought for a moment,

"Took me a while to hit my stride with properly long-lasting machinery, but I've mostly gotten up to the level of lifetime guarantee Ruggedizer can manage. Filled a dozen or so orders since then. I hope that's good enough?"

I smiled, "More than good enough. Truth be told, I was mostly here to check on your personal wellbeing, rather than audit your job performance."

Understanding dawned in Trainwreck's expression.

"Ah. There is something that's been bugging me, I suppose."

"You can tell me, you won't get in trouble for it."

There was a pause as Trainwreck hesitated. Then he answered.

"Even with the frame I built for myself, it's not really a body. I'd like to be able to go out and just have some normal time off, but can't see how to make that happen."

I blinked. This was a problem with a readily available solution.

"You do know brain uploading was recently added to Reliabuilt's health plan as an option for interested employees, right?"

Trainwreck blinked,

"I haven't read my contract in weeks. So no, I didn't know that. How do I apply for that?"

Wait... we never did get around to telling people about that, or setting up an official process for getting uploaded. Well that was an oversight we needed to correct.

Built To Last

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