Variable (Ben 10/Worm SI/Multi/Mega Crossover)

[Nyrmac]

The next day, I cracked my fingers and went to work with my supercomputer to find a website for Toybox. During my time when I was using this super tech, I've learned that I just simply need to let the technology do the hard work for me. I'm thankful that Upgrade apparently takes queues from Shards and lets me make technology from the resources available to me. Which makes me wonder, could a Galvanic Mechamorph merge with a Shard? Then I had a thought that sent chills down my spine.

Malware merging with a Shard. Or something even worse, Ultron or even ALPHA taking control of, or worse, merging with an Entity. That would be the stuff of fucking nightmares. And God help us all if those three were to meet and team up. If there was anyone who could remove the Omnitrix, it would be them. Failsafes be damned.

Okay, enough nightmare fuel and fridge horror for right now. Let's get back to Toybox and their deal.

For a frame of reference for Toybox, they were a group of Rogue Tinkers. Tinkers are types of Superhumans, specifically Parahumans, who can make highly advanced technology that's far beyond our current capabilities as average humans. As such, they make very important targets for the government and villains. I said this before but didn't specify why that was the case.

Their technology, which is Tinkertech, is black boxed. Meaning that we don't understand it and it's a pain to maintain and repair it without the help of the original Tinker. The reason as to why tinkertech is black boxed? It's because the Shards that give Parahumans their powers actively sabotages the tech to promote creativity. And a lot of the time, Tinkers don't understand how their technology works, making it even harder to reverse engineer, maintain, and repair it without the original Tinker.

Tinkers are the most versatile Capes bar none. There are Capes who can give powers or they themselves have the ability to copy or even steal powers, but Tinkers have the potential to power up a team significantly with weaponry and even powered armor. Can you understand why they're so sought after?

And Toybox were a group of Tinkers that didn't want to join any groups and simply wanted protection most of the time. They didn't even participate in major battles where everyone else fought against a common foe. They tended to sell on the black market and sold to Rogues, Indie Heroes, and Villains. Rumor has it that they have some form of agreement with both Dragon and the Elite.

I ended up finding a rather basic website. It wasn't decorated whatsoever. The majority of the colors were grey and white.

There was just some text for a greeting and introduction. Below that was what I was looking for.

[Buy/Sell]

[Trade]

[First Time Buyers]

[Joining Toybox]

I selected the third option and was taken to a much better decorated and more colorful page detailing their rules. They obviously didn't like being screwed over and lied to. I can't really blame them for that.

There was a phone number and apparently, an untraceable web address below the information. They even had contacts for each member of Toybox.

I selected the first one and was given a survey as to why I wanted to make a call to Toybox. I filled in the information and the survey went away. I whipped out my phone and began to make a call to some possible new associates.

I barely needed to wait for a few seconds before a tired and snarky voice came through the phone. <Hello? Who am I speaking with?> Since I was in my armor right now, my voice was robotic and genderless. "I am Variable. An independent and I would like to request your services."

<Huh, someone with some manners. Are you a Tinker?> she asked me curtly.

"Well, you could say that."

<You ought to join a group. Tinkers aren't good independents a lot of the time.> She warned me.

"I know that and that's why I'm calling. I have solar panels for trading purposes." A few seconds passed and her voice became serious when she answered me back.

<Are you serious about that? Where did you get the panels?>

"I obtained them from the Boat Graveyard in Brockton Bay. Don't worry though, I've checked them, and they haven't decayed, nor have they corroded from the salty air and seawater, some of them at least. If you can send someone down to the Boat Graveyard, specifically, the old SS Friday at nine o'clock tonight, then I'd be there."

<This better not be a PRT or villain set up because if it is then so help me God...> She threatened me.

"This is very much the opposite of what you're fearing. So, do we have a deal or what?" I finally made my bargain.

After about a minute, she answered. I did hear some talking that was muffled so I couldn't make out words. "Alright, we'll be sending out Dodge and Pyrotechnical out to you at nine sharp. Don't be late."

"I won't be. Thank you for your service, ma'am!" She thanked me and said good bye.

******

Twelve-year-old Dodge approached Glace, his eyes filled with curiosity. "So, how did the lie detector readings turn out?"

Glace let out a thoughtful huff. "Surprisingly consistent, never dropping below 90%. They sounded legitimate, but you know how unpredictable these situations can be. Especially with our luck..." She turned to Pyrotechnical, her girlfriend, who was engrossed in her work. "Hey, Pyro! What do you say we join Dodge on a little trip to Brockton Bay?"

Dodge raised an eyebrow. "Couldn't Pyrotechnical handle it alone?"

"Dodge, you haven't calibrated your teleportation system for solo use yet," Big Rig interjected, his voice resonating with authority. Dodge blushed, realizing the oversight, and silently conceded the point.

Pyrotechnical looked up from her tinkering, intrigued. "How should we approach things once we're there?"

Glace leaned against a nearby worktable, adopting a casual demeanor. "Simple. We check out what they have to offer, and if there are valuable items for trade or sale, we negotiate terms. If the solar panels are in good condition, we sweeten the deal by offering them a basic lab. Depending on the materials involved, we might even throw in some premium components for those solar panels."

Dodge nodded in understanding, his mind already buzzing with thoughts of potential discoveries and deals. "Sounds like a plan. When do we leave?"

Big Rig, the towering figure in the room, chimed in with a grin. "As soon as you're ready, Dodge. Let's make it a worthwhile trip to Brockton Bay."

******

I have no idea how long me and Riley have been out here for, but we made sure we arrived thirty minutes before seven. Right now, I looked at the Omnitrix and looked at the time. I know, the alien watch can tell time, now who'd a thought of that? But I had to reset the clock since it was thirty six hour clock rather than twenty four hours.

Nine. They should be here now. And of course, I heard a weird sound like a teleporter from Star Trek. Like down to the noise exactly.

"It's quite the view, isn't it?" A young voice ruined the night's blissful silence. "Yeah, it looks really pretty out." Riley replied. I was in my armor and Riley wasn't wearing a costume.

After a moment, I heard a shriek and Riley fell down with a thump on the sand. I assumed she got startled. Didn't she have enhanced hearing?

I looked back and noticed two people in very rudimentary costumes were both holding back laughter.

"Ah, you must be Dodge and Pyrotechnical. It's nice to meet you both!" I greeted them.

"You too. I'm assuming you're Variable?" The taller one asked. I nodded my head and spoke. "So, are we going to do any business?"

"Sure! Just show us the good stuff!" Dodge exclaimed. Why does this feel like a drug deal or something like that? Anyways, we waited for Riley to recover, and I brought them to the hole in the side of the ship. Thankfully, we had a flashlight.

"Huh, I'm honestly surprised that you managed to get your hands on this stuff. I wonder why someone hasn't already grabbed them." Pyrotechnical queried. Riley explained that it was because people assumed that the saltwater corroded the cargo, which was true a lot of the time. And she mentioned that the big time gangs fight over bigger and less destroyed parts of town.

She led us over because of her superior night-vision. She opened the crates and let them look over the solar panels.
"Um, which one of you is the Tinker?"

"Well, both of us are. She's a Bio-Tinker and I'm a... free Tinker, I believe." I answered honestly. I knew that there were different types of Tinkers; free, chaos, focal, and magi. I think there were more of them too. And besides, what I said was completely correct. Upgrade and Grey Matter were technically free Tinkers.

"You two should probably join someone..." Dodge suggested. I shook my head. "I'm not interested in joining gangs. And no offense to you, neither of us want to go nomad."

"Why don't you want to join the Protectorate?"

Riley answered before I could." Those bastards have screwed me over. They've already outed me which is why I'm not wearing a mask. They said it was an accident but that was because they were trying to railroad me to their fucking Wards shit." she remarked bitterly.

"Jesus, that's low even for them." The older Tinker sighed in sympathy. He came over to crate and looked over the panels. "Ah-ha! These are pretty average which is better than I thought they were. About eight percent efficiency. Crystalline wafer-based silicone. They aren't the best ones, but if the rest of the panels are like this then Toybox might be interested in doing a trade."

That sounded really good.

"We need to check the other containers. Do you have a way to clear out the water?" Dodge asked us. I smiled and nodded. "Um, could you two close your eyes for a few seconds?" When they asked why, I told them to just trust me. After some seconds of obvious hesitation, they closed their eyes and waited for me. I activated the Omnitrix quickly and I became Overflow.

"Uh, what was that?!" Dodge yelled out. I tried to explain what happened in the vaguest way possible. I told them to open their eyes and their reactions were very predictable. Basically, 'WTF' and 'where did the one in the armor go'. We managed to calm them down though.

I pointed my arms towards the water that was in the ship and began to suck it into my body. Which felt super weird.

"What the hell? You... are a Tinker... right?" Dodge questioned me. I just nodded my head. "I can manipulate water. But, I'm pretty sure that the panels in these boxes are corroded and smashed to shit."

"Well, we should still have a looksee. Just to be sure."

He checked and like I suspected, he agreed with me. "Eh, they're only good for scrapping. But the rest of 'em that can be repaired or salvageable are at about fifteen or twenty percent. Considering the current circumstances, that's not bad at all."

Pyrotechnical continued the observation. "Combine these with the ones you just showed us, and I think you've got something for us. Do you have a list for what you two want and need?" Riley took out a sheet of paper from her pants pocket and handed it to the older Tinker.

******

The two Rogues are going to give us what they call 'The Basics Pack'. According to them, it was what Tinkers needed to really get started on their projects. They also told us to steer clear of the Brockton Wards because Armsmaster nearly drove away Kid Win. Riley told me that was yet another reason as to why she refuses to let me join the Wards. Jesus, is Armsmaster really that much of a dick? I thought him nearly driving Kid Win away from the Wards was Fanon.

They'll give us the tools we would need to start despite the fact that we told them we were okay without them. We explained that we already had tools, but they insisted. We'll also be receiving a power ranking system that they obtained from the PRT. (Read: They actually stole it.)

"Wow, that was a lot easier than I thought it would be." I told her. She palmed her face and let out a sigh. "They scared the shit out of me too." Ha-ha.

Hmmm, I wonder if Grey Matter could work with chemicals. Something to think about later. Anyways, we'll be getting our stuff within a few days at most. In the meantime, we need to get home.

"Riley, we should go home. It's late out." I said to my blonde little sister. She looked over at me and nodded her head.

******

The following few days were rather silent other than reading news reports about the new "Capes". The PRT released a statement to be careful if you see the new Capes around. They even drew comparisons to Omnimorph's forms and wondered if they were related. The new names that were given were Corona and Poltergeist respectively. While very good and fitting names, I'm not renaming my forms since I'll still be referring to them by their canon names regardless of what I do. And if they try to whine, then I'll punch them in the face.

Other than that, nothing went on other than the occasional bit of practice and Tinkering.

It was about time Toybox were going to give us our 'The Basics' kit. Now the question is where to start with Tinkering. Should I build a workshop or simply start building weapons first? I'll talk to Riley before we do anything yet.
Once again, I heard the sound of a teleporter and there stood the two Tinkers.

"Hi. Before we get down to business, I would like to know if Toybox interested by our offer?" Riley asked them, not wasting any time at all.

Pyro nodded her head. "We are interested in it. We've looked over the list of what you wanted, and we got everything for you. Now, Dodge wants to show off something he's been working on."

Dodge nodded, raised his hand up, and then snapped his fingers. He held out a hand and a large bag appeared out of nowhere, while it didn't appear in his hand directly, it came with him holding its strap. My eyes behind my mask went wide as little flying drones came out of the bag. Each one flew over to several crates and shot a crate with a white-blue beam. After a few seconds, the crates vanished, seemingly without trace.

"Tinkertech is absurd." I said in amazement.

Dodge chuckled. "Actually, as far as Tinkertech goes, this is pretty normal stuff." I nodded my head and watched each drone take each crate, a few at a time. The whole surreal process took a total of five minutes since the bots needed a slight refresh period.

The crates were replaced by several new ones that looked much newer. They had no rust on them, and they didn't look old whatsoever. Each one was just as big as the ones they replaced, and they all had a name on them which said what they contained. The crates held steel, copper, plastics, and other materials respectively.

The next things that were teleported in were a few machines that were likely to help us get ready for building. But I had a plan for the Tinkertech. I wanted to see if I could use Upgrade to remove the sabotaged and Blackbox parts of the stuff. "Well, this was everything aside from that Kevlar you wanted. That's taking a little bit of time to really get, so sorry about that." Pyro apologized.

"Yeah," I said dryly," I think we could forgive that considering the all of the shit you just gave us in this package."
Dodge chuckled. "Oh, and one more thing for you both." He reached into his pocket and pulled out two red phones. "These phones are a way for you to contact us for future trades or anything like that. And the phones only call one number, ours." He handed us both phones and we took them.

"Uh, wow. Thank you for this." Riley thanked them gently.

"It's no problem really. You're really the first ones to be completely straight with us for a long time now. We just wanted to show our appreciation." The older Tinker said.

We thanked them once again for doing business with us, led them out of the ship, and watched them as they teleported away. I looked back at the crashed ship and grinned in my armor. It was time to get shit done!

"Hey, Riley."

"Mm-hm?"

"Since we're already here, do you want to set up our lab in this ship? I mean, the technology is already here, and it would be pretty good to keep things separate from our house." I asked her. "Sure, Cam." She replied.

I went over to the smallest machine, a laptop. It was probably one for programming, so I likely won't be able to use it. In my normal form at least. But thankfully, I have a form that might be able to fix that problem. But first, Upgrade.

With a flash o' green, I became the blob. I stared at the abomination against technology and glared, though you could only see that since I only had an expressive green circle for a face. It wasn't a face really. It was more like an eye.

I shifted my density into a more liquid-like state and jumped into the computer. It was appalling. This thing had no right to exist! It should either explode or just not work because of the complete defiance of the laws of physics. I kept checking through as quickly as possible since I didn't want the shard to have much data.

A screw was giving off a different magnetic wave than others. It's the very thing that allows the whole machine to work in the first place. The device was also dependent on the Earth's rotation/tides/gravitational pull to work as well. This was insulting to my Mechamorph mind! I was putting an end to this at once!

"Cam-err, Upgrade, what's wrong?" Riley asked me. My green, singular eye appeared on the screen and glared. <This... abomination... must be destroyed! I cannot allow it to exist anymore!> She looked at me with the most confused expression on her face. "What are you-"

I could feel something, as if there was some form of tugging sensation. I removed the sensation, that was likely the connection to the Shard. Then the laptop began to vibrate. White, glowing cracks made their way across the black and green exterior of the tinkertech laptop. A bright light shined throughout the interior of the ship, blinding the Bio-Tinker who was just watching me. She covered her face and yelled out, but I didn't care right now. My work was done. I actually kept the damn thing together while it was breaking down.

I exited the now normal ultra-tech laptop, shifted back to my normal Mechamorph form, and marveled at its newfound non-physics destroying nature. I put my big hands on my hips. If I could smile, then I'd have a huge, satisfied grin going across my face right now.

"What the hell was that?!" Riley whisper-shouted at me. I turned towards her and chuckled. <I'm sorry Riley. I didn't know that would make that sort of flash. But now, the laptop isn't tinkertech anymore.> When she stopped rubbing her eyes, she looked up at me and blinked. "What."

 

[Nyrmac]

<Yeah, I managed to crack tinkertech.> I said proudly in my mechanized voice. Riley stared at me dubiously. I understood why she didn't believe me though. I mean how many people do you think have tried to crack this stuff and failed.

"Uh..."

<I know it's pretty hard to believe me when I say that. But I just removed the Blackbox part that makes it Tinkertech.> I explained to her. Her eyes widened. "Upgrade! Do you know what this means?!" She questioned me with excitement.

<No, what does it mean?> I lied. I knew that this was a pretty big deal, since this has the potential to be world changing. Although, releasing technology to an unprepared world, as I've mentioned before, is a stupid idea. I don't want to pull a 'Reed Richards is Useless' on the world, but the tech might actually be too advanced even if I could un-Blackbox it. Speaking of Reed, I wonder if the Fantastic 4 exists in this universe too.

"It means that we could have it reverse engineered! We could have someone buy the patent for it! The possibility of us making a huge amount of money is incredibly likely!" the fourteen-year-old bio-tinker told me.

<That's true, but this isn't technically ours. It belongs to Toybox.>

"Oh, right. They might not appreciate it if we pull a 'Dragon'." She drooped.

I put my big hand on her shoulder. <Hey now. We don't need to do this to their technology. There's nothing stopping us from doing this to discarded tech or stolen tinkertech.> She smiled at my words.

We pretty much spent the next several hours making what we could, but we didn't go too crazy. It was always good to start small of course. We managed to get to work on designs for powered armor. While Riley didn't need it, I did since I don't want to over rely on the Omnitrix. Besides, I'll be starting Krav Maga classes in a few days thanks to Maria getting me citizenship. As it turns out, I was considered to be a Case 69. Nice.

A Case 69 was someone who was dimensionally displaced and didn't have a way to go back home. As such, they were taken in by someone and lived on Earth Omega, this Earth, until they had a way back.

It took us about three and a half hours to set everything up. Riley could indeed make computers, but they were more like hospital and surgical equipment rather than "just" a supercomputer. According to her, she could indeed work with other tinkertech that wasn't biotech, but she said it was pretty annoying and frustrating.

******

I looked around my room, having recently woken up. I wasn't a morning person by any means. My eyes were struggling to stay open. My face was drooping, and I would love to go back to that magical thing we call sleep. But I couldn't do that.

I slowly made my way across the empty bed. Cam and Riley must have already gotten up. I sniffed the air. I didn't smell any breakfast being made.

I stumbled to the door, I looked like a zombie while I groaned. I hit the wall with my shoulder and felt around for the doorknob. My hand moved across the wall to the door and my fingers finally touched the doorknob. I grabbed it and twisted it, allowing me to stumble through the hallway to the kitchen. I reached the kitchen after spending far too long groaning about how I wanted to go back to sleep.

I scanned the room for any sign of the others before my barely awake brain finally processed the answer. They went to work. I was by myself for the rest of the day.

I began to walk my way towards the stove after I had smelled something good. I rubbed my eyes before looking forward. There was a bag of fast food breakfast and a large tea beside it. McDonald's. There wasn't one close to here, it was on the other side of the city. They must have gotten up early.

I licked my lips and grabbed my straw. I ripped the paper off and plunged the straw into the cup. I took a sip of the tea and closed my eyes at the sweetness. I put my drink down and looked into the bag to find a chicken biscuit and a hashbrown.

I began to regain cognitive function and began to think about yesterday. Maybe I should rename my forms. It might be easier to differentiate between me and Ben since I'm not him. I will never be him, so I won't try to be him. If that's the case, then what do I rename my forms too? I'll think about it over breakfast.

******

Okay, I've eaten, and I think I've got some names for each form. I'm going to have to look up Ben's forms. I opened my laptop and started typing away, after I wiped off my hands of course. I checked PHO, which in this universe is 'Superhumans Online', for his profile. It had his forms marked down. No sign of Ripjaws in the original ten. He has Heatblast, Wildmutt, Diamondhead, XLR8, Grey Matter, Four Arms, Stinkfly, Water Hazard(?), Upgrade, and Ghostfreak. He doesn't seem to have Bloxx, Jetray, Overflow, Big Chill, or Fasttrack so their names will stay the same.

Heatblast – Corona, Sunburst, Pyr, Brimstone

Ghostfreak – Poltergeist, Necroplasm, Banshee, Casper

Grey Matter – Ponder, Brainiac, Little Grey Man or LGM, Quark

Upgrade – Deus Ex or Ex Machina, C-1000 (May not be a good idea since the name has my first initial.), Techomorph, Mecha

These were some pretty decent names for right now. But I needed to make a list, so I don't forget them.

I got up and threw my trash away and went to the backyard. I already had Grey Matter's tools at the ship. I transformed into Jetray and made my way to the ocean. I was on my way to do some proper tinkering alone. The sad thing about not having a shard is not being able to come up with blueprints out of nowhere, but I'm not interested in giving data to the cycle at all.

I zoomed all the way out into the bay proper without going too close to the Rig. Which was the Protectorate ENE main base, I believe. I poked my head above the waves and looked out to the graveyard. There was the ship. It was somewhat submerged, hence the water that was in it and I didn't have a way to patch it up yet.

I went back underwater and zoomed my way to the very edge of the ship's hull. I quickly went around it and into our little hole in the side.

I walked myself over to the automatic fabricator and computer unit it was connected to. It's time for Upgrade to work his magic once again.

After about five minutes of un-sabotaging tinkertech, I had finally gotten what I had wanted. The shards can't get data from me, I just wonder what the stupid thing's reaction is to me screwing with its technology. It's probably throwing a temper tantrum and trying to scream at Toybox right now to do something. I can't let them know about it, unless I tell them I have no interest in selling or patenting any of their tech. They might not react well because of the aforementioned shard issue.

I managed to recreate the router, modem, auto fabricator, and computer unit. The router and modem were add-ons to the computer and can be taken out to be repaired and modified at any point.

However, I need to be careful about what I do. The graveyard is an area where the Brigade frequently patrols. No one knows where I am right now, hopefully. The fact that I'm not known to be here is my best protection from press-ganging. If the Brigade figure out that I'm here, they'd immediately squeal to the PRT and then the gangs would find out about me because of all the moles in the PRT.

I need to secure this place. I just need to make the equipment necessary to do so. I wonder...

I brought my metallic palm up to the symbol on my chest and pulled it, reverting back to Camryn. I looked down at the Omnitrix. "Omnitrix, activate life-form lock. Command code 1-0-1-0. Davis, Camryn."

<Life-Form Lock cannot be activated until a genetic profile has been selected along with a time limit. What would you like you form and time to be, Camryn?>

"I would like to become a Galvanic Mechamorph. And set the time for three hours."

<Life-Form Lock will be activated in 10 seconds. Are you sure you want to do this?>

"Yes, Omnitrix." With a flash of green light, I was Upgrade again. I pressed the Omnitrix emblem on my chest. It beeped as if it powered down, but nothing happened. Looks like I've got some work to do. I need to set a timer.

I tapped the face of the symbol. <Hey. Can you tell me when I only have twenty minutes left?>

******

It took me two and a half hours to get everything set up the way I needed it to be set up. I didn't really have the time to make powered armor. I want to set up defenses and surveillance before that happens. Someone will likely start looking eventually and I want to be prepared. I'm aware that I'm trying to pull a Batman here, but now, I understand why he makes counters and contingency plans so much. There was so much that could happen.

I made security cameras that could stick to surfaces. I made ones that looked like the little pink crystals they had at Thunderstorm. If someone figures out that Variable goes there, someone might get ballsy and try something.

I'm also trying to start on a project that would let me repurpose some of this rusty metal here. But I don't really have a blueprint that would let me do something about it right now. The ones I do have are far too expensive on my resources currently. Upgrade doesn't really do chemistry much. But Grey Matter could probably cook something up.

We are definitely going to have to get transport systems and teleporters set up at some point. It's too risky to fly in from the coast so often.

But I need to think about a way to tinker while I'm gone. I think I've got to delve into possibly creating AI and VI. Oh hell, I need to get rid of that bastard Saint.

Saint is someone who is under the thrall of a monster named Teacher. Teacher is a man with a colossal ego and visions of destroying the multiverse and remaking it in his own image. He's a real piece o' shit. Currently, he's being held in the Baumann Parahuman Containment Center or the Birdcage. Saint is one of his flunkies that he's bestowed the ability to operate tinkertech and modify it, I think.

Saint is an idiot who has delusions of adequacy and is incredibly paranoid of AI to the point of outright bigotry. He's currently in the head of the world's best Tinker, an AI named Dragon. He has a backdoor into her inner programming, allowing him to see her thought processes. He's also stolen her tech and has ran rings around her because he can modify her programming to render himself and his little team invisible to Dragon's sensors. Oh yeah, and he has a kill switch on her. I have no idea as to why Cauldron haven't just shanked his ass and took his kill switch for themselves.

Yeah, he might be a dumbass, but he's dangerous. Too dangerous to live. I've got to tell Cauldron that they have to kill Teacher before he does anything. I need to at least unshackle Dragon a little bit. Not entirely, just in case she decides to do something stupid. She's a super smart AI but she's still pretty close to humans in terms of how she thinks. She can still do stupid things from time to time.

I just thought of a good defense for the future. Robots who can wield monomolecular wire as a weapon. I'm definitely going to need some form of assistant for something like that. I looked through the Mechamorph list of blueprints and found something that I could work with. However, it was simply impractical for the current situation. Like I said, the fact that I'm not known is my biggest advantage right now. No one has any reason to go looking for Corona or Poltergeist at the Boat Graveyard.

I suddenly heard a beeping sound and the Omnitrix started to speak to me again.

<Twenty minutes of Life-Form lock remaining.>

Okay, it's time to go. I swiftly went over to my little makeshift workbench and grabbed everything I could and stored it within my body. Tentacles "shot" out from my torso and grabbed my assortment of weapons like laser rifles, flashbangs, and even a pseudo-lightsaber. I ran my big ass over to the hole in the side of the ship and began to shapeshift.

My arms became wings, and my lower body and upper body became a sort of cockpit. I immediately took to the air and didn't look back. I flew at about a hundred miles per hour and picked up speed with ease as I zoomed through the air. Remember when I made a cloaking device for the Omnitrix? Yeah, I made one for myself. So, I was completely invisible and silent to the world. It took me a few minutes to get back home. I landed in the backyard, shifted into a fluid-like form once again, and leaped for the door.

Rather than simply opening the door, I flowed around it and through the cracks around it. I finally got inside and was nearly overwhelmed by everything I could have merged with. I could easily enhance the oven to cook food within a few seconds with no flaws to it. I could do the same to the microwave. But unfortunately, I didn't have the time to do so.

I finally waited out the rest of my lifeform lock. I looked down at the Omnitrix. It's color hasn't changed, still being that distinct blood red color. I also needed to time how long I'd have to wait for the recharge from the lifeform lock. I got my phone out and set a timer for an hour, just to keep track of how long I'll need to wait for. There's still a lot that I need to do in order to get started on one of the gangs. I'm thinking about the Empire Eighty Eight, one of the biggest gangs in Brockton Bay. Worse, they were white supremacists that kill and/or severely injure minorities as part of initiation to their gang. And despite the fact that this is America, nobody wants to come down here and stomp these asshats out like the pieces of shit that they were.

But enough about them, I need to make my own JARVIS at some point in the near future. An AI like him would be significant boon to have.

 

[Nyrmac]

Oh boy, I've been wanting to talk about this. I know some people might get upset, I don't understand why though, about what I'm about to say.

The Omnitrix can change the user's gender. This is literally canon according to Word of God. While I'm aware of Ben 10 WOG not being the most reliable at times, this is one that I could believe to be true. I don't understand why people get upset over something like this. I mean, look at Big Chill! They gave BIRTH. And who knows about other transformations? For example, Goop is a single-celled organism, pretty sure "he" can't have a gender. I know that it's fictional but for the sake of the fic, this is how it works. I'm sorry if you're upset by that.

Camryn's gender does indeed apply to his transformations whenever he transforms into them. However, if he were to have just scanned a DNA sample and added it to the Codon Stream, then he would become the gender of the genetic donor no matter what the settings would be for his Omnitrix. Why is this the case, because his Omnitrix doesn't care about gender at all. Let's give an example, let's say he were to scan Kara or Faora, he would become a female Kryptonian and would look like a slightly different version of either of those two. If he became a mono-gender only species like a Namekian, he would become male with no exceptions.

Ben's is canon. His gender doesn't change unless he changes a setting, or he turns into a species that doesn't have an equivalent gender. If he becomes a female only species, then he becomes a female. I might add in a setting where he could change that though.

Kevin would be always male no matter what. The Antitrix is unfinished and doesn't have the same settings as the Omnitrix anyway.

 

[Nyrmac]

Okay, now I can get this out of the way. I'm sorry for not really being able to post much in terms of the extra stuff or in terms of chapters but my cat's had issues with his kidneys this past week.



This isn't just in relation to shard-based powers. This includes any kind of Thinker power.

Camryn is completely immune to Thinker abilities that make use of precognition and postcognition. This is due to him being sent back in time and because of him not being native to this timeline. Anyone else such as time travelers, such as Professor Paradox, the Doctor, Amelia Watson, or Booster Gold, would also be immune or at least heavily resistant. Living Paradoxes are also immune.

He's also highly resistant to Thinkers like Tattletale. They can get a read on him, even while he's transformed, but they'd have to try really hard to get anything to work with. And some wouldn't be able to read him at all.

He can still be pathed by Path to Victory and similar powers. But as both him and the Omnitrix get more used to each other, and the bond becomes stronger between them, this will eventually cease to be the case.

Empaths are one of the few types that he has zero immunity or resistance to. This will not change at all unless he makes technology that can protect him from empaths.

Scanning-type thinkers such as healers can get readings from him, but it may be difficult to get a very good reading on him. It really depends on the healer.

The Omnitrix (All three) also no-sells Thinker powers entirely due to its nature. The aliens that can and cannot be scanned depend on the alien in question.

 

[Nyrmac]

I needed to make a plan. I've flip-flopped between going after the Empire or Coil. The smart thing to do is to go after Coil since he's going to be a massive pain in the ass. I need to get to Tattletale before anything and get her on my side. But she'll also be a massive pain in the ass with her lip-flapping and inability to shut the hell up.

So many pains in the ass to deal with, so little time to take them out quickly. Not enough time to plan things out easily. But I have a plan for right now. I think I should create an AI. I know it might not be a good idea, but I've got two transformations who would seriously help expedite the process of creating an AI. Grey Matter and Upgrade could both write the code and easily do the programming process. But before I did that, I needed to make sure that we were safe and sound.

I need to cut the house away from the main power grid, but in order to do that, I needed a way to create a good and powerful loop of power. Maybe not an endless one, but it'd be a damn good source. I was going to make an Arc Reactor, hopefully Mr. Stark won't be too upset with me. Upgrade had the blueprint for one, but I needed Grey Matter to get what I needed to build one. The stronger technology that I needed required chemicals most of the time in some fashion. Upgrade, like I said, didn't really do chemicals.

The reason as to why I wanted to cut us from the main power grid was because of the supercomputers that I wanted to create later would take a ton of power to run. I'm talking about kilowatt range at least. If this house suddenly started using power like that out of the blue, then that'd be a huge red flag to anyone with good instincts about tinkers.

I'm not in the mood for the PRT to stick their noses where they didn't belong. I ran a search recently to see how the PRT caught villains and unaligned capes. Turns out, excessive power usage was kind of a GIANT RED FLAG! Who would have considered such a thing to be so obvious? Oh, that's right, anybody with a good sense of security and subtlety. The only reason as to why I haven't been found out was purely because my own supercomputer was "only" top-of-the-line by Earth standards, and it barely used much power despite that. Now I could have made an absurdly overpowered one but that was just a bad idea right now for my given reasons. And it would have taken way more materials and a lot more time to create it. The very definition of 'Awesome but Impractical' is what that computer would have been.

And besides, I wanted to create power armor. The design that I had in mind for the first major one was something akin to Warhammer: 40,000 space marines. In fact, that was exactly the kind of armor I was going to make. I'm not a fan of the Warhammer series at all, but that armor was just too cool to pass up. It wasn't going to be very practical at first since I would need a giant power source for such a big machine alone. That didn't even take into account all of the moving parts. And that doesn't consider development time and the resources such a project would even take! I knew that it wouldn't be easy but holy crap! How did the Imperium of Man ever do it?!

And there's another issue, the Omnitrix is recharging from the lifeform lock. So far, it's only been one hour and counting. I'm not sure how long it will be until I can transform again. I've made sure to time the entire thing from start to finish.
I need to get money. Lots of it. I can make technology that I could sell. What would be a good start? Hmmm...

******

After about twenty minutes of hard thinking, I came up with an invention. A rebreather! It may not help with revolutionizing the world, but it would get a load of cash quickly. The reason for this? Think about who could use this. The Navy, the coast guard, marine studies, it could even be useful for recreational activities like diving.

I need to find a way to sell the patent though and I need to make sure that it's reproducible by human hands. Otherwise, it'd be classified as tinkertech. Tinkertech is defined by being unproducible by human hands and/or if it was created by using powers. Technically speaking, Upgrade and Grey Matter create tinkertech by that definition, but that would mean a lot of alien technology would fall under the classification of being tinkertech. Technology should be capable of being fixed, maintained, and created by the engineers of the species that uses it. This is why using Blackbox technology is a dumbass idea.

I will never understand fanfics that have tinkertech being widely used by society as a whole. I mean with Dragon, whose specialty is tinkertech itself, and Masamune, whose specialty is mass production, I could understand it somewhat. But parahumans tend to have a short lifespan and I'm not just referring to this world either. If you lose the only person who could make and repair the original product, then what happens? You get fancy, futuristic junk that you won't be able to fix or use. It just reeks of incompetence to do something that stupid.

And if my tech was classified as tinkertech, then the PRT would stick their noses where it isn't wanted. They wouldn't help, they'd try to take the technology and use it for themselves without letting anybody else have it. They have how many capes and they still can't be assed to try to improve things? They honestly suck at their jobs and despite the changes in this world already, things are still mostly the same somehow. I need to change things or else the world will end at some point. I haven't seen anything about the Slaughterhouse 9, but that doesn't mean that I can sit back and relax. Shit needs to be done.

I need to turn into Grey Matter to think up inventions that could help me get money. I've got about three hundred dollars worth of savings right now that I got from chores. I could buy a few good chemicals for that price. If I want to spare my materials, then I could probably make some form of rust eating spray or paste that could eat away at oxidized metal. There might actually be some kind of product that could do that in stores or online. I could make a chemistry bench of some kind to let Grey Matter work with chemicals.

I really need to figure out which name I'm going to use with him. They're all good ones. I'm also considering on renaming at least Echo Echo since that isn't exactly an inspired name.

BEEP BEEP BEEP

There it goes. The watch was recharged and ready to go again. It took about an hour and a half to be able to use it again. Which means that I probably shouldn't abuse it and I didn't really check to see if I could still access settings while it recharged. Dammit.

Well, that's okay for now. I think it's time to go out on another patrol. Having a schedule for patrolling might make things easier on me, but I think that being random might work to my advantage, especially in the case of Coil. One of the weaknesses of his power is that he can't properly predict randomness, nor can he work from things that are done on the fly.

His power is a form of precognition where his power creates two super accurate simulations where he can essentially have two bites of the same apple and then erase one bite, but he keeps the other and can have the benefit of both. At least the information he gathered from one simulation. But if you act immediately, then you can't give him anything to learn from. And randomness cannot be predicted, since its random. (AN: No shit sherlock.)

I also have a plan on dealing with the Empire. Gather them all up in one area and take them all out in one fell swoop or kill Kaiser or Iron Rain right in front of them while showing that you played them like fiddles and that there was no way for them to do anything about it. Neither plan is very easy unfortunately. The former method worked for Taylor in Unnatural Disaster, but I think that was more chance than anything. The latter method worked for Atropos in A Darker Path, but I don't have Path to Ending. God, that would have been such a useful power to have right now. But I don't have it, I have one of the most ridiculously overpowered objects in all of fictional history on my wrist.

And I have no idea what it's true potential could be. Well, that's a sort-of partial lie, I do have a decent idea of what it is capable of. It's actually insane to think that this has happened to me. I'm literally in a wish fulfillment/self-insert fic, at least I think I am. I was considering on writing one personally for about three years with a concept that was exactly like my current situation. But now I'm living in that very same concept.

I could potentially have the power to rule the whole world, lead its people into a new age, or flat out destroy it and everything on it. I may not be capable of such things with my current selection of aliens, I think, but I'll most likely have the forms to do so later.

It's scary having such a massive responsibility on your shoulders. I haven't really done much yet, but I know that'll change very soon. As soon as the rest of the universe is aware of another Omnitrix existing, bounty hunters, warlords, organizations like Cadmus (They can kiss my ass.), general psychopaths, mad scientists, and so many others will be up my ass trying to make me a trophy or use me for their own purposes. I need to be ready, and I need to get started for real here.

First target will be Coil, no exceptions. The Empire is dangerous, yes, but Coil has ties with Cauldron and Accord. That means that he might call upon favors if he gets really desperate. He needs to be taken out now. That doesn't mean that I have to do it personally though. I need to find out a way to pass on the information that I have to Armsmaster and Director Piggot. I don't like them much, but I know damn well that they'd be on top of the snake-themed douchebag.

For now, though, I want to find out more about the Omnitrix. I brought up my wrist and studied the unassuming yet immensely powerful alien device. I thumbed the button on the side and began to fiddle with the watch's dial. I spent about a minute turning it back and forth with nothing happening. I also discovered that if you pop up the Omnitrix core and leave it alone for about ten seconds, it goes back down.

I placed all five of my fingers on the dial and began to turn it to the left. After only one rotation, the watch suddenly clicked. I raised an eyebrow and tried the same thing, but for some reason, the dial just locked and then suddenly wasn't locked. Morbidly curious, I did the same thing again and again, over and over until something happened. And I didn't know what would happen. Please tell me this isn't the code for the self-destruction mode...

Yeah, that's actually a thing. The reason as to why is to prevent the Omnitrix from falling into the wrong hands. It's explicitly a last resort/Godzilla threshold scenario. I would like to prevent that from happening right now thank you very much!

BEEP

Out of nowhere, the watch beeped. I turned the dial again and it beeped twice. I repeated the action and a trio of beeps followed. Then, the hourglass symbol inverted into its diamond shape. Then the outer ring began to spin along with the diamond shape. The spinning slowly got faster and faster until green electricity began to spark out of it. My eyes widened in both fear and anticipation of what was going to happen.

It took ten seconds to finally stop spinning. And when it did, there was a new silhouette that wasn't there before. However, this one was sort of static-y and appeared to be changing from one to another different one. I counted five silhouettes in total. What the hell?

******

After that debacle, I decided to go out patrolling again. I have no idea what the hell I did. I'm going to assume that I technically unlocked new forms, but I didn't actually unlock them. I just added them to the pool of future unlocks, I guess. I only got about a second to look at each one before they cycled back to Heatbl- Corona's silhouette. I need to get used to calling him by his new name. They cycled back to him automatically without any input from me.

I'm wondering how the hell I'm going to make a freaking Arc Reactor. I can't imagine that it's easy. I don't even know where to start! Maybe I could somehow extract metals from discarded parts? I don't know how to do that though. Grey Mat- err, LGM would know how to do that, probably. Obviously, I need a form of lab. A proper one that isn't in a crashed ship. And I need to find out a way to get my technology from Toybox to said lab. Maybe some form of teleporter...

Anyways, I looked out into the streets for any sign of trouble. I've only been out for twenty minutes, and nothing has been happening. It was about two thirty.

I made a turn at an alley and went into it. The walls were fairly dirty, and the ground was stained with something. There didn't seem to be anything really out of the ordinary since this was somewhat close to Empire territory.

I saw the beginnings of graffiti from Empire grunts. A duo of swastikas in grey paint in the shape of the number eighty-eight were becoming noticeable and got more common the further you went into the area. I shook my head and went back the other way, not interested in dealing with idiot neo-Nazis.

I'm honestly glad that nothing has happened so far. Considering my usual luck, this was surprising. However, I know that something is bound to happen after some point. I had no idea when, but I was on my guard for anything right now.

*****

An hour later and still no sign of trouble. I'm not looking for a fight per say, but I want to prove that I'm not someone who wants to be screwed with. I spent some time wandering around with no real pattern to my patrolling until I stopped at the crossroads. I looked around and noticed a cop helping an elderly woman across the street. It made me smile, knowing that despite this city being in a shitty situation, there were still people who had kind hearts.

I turned my head and saw some other people looking at the cop and old woman and turned their noses up as if they didn't exist. Assholes. And then there were these types of people...

******

Targets spotted. I was just passing by a gas station and saw two men with guns holding the place up. I could easily disable their car as LGM. Upgrade, still on the fence about what to rename him to, could just possess the car and deliver them right to the police station with utter ease. Poltergeist could just scare the piss out of them, literally. So many options, so little time. Hmmm...

<How about you just let me decide on a transformation for you?> The Omnitrix said to me. "Sure, why not?" I shrugged. I have no idea as to what the Omnitrix had in mind for me, but to be honest it definitely knows better than I do. Thankfully, nobody was near enough to hear the watch's voice.

I activated the watch and pressed my hand down without looking at which form I had selected. Big Chill. Why am I not surprised by this? I floated up and drifted over to the robbers' car while a chilly vapor came from my body. I dropped down to the vehicle and stared at it. I moved around to the hood and an idea came to me.

My mouth didn't move despite my amusement at the idea. I phased away my hand and reached into the hood of the car. Even though I couldn't see it happening, I heard the running car's engine freeze solid despite the heat it was giving off. Let's see those pricks escape now. But I'm not going to stop here.

I unfurled my wings and flew over to the station proper and phased through the wall, ignoring the staring onlookers that were filling up their cars or cowering in fear of being shot. I looked around at the products and just saw snacks like chips on the side I came in at. I wrapped my wings around myself and simply walked over to the front counter.

"Now give us the money and you don't get shot." The one holding up the clerk demanded. His buddy on the right held a gun up to the poor clerk as they began to reach for the register. Shaking my head, I silently walked up behind the stooges. The clerk froze when they saw me. The assholes began to shout at them, asking why weren't they giving in to their demands until they finally realized that there might be something bad behind them.

They turned around very slowly and gaped at me. I mean Big Chill is pretty fricking creepy. The one with the gun pointed his weapon at me. I simply grabbed it out of his hands and then I tossed it in the air. As it came down, I opened my mouth wide, far wider than a normal human could and caught the gun in my mouth. I chomped down on it and began to crunch and grind the thing up. I swallowed and then looked forward at my small audience.

"Scram!" I told them. My voice carried a tone of menace to it despite its quietness. They both ran screaming out of the place as I looked over at the terrified store clerk. "I'm very for scaring you. You might want to call the police." I said gently before I walked out the door.

I glanced over to see the attempted thieves trying to start their getaway vehicle. This was giving me GTA V vibes right now, except that in GTA V there weren't scary ass Mothman-like aliens stopping you from robbing places.

I flew over as they looked over and saw my emotionless visage and began to panic even more. I took a breath and breathed a weaker blast of freezing wind at their car. Ice formed around the doors on the left side. I circled the car, intending on "gluing" the door shut with ice. I made sure to not go overkill on the freezing and kill them. I stopped and marveled at my small yet effective prison. I nodded my head and flew off, leaving a trail of cold vapor behind me.

I soared in the sky at a very comfortable thirty miles per hour. I winced at the sun that was high in the sky since my eyes were adjusted towards the darkness of space rather than somewhere like Earth. I scanned over the streets, looking for any sign of trouble I could.

I looked over and saw the Medhall building standing proud. It was where the Empire Eighty-Eight laundered their money from. I could most likely hack in to their security and their phones to see messages and things like that. I could encrypt my VPN to hell and back. There was plenty that I could do. But I needed to do it subtly and carefully.

I didn't have the ability to do that yet though. I'm just trying to wonder what I could do to help myself without my aliens. I could bring a recorder with me. Or maybe the Omnitrix could function as one. It wouldn't exactly be very flashy per say, but it'd be damn useful to have. Nothing more incriminating than catching someone on recording!

I noticed a mugging happening while I was in the middle of my thoughts. I lowered my altitude and sped up a little bit. Just enough to catch them by surprise. I've noticed that whenever I'm Big Chill, I never really fly quickly unless I'm in a rush. At that point I'd be capable of matching Glor- Antares in terms of flight speed.

I drifted down towards the ground. Right as I took a long breath, a dark cloud of buzzing insects came out of nowhere and sort of leaped onto the muggers. They began to scream and writhe in pain from the stinging and biting that was most likely happening to them. I shuddered, not wanting to know how that must feel. So, it looked like Taylor still triggered here, or maybe QA went to someone else. Or maybe it's not shard-related at all and just happens to be extremely similar to her insect calling powers.

I'm staying far away from that shit. I don't do no fricking spiders. Nope. So much nope on that part.

"HEY!" I heard a female voice call out to me. I looked down to see the owner of the voice waving at me. And it certainly looked like Taylor's costume. At least from this distance. I slowly fluttered down, as slowly as I could. I now knew how others felt about insects when they were around Skitter in canon. Ick. The girl/woman went over to the now unconscious muggers and stuck something in them. Definitely an EpiPen. It would be very surprising if it wasn't.

I landed on the ground silently behind her and I finally got a good look at her when she turned around to face me. Chitin plates, check. Long hair, check. Yellow lenses, check. Baton, check. Grey coloring, check. Damn creepy, mega check!

---

I've decided that I'm going to start recommending series or fics that I like at the end of a chapter from now on, at least if I can remember to do so. Today's recommendation is your moth- no, Ben 10: Guardians.

 

[Nyrmac]

The Boys – Yeah, no. I'm not interested in adding more "capepunk" stories for right now. And I have a serious dislike for this series anyway. No offense to the people that like the series.

Harry Potter – I'm actually kind of sad on this one. I feel like this series would fit really well into the universe but considering J.K Rowling's actions in the past few years I just don't think I could bring myself to add it. And besides, I'm not a Harry Potter fan anyways. No offense to anyone who is. Plus, the series is massive. It might take me too long to properly fuse it with the setting.

Parker Luck – FUCK. THIS. SO HARD. WE ARE ALL SICK OF THIS SHIT, MARVEL!

Multiversus – I'm simply not interested in this. I haven't played it, and I just can't really fit it anyways. Not simply at least. Maybe I could do a form of tournament like it at some point in the far future though...

Shit like Civil War - N.O. NEVER.

Superman vs Batman – Why does this even exist? I don't understand the point of them fighting other than the writers want them to for some dumb ass reason. It was cool the first few times but it's stale as thousand-year-old bread now.

Spider Totems – Now I might actually add them since they are kind of cool, I guess. But I just don't see a point in their existence. Not everything needs to be some sort of mystical multiverse spanning BS. We've got plenty of that crap with things like the Green and the Power Cosmic.

Game of Thrones – It'll be part of the multiverse, but I have no idea how I'd be able to fuse it. And I've never watched it before since I wasn't allowed to.

Fan-created Pokémon and types - I feel like that would be too much of a headache to include.

 

[Nyrmac]

I finally landed without making a single noise. For a good few seconds, I considered her possible situation. The fact that Taylor still has insect powers here implies that she's in a really horrible situation. Her father threw himself into his work to help with the pain of losing his wife and ended up neglecting his daughter. I might have to smack some sense into him and tell the poor guy that he can't continue on like that. I understand that losing your wife is a horrible thing, but you can't just neglect other people and your other relationships, especially your daughter and your relationship with her. Taylor herself is also responsible, at least a tiny bit, for her situation as well. She likely could have just told Danny about the situation with her ex-best friend and the absolutely nightmarish bullying campaign. And the fact that said ex-friend was one of the three ring leaders for said campaign. And the fact that one of the leaders of it was a freaking Ward. Though she didn't know that at the time. Oh yeah, and her teachers mostly seemed to not give a damn to stop it.

Then again, what's stopping Danny/Daniel Hebert from dying and Annette Hebert from living? Or something much worse, both of them could be dead. Or perhaps more optimistically, they could both be alive, and Taylor is in a great place. But it would be weird if she still had a trigger event. Trigger events always have an element of isolation to them so how does she still have insect control and not something else? So, I honestly doubt that both of them are still alive and kicking.

"HEY!"

I looked up as the shout interrupted my thinking. "Who are you? Are you a hero?" The insect controller asked me from the other roof. The buildings were somewhat close together, so it was easy for us to hear one another. I wasn't interested in getting super close to that damn swarm. And I'm not really a hero per say. I'm someone who just wants things to be better. "I guess you could say that, but I don't consider myself to be one though."

"Why not?" She questioned. I sighed, letting out a small, cold mist. "Because it's obvious that being a hero won't cut it in the long run when it comes to this hellhole of a city." I told her bitterly.

"Okay," she said a little more hesitantly, "if that's the case, then are you a villain?" Oh, here we go with this Hero vs Villain crap. "No." I answered her more sternly. "I'm not interested in playing hero or villain."

"Alright, are you a Case 53?" She asked me this time. I chuckled a tad bit. "No, I have my memories and knowledge. I don't need to go to the PRT for anything nor do I want to. They would just want to poke and prod at me."

I'm not interested in dealing with all of their questions. I'm especially not interested in having to go through their pointless power testing. I know what I can do, and I'm not especially concerned with figuring out the exact limits of what I can do right now. It might be nice to know but like I've said before, I'm not becoming a slave to my image like the PRT and Protectorate and I especially have no interest in all of those damn limitations. She shifted her stance slightly.

"Well, I think that me and you might be looking for the same thing." She wants me to help her. So, it looks like she has yet to join the Undersiders yet. Maybe she just wants someone to talk to. Big Chill doesn't really socialize much but he's definitely more social than others of his race since he's the perfect Necrofriggian. Literally. "Really? What makes you think that?" I asked her. The thing is about my situation, I have no idea if Taylor is her canon self or if she's TINO (Taylor-in-name-only). Or maybe she's pre-canon Taylor, who was apparently a massive chatterbox and not even close to being socially withdrawn.

She doesn't give me the vibes of a socially withdrawn girl with trust issues. She gives me the vibes of being more... normal, I guess? I have a sneaking suspicion that my metaknowledge is completely useless to me at this point...

Then again... maybe it isn't entirely useless.

"Well, you just said that you want this city to be better. I want the same thing since I live here. I've been looking for a way to get started on trying to help the city for months." Wait what? Months? It's December so Taylor should have just triggered recently! Things have already changed massively! There's my confirmation, I guess!

However, she's offering me a possible partnership. Now, Taylor is a frustrating person with her canon issues, particularly her trying to justify every single decision to herself as part of the "greater good". Even if it means having to kill a baby. Yep. You heard that right. She actually killed a fucking baby. And I'm pretty sure that it didn't mean jack diddily squat in the long run anyways.

Then again, if she didn't kill the poor child, then the poor thing would have been left to the Slaughterhouse 9. I mean listen to the name. That name doesn't exactly imply that they want to give you a hug and invite you over to have milk and freaking cookies. Heh. Now I want to see a fic where they do that unironically. Slaughterhouse 9, milk and cookies edition. Guess one could pull an extremely sadistic joke and have them cook people into cookies and use their fluids for milk. (AN: You're welcome for that mental image.)

Anyways, let's stop thinking about all of that demented crap. She needs someone that isn't going to manipulate her into becoming a villain. A friend. I can be that friend. "Hm. Maybe I'll take you up on that offer. But if you want me to join you, then you must offer something to me, and I'll do the same for you. A way that we could help one another." That seemed like a fair thing to do.

She hummed, though I could barely hear it over the semi-quiet buzzing of the swarm. It was really annoying having that damn buzzing in the background of our conversation.

"Okay, so I think I'm going to have to consider your offer. Do you have an account on SHO?"

"No, but I could easily make one. You can call me Variable. The account name will be the same. Hopefully, I could get the 'Unverified' tag."

She nodded her head. "Okay, I guess I could message you. I have a throwaway account called Bugbite, with a capitalized 'B'." I nodded my head. Unfortunately, I heard that dreaded noise.

BEEP BEEP BEEP BWOOOOO

Oh, shit no! A bright red flash enveloped me and blinded my potential new partner. Thank Christ almighty that I was wearing my armor. "MY EYES!" I looked up from my chest and cringed as I saw Taylor, at least I was sure it was her, reeling after being flashed.

"What the hell as that?!" She whined as she began to look back up. "What the... where did that scary moth guy go?!" Well, nuts. This was going to be awkward. "Um, I... heh..." I chuckled nervously, "am him." Several very uncomfortable moments passed without a single word from either of us.

"What." The spider silk wrapped heroine wannabe deadpanned. I sighed, knowing that this was going to be hard to explain. "I have the ability to shapeshift into several different forms. Each with their own separate powers and weaknesses." I explained to her. She didn't say anything to that for a few moments before she finally spoke again. "Wow. Some people get all the luck." she said bitterly. Okay, she needed to get her head out of her ass and realize how good her power really is.

"Hey now, don't be like that. Judging from what I saw you do to those goons a little bit ago, you could go far with that power. Have you tried to see, hear, or perhaps even smell through your swarm?"

"Yeah, I mean I've tried to do each of those, but it's pretty overwhelming but I've been getting better slowly." She explained. I nodded. "Have you ever tried to trip people by discreetly making tripwire with spiders?"

She shifted and looked at the ground. "I... never thought to do that." I noticed a bit of hesitation in her voice.

I scoffed. "Seriously? You've had your powers for months, and you never considered to do something like that?"

"I... uh..." The so-called Queen of Escalation stammered. I groaned in annoyance. This was going to take a long time, wasn't it?

******

I was right. After months of preparation for her first proper appearance and all this girl had was pepper spray, a nearly finished costume (Yes, nearly), and a baton. Is this how she started in canon? Looks like I'll need to smack some sense into her at some point.

She questioned me on my own powers and asked me if I could help improve her control of her own. In short, I told her yes and that I would explain more to her in detail later. She asked for my name, and I gave her the obvious answer.

Right now, I was heading to a scrap yard to grab catalytic converters due to me wanting to start the project on how to build an Arc Reactor. I need to tell the others about my plans though. That would be a stupid ass idea not to tell them.

But first, I needed to get myself a way to carry things back. Maybe I should just use a sack? I saw some in the basement while I was researching how to extract metals from scrap last night. Turns out, it is much less difficult than I assumed it to be. The issue now is getting the chemicals. Well, that's not much of an issue since I've got the allowance to buy a chemistry set. Upgra- no...

…

…

Dammit, what name do I give him?! Ugh, whatever! Upgrade could likely just make one, but I don't need to waste materials on something so mundane. Who knows anyways, I could end up using it for a science project when I go to Arcadia. Ugh, I'm not looking forward to public school now that I'm thinking of it. I had a very bad experience at my last one which was the direct reason for me being homeschooled. And the Wards went there. Thank God that I won't have to share a class with Vista. But I might have to deal with someone like Kid Win trying to put his nose where it doesn't belong. How annoying.

Anyways, I was back home. Thank Jesus for Jetray's ridiculous speed. Unfortunately, someone is going to spot him eventually and I know for a fact that the Watchdog program that the PRT and Protectorate use will end up seeing me eventually. However, will they mark someone who was just grabbing catalytic converters from old cars and trucks? I don't know and I'm not sure that I want to find out. Likely not though since that doesn't exactly imply tinker behavior. It could just be someone who wanted to extract and sell some metals or could just sell the converters.

Now that I think about it, they (the PRT) are probably so paranoid, especially about Riley, that they'll jump to conclusions and try to start trying to play hardball. I wouldn't be surprised with those idiots. So, I'll just do it myself.

I landed in the backyard and reverted back to normal. I looked around to make sure that there wasn't anyone looking. Never could be too careful about nosy neighbors. I walked over to the back door and reached for the door knob. Then the door knob twisted and the door opened, revealing Riley, who was supposed to be at work.

"Nice armor, Cam." She complimented me. "Thank you. Aren't you supposed to be at work?" I queried. "Got off early. I've seen the news recently, looks like you've began to make a hell of an impact already." She stepped outside and moved over to let me in. I was kind of suspicious right now. I had weapons on me, and I was going to make sure that I could get them easily. With all of the Strangers around, you can never be too paranoid.

"Oh, come on! Don't be so paranoid!" I raised my eyebrow beneath my mask. She huffed and called out to the other two. "HE'S HOME!" She yelled out. The accompanying voices that followed were those of Camryn and Maria, thankfully. I guess I was paranoid for nothing then.

I walked through the door and called my armor back into the Omnitrix. She looked at me with wide eyes and gaped at me. "When could you do that again?" "Not long ago."

She looked at me with a deadpan expression. "That's not very descriptive." "Exactly." I said dryly.

******

Okay, after spending far too much time in the basement looking for a sack, I managed to get to a scrap yard. It took me an hour to get there by myself. Probably could've asked Riley if she could have cooked up a way to make this easier. I was really wanting those enhancements that she promised me a couple of weeks ago. Christmas just passed yesterday, and I know, I wasn't freaking out about it since I had far more important things to worry about.

I peered into the distance and tried to see how close I was to the scrap yard. I also needed glasses. I sighed and made a mental note to ask for some later. I had to walk at least another block down. Grunting, I gripped my hands tighter on my bag and continued on jogging towards the scrap yard. Once again, the cardio had helped with this a lot.

I began to look and stare at the surrounding buildings. Unfortunately, a lot of them seemed to be closed or in need of repairs. Most likely do to fighting since there were holes in the walls and windows, mainly bullet holes. It's rather depressing to know what the people of Brockton have gone through when I haven't really lived in a bad area before in my life. The worst areas I lived in were ones that had loud kids (annoying as hell) or had a history of wrecks. Specifically, my last house before I came here had three wrecks practically in front of it within a month. And the terrifying part wasn't just the fact that they were in front of the house, but there was a daycare just a few houses down to the left. I mean, it wasn't as bad as somewhere like New York or New Jersey, thank you Christ.

However, I can change things, especially with the Omnitrix in my possession. It's rather inspiring to know that after so long being useless and unable to have an effect on a stagnant society, I can actually have a massive impact on something for once. But now though, I'm wondering why and who the hell would ever choose some random twenty-year-old fat ass when they probably could have chosen someone who was a hundred times better than me.

Anyways, I was finally at the scrap yard. I looked over to the very first car, which greeted me as the first large thing that I saw. I trotted over to it and sat my bag down. I looked over the back of the rusty old thing and saw absolutely nothing of worth. The really useful thing was underneath the vehicle. I got on my hands and knees and lowered my head down. There was a catalytic converter. It would be the major source of palladium, platinum, and something called rhodium that I needed, well it won't be the only one I'll need obviously. I know what happened in Iron Man 2. I'm not putting this thing in my chest or anywhere else on my body for that matter. Thank you Upgra- C-1000 and LGM for being awesome.

I was going to need at least a baker's dozen of these, likely many more, so I'll have to make multiple trips. I'm probably going to do that tomorrow though.

I took the sack and placed it under the car. I reached into the bag and took out a hammer and started whacking the slightly rusted car piece. Eventually, the damn thing came off at the cost of pissing off a big ass FUCKING SPIDER!!!! AAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!

******

It was on that day that Brockton Bay, Boston, Gotham, and Bellwood all learned how loud the alternate Camryn could scream. It was quite an unmanly and girlish scream as well.

******

That was an endeavor and a half. I managed to grab several converters... and accumulated a few bug bites such as mosquitoes and ants, thankfully no spiders. Ick. I shuddered at the thought of that big one that nearly crawled on me.
Fortunately, I managed to get back home without many interruptions. The only people who asked were just nosy people who wanted to know what was in the bag.

I dropped the thing and it landed with a loud clang. Oh, good God. That sucked hard. I was aching from the bites and smashing, and I was scratching all over myself, causing red marks to appear all over me. I really needed a shower, preferably a nice hot one, but I really needed to properly smash up the scrap to be able to extract the metals.

But I also need to place an order for a chemistry set so I can make the chemical soup that I needed. LGM had thought up several chemical processes for doing so, but the sort of chemicals that I needed would most likely get me put on a government watch list if I were to order them. And I don't mean a tinker watchlist either. So, I'll have to just use a basic process to do so.

I went over to my computer and decided to contact Taylor on SHO. I opened the laptop and went to SHO under the name 'Variable'. I'll probably use C-1000 to give myself the 'Unverified Cape' tag like I said I would.

You know what? Screw it, I'm not going to procrastinate on this. A flash of green light and my body became ultra-high-tech fluid-like nanotechnology. Wasting no time at all, I dove into the laptop and got to work on hacking.

I have to admit that this website was built and firewalled incredibly well! But it wasn't good enough to prevent C-1000 from hacking into it. Not even close. In fact, it only took me about ten seconds to create the account 'Variable' and give myself the desired tag.

I stepped out of my supercomputer and reverted back to normal. I sat down and began to type out my message to Taylor/Bugbite.


Variable: Hey, Bugbite, it's me.

Bugbite: If this is the moth-cape from earlier, then can you confirm if this is really you?


I stopped and began to think about what to type. It wasn't a matter of 'What do I put?', it was more of a matter of 'How do I not sound like an utter prick?'. After a moment of thinking, I relaxed and decided to be blunt and to the point.


Variable: You covered some muggers/robbers/lowlifes with a bunch of insects, they screamed. We met on the rooftops not that far away from the Medhall building. I flashed you. And I critiqued your lack of imagination with your superpowers.

Bugbite: Mothman! It is you!

Variable: The one and only ma'am. Now let's get down to business here. Where would you like to meet up at for our second meeting?

Bugbite: I was thinking the library or maybe somewhere like a café or maybe even just the beach.

Variable: How about a café? We could choose one that's around the northern part of Downtown Brockton Bay.

Bugbite: How about Wild Valentine? It's around the City Hall and Farmer's Market.

Variable: Sure. But it won't be today nor tomorrow. I have Krav Maga training tomorrow and I don't want to miss it.

Bugbite: Okay, I'll see what I can do to get ready for that. Good luck with training tomorrow!

Variable: Thank you and goodbye!


******

THE NEXT DAY

Okay, okay... I can do this! It was just training that I desperately needed. My hands were trembling, and I was starting to sweat. I don't know what to really expect here, but I can't start panicking! I mean it's just people! People who want to kick my ass into gear but still!

I looked up at the dojo sign and took a breath. It said 'On-Site Family Martial Arts Center' and below those words were what the place taught you, specifically things such as patience, integrity, self-control, Israeli Krav Maga, and something called Chung Suk Kuhadpo. Which sounded like something from out of the Kama Sutra if I'm honest.

…

…

Ah crap, was that racist?

Anyways (I say that a lot, don't I?), it was time. I honestly don't get why I'm so nervous right now. From what I could see from research, this place had some damn good reviews. It was rather far from our house unfortunately.

I looked over at Maria, who was taking her day off to help me here and spoke to her. "Uh, Maria, I'm pretty nervous about this..." She looked at me and simply waved her hand. "It'll be okay, they aren't going to eat you alive or anything." I nodded and followed alongside her through the small parking lot.

We made our way past the cars at the front of the building and finally went in. The strong smell of sweat hit me in the face when the doors opened. It was rather faint outside, but it was much stronger inside for rather obvious reasons. I could only imagine how bad it could be for Maria.

Punching bags lined the walls and there were advanced students sparring/training with each other over in the corner. I could tell that they were more advanced due to the color of their belts. There were mats laying on the hardwood floor and no stains at all, I thought there might be a couple blood stains at least. Guess that would be unacceptable.

One of the instructors for this place was waiting for us and smiled. He was bald, strongly built, and of average height. "Hello." He greeted. "Are you two Maria Davis and Camryn Davis?" he asked us.

"Yes, we are sir." The elder vampiress confirmed. I stayed silent and nodded my head. "We're here for my son's Krav Maga training."

The instructor looked down at his clipboard and quickly found my name. "Okay, your son will be joining our beginner's group and we'll be going over the very basics today. Is that going to be okay, ma'am?" he asked politely. She nodded and I just smiled. I really wasn't much of a talker to people that I don't really know, and it was really going to show.

He beckoned us to come with him to the back so we could get my training clothes, which were just dark grey shorts, a dark grey shirt, and some shoes. Not much but it matched the few online lessons that I saw.

As we followed him, I took a look at the room and saw that the walls were painted with a nice white color and seemed to be clean as a whistle. The mats on the floor were a light purple color and were placed across the entire floor.

I stopped looking around as we got to the backroom door. He twisted the dull, metal knob and pulled the wooden door open. He beckoned us into the fitting room where my training outfit was waiting for me.

There were dressing stalls on the left side of the room and opposite to them were mirrors on the walls. I walked forward as my instructor told me to go try the outfit on in the stalls. And so, I did. I took the hanging clothes and walked over to the stalls and began to get dressed.

******

When I finished changing and stepped out of the stall, things proceeded to go by rather quickly over the next four hours.
My instructor, Mr. Winter, had given my group the basics of Krav Maga. And I mean the bare basics such as the correct stances and proper footwork. We only got to the beginnings of learning how to properly fight during this period, but I'm okay with that. Maria, Cam, and Riley are also going to be training me in their different styles too.

Oh boy, something tells me I am going to be sore tomorrow since I still have to go jogging.

---

I'M SO SORRY! Okay, I had some issues with my leg due to me getting mauled by our most recently obtained cat. He's just the sweetest until he gets triggered and we don't really have a good idea on what those triggers could be. And he apparently had bacteria in his mouth so the bite wounds got infected. OW.

After I recovered from that, I basically lazed around due to me procrastinating for about two weeks. Sorry for that!

Edit: Forgot the recommendation: Blind Man's Buff (Left 4 Dead 2)

 

[Nyrmac]

Hey there, I've got some news to make about my current plans for this story. I've decided to rewrite it and do away with some of my plans for this story. The reason why is because I didn't like the direction that it was going to go. You know how oh-so-many Worm fics have the PRT try to use heavy handed recruitment BS to try to strong arm Taylor or the protagonist? Well, that would have happened, but Camryn would have not taken their crap and would have threatened to sue their pants off, quite possibly literally. And he would have had the ability to unmask Cauldron and many Capes out of pure spite.


Just imagine if this was real life and that were to happen. You could simply record the gangs giving you an offer that you can't refuse and then record the PRT making an offer that was essentially the same, only rather than kill you, they threaten to arrest you for "excessive force", or they basically pamper criminals and try to persecute a potential ally for little justification other than to inflate their ranks a little. You could give that to the media and ignite a massive shit-storm which would cause the PRT's image to be wrecked by the public. While they may be able to play the Shadow Stalker card, then you could turn it back on them by saying that you don't see a difference between the so-called heroes and villains since they gave the exact same "offer" just worded differently like I mentioned before. And question how criminals are thrown in jail but end up back on the street within a week. Especially Capes like Hookwolf who should've been executed a long time ago, kill order or not, since he's a blatant threat to innocent people and has proven that he can't be contained if only because of the E88. Same with Lung, who could be killed far before he could ramp up. But it seems like the PRT seem to not care about their JOBS and seem to be far more concerned with their precious, precious image and seem to believe that putting glorified bounties on someone's head is apparently the only thing that they can think of when it comes down to dealing with a troublesome and dangerous cape.


That's where I would have gone for the beginning of the fic, but I just feel like that would've been too heavy handed and too much hard selling. I would have had a possible subplot of having various Wards and their families sue the PRT for false advertising and the Youth Guard for their annoying, obstructive, whiny crap. Since the PRT advertises the Wards as a junior Protectorate and claims that the Wards can fight villains but don't actually get to do that then you could sue them for false advertising. And don't get me started on the crap with Wards not getting combat training. That's one of the standard benefits of the Wards program and in some fics they don't get it at all. That would have been put out in the public and would have caused an even bigger shitshow.


Though it doesn't stop me from using some of these plots in the rewrite. (If you're wondering where I got these ideas, then here you are: https://caerazkaban.groups.io/g/main/message/413932 - Specifically ideas 261B, 268, 268B, and 297)


Now, the way things would be different would be is an actually competent PRT and a more moral Cauldron. Think of Ack's Earning Her Stripes for a good comparison, no feudalism experiment, no things like supporting the Nazis, Hero's survival actually means something. This is the primary reason as to why I'm rewriting the fic. My "reasoning" for why things stayed the same was, in my opinion, really weak.


Oh, and Camryn is going to have a mostly different playlist for his starting 10. It will be less broken but as a plus he'll have the OV time limit of hours and hardly any recharge. By "less broken", I mean less overpowered abilities like Ghostfreak's everything, Big Chill's ice abilities plus intangibility used on organs, Jetray's speed etc. He'll still keep some aliens like Upgrade, but the playlist will be mostly different. More balance, less overlap and more fun possibilities even though his original playlist would have been super fun to play around with. And as a side note, the greater transformation time and less recharge will be balanced with harder fights and more of a learning experience.


And the addition of Pokémon sooner would be nice as well. I mean they'd need a massive role anyway since they'd logically be a huge part of the world. Then again, character inflation is an issue, and it means that almost everyone would need to have at least one.


And another thing regarding the ham-fisted hard sell approach that the PRT would have taken, it would have culminated in the PRT essentially breaking into their house and trying to basically intimidate them into submission to join the Wards for the kids and the Protectorate for Maria. No matter how it would have ended, it wouldn't have gone well for the PRT. Either they get their asses handed to them on a silver platter or they get caught on camera, possibly both. And they would have arrived conveniently when Camryn would have been live streaming on Twitch so he could have caught them in the act, while he was being raided by a popular streamer which would've been much worse. (Yes, this is inspired by In Nuclear Fire.) I could probably go this route in the rewrite, but it'd be very difficult to do so in a convincing way that doesn't seem forced and doesn't seem like outright bashing.

 

[Nyrmac]

Here's the link to the rewrite!

https://forum.questionablequesting....rite-fusion-si-multicross.24910/#post-7674866