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From the moment I arrived, the rain was inescapable. The sun must have risen here, being two hours ahead on the day, but the clouds were dense and dark enough that my eyes didn’t need to adjust from the pre-dawn gloom of Denver. All other respects, however, highlighted just how different a situation I had been dropped into.
The street was clean and intact for the moment, from what was visible beneath the streams of water passing my feet on their rush downhill, but even the area they’d chosen to gather the defending capes in looked worn. Tired concrete buildings were splattered liberally with graffiti, ranging from penises and personal tags to slur-laden invective and swastikas. More than one window was boarded up, and an overflowing pothole down the road gave the distinct impression that something very heavy and very strong had punched the hole into the tarmac. Most distracting was the rain pinging against my costume, a thousand tiny impacts against my recently-jarred system.
“Hey, bug lady! Clear the landing zone, we’ve got more coming in after you!”
I started, taking a couple of small steps forward, countless layered plates and hidden actuators sliding into new positions with the movement. The teleporter who’d dropped me and a half dozen other capes off gave me an unimpressed look before disappearing in a thunderclap of displaced air. I took that as my cue to follow the other capes towards the waiting PRT officers, who seemed to be directing them onward. As I watched, a woman in a white bodysuit with multicoloured ribbons tracing her arms and legs lifted into the air in a fast, graceful arc, heading towards a tall building some distance away.
I felt a momentary spike of jealousy, an incongruously light emotion given the circumstances. I’d always wanted to fly - really, who hadn’t? - and in the first awful days after getting my power I’d tried to turn my mind to methods of flight, clutching for a silver lining that remained stubbornly out of grasp to this day. My capacitors could take in and store kinetic energy, but the persistent fine control needed for true flight eluded me.
I shook my head, quashing the rising thoughts of vectored thrust and directed energy discharge; right before the biggest fight of my life was no time to be altering my loadout. As I walked forward, choosing to follow the path the flier had taken rather than discuss things with the PRT, I turned my attention to the equipment I did have on hand.
I was aware - in fact, it had been pointed out to me more than once - that my armour wasn’t the most visually impressive. It was too bulky and hunchbacked to seem sleek, too small and rounded to have the intimidation factor of some of the walking tanks I’d seen other Tinkers use. The matte orange-brown plating and layered armour shells gave the impression of an oversized beetle, and the fact my face stuck more forward out of the chest than above it was an unfortunate consequence of choosing function over form. Still, this suit had seen me through more than a handful of tough fights, and was a direct descendant of my first fumbling work.
Once, pre-battle checks had been a lengthy process, manually confirming all inertial conductors were fully operational and checking the integrity of each capacitor separately. Now, I could assess the suit’s functionality with a series of small muscle twitches, along my arms, shoulders, back and legs. Each triggered haptic feedback, a low buzz confirming that all systems were good to go.
I’d only just completed the final checks when I reached the muster point. Fortunately, the double doors had plenty of height to them, so I barely even had to duck to get through. I was even more grateful for that when I realised that the room immediately beyond them was already three-quarters full of capes. The lobby had been lined with simple plastic folding chairs, but few of the room’s occupants were using them. Instead, most stood around in their separate groups, talking quietly or shooting murderous glances at rivals and enemies.
I didn’t recognise many; Denver was far enough from my usual stomping grounds that there’d only been a couple of capes in my teleporter contingent who I could put a name to, and many of those here seemed like locals, turning out in force for the fight that would decide the future of their city. My eye was drawn to two groups who seemed to be staring each other down from opposite sides of the room, one of whom I recognised.
They were NuroNext, an unfortunate name that had apparently been enthusiastically signed off on by the board of directors but didn’t really fit what they did or what their powers were. I’d come across them when I was researching other tinkers online in hopes of some inspiration. One of the team, a jetpack-wearing cape named Exeunt, had caught my eye, before my attention was drawn to more gossipy stories. Apparently they’d got into a conflict with another corporate team over a fresh Tinker who specialised in some kind of dimensional technology, and things had escalated pretty badly. The bidding war nearly turned into open warfare, and in the end they’d scared the kid off - common wisdom suggested he’d turned to Toybox instead. Apparently both sides of that argument were still pretty sore about losing out on the next Professor Haywire, because as I walked by one of them was muttering something truly venomous under his breath about the other team’s leader, and exactly where he could shove his freeze ray.
Ducking out of that situation, I skirted around Haven, the Bible Belt team, and made my way for the sparsely-populated rows of seats. The flier with the ribbons was there by herself, and I made my way over to her before delicately perching on a chair. It took a moment of careful calibration before I could be sure I wouldn’t break it under me or knock it aside. It was almost certainly stupid to be wasting even the small amount of stored energy it took to minimise my weight, but I really didn’t want to draw any more attention from the crowd than necessary.
I considered running through my diagnostics again, a way of bleeding off some of my nervous energy, but if I repeated it again too soon there was a chance the feedback system might actually cause the sort of minor misalignment I as checking for. Instead, I turned to the woman next to me.
“It’s my first time.” The words escaped my mouth before I’d finished deciding what they were.
The cape kept staring ahead for a moment, before seeming to realise she’d been addressed. “Excuse me?” Her hair, looking somewhat messy, fell across her face as she turned to me.
“My, uh, first time,” I reiterated. “At one of these - an, uh, Endbringer fight.”
She turned her attention more fully to me then, an odd expression on her face. “Yeah, it’s most peoples’ first time.” She said it like I was missing something glaringly obvious. What, though?
The silence had stretched long enough to be awkward when it hit me. “Oh, you mean because of the -“
I managed to choke back on the phrase ‘death toll’, but it seemed to hang in the air between us all the same. I cleared my throat, shuffled uncomfortably in my armour, and looked away. Perhaps some people watching would be a better option.
The groups I’d known were behind me now, but there were individuals who were far more famous gathered near the TV screens at the front of the room. Alexandria hovered silently, a stern expression on the exposed portion of her face; Narwhal leant against a wall, head bowed as though in a quick prayer. The one who held my attention, though, was one of the locals, up at the very front. Armsmaster.
I’d willingly admit to a rush of excitement at seeing the Protectorate’s most senior Tinker. The blue and silver armour looked polished where mine was dull, sharp and professional where mine was bulbous and clunky. Two of his iconic halberds were slung across his back, and his exposed jaw was set in a determined expression. Back when I’d made the first prototype that had led to my current suit, I’d tried to base my own helmet on his - a sharp V-shaped visor, leaving the lower half of the face exposed. I’d hoped to make a visual readout that could help me manage the balance of my armour, the careful interplay of inputs and outputs that kept it all stable. It turned out my power was completely unwilling to make anything of the kind, hence the current haptic system. I’d kept a similarly styled helmet, however, with a more rounded visor that didn’t do anything more practical than hiding my face. I wonder if he’d be able to tell that he was the inspiration?
I was roused from my idle speculation as Armsmaster stepped back, and Legend took centre stage. His voice was steady and attention-grabbing, but it didn’t distract from the actual substance of his little speech. One in four dead. Kyushu, Newfoundland, Kyiv. A soft target. Not inspiring so much as sobering. As anxiety rose into full-on paralysing fear, I let his words fade into the background, focussing on steadying my breathing as a wave of lightheadedness overtook me. I must have let time slip by, because the next thing I knew a pre-teen in a lime green costume marked with swirling white and green lines was holding out a metallic cuff of some kind. I stared at it blankly for a moment, before she thrust it into my gauntleted hand. As she stepped past me to the ribbon woman, I looked down at the object in my hand. What was I supposed to do with this?
“It’s an armband,” Ribbons spoke up. “You put it on your wrist, and it gets your biometrics, sends you messages.”
I glanced her way, to see she’d already fitted hers around her left wrist. After a brief pause, I set about doing the same, flexing my fingers and forearm in the pattern that unclasped my left gauntlet. I placed it gently on the empty chair to my left, then closed the armband around my exposed wrist. After a moment, I rotated the small green digital screen to face myself, and read the words displayed on it.
State name. Did I just talk to it? Did I press a button? I wasn’t sure. I should’ve been listening.
Apparently I’d frozen for too long, because the woman next to me leant across and jabbed at a button on my armband. “What’s your name?”
My voice caught in the rush to get the word out. “Carapacit-tor.” The screen flashed ‘Carapacitator Y/N?’, and before I could try to correct it she jabbed the Yes button, sighing in exasperation.
Carapacitator? They’d got my name wrong. It shouldn’t be that big a deal - I doubted there was a Carapacitator here I was going to get confused with - but it bothered me. I liked my cape name. It wasn’t anything extraordinary, but I’d been proud at how smoothly it got the idea of my power across.
If I die here, no-one will know my name. Not either of them. People back home might notice that the Tinker in the orange suit isn’t around any more, but they’ll move on. Capes die all the time.
Leanna Farley might be missed for a bit longer, but I’ll just be a missing person. Whatever dad does - whatever Sharon does - they’ll never know what happened to me.
That thought paralysed me, blinded me to the world around me, until a hoarse shout went up: “Brace!” A flash of light, and multiple forcefields layered over the front left corner of the room, where a fountain of water was flowing in.
“Strider! Get us out of here!”
Legend’s voice was a barking command now, harsher and more urgent than in his speech. I pushed myself to my feet, ignoring the sound of my chair skittering backward as I did, bracing myself -
A sensation of compression, flickering throughout my suit, and I was unceremoniously thrown to the ground. I felt something in the delicate machinery around my left arm give as it was jarred against the armband and the ground whilst the whole system reeled from Strider’s power. Something was out of alignment. I could run through the diagnostic now. It would take ten seconds, maybe less-
“GET READY!”
Once again, Legend’s voice portended doom. I dragged myself to my feet just in time to see a distorted, serpentine shape blurring towards us.
I wasn’t ready. I was too close. I wasn’t ready-
There was an impression of bulging muscles under ridged, crocodilian scales, and he hit me.
For a single glorious instant, I was the fixed point about which the universe turned. The monster who had broken entire cities was held at bay, the echo of his movement breaking across my carapace.
Then, something gave; a cascade of shocks and stings along my left arm, leading to a sudden stab of pain from my lower back. An overload.
In the space of a second, the haptic feedback from my suit was replaced by external sensation. The capacitor on the left side of my lower back flashed red-hot, then ruptured. The resulting pain, the feeling of torn muscle and pulped flesh, barely had time to register before I was flung backward, everything that stood between me and the monster stripped away.
Carapacitator down, CD-5.
— — —
There was an impression of movement, of dragging then rising. I could feel air blowing past my left arm, against skin that shouldn’t be exposed. That was nothing compared to the roaring, tearing pain from the area of my left kidney.
I opened my eyes.
Somehow, I was flying.
— — —
For the first time since I’d been airlifted back to the hospital, I took a moment to take stock of things.
Jotun deceased, CD-6. Dauntless deceased, CD-6. Alabaster deceased, CD-6.
The hospital was in chaos. People screamed, nurses and doctors ran between curtained-off beds holding maimed and dying capes.
Miss Militia down, CD-6.
I’d been one of the lucky ones. Some healer or other had come right to me, had regrown the pound of flesh my own malfunctioning creation had torn free. They’d fixed the myriad fractures and contusions left across three quarters of my body. Then they’d turfed me back out of the bed, sworn at me for getting in their way.
Legend down, CD-6.
Leviathan was still out there. My armband - the stupid thing had survived despite everything - was listing off the wounded and the dead. And I was here, forcing the crippled remains of my suit to keep going. Useless.
Shielder deceased, CD-6.
Outside, Brockton Bay drowned, and the capes who had come to protect it suffered and died. From my position on the back lines, I listened to the litany of the dead, as Movers of every stripe brought the wounded back from the front.
Sundancer down, CD-6.
It took a few tries for the right shoulder, arm, and partial chest plate of my armour to recognise the tapped rhythm that keyed them to unlock, stacked armour plates grinding against one another rather than sliding smoothly apart. No longer held in place, the chunk of breastplate came loose and fell to the ground, landing in the grimy water that covered everything even here.
Escutcheon deceased, CD-6. Herald deceased, CD-6.
I turned the shattered construction over in my hands, searching for anything salvageable. It wasn’t quite as bad as I’d feared - whilst a good portion of the absorbing plating was warped out of shape, and some so structurally compromised I couldn’t even recycle the materials, there were quite a few inertial conduits in salvageable condition. I was considering how I’d go about removing them from the rest of the mess when my armband chimed out a new message.
Leviathan temporarily neutralised but invulnerable. Duration variable, between thirty seconds and ten minutes. Redeployment instructions to follow.
They’d stopped him? Even if it was temporary, this reprieve could be vital. More immediately, the halt in the ceaseless list of casualties from my armband gave me space to think for the first time since I’d clamped the awful thing to my wrist. Unbidden, my thoughts turned to the half-formed ideas on flight mechanisms I’d rejected back before the start of the fight. The surviving conduits, if networked correctly, could probably manage enough constant output to keep me weightless, an enhanced version of the trick I’d used to avoid crushing the folding chair what felt like hours ago.
My surviving capacitors - three on the right side of my back, one in the right shoulder and one in each leg - were fully charged, thanks to the blow that had shattered my armour in the first place, so there was no concern about energy drain. I’d be vulnerable without my torso armour, sure, but… well, the tried and true method had failed on first contact with the enemy.
Maybe it was time to try something new after all.