You make your way home, your backpack containing not only your Low Key costume, but also phat stacks of cash. Kaiser hinted not so subtly that trying to run off with your signing bonus would be a tremendously bad idea. You were not fazed in the least. When the Empire eventually comes howling for your blood, money will be the last thing on their minds.
In addition to the money, your new boss also unwittingly provided you with his soul's price. Shockingly, it turned out to be both morally acceptable and potentially doable. Sort of. Maybe.
Kaiser wants his son to become a worthy heir.
All you have to do is to discover Kaiser's secret identity to find his son, figure out what's wrong with the kid, and get some sort of power that can fix it. It's a long-term project, okay?
Your loyal companion, The Wolf Formerly Known As Bubbles, is not at your side. Since he won't be able to re-materialize for several hours yet you sent him off to lair territory to scout out a good place for a Tinker workshop. He's much better suited to it than you: He can just walk through walls and fences instead of having to figure out a way to break into each disused property. If he finds something matching the criteria you gave him he'll just guide you right there tomorrow.
God you love having a sapient magical wolf for a friend.
---
You come home to find the kitchen table full of empty beer cans. As is the coffee table in front of the TV, and several window sills.
"Dad?" you call out hesitantly.
"Taylor!" Danny's cheerful voice comes from the basement. He comes bounding up the stairs, then stops as he sees you staring at the Great Beer Massacre of 2011. "It's not what it looks like," he says sheepishly. You sort of guessed that much, given the way he's still conscious. "I used the beer to lure in a herd of wild dockworkers, and fooled them into doing physical labour! Come look!" His voice regains its enthusiasm as he goes, and he beckons you into the basement.
You follow him and crane your neck to see- oh. Gone is the pile of blankets and makeshift nightstand. In their stead, your entire bedroom has been transplanted into the basement. Just because you said... he went to all this effort... You feel tears coming to your eyes. Danny wants you to be happy.
You hug your dad with great enthusiasm, causing him to sway dangerously on the stairs. There's also a certain quality to his breath that you can't help but notice at this range.
"Skittish creatures, dockworkers," you note mischievously. "They wouldn't trust the beer unless you demonstrated that it was safe to drink first, yeah?"
Danny chuckles. "Something like that. I- I did the right thing, didn't I? You said-"
"It's perfect," you interrupt him. You take a step back up the stairs and use the height advantage to muss his hair. Then you pause and purse your lips. "Almost. Hang on."
You locate a screwdriver and remove the legs from your bed, letting the mattress rest directly on the floor. Danny helps you without making any wisecracks about monsters hiding under the bed. You make sure to hug him again before you turn in for the night.
Despite the assurances you gave, you spend some time tossing and turning, drifting in and out of sleep. But at some point during the night the bedsprings make a sound of protest as your bed becomes full of fur and safety, and you drift off peacefully.
---
While discussing plans last night Bubbles/Fenrir assured you that he's a light enough sleeper that he would notice your dad approaching in time to dematerialize, so you didn't bother to set an alarm this time. Instead you wake up from the sun streaming in through the one small window, but simply turn over and go back to sleep with a contented sigh. This repeats itself several times as you exult in the fact that it's Saturday and you don't need to pretend to go to school, but eventually the smell of frying bacon lures you out of bed.
After enjoying a thoroughly unhealthy breakfast (more of a brunch, really) you finally start getting ready for the day. Being lazy is nice and all, but you also have things to do that will help you not die.
"Heading out?" Danny asks as you leave the basement with your backpack.
"Yeah. Gonna take a walk, do some shopping, maybe visit the library."
"When will you be back?"
"Dunno. Don't wait up for me?"
Danny looks pained. "I don't like the way you've been staying out late at night lately. It's not safe. Not in this city."
"Dad, I-"
"Look, I don't want to- are you still working at the dog shelter?"
No. Yesterday I met the most powerful neo-nazi in North America and called him a jew to his face. He was so impressed he offered me a job. "Yes."
"I don't want to stop you from doing something you enjoy. But-"
"Dad. Listen. I know it's not safe. That's why I got this." You show him the pepper spray you bought. You don't show him the knife though, you don't think that would actually make him any less worried. "I also signed up for self-defense classes starting Tuesday."
Danny smiles ruefully and places an identical can of pepper spray on the table. "Looks like you're way ahead of me as usual, kiddo."
"No, no, this is great. Now I'll be twice as safe." You snatch up the second can and start dashing around, making 'pssshhht' noises as you pretend to pepper spray invisible assailants all over the kitchen. Once all enemies have fallen to your might, you holster (pocket) your weapons with flourish. "See?"
"I'm convinced." Danny nods solemnly. "Have fun out there." He's clearly still worried about you. But he's pretending everything is fine, which is close enough in this household.
---
"Well, did you find anything good?" you ask the empty air next to you as you get off the bus. "That's great, show me!" Some people look at you oddly, because they didn't see the empty air nod. You hurry off. You should probably get a hands-free set for your cellphone and wear it conspicuously, so that people just think you're an asshole, not a crazy person.
Fenrir guides you to a particular building. It's locked up, so it hasn't been completely given up on. Someone is feeling unreasonably optimistic about the future of the Brockton Bay real estate market, it seems. But not all that optimistic, because a closer look shows that the building has been broken into at least once already - and rather than replace the busted lock, the owner just welded a pair of steel rings to the door and stuck on a padlock. Clearly no one would mind (read: notice) if you borrowed the place for a while.
Making sure that no one is around, you take a set of heavy bolt cutters from your backpack and attack the padlock. Good thing you cleaned the basement recently, or you'd never have found these.
Inside, you find everything you could have hoped for: A skylight and a glass blowing furnace. The room is a mess, with ceramic trays, metal rods and oddly shaped tools strewn all over the floor. Not much of a black market for glass blowing equipment, you guess. The furnace is going to need some maintenance too - it may have been too big to steal, but they ripped out the gas burner meant to heat the thing. Nothing Tinker 0 powers can't handle.
Still, there's other equipment you need to borrow as well. Yes, borrow. You're going to put it back when you're done. You turn to Fenrir.
Spoiler: The-Wolf-Formerly-Known-As-Bubbles-o-vision
After giving Fenrir his instructions, you catch a bus back downtown to begin another shopping spree. First a hardware store, for spare parts and tools that you couldn't find in your basement. And a new lock, you don't want anyone else waltzing in. But mostly a whole bunch of hollow section steel bars, to serve as the framework for the focusing array.
The store does not usually offer home delivery, but you're able come to an arrangement where you pay a relative of the owner for the use of his private vehicle. It means one person who can tie your appearance to the location of your lair, but you could not possibly lug that much steel across town on your own. The lair's only temporary, anyway.
You make small talk as he drives, enough to get an idea of his character, and also the price of his soul.
Geoffrey wants to become a professional baseball player (and make millions of dollars).
Considering his thinning hair and prominent gut... you just keep reaching for those stars, buddy. Not something you can fulfill, but he seems like a reliable sort otherwise.
So you pay him extra to lug everything inside for you while you replace the lock.
"This place is a mess," he remarks. He does not make any comment about the broken lock or ask for proof that you're the rightful owner of the building. You knew he was reliable.
"It's a bit up a fixer-upper," you agree. "Can I call you if we need more things delivered?" He agrees, and gives you his number.
Speaking of the focusing array though, why do you even need natural sunlight anyway? Couldn't you just get an UV lamp or something? Nope, says your power. Suck it up and buy mirrors. At least mirrors are pretty cheap when you don't care about shape or size or pretty frames, just price per square foot.
The optics are another matter. Even if you could afford to order custom-made lenses, you can't wait for them to be ground. You're on a schedule here. Instead you end up buying a bunch of cheap toy binoculars to disassemble. It will have to do.
Your deliveryman does raise an eyebrow when you have him pick up all those mirrors, so you raise his hourly wage. "The boss appreciates a man who doesn't ask awkward questions," you say. Understanding dawns in his eyes, and he mimes zipping his lips shut.
That's the sunlight taken care of - or it will be, once you assemble everything. But then there's the magma to consider. Why, power, why? The magma won't even touch the metal, how could it possibly have an effect on the process? Because fuck you, that's how. Now buy some magma. Luckily you're able to find a gardening store selling magma by the pound (though the receipt calls it 'decorative basalt gravel'). You make yet another trip back to the forge, with a backpack full of rocks.
Next order of business is fuel for the furnace. Annoyingly, your Tinker power insists that the heat should should be provided by the volcano you're obviously getting your magma from, and gives you no idea of how much fuel you'll need. You jot down the manufacturer and serial number from a faded sticker. Off to the library to look up the specs online, then.
The bus to the library passes by an invisible wolf, weaving slightly as it drags an invisible set of oxyacetylene tanks perched on top of an invisible portable generator down the road. Huh. You didn't know he could do that. Who would have thought that the sneakiest cat burglar in town would be a guy without opposable thumbs, who can't even fit through regular doors?
You smile. He really is the Best Dog. You spend an enjoyable few minutes contemplating the counterfactual exploits of Dog Burglar, gentleman thief. It's a shame you're going to be too busy nazi-ing around to make it reality any time soon.
Then you frown as you realize that you were thinking of committing crimes because it would be neat. That's not cool. You're infiltrating the Empire to steal their powers. To make yourself stronger. You're borrowing this equipment for the same reason. But just stealing things for fun? No. Sure you'd fucking kill yourself before joining the Wards, possibly literally, but you're not a bad guy.
Uh, yeah, about that... This project is going to eat through most of your advance, and you still owe Emma money. Which means that you still won't be able to feed Best Dog properly, as you promised to do. Yes, he'll forgive you. He's forgiving you right now, and you haven't even asked him yet. That's the thing about undeserved unconditional love. Doesn't stop you from feeling like a heel.
Looking up the specs of the furnace and the relevant melting points paints a bleak picture, economically speaking. You'll have to run it around the clock to keep the magma molten, and keep the glory hole open all day to let the sunlight in. Yes, yes, 'keeping the glory hole open all day' is something Emma has previously accused you of doing. You're simply going to ignore all the double entendres there, because you're pretty sure glassblowers invented the term first. The point is, that's going to let heat escape as well. It'll add up to hundreds upon hundreds of dollars worth of propane by the time you're done.
At least propane is something of a household good, and modestly-sized tanks of it can be bought with no questions asked. When you first started having metallurgical Tinker ideas you were worried you'd have to somehow track down coke dealer. The kind of coke that goes in a blast furnace, you mean, not the kind that goes up your nose. You imagine the latter kind would be fairly easy to find around here.
By the time you get back Fenrir is resting next to his intangible loot, gathering energy to materialize it and himself. Once your deliveryman has unloaded your propane and left you make sure to inform Fenrir as to your opinions re: the identity of Best Dog. Also your intentions towards said entity, should he become tangible enough for belly rubs.
In the meantime you repair the furnace, rig up some lights, and buy gas for the generator to power them. Between it, the furnace and the welding torch you'll be burning three separate hydrocarbons, which seems sort of... suboptimal? If you were Armsmaster, you'd no doubt have come up with some brilliant contraption that siphons waste heat from the magma to power the blah, blah, blah. You're not Armsmaster, you're some sort of weird inconvenient alchemist-metallurgist.
As soon as the welder has been returned to the material realm, you give copious belly rubs. Because you promised. Then you start working on the focusing array. First you cut and weld together a framework of steel, then you carefully break the mirrors apart, angling the pieces to create a parabolic reflector as you glue them to the framework. Well, mostly parabolic. Parabolic-ish. It's not perfect, but it's no worse than the shitty plastic prisms and lenses you'll use for the final focusing stage.
Yes, it's terrible, but it's the best you can do on a shoestring budget. By the time you've rigged up a frame for the first mirror and gotten the optics set up correctly the sun has already gone down. Can't test it until tomorrow. No problem, you'll have to let the magma melt overnight anyway. You load the furnace up with gravel and fire it up. The empty shells of a dozen gutted binoculars crunch under your feet as you leave.
Only one thing left to do today, which is to recruit a minion. Someone has to wake up in the middle of the night and switch propane tanks, and it's not going to be you. Nor would Emma's parents agree to perpetual 'sleepovers'.
Luckily lair territory doesn't just contain lairs, it also sports a fair crop of naturally-occurring minions, aka homeless people. Now most capes would spurn this resource, reasoning that if they were in any way reliable they probably wouldn't be sleeping on the street in the first place. But that just means that you're hitting an untapped market. A bit of Loyalty will fix that reliability issue right up, you figure. They can't have ambitions all that lofty, either, and they are unlikely to object to a brief conversation in exchange for spare change.
---
Good lord but interviewing the homeless is depressing. As it turns out, quite a few souls have prices you are not able to meet.
Pete wants to see his kids again.
Hilda wants to stop coughing up blood.
Believe it or not, that's only the second most depressing category. By far the most common prices are alcohol and heroin. Not, mind you, a lifetime supply. These people will sell their soul for the next hit. Even if you were prepared to offer that, you don't think even Loyalty would be enough to make those people reliable.
Your latest candidate is not off to the most promising start either as he introduces himself as Funny Jim, 'because of the voices, see.'
"Do the voices tell you to do things, Jim?" you ask.
He nods. "But I don't do what they says. They are right assholes, they are." He suddenly whips his head around and addresses the wall to your right. "Like that! I'd never do that! This poor girl never done anything to me!"
You take a step back and grab your pepper spray, but he calms down quickly and offers you a reassuring(?) smile. Wow. If you were him, your soul's price would be a trip to the dentist. Wait no, the pharmacy. Definitely antipsychotics over dental work.
"Are you all right?" you ask.
"Yeah. Yeah. No problem. That's the funny part, right? When I argue with them. Real funny..." He trails off, muttering to himself.
Jim wants somewhere warm to sleep.
Okay. Despite the rocky start, this guy is clearly your best bet so far, and it's getting late. Beggars can't be choosers, even when they are choosing among beggars.
"Come along, Jim," you say. "I have a place for you to sleep, if you help me out a bit."
===