The conversation the next morning is as tedious as it is predictable. Yes, dad. No, dad. I thought you had already gone to bed like a sensible person, dad. I'll be sure to keep you better informed in the future, dad.
He comes away mollified, but quietly concerned that your new friend 'June' may be a bad influence. He's... not exactly wrong. Though privately you think your new friend 'Bookwolf' might be worse.
As soon as you can extricate yourself you head for the forge. You're so excited you run right past the bus stop and keep going. The gold should have finished cooking by now. You can't wait to see how it turned out! Also you have money and a bunch of powers lined up for study and tomorrow you start at Arcadia which is also full of powers!
And you have Fenrir, the best wolf in the whole wide world. Sure he threw you off a building the other day, but you forgive him. That's how unconditional love works, you know. You smile fondly at the invisible doofus running in the road by your side. He has no trouble keeping up with you, of course, and amuses himself by dodging every oncoming car instead of letting them pass through him.
Yes, against all odds life is actually pretty great right now. You can' help but laugh out loud as you run. Everything's coming up Taylor.
---
About halfway to your destination you slow down to a walk, huffing and puffing. Note to self: Brute 0 is not enough to let you run all the way across town on its own. Actual exercise may still be useful.
---
You carefully lift the crucible out of the magma and give it a once-over with sorcerer's sight. Verdict: It's shit. The process should theoretically be able to transmute 100% of the material in a week, but that assumes a real volcano and a lot more sunlight and proper mirrors that focus it better and don't break halfway through and, you know, not leaving it in the hands of a random bum overnight and hoping for the best. As it is, your sample consists of roughly 90% impurities (where 'impurities' is understood to mean '24-carat gold').
This 'pig orichalcum' is completely useless, your power helpfully informs you, having none of the properties that makes the pure stuff valuable. You don't have time to let it cook any longer, tough. You'll have to figure out some way to extract the good stuff. Uh, Tinker power? Hello? Anything?
---
Your solution ends up involving a dematerialized Fenrir, clutching in his mouth a dematerialized monkey wrench. The wrench grasps a single dematerialized wolf hair, which he slowly and carefully whisks through the molten gold, over and over again.
For reasons that are as obvious to you as they are impossible to articulate in English, the perfectly solid, material orichalcum reacts to the immaterial hair in ways that the mundane gold doesn't. The orichalcum gradually separates out and clings to the hair, forming a cylinder less than an inch long and thin enough that it could fit in a mechanical pencil.
Meanwhile the hair (and wolf) remain entirely unaffected by the heat from both the gold itself and the welding torch you rigged up to keep it liquid, because consistent physics are for people without superpowers.
While Fenrir handles that, you carefully clean the magma out of the glass oven. You're just borrowing it after all, and it wouldn't do to leave it in worse shape than you found it. You're in fact leaving it in considerably better shape, since you had to fix it up before you could use it at all. That's pretty fair rent for a week's use, you think. You have nothing to feel guilty about.
The sun is still up when you're done and the next step will have to wait until Jim arrives, so you head downtown for a while. As you promised yourself, you buy a proper smartphone with internet access. Then you head to the library again anyway, because there are some preparations you need to do online that you don't want traced back to your personal phone.
When you finally meet up with Jim, you give him a letter to transcribe. You don't know that the intended recipient has tinkertech handwriting analysis tools, but better safe than sorry.
Spoiler: Letter
LetterDear Sir
Allow me to introduce myself: I am a Tinker, in which capacity I have chosen the name Smith. I recently discovered a process for creating a hitherto unknown metal, which I have elected to call orichalcum. It has several remarkable properties, foremost among which is that it can be rendered indestructible.
I have no doubt that you can see the great opportunities this presents, both in your line of business and others. Unfortunately I personally lack the funds for both the equipment and the raw materials required to produce this substance in useful quantities. Nor do I wish, at this point in time, to join the Protectorate, as I lack both the inclination and the training to take the type of active role in its operations that you and other Tinkers in the organization do.
Instead I would like to propose an arrangement wherein the Protectorate would provide me with a workshop and and raw materials, and in return receive the bulk of the finished product (exact details to be negotiated). Please find enclosed schematics for the type of equipment and materials that would be required.
Also enclosed, attached to this letter, is a small sample of orichalcum produced using less efficient methods. I urge you to test this sample to verify my claims as to its properties.
You may contact me by leaving a message for Gold_Smith at PHO. Eagerly looking forward to your response, I remain
faithfully yours,
Smith
You glue the scrap of orichalcum to the letter, as was the plan all along. Even if you had managed to transmute the full amount it wouldn't have been enough to craft anything useful with. If anything the thin piece you ended up with is even more impressive than a bigger sample would have been, since the point is to show off its indestructibility.
Along with the letter you include the promised blueprints, drafted by you and annotated by Jim at your direction. The first set details what is essentially your current setup, except done properly and scaled up to produce meaningful weekly yields. The second is more fanciful, depicting a factory-cathedral built into an active volcano. You don't expect they'll go for that, but you included it anyway to make the first option seem reasonable in comparison.
Every little bit helps, you figure, when you write someone out of the blue and ask if they can spare a literal ton of gold.
At your direction Jim writes 'Attn: Armsmaster, Re: Tinkering' on the back of the envelope. You briefly debate adding 'NB: Not a tinker-bomb', but ultimately decide against it. It would ensure that no one else would open the letter until Armsmaster could examine it, but it would also make a rather unfavorable impression on the people you're trying to do business with.
You then send Jim off on his final mission for you: Put on this domino mask, walk into the PRT building and hand the letter to the receptionist at the front desk, then leave without answering any questions.
Fenrir, who you sent to shadow him the whole way, reports that he pulled it off perfectly. You shake his hand, give him a hundred bucks and regretfully inform him that Hotel Glass Oven is closed and he'll have to find somewhere else to sleep from now on. Your sorcerer's sight shows his Loyalty crumbling away to nothing over the course of a few seconds.
You send Fenrir on one last mission, and go to bed early. Break's over, school tomorrow.
(You buried the leftover gold in a park on your way home. It still contains trace amounts of orichalcum, and you don't want to leave it lying around where it can be connected to you.)
---
Dad wakes you up extra early for your first day at Arcadia. He frowns at you as you shuffle your way towards breakfast, even more zombielike than the early hour should account for.
"Trouble sleeping?" he asks. "Nervous about the new school?"
"A bit," you say. Not really. It's just that it took Fenrir all night to return the stuff you stole borrowed from the building site, and it's amazing how quickly you became dependent on wolf cuddles for a proper night's sleep. "Mostly excited." Capes! Powers!
You nap during the drive there, and arrive a full hour before the first class starts. The two of you wander through empty corridors looking for the office of the person you're supposed to meet.
"Looks nice," your dad comments. It does, doesn't it? It's uncanny. It's clearly a school, so where is the graffiti, the peeling paint and general air of decay? You walk past an entire row of lockers, and none of them has been broken into and left hanging open. They're not even dented. What sorcery is this?
Similarly eerie, the woman who handles your paperwork doesn't look like she hates her life, or even teenagers. There must have been an error in your paperwork - you were meant to go to Arcadia, not Stepford High.
You're presented with your schedule, a locker number and combination, as well as several papers to sign. You skim through the school rules. No drugs, no weapons, no gang-affiliated clothing or accessories. No running, no shouting, no public displays of affection. No vandalism, no bullying, no truancy. Whatever, it's all pointless. Not because you're intending to break the rules, it's just... Winslow had almost exactly the same set of rules. It's clearly not the rules that make a difference.
Your dad leaves for work, and you're given a quick tour of the buildings to let you make sense of the letters and numbers on your schedule. It wraps up just as the other students start to arrive, and you ensconce yourself near the main entrance to spot any arriving capes.
A red-haired boy, a bit older than you. Probably Clockblocker or Kid Win going by his general build. Or some non-Ward keeping a low enough profile to stay off the PHO wiki, you guess.
A hispanic boy, long-haired and well muscled. You almost jump out of your skin when his power activates as he steps inside, but he doesn't even glance in your direction. The light surges through his body, but does not reach outside. You'd say Changer, except he doesn't, you know, change. Still, it's clearly doing something to his body, just not anything visible to the naked eye. So... Brute? That would make him Aegis.
Yet another boy (caucasian, short dark hair), whose power is already active when you spot him. It's also the wrong color? Every single cape you've seen so far has had the same color glow, except this guy. Not that there are words in English for either color, but still, weird. You wonder what it means.
Who the hell is this guy, then? The activity is concentrated around the eyes... You keep squinting at him as he walks past. It looks a lot like sorcerer's sight, actually, except it's not sensing powers, it's- Shit! Shit, fuck, shit. Emotions. Gallant shoots emotion blasts. Apparently he also senses emotions, but doesn't tell people about that part.
You are incredibly glad he wasn't looking your way when you figured that out. This is going to be a real problem. If he senses your peculiar interest in a few specific people and puts two and two together, you are so fucked. No, never mind, you're fucked anyway. Just the fact that you know about him and the threat he poses to your cover means that you're going to broadcast a spike of anxiety every time your paths cross. There's no way he won't start wondering what's up with that.
Can you cultivate your Zen enough to honestly not be worried about this? Or maybe you can pretend that you're still in Winslow, method acting well enough that you're a nervous wreck full time and startle at every sound and movement? Ugh. People with sensory powers are the worst.
Your attempt at humor isn't cheering you up much either.
You're knocked out of your funk by another cape walking by. Another dark-haired boy, but closer to your own age. His power isn't active, but there's a secondary glow coming from inside his backpack. Sorcerer's sight can spot tinkertech then, you'd been wondering about that. This must be Kid Win, you can tell that the two glows have the same... texture? Polarization? They match, anyway. Which means that it's his own tech.
Waaaiiit a minute. You focus on the glowing backpack, trying to make out the shape inside...
Oh for fuck's sake. This is Arcadia, famously the good school in Brockton Bay. And the very first thing you see, on your first day, is a kid bringing a gun to school. Heroes ruin everything they touch, don't they?
You shadow Kid Win to his locker, where he stashes his gun. You memorize the number and send Lisa a text.
> Can you figure out a locker combination?
Not that you expect a reply right away, she's probably still asleep.
Despite these distractions, you manage to find your way to your first class in time, if barely. A quick glance shows no capes. A thought occurs to you and you take another look. Huh. You're not sure which is whiter, this classroom or the E88 bar/ready room. As in, genuinely not sure, you'd have to go back and count the Italians. No wonder they don't have any problems with ethnic gangs here: No demand for them.
You settle down and consider strategy. There's nothing you can do about the gun until Lisa gets back to you. Clockblocker is hardly about to use his power in public. You're going to stay the hell away from Gallant. By process of elimination, that leaves Aegis. Hopefully his power activating on its own like that wasn't a fluke. Some careful stalking will clear that up in short order.
Unfortunately you didn't follow Aegis to his locker, and the size of the school and your unfamiliarity with it works against you. You still haven't caught sight of him by the time Lisa responds.
< dials b4 & aftr, pics or vid of opening
At lunch you finally catch sight of Aegis again, and are happy to discover that his power use wasn't a fluke. His Brute rating appears to come from constant biological adaptation, and you do mean constant. As he starts eating his guts remodel themselves for maximum efficiency. When he gets up, his butt shifts from its previous optimal sitting form to a mode better suited for walking.
You're not even worried about Gallant catching you as you follow Aegis out of the cafeteria. In this particular instance, you've got an alibi. Aegis is not a bad-looking dude, staring at his butt is entertaining for multiple reasons.
As you follow him around, you note that it only takes a few minutes for his turbo-charged intestines to finish their job and fold themselves back up into a compact low-energy configuration. Unfortunately you can't stick around to watch him much longer, you have heroics to do. Or possibly prevent? The word 'hero' doesn't carry the same meaning for you that it used to.
When Kid Win returns to his locker you're ready and waiting. Just a girl leaning against the wall fiddling with her cellphone. Nothing suspicious here, no sir. Definitely not recording anything.
Apparently he took the gun out of the locker at some point, because he's putting it back now. That's not worrying or anything.
Once he's gone you make note of the new position of the dial and send everything to Lisa. She texts you back before you even make it to class.
< 5834 wanna brag abt it l8r?
Hm, do you? You'll take that one under consideration. You're pretty sure she's already figured out what's going on, meaning that this is just another thinly veiled attempt to check up on you.
Halfway through your next class you ask to be excused to go to the bathroom. It's granted, of course. No teacher would deny that request from a teenage girl, should she look mortified enough. Which you make sure you do. You hurry to Kid Win's locker, open it up - you didn't doubt for a second that Lisa could do it - and grab the gun. You take an extra few seconds to make sure you reset the dial to the same numbers as before.
Well, that was part one. But now you're the kid with a gun. You hide it under your sweater and make your way to a bathroom. You scoped this place out earlier, making sure that there were no cameras, and that the space between the cubicles and the sinks was wide enough for a wolf.
"Come forth," you whisper, and Fenrir appears. He has, of course, been following you around all day, as always. It not worth mentioning at this point. He's been dozing during classes and excitedly sniffing about every new place you've gone, though you can't imagine what he could possibly have been smelling. His nose can't interact with solid matter! Or maybe- his feet can, sort of, since he's neither flying nor sinking through the ground. Maybe his nose also... never mind.
"Hold this," you tell him, handing him the gun to grip in his mouth. "Begone." Fenrir dematerializes again, taking the gun with him.
"Put it next to my bed, but don't materialize it." You're going to check it very carefully for tracking devices before you let it back into the material world anywhere near your house. "Then go to the bar and wait for me there." Fenrir nods and leaps through the wall. His feet don't interact with the material world that much. Again, better not to think about it too hard.
The rest of the day passes without incident. You get introduced to a whole bunch of unpowered people, classmates and such. They seem nice enough, you guess? You didn't really pay much attention. There's a base level of interest-in-novel-thing ("Where are you from?" "Winslow." "My condolences.") but they don't really have a reason to care whether you live or die. Which is an improvement! None of them spit on you or hit you or even insulted you, what more can you ask?
You catch Aegis leaving, and once again see his entire body update itself as he passes through the doors. Optimizing for the ambient temperature, you realize. You're tempted to follow him home, but you want to get to the bar early today. You've got promises to keep.
===