Chapter Text
Friday started with a simple job - make myself a teleport inhibitor. I’d work on the stuff for the staff afterwards. And apparently Piggot and I were on the same wavelength, because there was just enough for a few inhibitors to be made. I could make one for my gear setup, then make a few for the foot soldiers of the PRT. I was more concerned with protecting myself today than the standard grunt, simply because I was certain by the end of today or tomorrow, I would be up close and personal with both members of the ABB.
I programmed the nanites to make an interdiction device for my own standard gear setup, one that could hang off of my belt and be powered by my power cell when I flipped the switch for it to be on. Thanks to my familiarity with how the devices were made, I was able to get it produced and programmed in half the time, picking the thing out of the gray sand and affixing it to my waist, where it was promptly integrated into my normal systems. A new module appeared on my HUD for my armor and gadgets, and it displayed what little information there was about the interdiction device on my visor.
With this, I felt…properly ready. I could set the nanites to make some more interdiction devices for the rank and file of the PRT, but now I still needed to work on mental defenses. I had basic mental defenses, something I could integrate into a flexible helmet-like thing that I could stick under my body stocking. I could make that, eventually, should I get the resources. Unfortunately, I had used up all the parts I had access to for what jobs that had been in my queue. I could let my Duplicator take my Scoria, Crynoic, and Perennial bars and turn them all into Life Alloy, though. It could be fun to make armor out of it, or see what Kid Win comes up with a bar of the stuff.
Resolving to commence operation: best tinker’s friend ever, I slowly pulled bars of the stuff from my shrunken inventory and started feeding them into my duplicator. After which, while it processed that, I began going over what weapons I had.
My stun gun, naturally. And my Minituriazer could be seen as a weapon as well. And one mustn’t forget the Sheepinator. I had the glove to throw bombs around, but no bombs in my weapon inventory. I also had plenty of weapon blueprints in my head, thanks to spending so much on the category. I wasn’t eager to go touching the Dimensionator until I properly understood Contessa’s words to me, so that was…mostly out.
Damn. I really needed some more firepower. Especially if I was going to go poking the gangs. Time to submit another requisition request, I guess.
Going by the pile of paperwork at the office when I dropped my form off, I had no faith that I’d actually get any of the things I would need by the end of the week. I mentally compiled a list of things I wanted to make and sighed. It’d be some time before I got improved firepower, that was for certain. Even a simple thing like a sonic gun would be a bit off if I didn’t get the stuff for it.
Still, I could play with what I had to try and make a few interesting bits. Heading back to my lab, I saw a bar of Life Alloy was actually done, so I took it off the output bay and passed it off to a nearby agent, asking them to take it to Kid Win, seeing as how I didn’t know where his lab was. The agent was politely baffled but agreed to my request after making sure it wasn’t harmful for him to be carrying around.
With that done, I kicked my feet up and watched the few things I had to do today progress quite nicely. More Life Alloy kept being printed, the few interdiction devices that I had access to were being created, watched over by Xavier to ensure the simultaneous creation of multiple devices went smoothly.
We even made it as far as lunch, and I had just sat down with my own food, when an alarm went off on base. I tapped my visor to show what was going on, and paled.
Lung was on a rampage, and his trajectory was leading him here.
I rolled up and jammed my pizza slices into my mouth, chewing frantically as I headed for the nearest door. Once my mouth was clear, and I was outside, I began flying towards the scene of the crime. I knew exactly why the dragon was on the warpath.
He was upset that I wasn’t his little pet tinker. Time to show him I never was.
My armor activated and my weapon selection was slim, but it should be enough to deal with both of the ABB’s capes. “Xavier, tell Armsmaster I’m on the way. I’ll need his backup to keep the both of them contained, I don’t have a tranquilizer that’d work on Lung,” I said to my robot friend through the link we shared.
“Sending now. Do be careful, Sprocket. Your armor is not flameproof. If it were made of the alloy, you’d stand a decent chance, but as it is…”
“Yeah, evasion is my best bet,” I muttered, cutting the link and focusing on the smoke coming from a certain dragon’s path. It was a sure thing that I’d find him at the front of it, probably far bigger than a normal man and scaled to boot.
This…was going to be interesting, wasn’t it.
Surprisingly, Lung was still vaguely man-shaped when I arrived to the head of his little ‘burning down the city on his way to the PRT’ convoy. His grunts were mostly not present, taking the chance, I supposed, to secure the home front while the boss went to express his displeasure with the local office.
“You!” he said, pointing an angry, scaled finger at me. “You are mine and you will be coming back with me!”
“Sorry, I’m my own Lombax, and I’ve already picked a side,” I quipped, and that just seemed to infuriate the rage-dragon. In retrospect, I could have picked my words better.
Lung growled and seemed to gain inches in height, scales spreading over his body as his jaw broke and re-aligned itself. The Dragon was coming out to play, and he wasn’t going to settle for anything less than me being broken before him.
His hands pulled back before he flung massive balls of fire at me, with some being joined from his mouth as a breath weapon. Seeing as how I was flying in front of him, it wasn’t a bad plan, but I had combat predictions to show me where to go and where not to go to dodge the flames. A few aerial maneuvers saw me weaving around the fire, and hovering in front of him cheekily once more.
“I’ve had warmer showers,” I taunted the dragon, not because I wanted to, but because Armsmaster was still five minutes out. If I did anything to try and stop Lung’s rampage now, I wasn’t sure it would stick until he got here to tranquilize Lung.
Lung, in response, roared and started growing again. He gained several inches as the scales covered more and more of his body, his head fully morphing into that of a dragon’s.
“Yoooooor miiiiiiiine,” he growled out lowly, his voice barely intelligible with his altered jaw structure.
f*ck, the dragon was coming out to play. Now detaining him was going to be harder. Armsmaster was closer, but I couldn’t guarantee that anything would stick until he arrived thanks to Lung’s increase in body mass.
A flicker of motion caught my eye, and I noticed an oni-masked man nearby watching things from a rooftop. And even if I did win, Oni Lee likely wouldn’t let anything happen to his master without making his displeasure known.
A quick flick at my waist turned the interdiction device on, and I planned my next move. If I waited too much longer, well…rumors were, Lung could grow wings if he ramped up enough. I was not eager to get into aerial combat with him, mainly because it would make taking him in much harder at that point.
I could use one of my weapons to try and restrain him. The Sheepinator would be if he got too much more ramped up, so the Minituraizer came out to play. Lung, no fool, was watching my hand intently, waiting to dodge whatever came out. Or, perhaps, he believed himself above such toys.
That attitude held up for approximately five seconds as the beam of light hit him and he started to shrink. The dragon noticed this and roared, charging towards me as he lost inches of height and trying to break my line of trained fire on him. I simply kept the beam pointed at him and by the time he was close enough to threaten me with fire again, he was roughly six inches tall.
It was, however, a temporary effect. One that wouldn’t last long enough for Armsmaster to arrive, seeing as how Lung’s power more or less directly countered it. I could see the field integrity around Lung start to falter the angrier he got, so I flew directly up instead and started trying to lead him away from the PRT by going off at an angle.
Lung roared, and there was a weird inverted popping noise as the field broke. Buildings broke as he chased after me, and I pulled up a map of where Armsmaster was compared to where I was on my visor.
“Armsmaster, I’m bringing the dragon to you! Get ready with that tranquilizer!” I yelled before cutting comms. He was only a few blocks away, and Lung was right on my heels. I got to where I predicted the bike would arrive and turned a 180 in midair, swapping my Minituraizer for my Sheepinator in a split second. I aimed and fired, and I could see the dragon-Lung’s eyes widen at the sight of a new gun in my hand. He didn’t have time to dodge with the suddenness of my maneuver.
The weird light hit him and played over his entire form, and with an eldritch twisting of space, in the dragon’s place there was an angry sheep, braying unhappily that he’d been turned into a farm animal.
Armsmaster pulled up on his bike and took his halberd off his back, the hypodermic needle attachment at the tip glistening as he jabbed it into the sheep’s flank. It pumped an industrial sized amount of specially made tranquilizers into the sheep, and I landed nearby as the farm animal was knocked the f*ck out.
“Quite an effective use of your skillset,” Armsmaster complimented me, and I breathed heavily in my suit of armor.
“A harrowing one as we-” I started to say, before there was a commotion.
Namely, a flash of light from a suddenly-visible dome that surrounded us, and a form that got blasted into the nearest building in a straight line away from us.
“...Would you like to go get Oni Lee as well?” I offered cheekily to Armsmaster, who grunted in acknowledgement and walked over to the suddenly-prone teleporter. A stab with the needle saw two for two capes of the ABB knocked out and ready for transport out of the city. Possibly to the Birdcage.
“That was your interdiction device at work, I assume,” Armsmaster said as he came back to watch Lung turn back into himself from being a sheep, still as out cold as he had been before.
“Yup,” I said with a slight pop to the ‘p’. “These two were my main focus, and with them gone, the ABB is far less of an issue.”
“Fair enough,” Armsmaster agreed. “I look forward to seeing what you bring to bear against such foes as the Empire or Merchants.”
That was about as close to an ‘I want to see what you can make next and want to work with you’ as you could get from Armsmaster.
Coil, dealt with. ABB, taken mostly out of the picture. Two for four major threats.
I was on a roll so far, but preparing for the Empire was going to be a hassle mainly in the ‘making sh*t’ department. I had designs ready for most of their gang members, but it’d take far more time to actually get the stuff together. The Merchants would be easier, but I wasn’t looking forward to the idea of dealing with Squealer. Tinker vs. Tinker was never a pleasant matchup.
Still, I had done good work today, and wasn’t even crispy. Time to relax until the next set of charges come in so I could get something like proper mental defenses for Victor, or the pigeon in orbit.
…Oh f*ck, taking out Lung and Oni Lee would mean another press conference, especially with the rebuilding the city would have to do from his little rampage.
Fu-
