Build 6.2
Bryce Kiley
2011, January 3: Brockton Bay, NH, USA
Monday was the start of the new semester. Unfortunately, it also meant a significant drop in my free time.
Last semester, I used a part-time tutoring job as an excuse to take fewer classes and get out of school early. But because it wasn't a true work-study program, I could only excuse myself an hour or two before the rest of my peers.
The Wards had much better excuses lined up, courtesy of the PRT. Dean "interned" for his father at the Stansfield Holding Company. Carlos and Dennis were doing some kind of junior cops thing. Chris was taking online robotics courses for college credit. I didn't know what Sophia or Missy did, but I was sure they had something. Or maybe not, given Missy's age and Sophia's probationary status.
The semester had barely begun and I already missed my extra tinkering time. Just the thought of so many hours wasted made me want to scream into a hole. Not that I hated school, but shit just wasn't fair. I wanted half days without having to tutor a bunch of gremlins. I was a hero too, damnit.
Which was why I chose to engage in the time-honored tradition of indie heroes everywhere: lying to our school admins.
I grinned smugly up at the vice principal as I slid over a small stack of official-looking forms across the desk. "Here you go, sir. I recently applied for and got an unpaid internship. I would like to be approved for half days."
Mr. Culpepper, Arcadia's Vice Principal of Student Affairs, looked over the forms with a focused frown. His beard, long and white, twitched as if it was alive. He was a big guy, six-five, with a matching beer belly. His belly alone had enough volume to fit SAINT. It was no wonder students sometimes called him evil-Santa.
"An internship? Let me see… CyberDuck Productions LLC… It does appear authentic," he muttered. He closed the folder. "How about you tell me what it says, young man?"
"The folder has everything you need, including a portfolio of their work."
"I know. I saw. You wouldn't be the first person to copy a company's wikipedia page though. Tell me, what does CyberDuck Productions do again? And what will you be doing as an intern?"
"Oh, of course, sir. CDP is a digital music production company. Their goal is to make tracks for video games, movies, and cartoons. They make background music, theme songs, that sort of thing."
"And what will you be doing? It says they are not headquartered in Brockton Bay."
"No, sir. I will be helping make new songs and edit existing tracks using a DAW, a digital audio workstation. I heard they were looking for talent and sent them my own portfolio. That's the USB in the folder."
"Uh-huh… I'll admit this all looks legitimate. And if I show this USB to my own kids, they won't recognize a single song? They're all originals?"
"Of course, Mr. Culpepper," I promised. If they did, they'd be interdimensional time travelers and I'd have a very different problem. "Other than myself and the folks at CDP, you're the first person to hear my catalog."
He looked over the papers one more time before inserting the USB into his computer. Music that was a decade ahead of even Earth-Aleph's development filled the air. Slowly, he nodded. "Alright. I'm willing to sign off on this, but only tentatively."
"What does that mean?"
"That means I want to speak to your supervisor. You have to have a mentor in the business, or it's not much of an internship."
I tapped the folder. "The company isn't registered in Brockton Bay, sir. I expect to do most of my work online. But, how about a video call? You can have a chat with my boss. Would that be fair?"
"That sounds fine."
"Here, let me write down his email for you. You can give him your schedule and he'll arrange something for when you're free."
"Very well, Mr. Kiley. You can have your half day. It's an unusual industry to get into, but I won't stop you."
"Thank you, sir."
X
After school, I headed to the lab to rendezvous with Amy and Sabah before leaving right away. We hooked a feed for them through my helmet cam so they could participate in the negotiations. Then, I was off to find Trainwreck.
Finding Trainwreck wasn't the hard part. The Case-53 was exactly where his name implied: the trainyard. Getting him alone wasn't hard, either. The man was already a recluse who only joined the Merchants on Coil's directives.
Once I snuck past the few Merchants loitering about, I made my way to each of the loading bays. I eventually found him inside a shipping container. Several of them had been slotted together in a way reminiscent of one of those micro-homes. One container served as his lab, another contained a box full of nonperishable food, and so on.
No, the hard part would be getting him to listen. The last time we met, Skidmark had gotten it into his head to raid Medline Pharmaceuticals, a Medhall subsidiary owned by Krieg. The Empire and the Merchants duked it out briefly before I intervened.
And before that, SAINT had blown up one of his arms, wrecking much of the rest of his armor, with a well-timed Ice Beam. He recovered quickly, in just days, but there was a good chance he'd be holding a grudge.
I knocked my knuckles on the thin wall of the shipping container. One of the long sides had been torn out of this one, giving him an airy patio of sorts. Trainwreck was inside, lounging on a filthy sofa and watching TV.
Or, I assumed that was him. He didn't have a mask on despite being exposed to the public. He was an ugly man who looked like a round potato filled with acne scars. He had dirty, unwashed hair that he kept in a ponytail. I knew that beneath his head, he was a limbless blob.
His armor had gone through some serious revision since I'd last kicked his ass. Back then, he'd reminded me of Optimus Prime, had the Transformers leader landed in a junkyard.
He'd had three sets of exhausts framing his head, spewing plumes of wing-like steam behind him. His chestplate had been the cow-catcher of an old locomotive and his arms had been two motorcycles slapped together. One of them had been the flamethrower SAINT had blown to kingdom come.
Now, he'd done away with most of that. By my guess, he'd be about nine feet tall standing up, with a heavy emphasis placed on durability and robustness over the steam golem aesthetic he'd had previously. Thick plates of steel covered his body and hid most of the mechanisms that moved his armor, though I could still see a few exposed exhausts for ventilation.
His primary weapons seemed to be his fists, which were much larger than they should be on a proportional human. The backs of his fists had been equipped with football-shaped bucklers, their oblong shapes forming punching wedges. He also had some kind of ranged weapon in the corner that looked like a cross between a bazooka and buzzsaw.
"Yo," I greeted as I shimmered into view. "How's it goi–"
I didn't get to finish. Trainwreck's fist rocketed out, detaching and extending on hidden guide-rails. He punched me clear out of his "patio" and into the air.
A sound like a resounding gong filled the trainyard. My armor had registered two impacts against my force field. Zooming in, I saw the very tip of the football-like wedge jut out for a moment, only to be retracted with a pneumatic hiss.
A pile driver. He'd placed modofied, industrial-grade pile drivers onto his fists to amplify his strikes.
I smiled. That was surprisingly creative. I knew his power. He could build durable gear out of scrap, but he couldn't do anything "fancy" with them. No force fields. No antigrav. No strength augmentation beyond the limits of his materials. Seeing him find a workaround for the latter made me happy.
"You! Creed!" he grunted. He got up and reached for his bazooka-buzzsaw. "You've got balls showing your face here!"
"Hey, I'm just here to talk," I tried being diplomatic.
Diplomacy failed. Trainwreck snarled and pulled the trigger. The buzzsaw on it detached itself, launching towards me with a sound that reminded me of those clay pigeons shooting ranges sometimes had.
I caught it on my cape, the loose fabric easily tangling its teeth. Now that I was looking closely, I saw that it wasn't just a buzzsaw taken from a scrapped woodworking machine. There was a crude gyroscope at the center to ensure it flew straight and spun faster. It probably would have shredded taut, protective fabrics like kevlar.
"Huh, this is surprisingly well-made," I said. Using Psychic, I tossed it back to him like a frisbee.
"Surprisingly? Fuck you, Creed!" Trainwreck swore. More buzzsaws came at me. When he ran out, he lumbered towards me like a small train.
"Wow, he really hates you," I heard Amy through my comms. "Why does he hate you so much?"
"I blew up his arm," I told her. "Well, SAINT did."
"Have you considered apologizing?"
"What do you think I'm trying to do?" I tanked the next piston-like punch on a Protect. "We're trying to help you, Trainwreck!"
I leapt into the air but a metallic hand grabbed me by the ankle. Before he could slam me to the ground, Crown Chimera's wheels caught against his wrist, allowing me to twist myself like an axel. I used the momentum of that spin to crash my other leg onto the bottom of his wrist, avoiding the buckler-like augments.
I could feel the metal give way under the weight of seastone, but it wasn't enough to get me free. My shields flared as I was slammed to the ground and I heard the girls yelp at the confusing perspective.
"You think you can come here and do whatever you want?" the Case-53 shouted as he slammed me into the ground again.
My shields flared. I wasn't actually taking much damage from this. I couldn't even get dizzy because of my biomass gyroscopes.
I sighed. It was starting to look like I'd need to incapacitate him for him to listen. "SAINT, out, please. Let's pin him with Psychic."
"Gon," my partner trilled. He swam out of my camera with a quacking battle cry. His eyes glowed blue and Trainwreck's fingers bent outward, releasing me from his grip.
Before he could realize what was happening, an aura of blue light encased the tinker, pinning his arms to his sides.
I stood and dusted myself off. The tinker struggled, almost throwing SAINT off for a moment, but I added my own psychic grip to his.
Trainwreck couldn't do anything "fancy." He was limited by the natural properties of his materials. He simply couldn't exert enough force to break our telekinetic grip without ripping his own arms off.
"Right, are you done?" I asked him. "Because I'm really not here to kill you. Or arrest you. Or anything else you're thinking. I just want to talk."
"You think I want to talk to you?" he grunted.
"No, but I already let you punch me and throw me around. What more do you want?"
"..."
"..."
"What do you want, Creed."
"Your time. Give me an hour of your time. No, just half an hour will do. You're not unreasonable, Trainwreck, and I've got a deal for you."
He stopped struggling. We let him go. After staring me down, he grunted and stomped back into his weird, shipping container house. "Fine, come on."
X
Trainwreck glowered at me from across the room. I had a feeling that the only thing keeping him from attacking me again was that he knew I was stronger. His greasy, little head looked comically small in his power armor so much of the intimidation factor was lost.
"Let me get this straight," he growled. "Your sponsor, The GOAT, wants to use me as a lab rat."
"I wouldn't say that. We have a product that will give you changer and brute powers. It has the potential to cure Case-53s. We're not asking for much in exchange," I told him calmly.
"If it sounds too good to be true, that's because it is."
"Is that right? But didn't you accept a deal with Coil? You promised to keep an eye on the Merchants, didn't you?"
"Yeah, and you and The GOAT fucked me over, you rat bastard," he swore resentfully. "Do you have any idea how hard it is to get a sponsor when you don't win the power lottery? Huh?"
"So that's it then? Money? And here we are, offering you exactly that, the power lottery. The devil fruit could give you a changer form. A brute package. A more socially acceptable body."
"It's too good to be true," he repeated. He glared at me, but his attention was elsewhere. "Miracles like that don't happen for trash like me."
I shook my head. "It's not a miracle. It's the 'devil fruit,' remember? Call it a deal with the devil if you'd like."
"What do you know, Creed? You won the jackpot. A good power. A sponsor. Connections. Bet you have a nice family and four walls to go home to. Me? This shit's all I got, a bunch of storage containers stapled together."
I remained silent as he continued to tell his story. It was telling that his idea of "luxury" was "four walls." There was real pain in his voice. His eyes were the eyes of a dead man. This was a man who'd completely given up, who'd decided that what he had was all he'd ever get, maybe all he'd ever deserve.
I realized now just what I'd done by taking Coil down. I made no secret of it. Me murdering him, yes, but there was no way to completely hide my involvement. It didn't surprise me that rumors trickled down even to Trainwreck.
Coil was… He was the villain. He enabled murderers and rapists. He would have gone on to kidnap a tween girl and turn her into an addict. He would have started the Echidna Incident. No two ways about it; he had to go.
But… But for Trainwreck, Coil may well have been all he had. Oh, I didn't think there was any affection there, but I was starting to realize that Coil represented something different to him.
To me, he was a tumor to be excised. To him, Coil was hope, the chance to achieve something more.
Even Amy and Sabah were silent. I wondered what they made of it all. This was a perspective they'd never encountered before. They were good people, but it was one thing to give to charity once in a while and something entirely different to have a story like Trainwreck's shoved in your face.
After a long minute, Amy spoke. "Bryce? Can you let me talk to him?"
I considered it. "Are you going to tell him that you're Panacea?"
"..."
"No. It doesn't matter how good his story is. Talk to him as The GOAT if you wish, but I don't want someone outside our group to know how deeply involved you are with me."
"That's fair. Okay."
I unclipped my pokenav and placed it between us. "You're live, GOAT."
"What the fuck?" Trainwreck muttered. "He was listening the whole time?"
"She," I said simply. "Keep that to yourself, won't you? The GOAT is a woman. The ambiguity makes her harder to identify."
"Then why tell me?"
"Call it a show of trust. You've worked with Coil already so you know how paranoid thinkers can be. Even this much is an olive branch."
"Fucking hell, fine. What do you want, GOAT? Is this the part where you blackmail me with my darkest secrets?"
"No," Amy said, voice slightly muffled. "You don't have any secrets like that."
"Damn straight."
"Besides, that's not how my organization operates."
"Says the shady-ass thinker."
"My 'shadyness' is for everyone else's benefit. If people don't know enough to strike at me, then I don't need to resort to those other things you think a thinker does to protect myself."
"Fine… What do you want?"
"What I always want: I am a thinker who nurtures people with potential. I like to create heroes. That is why I sponsored Creed, and why I am now approaching you."
"I never said I'd become a hero."
"I don't mind. You not being a villain is good enough for me," she said. She was doing well enough playing the part of The GOAT. "I'm talking to you because I understand that you and Creed have… history."
"Fucker broke my arm!"
I snorted. "You don't have arms to break, Trainwreck. I blew up your flamethrower."
"Fuck you!"
"Boys!" Amy snapped. "Whatever the case, you don't trust Creed. So, ask me your questions directly and I'll do my best to answer."
Trainwreck huffed like the steam vents on his armor. "Fine… Does this work? This 'devil fruit' thing. Will it fix me?"
"It should. I won't lie to you, Trainwreck. There is some risk, just like any new treatment. Someone had to figure out that fire burned before man learned to cook with it. You'll be the very first Case-53. We think the devil fruit can rewrite your power's template of your body, giving you the form of whatever animal you choose. Basically, we think it'll convince your power to let you take another form."
"And that form has to be an animal? Why an animal? Why not a human? Aren't humans animals, too?"
Amy paused. We'd talked about the possibility a few times since her initial exposure to the devil fruit. She was admittedly leery about a Hito Hito no Mi. It sounded too much like human experimentation to her. And yet, in the end, she couldn't deny the potential benefits.
Devil fruits were conceptual. Despite their organic foundation, they had a certain malleability to them, as if they took on the idea of the animal rather than just the biological organism. I'd told her as much.
The Hito Hito no Mi was not a universal cure for Case-53s because unlike every other zoan, it didn't allow the consumer to become the animal in question. Not even Chopper, the absolute master of that fruit, could pass as a man. His "full transformation" just made him a bipedal deer more akin to Bigfoot than a human being.
Rather, it granted human-like intelligence. I suspected that this was because to most people, humanity was defined in terms of intelligence, morality, and the capacity for growth. The word "humanity" itself was often used synonymously with "empathy." And since devil fruits had a conceptual component, that sapience was what was granted, not the physical nature of "hairless, bipedal ape."
That meant the fruit wouldn't be very useful to a Case-53 who already had a human-like form. I doubted Weld would get anything out of it for example. But for Trainwreck, who didn't have any limbs at all? Whose physiology was completely reliant on a suit of power armor?
"You're right," Amy said finally. "Humans are animals too. If we use humans as a base template, it's possible that you'll grow limbs. I'm told that your physical parameters won't improve however. You likely will miss out on a brute package then."
"Fuck it, that's fine. At this point, I just want a set of opposable thumbs. And you're sure this won't bite me in the ass?"
"If it makes you feel better, we'll have Panacea on standby to assist."
"Panacea? You have that much pull? I heard that bitch doesn't treat Case-53s."
"That's not true," Amy shot back. I could practically see her gritting her teeth in annoyance. "It's not that she doesn't; it's that she can't. She's tried before and failed when their powers reasserted themselves. We think a devil fruit will alter that dynamic however."
"Shit, you should have led with that. How'd you get her to buy in on this?"
"Creed provided several tinkertech equipment for her protection in exchange." That was good. It was a plausible story, and near enough to the truth. "If you agree, we'll take you to an isolated warehouse where you'll be treated."
"And all I have to do is not be a villain anymore…"
"You will have a weakness to being submerged in water, as Creed described."
"Yeah? So I'll move inland. Arizona's supposed to be dry, right? Maybe I'll become a rogue or something. Hell, I might even join the heroes if they can cough up decent pay."
"That's fine. I'm glad you're considering possible options. Do we have a deal?"
"I… We do… But what if I go back to being a villain?"
Amy's voice hardened with quiet threat. "Then the fruit's weaknesses will be shared with whichever hero team is best suited to take you down. At worst, Creed will personally find you. Please trust that you will not enjoy that outcome."
"G-Got it… Don't piss off the shady-ass thinker," he gulped audibly.
"Then we will contact you when we have the devil fruit's template adjusted. Goodbye, Trainwreck."
I cut the call and pocketed my pokenav again. Reaching into my pocket, I slid over a disk as wide as a volleyball. I'd thrown it together in a hurry so hadn't bothered to miniaturize it. "The disk is an invisibility module, one-time use only. It'll only last half an hour."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. Use it to come to the warehouse when we call. Suffice to say, I'd avoid telling the Merchants anything."
"They're probably too high to give a damn, anyway. I'm not going to miss them."
"You won't regret this."
"We'll see, Creed."
Author's Note
Bryce needs a way to not get bogged down by school (as much). This is it.
I think Trainwreck's learned quite a bit from his encounters with Bryce. Having "fancy" shit like a flamethrower isn't as useful as turning construction machines into power-arms. This chapter made me want to do a Trainwreck SI oneshot. Maybe someday.
Animal Fact: In Maori culture, the kereru is a "treasure" species, a taonga. They symbolized peace and guardianship, and were a major source of food for the Maori people.
Today, they are considered a vulnerable species and eating kereru is illegal. Bones and feathers used in traditional Maori practices can only be acquired through the New Zealand Department of Conservation. That said, there has been some pushback from Maori traditionalists who argue that this suppresses their culture.
And yes, they're the "drunk pigeons" I talked about before that ferment fruits in their own stomachs.
Thank you to everyone who paid for my groceries. I have a Patreon and Kofi with dozens of chapters written across my various stories. If you'd like to read ahead, receive more frequent updates, vote in monthly polls or even commission a chapter directly, this is where to find me.