Chapter 16: Physical Armor

Chapter 16: Physical Armor

Long week, Perrry thought with a sigh as he took off the bucket on his head and ran his fingers through his helmet-hair.

High Tide was only three days away, and already things were getting...a little weird.

Mom and Dad were fighting less than usual, for one. It was a strange thing not to have them duking it out on the morning news. Felt like their marriage was in jeopardy, or something.

The wall was a bustle of activity, heavily armed soldiers with prawn guns interspersed with Supers, constantly patrolling it as the ocean gradually crept its way up to the base of the wall.

The city proper was above the level that High Tide should reach, but there were never any guarantees.

Things got weird around high tide. People were Triggering left and right, insurance premiums went through the roof, and statistically speaking, one of Perry’s school-mates was most likely donning a mask and engaging in some super-shenaniganry for one team or the other.

Lord, if you’re there, please don’t let Vanessa Brown Trigger. Please and thank you...

On the other hand, if she did Trigger it would then be morally acceptable to punch her in the face, since we’d be on the same footing and gender mores are a little vaguer for supers.

Gosh, that’s a tough one, Perry thought as he walked over to his projects. Dear Lord, I’ll leave the decision up to you.

Perry’s CNC machine was cutting out bits and bobs rapid-fire, having been re-fitted with parts Perry had modified himself in order to drastically boost it’s speed. Speed was money, after all.

Perry hadn’t sold out his parts immediately as he was a relative unknown, but what little he did sell had easily allowed him to afford getting more aluminum plates and get started on a wider variety of parts. More lines in the water, more chances for the Tinkers at large to recognize the benefits.

Perry aimed to dominate the ‘good enough’ market. There were certain applications that you simply didn’t need the best parts for because the job didn’t require perfection. You didn’t need the springs in your car to be able to support a thousand tons. You didn’t need your coffeemaker to be bulletproof.

Perry was going to be the king of cheap and good, but not the best.

Once he was rich enough he could simply buy some of the best parts, preferably those rare ones he could modify to apply his multiplier to.

I wonder what the multiplier will be?

Was it possible for his multiplier to turn negative, or would he just make the best parts a little bit better?

Who knew.

Perry’s Mk II was sitting against the wall, finished since the day before.

And yet, Perry was already designing features for a Mk.3.

I like the disposable armor angle. Perry thought, weaving through the mess that was his lair.

Dang, I need a bigger lair already. I already paid twelve hundred for this one and it’s completely full. In a week!

Perry picked his way through the mess and sat down at the computer, booting up his CAD program.

The first issue with the Mk.3 was he wanted it to be resizeable so he could both sell them and loan them out as necessary. A cheap suit of power armor was practically unheard of, and he figured even if he sprung for some of the bells and whistles, he could field one of them for about five thousand dollars.

Perry would eat his cardboard helmet if he couldn’t sell them for less than a hundred thousand.

Money is starting to lose all it’s meaning.

But first. The resizing. Perry was thinking two curved straps of steel under the rest of the armor that ratcheted open and closed, sliding the armor apart as they moved.

The question is, how do we make sure the armor retains its functionality?

Making joints and internal moving parts work with resizing was a huge issue, forcing him to reconsider his entire design to accommodate.

Perry fell into the fog of the Tinker Twitch, the world ceasing to exist around him as his fingers flew across the keyboard. Perry must’ve been in the zone for a couple hours when he was distracted by the blinking light indicating his spell-discs were done training.

Woot!

Perry stood and took each of the disks out and inspected them briefly before he put them on their dark, warm shelf for night-night.Ñøv€lRapture marked the initial hosting of this chapter on Ñôv€lß¡n.

Gotta let them rest up when they’re not in use.

After just a week of hanging out with Titan’s Crew, Perry had already noticed several issues with both his suit and his spells.

Wouldn’t it be funny if it became so automated that a vendor delivers a stack of aluminum plates to this address, the door opens, and a robot arm snatches the delivery, pays the confused courier, then shoves a box of parts in his hands, addressed to the Marketplace?

I’m fairly sure there’s gotta be Tinkers out there who operate like that already. Living the dream, man. Of course, I have to wonder, at what point does my perk cease to apply to the parts that I create?

Sure it applies the perk to the parts when I use a CNC machine to cut them out, but I’ve never cut them out while I wasn’t in the room. That could be a hard cap.

Food for thought. I wouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t work when I’m...

Wait...Karnos is in my lair.

Perry stiffened and turned around, inspecting the blond, blue eyed shapeshifter who was seated casually on a chair in the corner of the room, his arm hanging off the edge of the seat, a gun dangling loosely from his hand.

“There he is,” Paul Skinner said, a faint smile on his lips. “You’re definitely your dad’s son, I’ll give ya that.”

“Does everyone know where my lair is?” Perry asked, heart thumping in his chest. He hadn’t seen Karnos come in. he hadn’t heard anything either. Had the man simply oozed in the crack under his door? With the gun?

How did I miss that!?

“Everyone who matters,” Karnos said with a shrug.

Yep. That’s the last straw. To heck with dad’s opinion about underground lairs. I’m making one.

“Haven’t seen my daughter in a week,” Karnos began. “Normally when a girl runs away from home, she starts crashing at her boyfriend’s house, he keeps her in his room, or on a couch in the garage or something.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Perry said, mentally tabbing through his possible options here. Karnos’s fighting method was usually to lead with the gun to put the opponent on the back foot, then shove a tentacle into the enemy’s mouth and suffocate them. “She’s not my girlfriend.”

Which meant Perry would need to play for distance and keep the shifter at range as long as possible....should a fight break out in this tiny eight by twenty room whose exit was dominated by Karnos.

Dang.

“But you...” Karnos’s eyes narrowed as he continued his monologue, heedless of Perry’s thoughts. “You’ve got her bunking with a group of capes. Can’t really send any non-supers to retrieve her, can I? I’d have to do it myself.”

“A few days back, I got a security alert and video of Heather snooping around my office. I expected her to try something, attack one of my shipments out of some idiot heroism mostly motivated by spite. But to my surprise...nothing. You don’t happen to know why that is, do you?”

“Blackmail loses its effectiveness once used.” Perry said.

“Now you see, that’s the problem.” Karnos said. “When teen girls lash out at their parents, it’s supposed to be impulsive and poorly thought out. That’s part of growing up.”

Karnos stood up, his cold eyes staring down at Perry.

“But now I can smell cold calculation from her actions. You wouldn’t happen to know where that came from, do you?”

“Yeah that was me,” Perry said. “Heather wanted to ditch your ass, so I provided her the plan to do it.”

The heat in the room bumped up a degree as Paul Skinner reddened, standing from his seat.

“That stupid girl has no idea what she’s doing. She belongs to me! I dictate where she goes, what she does and who she knows!” He shouted, gesticulating wildly with his gun-hand. “You think I’ll tolerate this!?”

“I mean, it depends on whether it’s worth it to you. Monetarily speaking.” Perry said.

“You failed to account for pride and spite.” Karnos said, his face gradually losing the color from his outburst. “The pride of a father and the spite of a cowl.”

“You think I can just continue my merry business when word on the street is you stole my daughter and I did nothing about it?”

“Frankly, I don’t care.” Perry said with a shrug.

“Well put,” Karnos sneered. “Well, let me tell you something that you might not be aware of. The unspoken rule against killing family members only applies when you’re in your civvies.”

He pointed at the cardboard helmet on Perry’s desk. “When you put on that helmet, you’re no longer off limits, understood? Something bad could happen to you. Will happen to you.”

Heart slamming in his chest, Perry reached over and grasped the helmet without breaking eye contact.

He put it on.

“You were saying?” Perry’s modulated voice echoed through the room.