((Note: some spoilers for the Slot Machine arcs in here. Turn back now, lest ye be spoiled. They're fun, available at 30 from inside the Golden Giza casion in St. Martial, unlocked with Gangbuster badge. Go get a group together and hunt Marcone Capos today!))
It wasn't a quiet day on the Isles by any means. At any moment someone was being trampled under someone else's boot. Fortunately, if you knew where to look, someone else was busy selling pungi sticks at the same time.
Overstrike, one of the rising tide of chaos after the Breakout, wasn't in either group today, and really wasn't planning to be, instead laying low in a small apartment. The artwork and gold 'liberated' from the Thorns' seized Mu stockpiles were making their happy way down the black market, and the heat was still high enough from the Circle that many of her Broker's usual contacts were laying low for fear of ending up in the middle of a glowing green circle.
It wasn't a problem, beyond Overstrike wishing her Broker luck. The arrangement had been satisfactory, and it had been very rare lately she'd gotten the chance to simply *create*, rather than the mere mechanical aspects of taking a power cell here, some catalysts here, and voila! an acid mortar. Running scams, shake-downs, and the occasional armed robbery was the name of the game, for now, and she'd done well, in currency and respect.
She could more than afford delivery for a while, of anything up to small particle accelerators, without straining her finances. So, instead, she was in oil-smudged jeans and a t-shirt, wielding a soldering iron happily instead of a pulse rifle, and seeing where the circuits took her, room lit only by grimy light and the faint glow coming from her eyes.
She didn't need it to see the *important* aspects. Electronics, mechanics, some physics - they came more than naturally to her. Not as if designs fell into her mind, but with a little fiddling, it was easy to see ways to make them *better* once she had an idea, made or stolen. She wanted to do the same to the world, on a small scale. It was why she'd been put in the Zig. It was why she played the game. She reached out a hand, with a whirr of servos, one of her simple servitor drones passed up the voltemeter without a word.
And she was afraid she had started to peak. There wasn't much more she could do to simply increase the power forced through her robots' weapons, despite increasing access to the most exotic of toys. The simple needs of keeping Arachnos from swatting her robots down, regardless of her status with them, on their way to a deployment limited the size of their generators. There was a limit to how much energy can be put in a small area without it exploding.
At least, so science said. Again her eye was drawn to the simple looking statuettes Kalinda had sent her to empower, to prove whether or not she was still in the running as a Destined One.
There was power there, to allow her to expand her armory. With the capability of walking around with that power within her on tap, beyond simply seeing the paths of power, she could make them flow with it, opening the way to allowing her to pack in innocuous-seeming equipment and then let it draw from her, deploying a half-dozen planned and discarded designs.
But.. was it worth it. She wanted a better running world, but against the heavier opposition that had yet to be cowed would require... crudity. Bluntness. Street-sweeping lasers, heavy napalm rockets. The sort of weapons that were available, but just needed to be refitted to her systems. The sort of power that, when made available to the mundane, invited cruelty and abuse. It wasn't a place she liked her mind to linger.
"Mail drop-off successful." reported another servitor, exotic and alien camera lenses hidden beneath a trenchcoat and a hat for heading out. On the Isles, much as Paragon, it didn't attract heavy comment. Her creations were as intelligent as could be managed. Eventually, she would need sentries and guards if all went well. If she dared let it go well.
"Thank you - " she flipped through "- may already be a winner. Life insurance... odd." There was a handwritten letter in there, with postage from the States. Ploughskeepie, apparently. She started to tear it open, and thought better of it.
Two minutes later, when the drone returned from outside with the opened envelope intact, she flippd on a light, squinting, and read the letter. And then she was quiet for a long time, frowning, iron forgotten. She glanced at the artifacts again. High Roller's career had missed her, the first time. On the Isles, she was busy scrounging, and then in the Zig, people didn't talk much about their felonies, let alone the ones committed by those who hadn't been apprehended.
But this... *this*. The Zig, simple enough. You weren't smart enough or fast enough, but it gave you plenty of time to think. What the Phalanx had done... this wasn't thinking. This was losing the one thing no one, she had thought, could take away With a slightly differently spun off-balance personality, she could have planned the same, been the same, reduced to running a lathe rather than seeing the rivers electric.
She looked at the apartment one last time.. "Better to linger than be locked."
She closed her eyes, and then closed her fist on the statuette. She did not scream. After the first second, the thought did not occur to her. Even freely bargained and rightly exchanged, the Powers could leave their traces on a soul. When the eternity ended after a minute... she opened them. Things were... brighter. A glance down the street showed the people as faint smudges, a hundred thousand synapses skittering into thought, but the city's heartbeat pulsed on its vessels of iron.
She turned back, and picked up the iron, voice calling out stridently, barking orders instead of requests. This *was* a war, not a dream to obtain, but a life to simply *have* at the end.
((Note: some spoilers for the Slot Machine arcs in here. Turn back now, lest ye be spoiled. They're fun, available at 30 from inside the Golden Giza casion in St. Martial, unlocked with Gangbuster badge. Go get a group together and hunt Marcone Capos today!))
It wasn't a quiet day on the Isles by any means. At any moment someone was being trampled under someone else's boot. Fortunately, if you knew where to look, someone else was busy selling pungi sticks at the same time.
Overstrike, one of the rising tide of chaos after the Breakout, wasn't in either group today, and really wasn't planning to be, instead laying low in a small apartment. The artwork and gold 'liberated' from the Thorns' seized Mu stockpiles were making their happy way down the black market, and the heat was still high enough from the Circle that many of her Broker's usual contacts were laying low for fear of ending up in the middle of a glowing green circle.
It wasn't a problem, beyond Overstrike wishing her Broker luck. The arrangement had been satisfactory, and it had been very rare lately she'd gotten the chance to simply *create*, rather than the mere mechanical aspects of taking a power cell here, some catalysts here, and voila! an acid mortar. Running scams, shake-downs, and the occasional armed robbery was the name of the game, for now, and she'd done well, in currency and respect.
She could more than afford delivery for a while, of anything up to small particle accelerators, without straining her finances. So, instead, she was in oil-smudged jeans and a t-shirt, wielding a soldering iron happily instead of a pulse rifle, and seeing where the circuits took her, room lit only by grimy light and the faint glow coming from her eyes.
She didn't need it to see the *important* aspects. Electronics, mechanics, some physics - they came more than naturally to her. Not as if designs fell into her mind, but with a little fiddling, it was easy to see ways to make them *better* once she had an idea, made or stolen. She wanted to do the same to the world, on a small scale. It was why she'd been put in the Zig. It was why she played the game. She reached out a hand, with a whirr of servos, one of her simple servitor drones passed up the voltemeter without a word.
And she was afraid she had started to peak. There wasn't much more she could do to simply increase the power forced through her robots' weapons, despite increasing access to the most exotic of toys. The simple needs of keeping Arachnos from swatting her robots down, regardless of her status with them, on their way to a deployment limited the size of their generators. There was a limit to how much energy can be put in a small area without it exploding.
At least, so science said. Again her eye was drawn to the simple looking statuettes Kalinda had sent her to empower, to prove whether or not she was still in the running as a Destined One.
There was power there, to allow her to expand her armory. With the capability of walking around with that power within her on tap, beyond simply seeing the paths of power, she could make them flow with it, opening the way to allowing her to pack in innocuous-seeming equipment and then let it draw from her, deploying a half-dozen planned and discarded designs.
But.. was it worth it. She wanted a better running world, but against the heavier opposition that had yet to be cowed would require... crudity. Bluntness. Street-sweeping lasers, heavy napalm rockets. The sort of weapons that were available, but just needed to be refitted to her systems. The sort of power that, when made available to the mundane, invited cruelty and abuse. It wasn't a place she liked her mind to linger.
"Mail drop-off successful." reported another servitor, exotic and alien camera lenses hidden beneath a trenchcoat and a hat for heading out. On the Isles, much as Paragon, it didn't attract heavy comment. Her creations were as intelligent as could be managed. Eventually, she would need sentries and guards if all went well. If she dared let it go well.
"Thank you - " she flipped through "- may already be a winner. Life insurance... odd." There was a handwritten letter in there, with postage from the States. Ploughskeepie, apparently. She started to tear it open, and thought better of it.
Two minutes later, when the drone returned from outside with the opened envelope intact, she flippd on a light, squinting, and read the letter. And then she was quiet for a long time, frowning, iron forgotten. She glanced at the artifacts again. High Roller's career had missed her, the first time. On the Isles, she was busy scrounging, and then in the Zig, people didn't talk much about their felonies, let alone the ones committed by those who hadn't been apprehended.
But this... *this*. The Zig, simple enough. You weren't smart enough or fast enough, but it gave you plenty of time to think. What the Phalanx had done... this wasn't thinking. This was losing the one thing no one, she had thought, could take away With a slightly differently spun off-balance personality, she could have planned the same, been the same, reduced to running a lathe rather than seeing the rivers electric.
She looked at the apartment one last time.. "Better to linger than be locked."
She closed her eyes, and then closed her fist on the statuette. She did not scream. After the first second, the thought did not occur to her. Even freely bargained and rightly exchanged, the Powers could leave their traces on a soul. When the eternity ended after a minute... she opened them. Things were... brighter. A glance down the street showed the people as faint smudges, a hundred thousand synapses skittering into thought, but the city's heartbeat pulsed on its vessels of iron.
She turned back, and picked up the iron, voice calling out stridently, barking orders instead of requests. This *was* a war, not a dream to obtain, but a life to simply *have* at the end.
And she intended to win.