Chapter 55: (IN)FAMOUS (Patreon)

Nexus orders reparations of $16,000,000 to pay for the damage to infrastructure sustained during The Event, as well as two weeks Drafted to the defense of the wall.

If your debt is not paid within two months, Nexus will confiscate property associated with your super identity to pay it for you.

You are to report to the wall beginning…

“Well…easy come, easy go, I guess,” Perry said, crunching the letter in his fist and tossing it into the trash.

That wasn’t really too much of a problem. He’d furnished about a hundred and fifty suits for Locust already, and after stripping Magneton’s lair, he was pumping out another hundred a day. Some of them still had paint from their previous incarnation as wall-signs.

That meant he’d get his massive payday in about a week, and it would be more than enough to cover the staggering fine from Nexus.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still pissed off at the idiots and Chemestro for getting off scott free despite treating a gang war like a super-soaker fight.

Perry had received a several hour long talk from Mom and Dad about ‘equivalent response’ and how you don’t unleash greater corruption demons all willy nilly if someone looks at you wrong.

The thing NOBODY seemed to understand was that Perry hadn’t been there, and he hadn’t been the one doing the ‘unleashing’. That was what really got under his skin.

How hard is it to understand that I condensed the complicated, difficult to perform and esoteric ritual for summoning a horrifying demon into something that can be loaded into a bazooka and deployed by any random shmuck at the press of a button?...I think I just explained to myself why I’m in trouble.

The terms of Perry’s ‘grounding’ were such: He was under strict orders from his parents to suffer through an interview on Capes Tonight, the talk show that interviewed up and coming capes and broadcast them across the city and beyond.

Amber Hardy was not known to be particularly nice towards the supers she interviewed, which was why this was a punishment.

Perry had called the show the day the chuckleheads had deployed his spell, getting himself a slot six days from then, showing the confirmation email on his phone to the security camera outside his house so he could finally be allowed inside to sleep in his own bed.

So…Perry had four days to come up with a plan to ‘win’ an interview with a hostile host and prove he wasn’t responsible for the attack.

Or… at least, less responsible.

I guess I’d settle for surviving the interview, honestly.

Which was why Perry had taped episodes of Capes Tonight blasting on every monitor while he worked.

Studying his enemy.

Sometimes a cape could bring in a little example of their work that would help win Amber and the audience over. The Whisperer brought in a tame bunny and had been given softball questions for the rest of the show.

Extrapolating from this, Perry was going to summon something nice and fluffy, to make the interviewer go soft-headed while simultaneously proving that he could make tech that could allow other people without skills or magic to summon.

At this point, it was fairly well understood by the community that Paradox was using magic somehow. What Perry really had to do was keep his proprietary tech under wraps with a mislead that the tech he’d invented harmlessly tapped into the essence of the people using them.

People probably weren’t ready for fully autonomous magitech.

I should start adding some thermite to the spell-discs to slag them if tampered with. Thermite is super cheap! Why didn’t I think of that a long time ago?

Live and learn I guess.

The summoning ritual for summoning Elysian Fluffers wasn’t difficult, it was just tedious, and he had to make a reusable copy and enough of the consumables to use it three times.

Once to test it for himself, one to show it to the producers of the show backstage, and one for Amber.

There was no way they’d let him pull out a steel hockey puck of unknown origin and have Amber press the button on live TV…Unless he let them test it.

So…I should probably make six charges. He would bet money that someone would use it twice or lose a charge or something of that nature.

Perry was going into this conflict armed to the teeth…with divine lap animals.

“So, Paradox,” Heather said, taking on the cadence of the nosy reporter “Why did you decide to attack the mutant slums?”

“I didn’t, some of my stolen tech was used.” Perry said as he worked.

“Stolen? It can only be assumed you sold that tech. All Tinkers who are any good have iron-clad protection on their weapons to prevent other people from using them. You’re obviously lying.” Heather said.

“No, ma’am, I’m just a rookie.”

“So you’re incompetent?”

Heather practiced saying things to box him in, get under his skin or put words in his mouth.

Perry practiced keeping an even temper.

***5 days later***

Perry paced the musty backstage of Capes Tonight, his heart racing. He’d practiced his ass off, but it had all been in the safety and comfort of his lair. Now he was starting to see how the pressure of location could bear down on you until you snap.

It was dark, unfamiliar, there was a roaring crowd outside:

Perry felt like a gladiator about to go out and get eaten by lions.

He’d signed a binding document backstage that stated Amber would steer well clear of his public identity – which the demon had revealed to anyone with an internet connection – and in return Perry promised not to seek vengeance for any perceived slights, or generally cause chaos on-set.

Not that Perry was the vengeful type, but it seemed like he was getting the short end of the stick. His phone had been blowing up ever since with text messages from old ‘friends’, groupies, and random strangers looking to sell something. People obviously knew who he was now…

It was just polite not to talk about it.

Mistakenly giving Solaris his full name and then running with it was coming home to roost.

I gotta get a new phone. Mod for super-range and durability.

“You all right?” one of the producers asked, a thin man in his thirties with dark hair and olive skin asked.

He was clutching an oversized cup of coffee with only a scraping left on the bottom and white-knuckling a clipboard in his other hand.

“I’ll be fine,” Perry said, winding around a stepstool as he walked. The backroom was kind of messy, with cleaning tools meant to clean the stage quickly or replace lightbulbs at a moment’s notice. “Just never been on a talk show before.”

Never even did theater in high school. Well, Perry tried but it wasn’t a great fit.

The producer sucked in a breath through his teeth and winced. “Ooo…Sorry.”

Perry chuckled. “There’s nowhere to go but up, am I right?”

“Love your optimism,” The producer said, glancing at his watch. “Take your spot next to the stage, you’re on in about ten seconds.”

Perry did so, his nerves reaching a crescendo as the producer began counting down on his fingers.

“And now, joining us for a special interview, we have a young up-and-coming Tinker whose name has been on the tip of everyone’s tongue these last few days, please welcome Paradox.” Amber said, prompting Perry to take the stage.

Heart slamming in his chest, Perry walked out from behind the curtains into the blinding spotlights, sweating bullets thanking every god his mother had ever told him about that he was able to hide inside his armor.

He scanned the assembled bleachers of civilians, many of whom had less-than-welcoming expressions.

“I see you’re wearing your old cardboard armor, Paradox.” Amber said as he sat down on the couch.

Lead with easy banter, lull them into a false sense of security, then slam them with something accusatory, Perry had memorized the host’s patterns.

“I figured it was more iconic than boring old power armor,” Perry said, rapping the chest piece with his knuckles.

“Does it actually function? I would think cardboard would be…not a great choice.” Amber asked from behind her massive desk.

“Oh, yes, it’s more of a laminate, anyway. There’s plenty of aluminum foil and flex-seal in here too. My power’s primary function is to improve material performance, so this should actually stop a high caliber round.”

Perry glanced at the cameras.

“I’d rather not test that, though, you know what I mean?”

There was a smattering of half-hearted through-the-nose chuckles.

Perry would take what he could get.

“Interesting. So you’re a Tinker, right?” The platinum blonde woman asked. This close, Perry could see wrinkles that were carefully concealed from the distant camera with layers of makeup.

“That’s right,” He nodded.

“It says here in your questionaire that you’ve got an extensive background in Manitian magic that’s commonly used by Supers from East Block 13, or ‘Funkytown’ as it’s more commonly called.”

“I grew up around it, yes, which is why it was kind of natural to apply my Tinkering to magic. While I’m not a mage, I’m able to streamline rituals to an extreme degree, such that it doesn’t make a difference.”

“Wow, so, like, you can do magic?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Perry said.

“Like what?” She asked leaning forward with a pleasant half-smile.

Perry decided to drop the bait.

“Oh, floating swords, melting things, summoning rituals, that sort of thing.”

“Summoning Rituals? Like the one you attacked Oberon Scrapyard with? We couldn’t help but notice the monster screaming your name.”

There it is.

“Not a monster,” Perry said, deflecting. “His proper name is Ex’bergazzat, a greater corruption demon from the plane of ‘Nargosh’, or Entropy, in English. He has seventeen descendants who budded asexually, who rule small fiefdoms in that benighted place. He’s widely considered one of the more reasonable and easy to work with entropy demons in Nargosh, although that may not be saying much by human standards.

“I even hear tell he was actually on friendly terms with Gar’ol the conquerer until the man’s untimely death some…three hundred and thirty five years ago. Perry continued.

“He’s a well-read individual who owns a wide collection of classic music and literature from across the planes, and is always happy to purchase or trade for more. I hear he’s even got some Elvis on vinyl from a reality where he actually got to do his Vegas comeback tour.”

“While he owes his loyalty to the Demon God of entropy, the god has no agenda or concern for the coming and goings of mortals, and so Ex’bergazzat takes the odd job on the material plane every now and then for the proper price.”

“And I’m pretty sure I earned myself a vendetta last week.”

Amber stared at him, her jaw hanging loose. She recovered quickly, as expected of a veteran super interviewer.

“I’m wondering what your agenda was, using Mr. Ex’berzat to attack the mutant slums.”

“Attack? Was someone hurt?” Perry asked. He knew for a fact that no one had been wounded, because the surrounding area had been evacuated beforehand by the warring cowls, and his letter from Nexus hadn’t had any medical or loss-of-life penalties, just infrastructure damage.

Perry had every intention of taking credit for their safety.

“There were millions of dollars in damages to people’s homes and businesses,” Amber said, deflecting herself as she shine a light on the worst part of the event, while ignoring the zero fatalities. “I’d say that hurt pretty bad.”

“Amber, I’m taking personal responsibility to restore, replace and refund anything I can. I know there are some things I can’t replace. Treasured memories and heirlooms, but I’m just grateful that everyone in the area was evacuated beforehand.”

She opened her mouth to speak.

“Furthermore,” Perry interrupted her, not interested in allowing her to divert the subject from where he wanted it to be. “This event made Nexus and the rest of Franklin City aware that summoning demons can be done by non-mages at the press of a button, and they are aware of the danger that presents should other tinkers try to replicate it. I can’t go into any specific details, but let’s just say that I hear they may approach the foremost expert in industrialized magic and make him an offer to develop countermeasures against copycats. Nexus is committed to the safety and prosperity of its citizens, after all.”

***Solaris***

His sandwich dropped out of his hand as he stared at the T.V. screen.

“That little punk!”

***Locust***

“AHAHAHAHAH!” Locust cackled, beating the heels of her combat boots on her hardwood desk as Paradox put Nexus in a tight spot. “He learned that from me!”

“Is that gonna work?” Blink asked, brows furrowed.

“Nah, Solaris will find a way around it. That old bastard is canny. This is a check, not a mate. Paradox just doesn’t have the right leverage to back it up. It was a beautiful move, though.” Locust said, wiping a tear from her eye.

***Metalon***

“Why are you laughing, dad?” Felix asked, glancing up from his work on carefully peeling back the armor plating on Paradox’s suit.

“Because, Paradox just identified a security threat he caused, insinuated that Nexus would do something about it, then offered to sell them the solution. If they don’t take public measures to do something about other Tinkers pulling that kind of malarky, they’ll look really bad. So he basically placed them in the position of paying him money or losing face.”

“Oh,” Tom said from the CAD station, nodding for a moment before shaking his head. “I don’t get it.”

***Paradox***

Perry walked off the adrenaline, his body refusing to accept that the fight was over and not a single punch had been thrown.

“Hey, kid,” Amber Hardy said as she entered the backstage now that the show was over and the audience had been ushered out by the stage crew.

She straightened her suit unconsciously as she approached, eyeing him critically.

“You gave me a good fight out there, young man.” She said, offering her hand.

“I practiced…a lot.” Perry said, shaking it gently.

“You’d be surprised how few people prep. The Elysian fluffers were good. the audience ate it up. Would you be interested in coming back on the show once you’re a little more established? Five or so years from now?”

“No offence, but an interview with you was more nerve-wracking than fighting prawns for the first time.” Perry said.

“I consider it a compliment,” Amber said, her bright white teeth practically glowing in the dim backstage. “And you’ll get used to the spotlight. Comes with the territory. We’ll revisit the offer in a few years. Maybe you’ll feel different then.”

Perry nodded.

“Later kid. Say hi to Hexen for me!” Amber said as she walked off deeper into the backrooms, presumably going to her office to wrap up for the day and begin planning tomorrow’s show.

Perry drew a deep breath and blew it out. The woman was hard on him on camera, but didn’t seem to take it personally at all. That professionalism allowed him to disperse a bit of his nerves as he put the conflict into context. It was a show, and it was over now.

Shortly afterwards, the stage hands guided him to the guest exit. Perry winded down a long series of stairs and hit a steel door, breaking out of the broadcasting building and out onto the street.

Daylight crashed into him along with a wall of sound.

A mob of civilians was screaming and shouting just beyond the velvet ropes and security, waving signs that ranged from death-threats to offers of marriage and everything in between. A wall of chaos blocking his exit.

Perry blinked.

He had no context for how to deal with this.