Honest to Himself 29 (Patreon)

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Honest to Himself
Arc 5: Scion
Chapter 29

-VB-

We felt something approach the city.

To our [Offscreen Travel], it was a giant blindspot that we could not teleport into. Worse, it was a giant blindspot that was moving.

This was not good.

Immediately, we dispatched one of our own clones to scout it out.

---

C114 grumbled.

Of all of the clones within the base, why did he have to be the one to scout out the anomaly? There were other clones who weren’ doing anything interesting, so why did he get chosen while he plowed Lisa?

Fucking original.

Did he not know that Lisa was a woman in demand? C114 woke up early in the morning for that reason, and his reward for proactive loving was getting more jobs dumped on him!

Ugh.

He visited the armory and outfitted himself with a single pistol, couple of magazines, and the rag all of them called a mask.

He paused before the “special” containment chambers, where the less sex-addled members of their clone army spent day and night using their newfound Tinker powers to make tinkertech. [Light Filament] tinkertechs were generally hardlight armors, which could be useful for non-clones because clones were disposable and regular people weren’t. [Infest] would ruin anything it came into contact with. [Regimentation] tinkertechs helped with mass production but couldn’t mass produce by itself.

The only one that could help was the tinkertech made using [Convert]. So far, the only two widely produced products of that power were the Stakes and the Bombs. Convert.Stakes were tinkertech poles that, once embedded into a location, would prevent parahuman powers from affecting the area. Of course, it didn’t affect parahumans themselves (damn Manton Effect). It was slow to convert the area back to normalcy, but it was permanent as long as the stakes got some sort of energy, even sunlight. The Convert.Bomb was a much faster but temporary reset. It had a wider area of effect but also higher material requirement.

So he took one Convert.Bomb and three Convert.Stakes. It would probably be useful against a blindspot of this size. Hopefully.

Now outfitted, he closed his eyes and looked for a close enough spot for teleport to.

As he looked for one using [Offscreen Travel], he noticed that the blindspot moved at a noticeable speed but still a slow speed. There were a lot of other people around the blindspot as well. There were PRT vans that he could appear in within.

Actually, there was a lot of people doing something along the border. Some were … causing the blindspot to reduce in size. Some were helping? Well, there was no one at the back, where the blindspot had already traveled through. With that in mind, he decided to travel to the back of the blindspot.

He stepped forward-.

-and came out from a grove of rapidly decaying trees.

‘Huh,’ C114 thought as he looked around. This was part of a city that shouldn’t have a forest. Or rather, this was part of the suburbia that shouldn’t have a forest because there should be houses, roads, and parks. ‘Isn’t this the edge of the Commercial District?’

He looked around and found it.

It was a road sign with the name of the street intersections still attached to the metal pole.

Howard Ave. and Utrecht Blv. Yup, this was firmly within Commercial District of Brockton Bay.

Frowning, he moved forward while wishing that he brought a hatchet or a machete with him, because forest travel, especially through one that looked jungle-like, was a bitch without a hacking tool.

Well, he still had to scout out the place, so he walked forward into the odd moving forest.

-VB-

Barrow paused as someone stepped into his forest from behind.

And from the north.

And from the east. The eastern invaders were burning down his forest. His birds told him that the eastern invaders were also the PRT.

He frowned.

This was not what he wanted. The PRT never acted so brutally against his approach before. What was the cause?

-VB-

Armsmaster stood guard while supervising the pyro-teams and firefighters as they burned away at the edges of Barrow’s forest.

Barrow and his Lost Garden had been on PRT ENE’s radar ever since they passed through several towns between Brockton Bay and Boston. Unfortunately, the recent struggles that the PRT and Protectorate ENE had in keeping Brockton Bay stable from the likes of Stitches had kept them focused elsewhere until Barrow had arrived literally on the edge of the city limit.

With no way to delay or mitigate the issue until later, the director had pulled everyone from researching Stitches’ tinkertechs and into stopping Barrow from ruining more of the city.

So they now burned away at the edge of Barrow’s forest. Lost Garden also lacked any directly confrontational capes - no Brutes, offensive Shakers, Strikers, or Blasters - so they would have to eventually retreat.

The problem would be about how long that would take. Barrow’s forest was an ever regenerating non-standard forest. There were creatures and plants that were dangerous to normal people, and all of it was connected to the cape. He could direct giant man-eating plants, though they could exist only within the borders of Barrow’s Shaker-forest.

Armsmaster was very tempted to lead a strike team into the depths of forest to arrest Barrow, but he also knew from dossiers of the Lost Garden that such a move was suicidal. What Lost Garden lacked in offensive capabilities, they excelled in defensive and utilitarian capes. In fact, Lost Garden had the most number of Masters and Strangers, which made the group an A-class threat.

The only reason they weren’t bombed to hell was that they generally ignored cities and didn’t attack anyone. It wasn’t an attack if a civilian walked into the forest.

But then Lost Garden was now here and people have gone missing from outside the forest.

“{Armsmaster.}”

“Director,” he acknowledged her through his helmet comm. “What is the situation?”

“{Stitches has been sighted entering Lost Garden’s forest.}”

He wanted to growl in irritation.

The situation was just getting worse and worse…

-VB-

DATA

[spoiler=”Status of Stitches”]

Cash: ~ $8 Million stolen and converted from drug and weapon sales

Reputation:

*Kill Order: $750,000 dead (PRT)

*Kill-On-Sight [KOS] (Coil, Ambassadors)

Willing Assets:

Dinah Alcott - Precog Thinker

Kelly

Lisa Wilbourn - Super Intuition Thinker

Sophia Hess - Phase Breaker

Sherrel Bailey - Automotive Tinker

Amelia Claire Lavere - Queen Shaper (Pregnant 42w)

Olivia - Multi-Effect Trump

Kayden Russel - Solar Artillery Blaster
Cassandra - Contact-Limited Telekinetic

Sex Slaves:

Wilson sisters (Jennifer, Samantha, Cherry) (Broodmares)

E88 Woman (Pregnant 35w)

Jean Brown (Citrine) - Field Micro-Adjustment Shaker

Samantha (Ligeia) - Liquid Water Storage and Dispenser

Rescued & Soon to be Released:

Unbroken Asset 1:

[/spoiler]

[spoiler=”Children”]

Jane (Mother: Emma Barnes, 2012.5.4)

Michael (Mother: Sophia Hess, 2012.5.7)

Alexander (Mother: Lisa Wilbourn, 2012.5.9)

Rin (Mother: MW2, 2012.5.13)

Wendy (Mother: MW3, 2012.5.18)

Elizabeth (Mother: Jennifer Wilson, 2012.6.1)

Victoria (Mother: Samantha Wilson, 2012.6.7)

Lily (Mother: Cherry Wilson, 2012.6.8)

Rose (Mother: Olivia, 2012.6.9)

Margaret (Mother: Kelly, 2012.6.3)

Tyler (Mother: Sherrel, 2012.6.14)

Mary (Mother: Cassandra, 2012.6.20)

Zoey (Mother: Kayden, 2012.7.4)

Cathy (Mother: MCW1, 2012.7.8)

Issac (Mother: MCW2, 2012.7.10)

Iris (Mother: MCW3, 2012.7.2)

Joseph (Mother: Samantha(Ligeria), 2012.7.19)
Maya (Mother: Jean (Citrine), 2012.8.1)

Cynthia (Mother: Amy, 2012.8.10)

[/spoiler]

[spoiler=”Stitches Power Upgrades”]

Mirror Image (Second Trigger):

*Increasing number of copies (Passive)

*Copies permanent unless killed (Passive)

*Telepathy between Original and copies (Passive)

*If Original is killed, then one of the copies become Original (Passive)

Offscreen Travel:

*Can teleport while being seen. (Active)

*Can teleport to locations that are under observation. (Active)

True or False:

*No limits to daily questions. (Passive)

Insomnia:

*Can force close targets to become unconscious (passive).

*Manipulate dreams (Active)

Regeneration (Second Trigger):

*Increased regeneration speed (Passive)

*Temporarily gain Changer ability

-Become bigger with double strength and speed. Cannot teleport while this Changer ability is in effect.

-Allows for variety of form, but if base humanoid form is changed by more than 10%, then all other powers except for Regeneration and Mirror Image are disabled for the duration of change.

Blindspot:

*Applies to locations where he stays a lot. (Currently: All of Brockton Bay)

[/spoiler]

[spoiler=”Looted Power”]

Relationship Meter

Light Filament
Infest
Conditional Robotics
Convert
N*&@H
Defective Goal
Trespass
Peripheral Cascade
Regimentation
Eclipse Source
Matter Comb

[/spoiler]