Scrap Metal Philosophy 7 (Patreon)

Scrap Metal Philosophy

Chapter 7

-VB-

When it came to capes, both national and non-profit organizations possessed methodology to classify the superhumans based on their character, power, and association.

Take two capes, for instance, Kaiser and Lung. Both are native to Brockton Bay, which was in New England. This made them low-priority information-gathering targets for anyone outside of New England but high for anyone keeping an eye out for individually powerful or leadership-capable capes.

Kaiser was the second leader of the Empire Eighty-Eight, a white supremacist criminal cape organization founded by his alleged father, Allfather. With eleven capes total, E88 was a highly dangerous organization. If provoked. E88 was a legitimacy-centric organization; they could not act out too much lest they lost the legitimacy they possessed, which allowed them to recruit non-powered capes. Even if individual capes might not agree with the philosophy of the organization, they must still be shown to follow it. On top of that, their fixed location and base of power meant that they also could not act extremely.

Because of this, threat ratings had addendum ratings based on how threatening a cape was, not just how dangerous they were.

And Techscav got a very threatening rating of “A-class,” which put him - by himself - on par with Lung and the entirety of E88.

Now.

What did this have to do with Techscav, the current topic of the week for every PRT branch on the East Coast?

Because Techscav was the topic.

See, unlike Lung and Kaiser, he was an unknown. No one knew anything about him. They knew that he was a Tinker and that he must be a powerful Tinker, too, but beyond that?

Questions flew around. What kind of Tinker was he? What was his specialization? Was he a criminal? Should be treated as a villain? What happened to Downtown Brockton Bay? Was there truly a villain involved that Techscav was chasing? Was there truly a villain working from within PRT’s own ranks?

And for Emily herself, it was an absolute nightmare.

Unlike Lung, Techscav did not have a base of power to whittle away. Unlike Kaiser, Techscav did not have an ideology for her and her subordinates to predict the man on.

There was nothing they could do to track him down.

“What do you think?” she asked her deputy.

Deputy Director Renick, an older man with nearly white hair, hummed as he stared at the report in his hands. He looked uncomfortable with what he was reading.

“I don’t understand.”

“Understand what?”

“See this bit here?”

It was the one about Armsmaster’s power armor status.

“Yes?”

“The damage is too much for the damage the rest of the street received. If his armor truly did take this kind of hit, then we would have shattered windows simply from the sonic boom of a fist moving that fast to deliver this blow.”

She knew the portion he was talking about well. It was about how the man’s halberd had snapped from taking a blow the hero thought it could take. Considering that the halberd was now in two pieces and in need of some long and hard repair, Emily didn’t agree with Armsmaster’s initial assessment of Techscav, which had been compiled after looking through videos of the independent tinker’s action in Canberra.

They had all thought he was some kind of mobile artillery specialist because of his large gun and the damage he dealt to Simurgh. His new power armor as well as the attachments that came with it was telling a different story.

Normally,  she would have Armsmaster here to tell her his thoughts as a Tinker on another Tinker, but he was out of the count. Panacea had healed him, but the doctors were keeping him in the infirmary to see if he needs anything else.

If there was one bad thing about Panacea’s service, then it was that it wasn’t a cure but a shifting of existing materials. Healing wounds drained a lot from someone, and even Panacea couldn’t magically make someone good and hale. This meant that Armsmaster would be in the hospital bed for some time as he got the fluids and nutrients needed to get back up.

Perhaps in a few days, he might be ready, but she wasn’t going to bother a thoroughly exhausted man.

“Despite the damage he did to us, I don’t think he’s hostile,” Renick spoke up.

She raised an eyebrow before nodding. “That’s what I think, too. We couldn’t let him go after what he did, but he also didn’t have to leave all of the heroes mostly damaged.”

The only person who hadn’t gotten out of that fight more or less intact was Assault. He got healed by Panacea, of course, but the fact of the matter was that he had taken a very strong hit. Emily didn’t understand how Techscav broke through Assault’s power.

Unless those attacks weren’t purely physical?

Something to have Armsmaster look into if he wasn’t already.

“Put a warning out. Do not engage Techscav. Call in reinforcements if necessary.”

“Alright.”

Until the man made more moves, they could only speculate and gather information where they could.

Unfortunate.