Differentiation 3.8
April 13th, 2011
I didn't particularly enjoy owning a cell phone.
It brought back too many unpleasant memories. Most of my experience with social media and internet communication in general had been gained while using a computer rather than a phone, but it had still been more than enough to dissuade me from sharing my phone number or online accounts with those close to me. A few exceptions could be made – for family, like my Dad, and truly trustworthy people, like Vista – but I had no desire to get in touch with just about anyone from Winslow.
Emma had even managed to find my email accounts, back when I was still attending classes. Some part of me couldn't help but worry that texts would start pouring into my new phone the second I began to let my guard down again, even if it had been a month since I had last heard from her in any form.
Thankfully, the hateful messages never actually came.
The lack of harassment didn't quell the actual source of my discomfort with cell phones, but there wasn't anything I could do about that either way. Maybe the cell phone would come in handy a few times in the future, and I would relearn to get used to its presence. I doubted that would actually happen.
There was no use dwelling on things, though. I needed to get moving.
I had worked out my schedule for the day, and it was going to be a busy one. I had already spent the night collecting a few dozen more tons of biomass from deeper in the Bay, more than making up for what I had expended in the creation and maintenance of my relay and proxy.
I started the morning with a quick shower – one for my actual body, that was. The proxy was in the Womb, dormant for the time being. I would be using it today, but I didn't want my emotions to be muted or messed up while I was hanging out with Vista, even if my proxy's shape-shifting abilities could have been used to create a convincing disguise.
If Vista trusted me enough to unmask to me, then it wouldn't be right to not respond with the same level of trust. I wasn't too concerned about being targeted by hostile Capes, as we were just going down to the Boardwalk, rather than anywhere remotely dangerous. I had ideas for more useful ways that Vista and I could spend our time, but there were still four more days until Alexandria's arrival – plenty of time, if everything went well.
Before I could set any of my plans in motion, I had to confront my Dad. I summoned up the courage to go downstairs and face him with my request, stopping first to grab a mock-backpack made of biomass from my room. I shouldered the backpack and found my Dad in the kitchen.
"Morning, kiddo," He greeted me, seeming to be in a good mood, "Sleep well?"
"I did," I responded truthfully, only omitting the fact that I had slept well within a chamber of flesh seventy feet below the basement while part of my consciousness controlled a proxy for the entire afternoon instead of sleeping well within my bedroom that night.
Just a white lie.
"Hear anything out of your new friend?" My Dad gently probed.
I perked up, "Yeah, actually, that's what I wanted to ask you about. I was wondering if you could give me a ride to the arcade at the north end of the Boardwalk today around five P.M.?"
My Dad seemed a bit surprised that I was asking him, and it was a fairly unusual request for me. Normally, I would have fought tooth and nail to ride the city bus rather than be directly chaperoned, but the only way Vista had been allowed to hang out with me had been for her to make some concessions.
One of those concessions was allowing Vista's Mom to personally inspect both my Dad and I in person. I got the impression that Vista came from a somewhat wealthy family, and I was a bit worried that my Dad and I wouldn't appear as high-class enough to earn her approval.
Well, Vista was in the Wards, so at least her mom wasn't an Empire supporter or something. Hopefully.
"Sure thing; today's not too busy, just wrapping a few things up with the warehouses, so it'll be easy for me to leave work a bit early. What made you decide to ask me for a ride, though?"
"It's Vi's Mom. She wanted to meet the both of us, if that's alright," I asked, my voice slightly tinged with nervousness.
"That's not a problem at all, Taylor. I've got to head in early if I want to leave early, though, so we can talk more when I get home. Love you, kiddo; have a good day at school today."
"Love you too, Dad," I responded.
He finished his cup of coffee and wrapped me into a tight hug before he left for work. I felt guilty for lying to him during our brief interaction, but I pushed my emotions aside as I headed down into the basement.
-
I would have about half the day until school wrapped up, so I resolved to try and catch up on some of the tasks which I had been putting off in the meantime.
Kenta had given me an address and asked me to bring his stuff to him. I wasn't sure if Director Piggot would allow it, but I would do my best to fulfill my end of the bargain.
Given Lung's position within the ABB, I didn't expect his former residence to be very discreet. There would no doubt be a heavy ABB presence, and I had no intentions of walking around in ABB territory defenselessly.
My proxy was better suited for that task. Hopefully, it would give me some idea of the defenses and precautions the ABB took in protecting their territory. I couldn't use my own appearance for this trip, of course, and the biomass surrounding the proxy's core began to shift as I considered what form I wanted to take.
I hadn't actually collected blueprints on that many people. Most of them were Wards, and the remainder were mostly male. The only girls whose blueprints I had were from the Trio and Vista.
Fuck it.
The proxy's appearance blurred, losing detail as bones reformed and facial features were reshaped. Soon, the proxy resembled Emma, with slight changes made to the template. I gave it longer hair, colored blonde instead of auburn, a thinner nose, and other, more minor alterations to prevent the proxy from being too much of an obvious copy of Emma. I left the rest of her body's proportions the same, and I struggled to adjust to the new body.
I had to spend a while manually rewiring part of the proxy's core to translate my own mental commands to better fit the proxy's own senses and simulated muscle memory, as it was beyond frustrating to stumble every time I stood up like a toddler trying to take their first steps. The reflex adaptations I had made to the core would hopefully allow me to adjust to new forms more easily from now on; even without a direct blueprint for that form's muscle memories, it was becoming easier to synthesize blueprints to fit the specific needs of any particular form I chose to take.
With that sorted, I was finally able to head out to investigate the address Kenta had given me, donning a plain black t-shirt and gray sweatpants before boarding a bus near my house, not bothering to move quickly or do anything to draw attention towards myself.
My research had told me that Fuschia Drive was on the northeastern end of the city, within one of the neighborhoods that had been hastily constructed after the Endbringers began their attacks. It made sense that Lung would live there, as most of the inhabitants were refugees from East Asian countries.
The bus crossed a bridge over one of the Bay's inlets, and the change in building quality was instantly noticeable. Everything looked shoddy and neglected – even more than the rest of the Docks, somehow – and practically every building was tagged by the ABB. Nobody walked alone, and groups of armed men hung around some of the street corners. Thankfully, none of them made their way onto the bus. I regretted that I had chosen now of all times to look more attractive; I never really went into this part of town (under strict orders from my Dad), so I didn't realize how truly awful conditions here were.
I exited the bus once I got near the address Lung had given me, but I only made it a block and a half before I was confronted. Several men – clearly ABB gang members – sprung a trap, jumping out from a nearby alley and grabbing my proxy quicker than I could respond. One of them wrapped his hand around my jaw, preventing me from calling out, then placed a blindfold over my eyes. It took a lot of effort on my part to not lash out lethally in response to being restrained in this manner.
I struggled uselessly against my attackers' firm grip, but one of them injected something into my carotid artery within the first few seconds of the engagement. I had to rush to adapt to the foreign substance as it began shutting parts of my brain down, instantly sedating my proxy.
It only took me about twenty seconds to develop an organ to filter sedatives and clear the substance from the proxy's system, but by then, the men had handcuffed me and brought me to the other end of the alley before I heard the sound of squealing rubber.
The men dragged my semi-conscious proxy by the shoulders towards the vehicle then opened one of its doors. They then chucked me into the vehicle, slammed the door shut behind me, and peeled off.
I tried to keep track of what turns they took as I pretended to be unconscious; my proxy's senses were all dampened in order to give off a more accurate impression of a helpless victim. Playing this role got on my nerves, but I had the potential to get some good information on the ABB's operations right now.
If I could find one of their human trafficking centers, I would take it down with extreme prejudice. Clearly the trafficking problem had spiraled out of control if this part of the city had become this unsafe for random pedestrians; something needed to be done, especially if the PRT hadn't acted on the problem. I had presented them a golden opportunity by capturing Lung, but they still refused to take decisive action.
I was beginning to implement modifications to my proxy which would allow it to begin the production of several non-lethal pathogens when the truck pulled to a stop, with a pair of men roughly grabbing me and dragging me into the interior of some kind of apartment building. I was actually a bit grateful for how handsy they were getting – all the skin contact between them and I would have ensured that they would be carriers for the infection. Hopefully, they would have plenty of time to spread the disease to other ABB members before its symptoms began to manifest.
The men didn't remove the blindfold until I was within some kind of basement-turned-lab. The whole thing looked rather shoddy and makeshift; I wouldn't have believed that it could have belonged to a Tinker, if not for the wide array of tools and materials spread across multiple desks and low tables within the basement. Other tables were occupied by unconscious people – most, but not all of them were Asian – of all ages, including a teenage boy who looked younger than I was.
They had bandages wrapped around their heads – each and every one of them looked to be recovering from surgery.
So I was in an ABB-controlled Tinker lab, with a bunch of other kidnapped people who all had undergone some kind of head surgery. The ABB, whose only Tinker's specialty was in bombs.
Yeah, I had seen enough; it was time to get the fuck out of here.
I stirred slightly, and one of the men turned back to look at me before he said in a worried tone to the other man, "Tranquilizer didn't work. Boss won't be happy."
It was then that another figure came down the stairs, each footstep clearly carrying weight and power behind it.
I opened my proxy's eyes a tiny fraction further, which revealed a slender figure clad in dark-colored power armor. The figure's face was hidden by a gas mask modified to emit a menacing red glow from its lenses. I had to admit that the effect was intimidating and pretty cool-looking overall. I didn't recall seeing this suit of Bakuda's in the news, but it was undoubtedly her.
"Actually," Her odd, mechanical-sounding voice hissed, "I've found that sometimes it's more fun to work while they're still awake."
I managed to cough weakly, drawing Bakuda's attention. She strode over to where I sat imperiously. She looked me up and down, somehow managing to convey disgust and indifference without any of her face showing as she quickly turned away, looking at her subordinates.
"Where'd you pick her up?" Bakuda asked mildly.
"Near Fuschia Drive," One of the men answered quickly, "The dumb whore got off the bus and started-"
"I didn't ask you for a full goddamn report, did I? I asked you where you picked her up at, not all that extra shit, so unless you want to wind up as another test subject, you'd best shut your fucking mouth," Bakuda's temper suddenly flared, causing those around her to react as if they had been physically struck.
"U-Understood," The ABB gangster said weakly.
Just how many bombs has Bakuda already produced? How much of Lung's former gang had already been transformed into walking kamikazes?
"My, my. What's a little white girl like you doing all alone in this part of the city?" Bakuda asked mockingly.
"I…" I stuttered, but Bakuda didn't allow me the chance to speak.
"It doesn't matter. You're going to be the guinea pig for my newest line of bombs. Transmutation… Do you know anything about transmutation? Probably not, normal people are all fucking stupid. Anyways, alchemists always wanted to turn elements from one kind into another, but their dumb-asses were never able to figure it out. I'm smarter, so my newest line of bombs are all about accomplishing exactly that. I won't know for certain which element your head's going to transform into when I decide to activate the bomb, but I'm sure it'll be something exciting. Personally, I'm hoping for something like Francium – that'd create a real light-show. What do you think, hm? Any preferences for what element you'd like to become?" Bakuda rambled gleefully.
This Cape was completely insane. Incredibly powerful, but also incredibly insane. It was way too dangerous to engage her in her own lab without a better understanding of her nature. Time to abandon ship, then.
"I think…" I had the proxy rasp out, as I made the last of my changes to its template.
"Oh? Go on, but don't try to waste my time. I'm a busy woman, you know? I-"
"I think that you're a crazy bitch," I completed the sentence, unleashing a salvo of caustic fluids from a modified organ within my mouth onto her gas mask as the entirety of my body unravelled, with my hands slipping free of the uncomfortable cuffs that had been restraining them.
I further reverted to the most basic, generally useful form I could think of, given the circumstances: about four dozen tentacles all wrapped around the tungsten core, with maybe half a dozen being longer and with additional reinforcements to their structures. The proxy's brain was mostly unchanged, and this new form actually had more efficient communication between the core and the brain due to the decreased distances involved in transmitting messages between them. My clothes were abandoned, as it would be too much of a hassle to assimilate them.
The strongest tentacles pulled me up and into an air vent, simply taking advantage of leverage and the tungsten core's density to bust through the vent cover rather than have to push it aside or unscrew it.
I had started moving through the vents towards the ground floor before the people in the room below could begin to react. I felt an explosion below me, strong enough to make the entire building shudder slightly, and increased my pace in response.
I came across a shaft which led straight upwards and rapidly ascended, pulling myself dozens of feet upward over the span of maybe ten seconds. I encountered a spinning fan within the vents and used a few of my tendrils to tear it asunder, tossing it to the side and continuing upwards.
Another fan greeted me, spinning faster than the previous one. It looked like it led into some complicated-looking machinery, but I simply tore it apart and ripped a hole straight through it. I felt a mild electric shock and something began to smoke nearby, but I couldn't afford to pay it any attention.
I had finally breached the top of the building, and I needed to get away from the psycho bomb Tinker. My strongest tendrils found purchase on the edge of the rooftop and launched myself into the air. While it was gaining altitude, I forced the proxy to shift until most of its biomass was locked up in huge, leathery wings, which I used to rapidly accelerate. I made use of wind currents as I flew, not stopping until the Boat Graveyard came into view.
I felt guilty for leaving people behind in that building with her. On the other hand, it just wasn't worth it to fight a Tinker in their lab, ever. Maybe Vista would have some experience dealing with hostage situations, although I had no intention of getting her directly involved with Bakuda.
Hell, I hadn't expected Bakuda to be nearly this aggressive or maniacal at all, and I was struggling to come up with an easy answer for her methods. I would have to adjust almost all of my plans in order to deal with her.
It felt like every single rock I overturned in Brockton Bay had a villain hiding under it. Just how many more hidden supervillains and monsters were lurking within the city?
Hopefully none, although I had a sinking feeling that my plan to clean up the city before Alexandria's arrival would have to be a lot more complicated than I had initially anticipated it being.
--
A/N 2: Thanks for reading!
I was 50/50 on killing/maiming the proxy in this chapter, but Taylor had the element of surprise on her side.
Bakuda is scary in canon. I hope I captured a little bit of her essence. This song always pops into my head when I think about Bakuda.
Please leave your thoughts below!