50 Bloody Hell!

Four days later :

"Next!" the chubby lunch woman you'd typically expect to see in a school cafeteria calls out, prompting me to shuffle to the side and present my tray.

I'd been here three times already, and yet the old girl's nose wrinkled at the sight of me every time. You'd think she'd have gotten used to serving me, though, maybe not? There was a not-so-unlikely chance that I'd killed someone she knew.

Of course, her reaction was common around the Rig, despite the Director's assurances I wasn't going to tear everyone onsite apart, they acted as if it was bound to happen.

Oh, it's Pizza Friday!

"Kieu, over here!" Vista calls out to me, the two other capes at her table quickly ducking their heads when I look over.

"Vista. Haven't seen you for a couple days." I say conversationally as I drop my tray in a vacant seat.

"School stuff." she shrugs, "What've you been up to?"

Gallant suddenly stands, interrupting us as he takes his tray of half-eaten food, "Sorry, just remembered I had something to do." he says before quickly leaving.

"Uh, awkward..." Kid Win chimed in, putting his fork in his mouth and only noticing the food had fallen from it when he bit the metal.

"More tests, more therapy, more tutoring..." I drawl, ignoring the Tinker in favour of the only Ward that didn't just tolerate my existence.

"More tests? Thought you'd have been done the first day. I know all I had to do was blood and a physical."

Kid Win perks up, "Oh, did you get back your bloodwork? Anything irregular from norma-ahem, average results?"

"Well, like many Case fifty-threes a lot of my body acts like it's blackboxed. Apparently, every test has resulted in nonsense." I allow a chuckle, "They can't even tell what blood type I am."

"Oh, bummer...?"

"Not like he needs it, with your healing you could probably stock a blood bank for a week or two in a day." Vista remarks.

"If they'd accept monster blood, that is." I roll up a slice of pizza and eat the entire thing in one bite.

"You're not a mons-" Vista started but didn't get to finish as someone stepped beside me, sliding a blood bag in front of me.

"Today's delivery, don't drink in one go." a PRT officer/blood-bag delivery guy groused before walking away.

"What-What the fuck!?" Kid Win barely stifled his shout as I stabbed a straw into it. I wonder how his reaction would be if he realised it was Aegis' blood in here. How heroic of the guy to volunteer as my personal blood bank.

"What? Did they forget to tell you I'm a vampire?" I open my mouth and point to my rather large canines, "Got the fangs and everything."

He sinks into his chair at that, looking ready to wretch at the smell of iron now permeating the air. Though, I sniff deeply, that isn't just blood in there today?

The bag of blood flies through the air and hits the back of the PRT officer's head, causing him to stumble forward as red from the bag drips down his neck. "Oi! If this is your attempt to kill me you've gotta try better than that, cunt!"

All the nearby officers had stood and readied their weapons at my outburst, the presence of Vista and Kid Win seems to have stopped them from trying to put me down, however.

"Poison...?" the delivery guy muttered in apparent confusion.

"Did you think I wouldn't smell it?"

"Wait, you actually think someone tried to kill you? Here?" Vista asked, aghast.

"We just gonna ignore the fact he drinks BLOOD!?" Kid Win blurts.

Ignoring him, "I'm surprised it took this long to happen... Can we figure out who's responsible before that can try. again..." I trail off as I hear the guttural growl coming from the delivery guy, as if he were trying to mimic a cat's purr.

Probably shouldn't have thrown the blood at him then, huh...

"We should probably get this guy to the infirmary..." I jab a finger at the guy who was becoming more feral by the second.

"Hey, Kev, come on we'll get you fixed up-" one of the guy's buddies touches the back of his arm.

*Thud!*

A sudden back fist plants the guy's ass on the ground, the subsequent kick knocks his lights out.

Before 'Kev' was able to keep attacking his friend Vista thrusts a hand forward, causing the guy to freeze in midair... "Kid, pick up your jaw already!"

"R-right! Q-Quarentine the room and alert the Director! No one touch the blood, and anyone who's made contact go stand in that corner!" he tentatively shouts his orders.

What a blatant and rushed attack... Whoever did this wanted him to go apeshit and massacre the room. Why though? It couldn't be someone from the PRT, they wouldn't risk Vista and a Tinker just to ruin my cred.

So, that left someone infiltrating the Rig, one of the most fortified and safe areas in all of Brockton Bay... That, wasn't good. The only group I could think of that might have the resources for it was the Empire.

The blood came directly from Aegis on the premises though, meaning they'd poisoned it in storage.

I rub my face, wondering if I was gonna get blamed for this shit. Gonna have to hear from the therapist about 'Not throwing blood at people'...

------------------

"Report." Piggot groused.

"Officer Kevin Mclearie remains in an animalistic state. He's been put in an artifical coma to stop him from hurting himself while they flush his system. Initial tests for the substance have also just come in, organic power-based with no origin on file." Armsmaster coldly explained. "I'd say we were lucky this was an assassination..."

Piggot narrowed her eyes, "Explain." she glowered in a tone that brooked no argument.

The Tinker coughs into his fist, "If they could sneak a foreign substance into a heavily monitored and secure storage of blood, the perpetrator could have laced the whole cantina's food with something far more dangerous. A single creation from Bonesaw or another Bio-Tinker could've wiped the city out, let alone the Rig itself."

The Director went rigid at the mention of that, "Dragon! Find anything on the cameras?" she calls out to no one in particular.

"The records were scrubbed... Whoever did they had access to our internal systems. That or a high-level Thinker, or a Tinker with a speciality in hacking and breaching." Dragon observed.

"So we've got an unknown substance, an unknown perpetrator with unknown access to our systems, all with an unknown objective..." Piggot sighed, "Whoever it was either wanted to frame our new potential Ward, or wanted Vista and Kid Win out of the picture... Was it only the single bag infected or was it all spiked?"

"All of it."

"Get the cat some blood, Dragon, lock the place down and find what you can. If there's even a speck of evidence, I want it."

"I'll try but don't hold your breath..."

--------------------

With the Rig completely locked down for the next couple of days, I found myself with surprisingly more freedom than usual. Looks as if my attempted murder/framing/suicide/whatever had garnered some sympathy from my handlers, prompting them to offer my some not-seen-before privileges.

What did I ask for, might you ask? Well, I requested access to some low-level Tinker-tech, specifically any weapons. It wasn't hard to convince them after explaining that I might be able to copy them.

The potential power I could grant by copying one-time-use Tinker tech items wasn't to be understated. There were plenty of capes out there like Leet who had weird restrictions on their powers, after all.

So here I was, standing in the testing room once more with part of the ground raised to act like a table. On it, was a peculiar-looking device that looked like a weird sickle. From the handle were two sharp claw-like curved edges, resembling something like a grapple hook.

My handlers were silently watching from the observation deck as I reached for the device.

Structural Grasp.

Blue circuits lit up from my arm and ran into the object, my mind was immediately bombarded with information about it. Despite this being small and rather weak compared to most Tinker tech, it was still enough to give me a small headache.

Not to mention, there was some tom-fuckery going on with it. Looks like 'Blackboxing' isn't just the tech being too advanced to figure out with modern technology, no, the innards of the device literally distorted physics. It was like someone had packed more than twice the volume in half the space. To put it simply, it was bigger on the inside.

I could tell that whoever had made it hadn't intended for it either. Or at least, they didn't understand what they'd made. Their power, whatever it is, eases the process for its user.

The weapon itself was rather simple, sharper than sharper-than-average blades that could be shot out and used as a grappling hook. Not like the crappy ones either, but more like the version Batman used that could reel him in.

I made a few cuts in the air before swinging it while simultaneously unfurling the hook, causing it to extend like a barbed, very deadly whip.

Reeling it back in, I held out my left hand and closed my eyes, doing my best to remember the peculiar spacial fuckery going on with the thing.

Projection.

Blue particles gathered in my hand, and I was surprised by the ease with which I was replicating the tech. I blinked as the process finished, leaving me with an identical hook-sickle-thing in either hand.

I give it a swing and it works just as the original did...

Why was it so easy? This thing that broke physics was only around triple the difficulty of generating an average kitchen knife.

Was it because magic didn't really care about physics? According to it, was I just making a fancy knife with more moving parts than usual?

I smash the copy against the table, the blades digging a couple inches into the material before breaking and dissipating into blue particles.

I glance at the observation deck, "Got any more?"

*Bszzzzz!*

Another section of the floor opens up, revealing a table filled with Tinker tech knives and other oddities.

Whatever. Waste not, want not.

Knife with a blade that extends into a sword.

Knife that becomes dull if used against undesignated targets.

A bladed boomerang that always returns...

Throwing knife injects whatever's struck with something (Deadly poison not included.)

The former list was easily assimilated into my mental library of weapons, but the same could not be said for some of the other devices.

A foam grenade that covered the immediate area in containment foam gave me a god-awful migraine, not to mention how much mana it would cost to project. One grenade was worth almost seventy grapplehooks!

Whether that was due to it being an explosive, or because it was nonlethal, I didn't know. All I knew is that it would never be worth using outside of very unique circumstances.

I didn't even bother trying to use Structural Grasp on the half I-Pad half pistol thing. I'd rather not have my brain leaking from my nose thank you!

"Alright, end the test... It should be time for dinner, right?"