The Original

Signing Bonus

“Splicers is the nickname given to biological and genetic ‘Techno-wonder’ type enhanced. The methods of achieving this are numerous, but are always based on some formal type of research and development. Even those that claim to use magic or alchemy for repeatable results are using measurable and quantifiable, if not actually understandable, methodologies that boil down to technology.”

“The first documented splicer was, unfortunately, Josef Mengele. During World War II his experimentation on victims of the holocaust ranged from the merely horrific to the existentially terrifying. He was, undoubtedly, worse than any of the monsters he created during his lifetime.”

“Now there are more than a few Splicers in the world. The responsible members of that community work in medicine or traditional research, which has led to medical discoveries that have saved thousands. Some white hats see the genome as just another computer to hack, but do so to help others become heroes. Others create genetically modified creatures who are harmless, essentially custom pets.”

“Others do the same for the other side, the cartels and criminal organizations. Even independent criminals are willing to pay. Perhaps the darkest are those who create monsters to do battle in modern gladiatorial games. The least horrible of these use animals to make their creatures, and the least ethical of them…”

“There’s a reason we do a genetic workup on any mutated monster that is destroyed. There’s a lot of missing persons cases out there.”

Recorded presentation to UNLOC Special Response Team trainees.

“I don’t know how to tell you this, but your sleeve is still smoldering.”

Fortunately, speaking to the police hadn’t taken long, as there had been witnesses and security cameras in the area. This, and Anarchist Knight was something of a known issue. Soon, Elizabeth and Penny were walking back towards the truck.

“Bloody hell”. She said irritability, patting out the smoldering cloth. “Well at least it’s just a t-shirt. And now I am craving barbecue.”

"We can pick some up on the way home." Penny assured the English woman as they got in the truck, and pulled out. "They’ll deliver the replacement linens by the way.”

“Yes, that is very good of them,” Solaris leaned back in her seat. "I wonder how long it will take the trash villains to figure out that attacking me like that is utterly pointless. Seriously Tankman could have taken that fool without the suit!"

"Not all of them are that stupid, or weak. And trash tier villains are supervillians for a reason. No marketable skills and not creative enough for the Super Fighting circuit."

"I don’t want to know." They drove a bit down to the car dealership. Solaris smiling as she got out of the car looking for the Ruan's, finding them chatting with a salesman, a shiny new and sporty sedan and a somehow older but well maintained looking used car.

“We found some good choices. The Toyota crown will do me very well for running about.” Mrs. Raun said. “With your approval that is. I also thought this older Grand Marquis would be good for when we have guests who need to borrow a vehicle.”

“It’s very low mileage, frankly we’d normally have shipped it to a discount lot but it was in too good a shape.” The salesperson said, offering his hand. “Kent Keller.” Noticing Penny was distracted, talking to Marcus, he under his breath said “We’re throwing it in since the other vehicle is going to be taken for new paint, once you sign off on it. A very nicely loaded Chevy full size. She said it’d be a surprise.”

“Excellent. I assume we have some paperwork to fill out then?”

“Yes, though… may I ask why your shirt looks like it’s been set on fire?”

Elizabeth sighed.

“She got into a fight with some fire throwing moron. It’s all over the media.” Mrs. Ruan answered for her, holding up her cell phone.

“Right. Well, sorry to hear that. Come with me and we’ll get that paperwork signed.” Car salesmen let little stand in the way of a sale, even literally smoldering young women.

"I am still not used to how quickly news spreads now.” Elizabeth said with a look of mild irritation on her face. "Also the resolution of your cameras hides nothing. My hair is a mess." she said with a blush.

"Welcome to the era of 4k." Penny said as she caught up with Marcus. “So guess we’re going to caravan home.”

“Yes. I hope we beat the workmen there with the furniture.”

"They said it'd be a couple of hours, but they'll have a group of workmen to move and assemble a couple of the bedroom sets and the couch. The rest will have to come tomorrow or the next day due to the amount of overtime involved." Penny said.

“At this rate we’re going to have too much for the garage. We might want to add a car port or two to keep things out of the rain when not being driven.”

“Seriously, you didn’t need to get me a truck, I could have gotten it myself.” Penny said a couple of days later, looking at the Ram 1500 that had just been delivered, white with an orange ‘racing stripe’ like a coast guard cutter. She wanted to be more irritated. but…it was perfect and she couldn’t wait to drive the beast.

“A signing bonus for you, my dear.” Elizabeth said with a smile. “You were going to start building a suit, weren’t you? This should help move equipment about when you get it.”

“Actually… I might have done more than think about it. Or buy little bits here and there.” Penny admitted.

“Oh?”

“I might have a kind of off the books workshop. Well, it’s a trailer I bought at a seizure auction that I turned into a workshop. And it might have the start of a suit in it.”

“Well we should go fetch it and bring it home!”

"Um, no. It’s not an attractive trailer. I wasn’t worried about it being pretty." She admitted with a slight blush.

"Nothing wrong with that, farm trucks aren't pretty but they do their job well. We will make it work. It's not like I care about what the neighbors say. Worst case we replace it with a workshop in the garage."

Penny sighed. "Wanna take a road trip?"

"I don't see why not, Ms Ruan is more than capable of handling any deliveries..” She pulled out her phone and began awkwardly tapping on it to open the message feature. "Dear Ms. Ruan. I am running an errand with Penny. If you have any questions about anything please feel free to call. Sincerely Elizabeth Summers."

“God I love your texts.”

“The trailer is in a storage lot on Staten Island. I took it out from time to time when I had time off.” Penny explained as they pulled onto the highway, her new truck growling like a predator.

"Makes sense to me. How far have you gotten?"

"Well, I managed to get a pair of base frames cheap from a failed start up. The design was called Gumshoe, meant for police and heavy security. The company went out of business because the frame and control systems were first rate, but they cheaped out on armor and combat systems. I've basically stripped the suits down and have maybe another two suits in spare parts from the fire sale they had when their start-up folded."

"I've removed the original armor linkage points, and installed my own, and have 3d printed test plates in place of actual armor to see how everything fits. I redid the software package completely and improved the HUD. Targeting I can't test till I have weapons systems. I have a coil gun mostly assembled, but haven't had a chance to test it. In simulations it works okay."

“Well sounds like you’re moving well along, are there places to test weapon systems. and is your trailer enough workshop space for you?”

"Testing is the tricky part. I technically have all the licensing, pretty much anyone who gets into building battle suits gets it just to avoid suspicion since everyone assumes we're building a suit anyway." She admitted. "I keep toying with taking a trip out west, like to Nevada and just unleashing in the middle of the desert somewhere. I haven't gotten past the basic idea there, though, since I haven’t got anything to unleash."

"As for workshop, It’s a weird set up, you'll see, but I got it cheap. It’s pretty spacious for what it is. It got seized in the process of shutting a supervillain supplier specializing in custom animals."

“A splicer?” The blond shuddered. “Splicers are some of the vilest of villains. Mengela was a manufacturer of nightmares.”

"To be fair, splicers fall on both sides of the spectrum now. The better-behaved ones just don't admit Mengela was the first on record." She chuckled. "I know one, she's a licensed splicer who can make custom pets. It's very regulated, and requires certain certifications, but when someone wants a miniature great white shark for their fish tank she can make a lot of money making them one."

“I’ve only met one splicer I considered mostly sane. And she used it for limb replacements and such for wounded soldiers. Lady Frankenstein was a sweetheart but she was still a bit odd.”

"Yeah, there's more than a few in medicine now. Very minor splicing can help with several diseases. Of course, then there's the idiot who gets spliced with a honey badger and starts attacking everyone who looks at them funny. Or, you know, looks at them."

Solaris nodded, “Most powers can be used for good or evil. Splicing is just one of the easier ones to abuse.”

"True. There's a few too many guys out there selling superpowers and leaving someone a very ugly corpse by the end of the mutations. The process must be so custom to the target and so carefully developed. And most power vendors victimize young, weak and desperate supers to fuel their therapies.” Her voice was sad, she’d fought against power vendors, there always were tragic consequences around them.

"Cyberneticists are a bit more reliable on that front." Penny moved to avoid the major traffic zones as best she could, guiding the SUV towards Staten Island. "Battle Suits are the cheap and cheerful option in a lot of ways, but the difference between a suit driver like me and an armored wonder like a Tank Man, or Armorstar is hard to really apply."

“I think it comes down to how replicable the tech is. Tank man could make a suit out of a fridge and a broken motorcycle engine and use it.

"Yeah... I am rated D class as a Super tech "Catalyst type." I came in just under the limit to prevent military service.”

“What is a catalyst type?”

"Oh, sorry. I forgot; we started really classifying after your time. You fall into what we call an "Original" type. Flight, strong, tough. In your case you're a "Powerhouse", noted for extreme physical abilities but limited energy projection. Kriegsmarine is an "Original" type, but he's a "Dreadnaught", more oriented towards energy projection." She explained.

"In the case of Tech types, there's the Kit bashers, which Tankman is the best example. Then there's the Breakthroughs, like Nikola Tesla. Last you have the Catalysts, think Edison or Benjamin Franklin. We're the ones who can take nearly, or totally, incomprehensible science and make it make sense and re-creatable. Wildly valuable to business and a reason to hide things for the other two types. I cause paranoia."

“Ahh. Poor Tesla he was never really appreciated. But that is a fascinating distinction. It’s a real trick to make things accessible to everyone, sounds like I would have tried to recruit you to my Tank Girls. I know how hard it is to make technology explainable.”

"Oh, St. Nicks is one of the best-known places for all three getting along. That, and Space X at this point. But it means I watch things on Youtube and go “I can make that better” or "I can do that." Except the damn Elephant Toothpaste thing Mark Rober did. I have no idea how he made it go so high. I just don’t want to do that math."

“What is elephant's toothpaste?”

"It's just an experiment. Mix a little yeast, water, hydrogen peroxide and a little soap and you get a LOT of foam very fast. It's a great lesson for reactivity in chemistry, but the substance it produces is basically just soap and water so can go right down the drain. Rober made it go something like thirty stories high, I think? It was ridiculous whatever the height was.”

“Encouraging children in science is quite noble. I love how the internet evens the field in education and liberation. Even though we got the right to vote just before I was born, when I was trapped I still had to have my father’s permission to sign contracts, or even start a bank account.”

"Women couldn't have credit cards till the damn seventies if memory serves." The younger woman nodded. "And there's still places with glass ceilings for women. But that's true for everything and everybody somewhere, I guess. At least the playing field is more even. Especially for people with battle suits or the ability to lift ships."

Solaris laughed. “Most men didn’t know what to do with me. I was a woman who was stronger than any man, and weirder still I was a military woman that was in command of a bunch of men. Men that they couldn’t mock for being under a woman’s command.”

"Okay, I could see how that could be a problem, especially back then. Not as much of an issue now, women serve across the spectrum and have for a while, not just as nurses like back in the day."

"It is a beautiful thing." Solaris said "Seeing women live so freely. So tell me Penny how is your suit coming together, what kind of build are you going for.”

"Honestly, it was a hobby so I wasn’t really focused until now.” She admitted. “but considering it is likely I’d be in support of you or Marcus, I was thinking of ranged fire support and battlefield monitoring.” She glanced at Solaris. “I mean, I know you’re not jumping right into fighting criminals or other adventures, but you’re the type to get involved, even when you aren’t looking to get involved.”

"It is the nature of what and who I am, and means that I will always have to be ready to go into the field.” Solaris smiled. "I wonder if Phantastique is still around. She did my post war costume. I will need a new one."

"Oh she's a legend, and retired from what I heard. I think something about living full time on a worldwide cruise." Penny said. "But her apprentices are in a few places around the world, including here in New York. I can see if I can find out how to contact them. Tailors are secretive folk. Unless that's who the lady at Bergdorf Goodmen gave you the address for."

"Hmm...we will have to check that out. Marcus will also need something. He is a charming boy and he should not look like a goon."