The Power of Ten Book Four: Dynamo

I waited for him on a neighboring rooftop, aware he wouldn’t have any difficulty spotting me, especially when I started ‘winking’ bursts of electricity whose static fields would look like flares to him.

“How did you know to do that?” was the first thing he asked me as he vaulted over the edge of the roof. He’d pulled the men he’d knocked out to safety, of course, including the idiot with the sawblades on his wrists. I mean, seriously...

“You should have just confiscated the guy’s tech,” I noted to him. “Always make it expensive for them to be twats.” I held up my fingers and sparked them. “It was earlier, when I discharged for you. I can feel radio waves coming off your head in a wavelength.” Voltage popped, and he clutched his head at the sensation of a big wave breaking over his awareness, past and over him like a wave of water rushing past. “You’ve got, like, a living radar or something going on, right?”

He heaved a big sigh as I stopped. “I try very hard not to let that be known,” he admitted.

“That’s wise. Otherwise some fruitcake would set you up with a color-coded death trap, and you’re screwed.”

“What did you recover?” he redirected quickly.

“There was a drug lab downstairs, focused on cocaine refinement and some experimentation. This case contains some psychoactive hallucinogens, which are empowered if they come into contact with anyone with Power. You and your radar brain would probably qualify.”

“What kind of psychoactives?”

“Hallucinogens derived from fear responses, according to the notes I dusted.”

“What do you intend to do with them?” He nodded at the case stuck to my back.

“I figured I’d glide uptown and stop by the Baxter Building. Dr. Richards is a far more reliable person to process this stuff and come up with an antidote than normal civilian authorities, and as a fellow Powered, he’d have an incentive for himself and his team.”

There was a moment of hesitation, and he finally asked, “I would like to have a couple samples.”

“Sure.” I think I surprised him with how readily I agreed. I set down the case, popped it open, drew out two vials, and tossed them to him. He caught them deftly. “According to the files, they work inhaled, injected, eaten, or administered topically. If you want to try some resistance training in case you are exposed, just be careful and go with minimal doses, no more than a teardrop to start with. The stuff can be crazy strong if the subject is unaware of what is going on, and contaminating civilians could lead to mass hysteria.”

“Understood.” He looked a little bit at a loss for a moment on where to put them.

I sighed. “Take off your glove, store them in the fingers, and pin the glove into and through your belt.” I pulled a safety pin out of my Vest and handed it to him. It looked like a simple jean vest with pockets at the moment, much different than the stylized version I wore as Dealer.

He had the grace to smile. “You come prepared,” he acknowledged. “Refreshing to see in someone so young.”

I waved it off. “Training. You should be carrying more than just a tricked-out baton, too. Do you even have any lockpicks? If you’ve got enhanced touch, you’d be a great picker. Subtler than busting a door down, too.”

He tilted his head thoughtfully. “You mentioned ‘glide uptown’. You can fly?”

“Glide. Subtle difference. I don’t have any ability to command or counteract gravity intrinsically. What I can do is Repulse the air above me, so the air pressure below me starts pushing me up with pressure differentials. It’s like riding an updraft all the time. A real flier using actual thrust physics or gravimetrics could fly rings around me, but for getting from one place to another, or surviving a long fall, it works fine.” I paused myself. “You’re Powered... did you get your Core Awakened?”

He stiffened slightly. “The people I trained with did not have that ability,” he finally replied. “Their training was more... spiritual, you could say?”

Stick’s people, if I remember correctly. “I’m sensing very little ki from you, if that is true. Ki is a fantastic foundation, but it doesn’t have the power of a Core, even if you can’t become a psion.” I paused significantly.

“You know how to use ki?” he blurted out in astonishment.

“It’s my foundation. The voltage and stuff was, huh, how to say this? Foisted upon me.”

He regarded me with some feigned irritation. “What kind of monster are you?” he asked in amusement.

“Wrong question to ask. Correct question: ‘I’m Powered, I could get a Core, and I could learn to wield ki. Why can’t I?’” I lobbed back at him.

He fell silent as he took off his left glove, inserted the vials into two fingers, folded the glove closed, and used the safety pin to secure the folded glove to a belt loop so he had his hands free. “I’m having the impression we should talk further,” he finally suggested, somewhat warily.

“That’s fine. You look like someone who could use a step up the power ladder, given what you’re doing. I’d be happy to help.”

“You’re awfully trusting.”

“You aren’t the only one with expanded senses, sir. Mine are just in different directions than yours.”

“Should I even ask?” his Silver self asked me. Vigilante, lawyer in the system. Sure. Good people realize when the law is designed not to work, and are not obligated to follow laws and rules that reinforce the power of Evil to do work.

“Not really. But with a Ki Pool and an active Core, mmm, things would change for you.”

The firemen had already arrived, and were energetically engaged in hosing down neighboring buildings to prevent the spread of the flames. As we watched, there was a gouting roar from the basement as the explosive fumes there ignited and blew it out. The building above began to collapse into the new opening, which was actually good news for the firefighters, as they hadn’t entered the building.

“Make them pay, eh? Do you know who that building belonged to?”

“No.” I guessed, but...

“It’s run by Jimmy Falcone, who is one of Wilson Fisk’s men.”

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“What’s the Kingpin doing developing Power-targeted hallucinogens?” I had to ask. “That kind of research isn’t cheap. He probably spent a million dollars getting someone smarter than him to make that up.”

“Will it work on normal people?” Daredevil asked.

“Yes, but the effect is reduced. However, if you don’t know it’s working on you and don’t fight it, it can really fan emotions related to fear easily, according to the papers.”

“Perhaps he’s making a defense against Powered for sale or use?”

“Have Powered been hitting on his operations?”

“Well...” he coughed awkwardly, “he shouldn’t know I’m Powered. There’s those heroes working more uptown who are stumbling across some of his operations...”

“And of course, the Avengers are now here. Well, it’s not a bad business decision to have a defense. I think I’m going to sabotage it for him, however.” I tapped the box stuck to my back.

“How are you holding that on there like that?”

“Weird Science electromagnetism. When I can isolate the particle and Name it, I’ll let you know.”

He grunted, amused that I also didn’t know how it worked. “Alright, where would you like to meet?”

“During the day or at night again?”

“I’m not sure I want to reveal my civilian identity to you so soon.”

I eyed him strangely. “No offense, Red, but if I get within a hundred yards of you, your constant pinging of me is gonna reveal who you are to me straight off.”

He pursed his lips. “I had not considered that,” he admitted slowly.

“A good reason to learn your Core. Shut that down at will. No normal person will know to look for it, but if you ever run into a Schmot Person, one reading of some unknown source of radio waves, a leap of deduction, and you can’t hide yourself.”

“Do you have a civilian identity?” he had to ask. “You’re not exactly wearing a costume...”

“I have a civilian appearance. A secret identity like the Scarlet Pimpernel, not so much. It’s more about not being recognized without the mask then protecting those close to me. You must have a day job and friends, family?”

There was a short pause before he confirmed, “I do...”

“Then I understand your hesitation. I don’t, actually. I have one associate, and anyone who tries to lean on me by leaning on him is in for a horribly bad day.”

He exhaled loudly. “That is quite convenient, and if I must say, sounds quite grim...”

“Do any of us have wholesome back stories?” I asked rhetorically.

He was silent as he pretended to watch the activity below. Given we were staying in shadow and keeping our distance, he probably wasn’t getting much detail, more listening to what was being said in the distance than actually firewatching.

“Anything else for us to do here?”

He tilted his head, listening, and pointed off to the side. I followed his baton and saw a limousine over there, a couple guards keeping riffraff away from it as whoever was inside watched the fire and received a report or two through the window.

“Fisk himself?” I was impressed, considering the hour. “Probably making sure nothing is uncovered in the investigation so he can collect the insurance,” I noted professionally.

“I’m not an arsonist, so he may want to blame me, but he won’t really believe it. Did you set the fire?” he asked directly.

“There may have been a problem with the electrical system shorting out. It’s an older building. I was nice enough to notice and pull the fire alarm.”

“It also gets rid of the evidence,” he pointed out.

“What evidence?” I asked rhetorically. “Everything in the open is insured. The only thing that will cost him out of pocket is the lab itself, and due to the money involved, he’ll have another one set up and running inside two days. Not legalizing your drugs is asinine given the amount of money going into all the wrong pockets.

“The men you pulled out aren’t even going to do any time. The Crux won’t press charges against anyone, the Kingpin’s men will cover one another, lawyers from all sides will get them off, and they’ll all walk to bring their problems back to the streets. They might be able to send up that Gladiator guy for unrestricted wearing of sawblades, which I presume is going to make the courts laugh so much he might do thirty days for nothing... and he’ll probably get paid for it.”