Chapter 182 – Preparation
The problem of deciding on what my payment from Silver Knight would be was a difficult one. There were many non-offensive options that could see being useful to my current kit. However, there was the matter of points. I’d already spent the points I’d earned on my Gel-Nak adventures, so I didn’t have a store of XP to buy new abilities with.
That was a problem, since the System didn’t let me just add on gear to my abilities, and be done with it. Oh, it didn’t stop me from picking up someone’s gun, and using it, or grabbing a shield off the wall, and using it as, well, a shield. However, if I wanted to keep the shield as anything but a trophy on the wall, adding it to my full kit? Then I had to pay in points.
So, that left me with two options. The first was to limit myself to something that would work in the 1, maybe 2, XP I’d earn from this gig. The second was to buy something bigger, and just have it sitting on a shelf until I got enough XP to buy it. Neither of those were particularly attractive, but I’d long ago learned to tease any restrictions I was under and stretch my resources to the absolute limit.
What I decided on was a piece of gear that was heavily limited at the start, but which I could boost gradually, as I gained XP. Which meant I needed an ability that would be effective with restrictions. Something that didn’t scale with Active Points as heavily as most of the defensive abilities did.
The Missile Deflection power came to mind immediately. It scaled from only being able to block thrown objects (like a knife or beer bottle), to projectiles like arrows and slings, to bullets and shrapnel, and then to any ranged attack, including energy beams and the like. Using it required me to either give up an attack to prepare to deflect the attacks, or abort to it, like times I had to abort to a Martial Dodge or the like.
That was step one of using Missile Deflection. Step two came the hard part. I needed to make the normal 3d6 roll that came with attacking, since I was, essentially, attacking the attack. The number I had to get under was 11 + my OCV - the attacker’s OCV. So, in my base stats, I’d have to roll under (21 - attacker’s OCV). The better the attacker was, the harder it would be to deflect their attacks.
But that wasn’t all. Once I used Missile Deflection, the ability lasted until my next phase, meaning I could deflect multiple attacks. Of course, each one after the first had a stacking -2 to my OCV, so you quickly hit diminishing returns. Once I missed a deflection, I couldn’t deflect any more until my next phase.
If I made the deflection, then I took no damage from the attack. However, if I missed, that didn’t mean I was getting hurt. The attacker still had to hit my DCV to hit me, and they still needed to penetrate my defenses to do actual damage to me. And I’d been layering ice on top of my costume’s armor for a while now to boost my defenses.
The main weakness to Missile Deflection, if you could call it that, was that it didn’t cover everything. No mental attacks, no area effects, no melee attacks, and so on. It wasn’t a perfect defense, but it would be a significant boost to my kit. Since I was already layering on defenses, this meant I would be increasingly more difficult to take down at range. And if someone tried to get into a melee with me? Well, I’d proven that I was more than capable with that.
Area effects were an issue, but the best defense against those was to make it impossible for an attacker to target me with one without catching their friends in the line of fire. Of course, sometimes the other side didn’t care if their minions got caught up in things. I still remembered getting blasted by those overlapping bombs when I hit Axis Industries, and the damn Ubermensch blew themselves up. So, I would still be weak to suicide bombers, but that was why I used my frost armor over my costume when I was expecting big fights.
The next thing would be to decide how to integrate the device, when I got it, with my kit. Adding it to my costume in some way would be ideal, since the Elemental Controls that made up my Costume and Cowl would further reduce the cost to me. I decided that adding it to the cowl would work best. Thankfully, the Tailors knew that people often wanted to upgrade gear, so they had standard ports in their setups. I sent a message to Silver Knight through the burner email address he’d given me through Electra, detailing what I wanted, and the specifications for the upgrade port.
By the time I had finished with that, Web Mistress had already prepared a dossier on the players in Syracuse. Both the members of the Knights in town, and the local villains. I didn’t anticipate running into any of them, since I was doing a stealth mission, not ‘normal’ villainy, but it was better to have the information than not. Never knew when things might overlap.
There were three Knights in Syracuse. All three of them were closer to ‘street-level’ heroes, but still had respectable powers in their own way. This was especially true since none of them were completely combat-focused.
Lightstrike was a light-based hero. Most well-known for his ‘Lightsuit’, which was an energy construct giving him armor and increased hand-to-hand attack power. Effective, as far as it went. However, he did have a short-range teleport ability called ‘Flashstep’. Exactly like it sounded, he could teleport from one place to another in a flash of light, though he apparently needed a direct line between the two places, suggesting that he momentarily turned himself into a beam of light to do that.
Aqua was your basic water-manipulator. Water blasts, water walls, able to breathe underwater, incredibly resistant to the cold, and so on. She was often called in to help with fighting fires, or search and rescue in nearby Lake Ontario. Actually a fairly bad matchup to me in a straight fight of energy against energy, but I was more powerful, and had more tricks up my sleeve, so I’d still win, if it came to a fight. Even without my ring’s powers.
Defender was exactly what his name implied. Trying to fight him was like trying to punch a brick wall. He didn’t have much in the way of offensive powers, but he could grant his damage reduction to others, as well. That put him in a solid tank/support role. With him boosting Lightstrike and Aqua, the Syracuse branch of the New York Knights could literally punch above their weight class, at least holding off any major threats long enough for reinforcements to arrive.
What few villains there were in Syracuse were purely street-level types. The kind of guys who had skin like a bulletproof vest, or could lift an SUV, and similar things. They were all impressive, but none of them even came to the sheer level of utility as my FX, and certainly weren’t on the same level as any of my girls when it came to dishing out the damage. However, as mob enforcers, gang leaders, or just independent villains? They were solid.
More than just solid, actually. According to Web Mistress, they had training. Not fight training, not really, but training in how to use their powers without drawing too much heat, and causing collateral. Part of the reason there wasn’t more call for heroes in Syracuse was because whoever was doing the training was making sure that, regardless of what powers a budding villain had, or who they worked for, they acted in a way that didn’t draw heat to the area.
In some ways, it reminded me of the Guild. Obviously, it wasn’t actually the Guild doing this, since only teaching villains, and not giving similar services to heroes would go against their neutrality rules. But someone was making a play at having some kind of loose association of villains, who played by the same rules, and kept things ‘civil’, so that nothing happened that needed the big names to come in and stomp on everyone.
Web Mistress had been intrigued by this mysterious trainer, and had torn through the virtual landscape of Syracuse. Not visibly, of course. She had her pride, after all. If someone wanted to find a trace of her activity online, when she wasn’t purposefully letting them see, then they needed to be good enough to earn it. Either way, there were few people who could keep secrets online when Web Mistress decided to go hunting.
According to Web Mistress, there were four key figures in the Syracuse villain scene: the Agent, the Cleaner, Doc, and Tactician. They went by the unassuming name of the Syracuse Development Association. One of those names that was deliberately bland enough to be used in general conversation without raising suspicion, and gave no clue to what they actually did. The kind of name that could be used to help fund charity dinners and other legitimate events that could cover for other, less legitimate, dealings.
The Agent had no powers, at least as far as anyone could tell. He ‘just’ had the best information network in upstate New York, allowing them to have a finger on the pulse of everything criminal going on in an area reaching from Rochester to Albany, and from Binghamton to Fort Drum. He didn’t control all that territory, but he always knew what was happening, and he had the reach to ensure that people who started causing the wrong kinds of trouble, or too much of the right kind, quickly got the message to back off, or they soon suffered unfortunate accidents that usually ended up with them in prison, if they were lucky.
The Cleaner had powers, but they were useless in combat. Being able to conjure chemicals like bleach or hydrochloric acid by the bucketful did not exactly make for great combat potential. That ability did, however, make him a master at cleaning up crime scenes and ensuring that any blood, bodies, or bullet casings left behind were useless as evidence. He actually ran a water and fire cleanup company as a legitimate front business.
Doc was a healer, obviously. Not terribly powerful, but her low-grade healing ability could be used continuously. Combined with her medical knowledge, if someone was still alive when they reached Doc’s table, they were almost certain to live. That kind of thing was huge for people who didn’t want to explain to a hospital why they had a mysterious bullet wound, or couldn’t pay to see the Physicians.
As far as payment went? Doc didn’t take payment from those she helped in cash. She accepted ‘charitable donations’ of cash and resources, of course, but that wasn’t payment, it was gratitude. Everyone made sure Doc had the money to pay the bills and keep the clinic stocked, because they all relied on Doc.
Indeed, every crook in Syracuse knew that the four blocks around Doc’s clinic were neutral ground, with safe passage guaranteed. Saying, “I’m going to Doc’s,” would let even gangs actively at war with each other step aside and let people through. They might follow, just to make sure, but everyone knew that the Agent ensured Doc would know if someone tried to keep a patient from getting to Doc, or attacked them after they left Doc’s clinic. And anyone who did that would be blacklisted from Doc’s clinic, for life. Same for anyone who thought that they could steal from Doc. More importantly, the Agent would then inform his whole network about the black list, and trouble soon found anyone who got their name on it.
Finally, there was Tactician, the trainer. No powers, but he didn’t need them, not when his weapon was his mind. That, and his law degree, since he was a registered defense attorney. He worked with young criminals and taught them how to do their jobs in a way that didn’t leave bodies stacked in the streets, or caused civilian casualties and property damage. Those with powers that might be more problematic than ‘bulletproof skin’ or ‘energy blasts from their hands’ also benefited from his teaching. After all, someone with minor illusions or mind control could still learn a lot about how to subtly weave their powers in ways that not only get them what they want, but are very difficult to prove in a court of law.
Basically, the Association ran things in such a way that it was just good business for everyone to do things their way, and that helped influence everyone in the business to be more reasonable about things. I was going to need to pay this Association a visit. Not because they were a threat, but because they might have information that would help. And I did have a soft spot for people trying to ensure that the next generation of villains ended up the ‘reasonable’ sort.