The casing of the device offered a pleasant click as it all fit together. A couple screws here, a rivet there, and boom! Instant teleportation in a can...or a triagonal prism anyway. It was thrust to the side and more parts replaced it, more Tinkering, more work to—

  “Kraftwerk!” a voice bellowed as the door to the workshop slammed open, making the woman at the workbench start and whirl in her swivel chair. A man in a black, military uniform and gas mask strode up and loomed over her, brandishing a melted piece of scrap. “What is the meaning of this?”

  “That’s not my name,” she said, glancing at the debris he was holding. “And I don’t know, what is it?” She could hear him growl, like a wild boar.

  “While you work for us, your name is Kraftwerk, not that nonsensical trash you used before.”

  “Nonsesi— Ohh, you just didn’t understand.” She smiled at him, easy enough fix. “It’s Whatchamacalit, bit of a mouthful I know. What-cha-ma-call-it.” He growled again. Maybe he had a problem with his throat. “‘Whatcha’ is fine, if that’s too much.”

  “What. Happened.” He brandished the scrap again. Whatchamacalit rolled her eyes and snatched it from him, spinning in her chair and dropping it on the bench. She spent eight seconds looking it over under a magnifying glass before clicking her tongue.

  “You used this at a longer range than it was specified for, didn’t you?” she said, spinning around and eyeing him. Krieg, that was his name, probably. “I told you it’s limited because of the size of device I can make. Don’t worry, I just finished putting together another one! Remember, five-hundred and thirty-three meters or less; it’s not Bifrost, just Bifrost in a can.” She took the new device off her workbench and held it out for him, and he snatched it away. “You’re welcome.”

  “Don’t try my patience,” Krieg said, his voice low.

  “Don’t try my devices limits,” Whatcha retorted as another, gigantic man came up behind him. Her eyes widened when she recognized him. “Hi Thurs, I thought you were in prison!” she greeted him excitedly.

  “Hello Whatchamacalit,” he replied evenly.

  “Thurisaz,” Krieg barked.

  “Apologies sir.” He lifted his shoulders in a near-microscopic shrug. “Thanks to your new invention, Kraftwerk, I was rescued.”

  “That’s great!” she said, smiling. He was the only one that seemed to give her the time of day, apparently happy to learn about the inventions she’d made at gunpoint. “Well I guess if the triagonal was destroyed saving you it’s fine. I’m going to need more zirconium and lithium batteries though, if you want me to keep making them. Also can I please take a look at everyone’s powers? That was part of the deal!”

  “We need more of these teleportation devices, not whatever fanciful nonsense you might come up with,” Krieg said. His bad mood was getting contagious… “See to it we produce enough of these and perhaps I’ll allow you to examine others.” She perked up.

  “Alright fine,” Whatchamacalit said with an eager nod. “You just keep bringing me materials, and please follow the instructions.” Krieg spun on his heel and brushed past Thurisaz, leaving the workshop in a facsimile of peace.

  “Sorry for the trouble, Whatcha,” Thurs said as his body shrank to a slightly more human scale. He took a seat on the other stool in the room, his stool.

  “It’s no trouble, I’m glad you’re okay,” she replied, offering him a smile before turning back to her workbench. “How did they get you? I saw the bodycam footage but it didn’t do much to explain things, beyond the Protectorate using big guns.”

  “That is how it was done,” he said, chuckling dryly. “I did not expect then to use such methods, but the heroes I first fought were not members. They stole our firearms and used them against me. Eventually they were able to overwhelm even my abilities.”

  “How did they hold you after?” Whatcha asked as she started putting together another device. No time to waste. “I couldn’t get into their main systems to watch, they’re on an isolated server.”

  “I do not know, I was sedated,” he said. “I suppose that is the answer you are looking for.”

  “Yeah, guess so,” she sighed, shaking her head. “Honestly, it’s not like it’s impossible to counter your powers. All they need to do is prevent your limbs from moving; you can’t apply force to something if you can’t, you know, apply force. They have a space warper for goodness sake! They could keep you away from anything as long as they wanted.” Oh if she could examine that girl’s powers...Vista, that was her name. Probably.

  “The methods of the Protectorate are more crude than yours,” Thurisaz replied.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  “Aww, thanks buddy.” Whatcha tossed a grin over her shoulder, getting a nod in response. A man of few words, she appreciated it. “So what’s got the boss up in arms?”

  “The device he brought you was used in a failed attempt to assassinate Tattletale,” he explained. “There were more enemies than expected, and the squad leader panicked when attempting to escape. The results were...predictable.”

  “None of the squad made it back?” Thurs shook his head and she clicked her tongue. “Idiots. I thought you guys were supposed to be the master race.”

  “Do not make jokes like that,” he warned. “I understand you do not share in our truth, but understand that here it is truth.”

  “Alright, sheesh I get it,” Whatchamacalit sighed as she got back to work.

  Around here, truth was relative.

  “Ooookay just sit right there,” Whatchamacalit said, carefully positioning the needle. “You’re going to feel a little poke, okay?”

  “A little— ow!” Othala yelped and tried to pull away, but the harness around her skull kept her in place. “That wasn’t fucking little!”

  “Relax, you can’t even feel it now,” she said, turning to the computer monitor beside her. Her fingers danced on the keyboard, spilling out lines of code in seconds. Whatcha smacked the execute key and smiled as data began pouring in. “And you have a beautiful power. God, I’d kill for something like this.” She turned and smiled at her worried looking patient. “But I don’t have to, because of Tina!”

  “T- Tina?” Othala blinked owlishly.

  “Calling it a ‘transcranial-inserted neuroparaaxon analyzer’ tends to make my patients nervous,” Whatcha explained. “So I call her Tina. A lot easier to remember too since the boss has problems with long names,” she added, lowering her voice and winking.

  “Oh, um, okay.” The girl squirmed in the chair, eyes glancing about the workshop. “So what do you need me to do?”

  “Just use your power like you normally would,” Whatcha replied, offering a hand. Unfortunately this required contact to work. “And let me know what you’re giving me so I can mark it in the data.”

  It was so much easier to work with willing subjects. Obviously, of course, but these Werwolf fellows seemed practically eager when she said she might be able to crack Othala’s power. Hmm, personal superpowers in a can… What shape would it be? Well, that depended on what sort of power Othala could impart of course.

  And powers she could impart. Invulnerability, inhuman strength, flight, fire-breathing. It was dizzying, though Whatchamacalit resisted the urge to experiment with the powers given. That would take up too much time, and she wanted to get to work as quick as she could.

  Still, it took nearly an hour just to sort all the data she needed to gather. That was fine, it wasn’t like Whatchamacalit was going anywhere. She’d been cooped up in her workshop and quarters for weeks. It wasn’t that different to her life before being press-ganged like a British drunkard in the seventeenth century, but it was the principle of being able to that bugged her.

  Of course she still got out from time to time, wasn’t like they could stop her when she literally built teleportation devices for them. But she had to come back, too much leverage to avoid it. Besides, whatever their idiotic nonsense about master racists and whatnot, they gave her everything she could ask and more. Except freedom, but the trade was almost worth it.

  Besides, where would Whatchamacalit go, the Protectorate? No, they would badger her about the fact that her medical license had been revoked a decade ago; not to mention their own uptight rules that would restrict what she could do needlessly. And with the unconstitutional laws that made parahumans second class citizens, commercially, she couldn’t do what she wanted.

  She couldn’t here either, but she could do more at least.

  “Alright you’re all done,” Whatchamcalit said cheerily, pulling the needle from Othala’s head and saving half a dozen backups of the data she’d gathered. Couldn’t be too careful. “Thanks for taking the time, and showing me that gorgeous power. If you ever have some free time I’d love to see it again.”

  “I...think I’ll be busy,” Othala said, rubbing her head. “Hope that whatever you’re doing works out.”

  Whatchamacalit couldn’t wait to find out.

  “So this one grants about ten seconds of increased strength, this one can heal minor injuries.” Whatcha held up a hexagonal device and grinned. “And this makes someone basically immune to damage for a whole six seconds. Told you you needed to let me look at all your powers.”

  “This is excellent work, Kraftwerk,” Krieg said, getting her name wrong again as he took the device. “A shame it took so long.”

  “Do you want to try processing three hundred petabytes of data to get the circuit diagrams right?” She crossed her arms, frowning. “It didn’t even take me two weeks, we’re a day short!” Lucky.

  “It is a faster pace that she created the devices based off of Bifrost’s power,” Thurisaz came to her rescue, tone dogged and flat as ever. “And if it repeatable at the same scale, this will dramatically increase the abilities of our troops.”

  “That is true,” Krieg mused, nodding slowly.

  “Well I can only make as many as you give me materials for,” Whatchamacalit said, raising a hand. “And these things do require some...fancy stuff, illegal stuff.”

  “Put together a list,” Krieg said. “I’ll see to it you have everything you could need, so long as you continue making things like this.” Her frown turned right around.

  “And maybe I could start looking at the others?” she said hopefully. “I mean, if I could do this with just a couple of you, imagine—”

  “This is enough,” he cut her off. “Thurisaz, collect the list when she’s done and have it delivered to Graham, logistics. Understand?”

  “Yes sir,” Thurs replied simply as Krieg turned and left. “Your work is excellent, Whatchamacalit.”

  “Yeah I know,” she sighed, sitting on her swivel chair and spinning idly. “Just wish you weren’t the only one to notice.”

  “The others...do not understand you much of the time,” he rumbled gently, shrinking down so he didn’t quite tower over her. “Many of them do not seek to understand. It is an unfortunate flaw in an otherwise perfect organism.”

  “It’s stupid,” she muttered.

  “I do not disagree.”

  “Thanks big guy,” Whatchamacalit said, offering him a smile. “Well, no time to waste I suppose. So what do you think I should start with?”