I have an organization of fence sitters, Erich thought furiously as he strode through the halls of Habitation Block A.

The second his guards had seen that it was Prowler attacking – and not some other gang – they’d effectively scarpered, choosing not to get involved.

It really shouldn’t have surprised him. Apparently, the big appeal of working for him was that it allowed them to stay out of the brewing pissing match between Zig-Zag and Bronte.

Something that Erich had failed to take into account when he’d decided to throw his hat into the ring.

So I’ve effectively lost a third of my combat strength before the first fight, the engineer grumbled nearly ploughing down a small child before it hastily skipped out of his path.

Erich barely noticed, as his eyes alighted on his destination.

He wasted no time before stepping into the room, his HUD helpfully placing a reticule over his target amongst the myriad other occupied beds.

Erich had certainly not included an infirmary in his designs for the Habitation Block, but it seemed that Natasha had wasted no time in converting one of the dorms to suit that purpose after he’d designated her the leader of his ‘medical wing’.

A ridiculously ostentatious name for a group who for the most part lacked even barely adequate first-aid training, but like a hundred other things he’d created over the past year, he hoped they would eventually grow into it.

“Trying to stab a rampaging Bruiser with a spanner was not wise,” he said without preamble.

Natasha’s – poorly – bandaged head slowly swivelled in the supervillain’s direction. “Gee boss, thanks for the kind words for your wounded minion. A minion who was wounded trying to save your workshop I might add.”

Erich snorted, both irritated and relieved to see that not even a head injury had seen fit to knock the irreverent attitude from his most precocious underling.

“If at any point any of my facilities require the intervention of a spanner wielding child to keep them from destruction, they deserve to be destroyed.”

Natasha scowled for a few moments, before her indignant façade crumbled.

“It was pretty dumb, wasn’t it?” She chuckled humourlessly.

“Without a doubt,” Erich nodded, before hesitating slightly.

“…Still, it was also – for a given definition – brave,” he muttered as he pulled a package out from within his cloak. “To that end, I have decided a reward is in order.”

The girl tried to hide it, but he didn’t miss the way her eyes lit up as he placed the unassuming brown package on her bed. Nor that way the many bandaged and blatantly eavesdropping children around the room leaned forward with interest.

Truth be told, he didn’t care. This entire thing was a farce.

Rewarding stupidity? He thought, what a ridiculous notion.

Still, Ethan had been most insistent that a reward was called for in this instance, and not a rebuke. Or at least, not just a rebuke. And despite of the man’s recent fuck-up in regards to the reliability of his adult contingent, he did have some measure of insight into the minds of the children under Erich’s command.

“You finally got them working?” Natasha said, her voice heavy with an emotion he couldn’t identify, as she gently pulled the set of four metallic fingers from the shredded remains of the packaging.

Erich shrugged.

“For a given definition of working,” he said. “The prosthetic’s ability to sense tactile or thermal sensation is near non-existent, and as such their ability to perform delicate tasks is equally compromised…”

He trailed off as he saw the girl was barely listening.

“They’ll do for now,” he finished with a sigh, ignoring the way the girl was all but ignoring him as she cradled the things to her chest.

It’s fine, he supposed. The girl is still developing so a series of replacements would have been obligated anyway as she slowly grew.

That was not something he was looking forward to. Making dozens of prosthesis for different stages of development. Maybe he would make them transferable? As soon as someone outgrew their own prosthesis, they could pass it on. That would surely cut down on the numbers needed.

No, injuries aren’t standardised, so that would be impractical.

Unless he started to standardise the injuries themselves?

Make fingers. Hands. Arms. Feet. Legs.

Missing half an arm? A hand? A leg? Might as well take off the rest of it for ease of new prosthesis application, he thought. Yes, that would make sense.

Problem solved; Erich found himself smiling as he turned to leave.

He was halfway out the door when a small voice stopped him. It was quiet. So much so that his suit had to compensate by boosting the audio.

Still, he heard it loud and clear.

“Thank you.”

He paused, a strange sensation rising in his chest.

“…You’re welcome.”

Then he left. Quickly.

Erich was pondering over what to with the ‘Prowler Situation’ - while simultaneously directing bands of roving repair children - when his HUD alerted him to an incoming call.

His first instinct was to ignore it, one which he only barely managed to reign in when he saw just who it was that was calling.

“What?” He said as he finally bit the bullet and answered.

“Now, now,” Bronte’s husky voice filtered out through his speakers. “Is that anyone way to speak to your boss?”

“Last I checked, that particular dynamic was no longer applicable to our relationship,” the engineer scoffed as he used his mechandrites to lift a downed Helot that a far too young child was struggling with.

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Bronte chuckled. “Last I heard, you and Zig-Zag are on the outs.”

Erich didn’t bother asking where she’d heard that. Criminal organizations were sieves of knowledge, and even his was no exception on that front.

“Maybe.” Erich shrugged as he dumped the wreck Helot onto a passing trolley already piled high with damaged drones and equipment. “But that doesn’t really change my stance on you.”

The incident that had caused the break in their relationship might have been minor in the grand scheme of things, but in Erich’s mind it was emblematic of a larger problem.

Bronte needed to be in control. He could have lived with that. His only concern was his workshop.

Bronte was also dangerously unstable – though if she’d always been that way and he’d never noticed, or it was a new development, he didn’t know. That he couldn’t live with.

He had no interest in working under an unstable supervillain with control issues, not when he could apparently run an organization just fine by himself.

Hell, he was doing it right now, and he hadn’t totally ruined it yet, he thought as he looked at his many workers scurrying around him. Though he tactfully ignored that fact that they were in the process of cleaning up wreckage.

His organization was fine. He needed and wanted no oversight.

“The Block Party,” and he realized that was the first time using the group’s ridiculous name, “needs no help.”

He half expected that statement to set the woman off. Which was why he felt a shiver go up his spine as the villainess just chuckled.

“I don’t know about that,” she said. “Maybe you should give that Artificer pal of yours a call? I know you need her help. Specially if you want to keep all your toys working.”

Then she hung up.

“…Shit.” Erich murmured as he looked at the ended call sign.

It took him all of a few seconds before he input Overdrive’s contact details into his communicator; and while Erich was usually a man who appreciated promptness, he couldn’t help but feel a slight nagging sense of worry when Overdrive picked up the call before the second ring.

A sensation that was immediately vindicated when Overdrive immediately started yelling in his ear.

“It’s gone!” The woman screamed, prompting Erich to wince and franticly dial down the volume on his speakers. “My car. The tech. Your little anti-listening thingy. My car!”

Erich wasn’t stupid, so he didn’t waste time with stupid questions.

“Who took the tech?”

‘How to Make Friends and Influence People’ had suggested adopting a calming presence in high stress situations so as to allow others to emulate it and solve the problem at hand.

‘How to Make Friends and Influence People’ was also apparently full of shit, because Overdrive didn’t calm down at all.

“The Dome,” the racer shrieked. “A bunch of officials in suits busted down the door a few minutes ago and took all my stuff.”

“Did they give a reason?” Erich asked, trying to stay calm himself.

“’Outside Interference’” Overdrive said in the tone of someone who was quoting another. “Some shit about receiving outside help ‘being contrary to the spirit of competition that the Dome seeks to cultivate amongst its competitors’. Total horseshit.”

Yes it was.

Gladiators received outside assistance all the time - in the form of monetary compensation or raw materials rather than tech. Either for advertising space within the dome, or favours in the event a Gladiator managed to win their way to freedom.

The big omission from the list of allowed materials was actual technology. Presumably to stop a powerful Artificer from creating the sort of arrangement he had developed with Overdrive.

Hence why he had gone out of his way to jam any listening devices coming to and from the area and demanded that any components Overdrive supplied him with were small enough for him to smuggle out in his suit.

I also had to pretend those visits were of a… conjugal nature.

That had galled him for reasons he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to read into.

“Someone must have tipped them off as to the nature of our arrangement,” he concluded, already knowing exactly who.

“No shit,” Overdrive spat back. “Or maybe they noticed I went from being close to last in every race to number one.”

Erich rolled his eyes. What did she want him to do? Make an inferior product that he gradually scaled up…

In retrospect, he should have done exactly that, but the excitement of working on the project had gotten away from him.

“You didn’t exactly complain!” He shot back, earning an indignant squawk from the redheaded woman on the other end of the phone.

He mentally tuned out the accompanying tirade as he started considering his options now that his supply line in the form of Overdrive had been cut.

Could he contact another Dome gladiator?

No, my name’s already known. I’d be receiving far greater scrutiny if I contacted a different Artificer.

Could he survive without Overdrive’s input?

Hell no. Not a chance in hell.

He needed Overdrive. Or someone like her. Her contributions of Meta tech were an integral part of his industrial base.

Sure, he could build Helots and other more conventional tech without her, but it was his Meta products and weapons that formed the solid core of his armed forces and product lines. Helots might have been fine for things like guard duty and light engagement, but as the events of last night had proven, when put up against real power they crumpled without resistance.

Not to mention his suit!

Repairs. Maintenance. Upgrades. The list goes on.

Power armour was not cheap. In time or material. Without a supply of Meta-tech parts Erich figured he might get a single fight in the machine before it was rendered defunct.

Not acceptable. Not acceptable at all.

To be honest, when he’d started picking up kids for his workshops, part of him had hoped one of them might have an event, allowing him access to another Meta.

Hell, I didn’t even argue all that much about personal protective equipment in the hope that losing a finger or any eye might set one off.

Sadly, reality was not so convenient, and he wasn’t about to start intentionally trying to create new Metas.

He’d been down that road himself, and he knew from experience that it did not engender loyalty to the provider of those powers.

If it even works, he thought with a hint of bitterness. It was an old tired thing, but it flared up anyway as his thoughts turned to his own childhood.

Fortunately, the gradual cutting off of Overdrive’s stressed out tirade brought him back to reality.

My very shitty reality.

“So what do we do now?” Overdrive finally said, sounding just as tired and lost as he felt.

Erich didn’t know.

He honestly didn’t.

With almost contemptuous ease Bronte had killed his faction.

I suppose that’s the difference between a professional schemer and a dabbler, he thought with a hint of black humour.

It was obvious what her goal was. Bringing back in line. Cutting off his ability to split from her.

And I’ve got no doubt I’m going have a whole bundle of ‘babysitters’ if I do go back to her.

She’d dismantle the Block Party for sure. Even if he surrendered to her totally, she wouldn’t allow an organization so obviously loyal to him to continue to exist.

No, she’d destroy it outright.

The thought was more offensive to him than he thought. Even more so than the loss of his freedom.

Am I going soft?

God forbid he felt any kind of affection for the horde of little monsters that infested his workshops. The very thought sent a shudder up his spine.

It won’t be too bad, he tried to reason. If she’s trying to bring you back in then it means she has access to her own supply of Meta tech.

And he had a good idea where – and it sure as shit wasn’t an old cache of Hardlight’s stuff, even if he was sure she would try and sell it to him as such.

“I guess you don’t know then?”

Clearly he’d taken too long to speak, because Overdrive had taken his silence as an answer. Which it was, he supposed.

To his surprise, she didn’t sound angry. Just tired.

Defeated.

“Shit.” The woman said, effectively summing up the situation. “And here I thought I might get free. Shouldn’t have hoped. Just leads to disappointment round here.”

Erich had no interest in hearing the lamentations of a dead woman. He had his own problems. She had nothing to offer him anymore, and he her.

He was just reaching over to cut off the call when he heard her last words.

“Guess neither of us are escaping our collars, are we?”

The words struck him like a lightning bolt.

He started to walk towards his office.

“I’ll call you back. We might not be totally fucked after all.”

“Wait, wha-”

He cut the call off.

The Mechromancer wasn’t done yet.

The Block Party wasn’t done yet.